Review: Under the Rushes by Amy Lane

Going by the cover, I expected Amy Lane’s UNDER THE RUSHES [Amazon | Scribd] to be historical fantasy. Much to my surprise and delight, it's actually science fiction set on a distant world where the colonists have lost some of their founders’ technological prowess and redeveloped what remains into a system with a vaguely steampunk aesthetic. It has a lot in common with the baroque SF I always hope to stumble across, in which science fictional elements operate within an elaborate, highly stratified society.

A lot, but not everything. Because this isn’t just far-future SF: it’s a superhero novel!

Dorjan's been in martial disgrace ever since he took a civilian’s tip to heart and tried to prevent his province from starting a pointless war. Ten years on, he spends his days carefully steering the provincial leadership in his guise as Doltish and Disinterested Forum Master and his nights protecting the capital city as the Nyx, an armoured warrior who champions the most vulnerable elements of society. He's alone in this endeavour save for his genius inventor friend, Areau, who was tortured after his own disgrace and now demands soul-crushing things from Dorjan following each mission. Just as the pressure of dealing with Areau’s addictions becomes too much for Dorjan, he finds a solution in the form of two grateful rescuees--one of whom is the very boy who first alerted him to the corruption in his government, all grown up and determined to take an active role in the Nyx's endeavours.

Review: Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley

Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION [Amazon | The Book Depository] centres on a futuristic space port and the surrounding community. Central Station--both the massive structure and the neighbourhood to which it lends its name--lies between Israeli Tel Aviv and Arab Jaffa and is home to a diverse group of people: racially, economically, religiously, and technologically. Prominent families, notorious groups, and established social fixtures abound, and the story herein gives everyone plenty of opportunity to hobnob with others (and Others) from across Central Station’s width and breadth.

CENTRAL STATION began life as a series of short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies between 2011 and 2014, with two chapters being original to this volume. Tidhar has reworked the stories so they form a novel, but I’d caution you not to expect much in the way of a traditional plot. Proximity and familiarity, not a common goal, draw these characters together. Tidhar isn’t interested in providing the reader with many answers. Instead, his work issues an invitation to consider the many ways people might come together in a futuristic society that’s traveled to the stars but still has firm ties to Earth.

Review: Dark Jem by Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

DARK JEM [Amazon | The Book Depository] is the third volume of JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, writer Kelly Thompson and artist Sophie Campbell’s take on the 80s icon. I must confess, I’ve been a bad Jem fan--I missed most of Volume Two, VIRAL. As per the comics tradition, though, this didn’t affect my enjoyment of DARK JEM. Yes, I’m sad I’ll have to read those vol 2 issues later than I might’ve done, but the story itself works perfectly well without them in the mix because Thompson and Campbell carefully seed their story with reminders as to the series’ overall premise and what’s happened in the recent past. I caught up easy-peasy and settled in to enjoy the ride.

Which is GREAT. Like, super-great. Like, all the Jemerrific goodness I loved in volume one with an extra dose of “let’s play with the wider comics tradition” in the mix. It delighted me and made me gasp in horror; my most favouritest combination, made all the better because it happened within one of my favourite comics.

The basic story is as follows: something’s wrong with Synergy, the AI the Holograms use to craft Jerrica’s stage persona and all their special effects. Really wrong. “Hey, let’s brainwash everyone,” wrong. Eep! Jerrica quickly falls under Synergy’s spell, and the other Holograms aren’t far behind her. With their new sound, they look set to infect everyone with Synergy’s pernicious virus and turn the world into a dark yet orderly hellscape.

Unless they can break Synergy's hold, round up a few helpers, and save everyone.

Television: Aldnoah.Zero

Last year, I decided to start watching more foreign TV as a counterpoint to my excessive CW consumption. I wasn't out to watch a different kind of TV, mind; I just figured subtitles might lend an air of legitimacy to the usual faked deaths and Secret Babies.

I asked Netflix what they had for me, and Netflix was like, "We think you should watch some anime. Here's a well-rated SFnal thing called ALDNOAH.ZERO."

A this point, I’d watched one anime in my whole life (SKIP BEAT!, based on the manga of the same name) and that wasn’t even on Netflix, but I was like, "Okay." Because Netflix has learned what I like, and the whole no-anime thing was situational rather than preferential. When I was a young person, anime was super expensive and hard to find, so I didn’t bother. Netflix is relatively cheap and easy to access, so I figured it was time to explore the medium.

I generally give new shows two or three episodes to hook me. ALDNOAH.ZERO managed the feat inside of ten minutes.

Review: The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman, J.H. Williams III, and Dave Stewart et al

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Fair warning: I’m about to use the phrase "religious experience."

I know, I know. It’s overblown and hyperbolic and it’ll prevent you from ever taking me seriously.

Worst of all, I mean it without a shred of irony or exaggeration. THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology] was, for me, a religious experience from the second it was announced until the moment I read the last page of the deluxe edition’s extensive back matter.

This is partly because stories are at the very core of my religion, for reasons I'm never comfortable elaborating on in public. Whether we're talking sacred or secular, I'm forever fascinated with the way life-defining stories shift according to who’s doing the telling--and according to what comes to light, and what stays hidden from whom, as the story unfolds.

THE SANDMAN shares my preoccupation. It never loses its bone deep awareness of stories as a vital, ever-shifting, highly subjective force.

"Religious experience" is also apt because because SANDMAN was the first of what I think of as the comics; the ones that reach into my very soul because something in them calls to something in me. The world is never the same after I’ve discovered one of the comics. It hasn’t been the same since I discovered SANDMAN in the pages of a massive coffee table book about DC Comics, or since I scraped together $19.21--a hefty amount to Teenage Me--and ordered a steeply discounted¹ copy of PRELUDES & NOCTURNES from Amazon’s fledgling Canadian operation.

I’ve returned to SANDMAN over and over in the decade and a half since then, and I can’t wait to reread it again with OVERTURE under my belt. Because this final/first volume casts everything that came before (or after) it in a new light.

Review: Jem and the Holograms Vol 1, Showtime by Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

A lot of 80s kids have fond memories of JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS, and I’m no different. I spent seven years in the Hell Decade¹, and Jem et al were one of the things that brightened it up.

That said, the vast majority of my Jem-related recollections have to do with my awesome star stage that was also a tape deck, and with how my one Jem doll² was way taller than everyone else’s Barbies. If I ever saw the cartoon, it's faded from my memory.

So for me, Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell’s JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology] falls into that strange realm between nostalgia and brand newness. I have an emotional connection to Jem as a beloved thing from my childhood, but not Jem as a particular story.

Which is to say, I don't mind the ways this incarnation of Jem may or may not differ from the older version.

Jerrica Benton and her three sisters, Kimber, Aja, and Shana, are ready to burst onto the music scene as the Holograms. The Misfits Vs! contest offers the perfect chance to get their video in front of thousands of listeners, especially since they’ll have an opportunity to face off against the uber-popular Misfits in a live battle of the bands if the video gets enough likes. There’s only one problem: Jerrica’s stage fright makes it impossible for her to perform in front of even a small crowd. Ulp!

Luckily, the girls’ scientist father left them the ultimate solution in the form of Synergy, an AI that can project three-dimensional holograms over anyone or anything--including Jerrica. Armed with an amazing stage persona for Jerrica and some kick-ass visual effects to go with their awesome music, the Holograms are ready to take on the world--provided the Misfits' jealous lead singer doesn’t sabotage them before the big day.

Review: Bitch Planet vol 1: Extraordinary Machine by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

If you’ve spent time on even the very fringes of comics fandom, you’ve surely heart about Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro’s BITCH PLANET. It made a huge splash on Twitter as soon as it was announced, and the first issue was barely out before I started seeing non-compliant tattoos. Everyone was abuzz about the third issue. And people like me, who don’t have room in their budget for single issues, chaffed to get our hands on the trade.

The wait is over! The first volume, EXTRAORDINARY MACHINE [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology], is now available digitally or from your favourite purveyor of print books. Go forth and purchase, friends! (Or ask your library to handle the purchasing so everyone in your town or city can benefit.) You want this book.

Female compliance is totes the most important thing in the world of the future. Not calm enough? Not pretty enough? Unwilling to accommodate the men in your life in every little way? You’re a prime candidate for removal to the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, better known as Bitch Planet, where your rehabilitation is the patriarchy’s priority.

Kamau Kogo used to be a professional athlete, but she has no more status than any other prisoner on Bitch Planet until the board lights on a new idea to increase revenue at the expense of the women they’ve taken in hand. They want Kam to form an all-prisoner Megaton team to feed demand for the world’s most popular, and most violent, sport. And hey, if one or more of the women should happen to die on live TV, that’s just the way things roll.

Kam may not have many options, but she won’t stand by and let her jailers call all the shots. With the help of her new teammates, she sets out to subvert the system--unless the powers that be get to her first.

Diversiverse: Canadian Women of Colour

A More Diverse Universe (aka Diversiverse) is now underway. This two-week reading period centres on books by people of colour, and I’ve committed to providing recs lists that highlight a few of my favourite authors.

Today I want to turn the spotlight on four Canadian women of colour. Two of them write SFF. Two of them don’t (or maybe just haven’t yet).

Karin Lowachee

I discovered Karin Lowachee late last year, thanks to a rec from Kristen. She’s since become one of my most recommended authors.

Lowachee’s first book, WARCHILD [review | Amazon | The Book Depository], is the start of a science fiction series that’s everything my younger, SF-averse self never dared to hope science fiction could be. The settings are rich and complex, whether Lowachee takes us to an alien world or deep into the heart of a human space station that’s a planet in its own right. The characters are as multifaceted as the worlds they inhabit. And the things Lowachee does with narrative; with the sheer possibility she unlocks in mixing first person with second and third, past tense with present... oy. These books are a master class in how technical wizardry can enhance every element of the story.

If you only seek out one new-to-you SF author this year, make it Karin Lowachee. Please be aware, though, that her books travel to dark places and may be triggering for some readers.

WARCHILD is followed by BURNDIVE [review | Amazon | The Book Depository] and CAGEBIRD [Amazon | The Book Depository], with a fourth book, THE WARBOY, to come. The paperbacks are a terrible price, but the ebook editions are fairly reasonable. Lowachee has also written a fantasy called THE GASLIGHT DOGS [Amazon], but I haven’t read it yet and so can't comment on it.

Review: Alex + Ada Volume 3 by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Friends, I fear the rumours are true. ALEX + ADA is a limited series. Fifteen issues; three tight volumes; one hell of a resolution.

Since this is the series’ third and final instalment, we shall forgo any attempt at a volume-specific plot summary. If you’re new to ALEX + ADA, I’ll refer you to my review of Volume One; or, if you’d rather not wade through all that, what you need to know is this: the comic is set in a nearish future where ubiquitous androids have their sentience suppressed due to public outcry and fearmongering. Alex, a young office worker, receives Ada, an android, for his birthday and sets out to unlock her sentience, with consequences both uplifting and dire.

I revisited the first two volumes directly before I read this one, and I’m beyond impressed with how the series gets deeper and meatier and better every time I reread it. Vaughn and Luna pack so much into each page. Luna’s deceptively simple layouts take us through each emotion in a subtle, truthful fashion that also invites us into the frame as a direct participant. The clean lines and muted colours effectively render the comic a canvas into which we can paint ourselves, even as we experience the characters’ every jolt.

Review: The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS is the sequel to THE JUST CITY, Jo Walton’s novel of time-displaced philosophers doing Plato’s Republic with divine aid. It picks up about twenty years on and examines the fallout from Sokrates’s debate with Athene at the end of the previous book. You probably want to read THE JUST CITY first so you’ve got a good grounding in the premise and the characters, but there’s enough distance between the two books that I imagine a new reader could enter here if they were so inclined. I wouldn’t recommend it, since it’d mean cheating yourself out of the wonder that is THE JUST CITY, but it’s a thing you could do.

Like its predecessor, THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS employs three narrators: Apollo, who continues to increase his understanding of humanity as a father, civic leader, and recently bereaved husband; Arete, his daughter, who has lived her entire life in the remnant of the Just City with full awareness of her father’s divine nature and her own potential to become a Classical hero; and Maia, who remains a teacher and interrogator of philosophical concepts large and small.

Apollo and Arete’s stories work in concert as father and daughter undertake a journey to discover the truth behind a deadly art raid and their fragmented Republic’s missing colony. Maia’s mainly comprises flashbacks to the years after the Last Debate, giving us insight into the challenges cities and citizens alike faced during their restructuring efforts.

And of course, it’s all terribly interesting.

Review: ODY-C, Volume One by Matt Fraction and Christian Ward

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

ODY-C [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology] is Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s reimagining of THE ODYSSEY—in space, with a predominantly female cast of characters. Odyssia, trickster-general, has spent a hundred years waging war against Troiia-VII and is now anxious to return home to her wife and child; however, her actions have drawn unfavourable attention. Zeus would be just as happy if Odyssia never made it home, so she erects barrier after barrier in the hero’s path.

It's your standard Odyssey setup. A war’s end; a hero on her way home; a slew of problems that lengthen her journey and threaten her life. What makes ODY-C different from every other Odyssey retelling you’ve ever read is its blend of science fiction with divine magic, and its strong focus on women. In this universe, Zeus eradicates manhood, certain sons cannot help but rise against their fathers as she rose against hers. She expects this to be the end of all non-godly people¹, but women respond by engineering a third sex, the sebex, which can incubate ovum and thus bear children without masculine input.

This pisses Zeus off, but she can’t actually do anything about it because her decree only banned men and a sebex is not a man. Awkward.

And that’s where we’re at when ODY-C begins. The universe is full of women. Zeus is angry. Odyssia wants to go home. The reader enters the fray.

Let me be straight with you: I did not enjoy ODY-C. I loved the art. I admire the attempt. But the story itself left me cold, cold, cold.

In the normal course of things, I’d decline to write about a book that didn’t work for me, but in this case I want to unpack my response. I do honestly admire the scope of Fraction and Ward’s work, and I strongly suspect the comic will be absolutely the best thing ever in the right reader’s hands.

I’m not that reader, but you might be. Read on to find out.

An Assassin-Free Recs List, For Once

I write a lot of recs lists these days, partly because people keep asking me for them, partly because of My Year With Marvel, and partly because I like telling the world what to read. These lists cover a variety of territory, from knee-jerk recs to my top-rated Marvel comics, but whatever their focus, they all have one thing in common: they’re packed with assassins.

Turns out, all my top recs are assassin-oriented. Like, guess what profession Fitz trains for in Robin Hobb’s ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE! (Go on. You’ll never get it.) The Will, the sorta-kinda villain of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’s SAGA, calls himself a freelancer, but dude, he’s been paid the big bucks to put an end to Our Heroes, and we all know what category that puts him in. Mildmay, co-narrator of Sarah Monette’s MELUSINE, dodges his assassin roots but can’t escape them entirely. Jos, protagonist of Karin Lowachee’s WARCHILD, doesn’t technically kill people for money (except for the whole soldier thing), but he’s trained as an assassin-priest so he gets the title free and clear.

And so on and so forth. Assassins, they follow me around.

Soon as I noticed this trend, I challenged myself to make a recs list without a single assassin on it. No assassin protagonists; no assassin antagonists; no secondary characters who occasionally assassinate people. No assassins lurking the background doing nothing of any great importance, even.

No assassins. None.

I opened my LibraryThing account and scrolled through my top-rated books in search of qualifying titles. A wealth of possibilities spread themselves before me. I could rec THE DREAM THIEVES by Maggie Stiefvater--except no, wait, the Grey Man is a hit man. Damn. Michelle West’s fabulous Averalaan novels were a clear choice until I remembered they’re packed with demonic assassins. I can’t immediately recall any assassins in THE SNOW QUEEN or THE SUMMER QUEEN by Joan D. Vinge, but neither can I swear to their absence given how that world works. The same is true of Kristin Cashore’s BITTERBLUE. And some of my other less frequently pushed top picks--A GAME FOR SWALLOWS by Zeina Abirached, THE MAGICIANS AND MRS QUENT by Galen Beckett, and THE SIREN by Tiffany Reisz--contain sneaky-ass, hidden assassins.

Even SKIP BEAT, my comic-du-jour, has an on-screen assassin tucked away in one of its storylines.

The hell, self? Why you gotta fixate on books about contract killers?

For that matter, why you gotta sneak a ton of assassin-laden recs into what is supposed to be an assassin-free recs list?

Um.

Moving on, I present to you five books I’m 98% sure are assassin-free, and which I loved and adored and think you should read:

Review: Wake by Elizabeth Knox

It’s sudden. One minute, the citizens of Kahukura, a small community near the north coast of New Zealand’s South Island, are fine. The next, most of them are hell-bent on destroying their neighbours without the slightest thought for their own safety.

Fourteen people survive the experience unscathed and are subsequently trapped inside the town by a barrier that kills all technology and renders all living creatures inert. Robbed of a way to communicate with the outside world and with no idea what’s truly happened to them, this small group of survivors bands together to get each other through--provided the strain of all doesn’t tear them apart.

At first glance, WAKE seems like your standard zombie story. Violence becomes the norm in the blink of an eye, with transfer potential at the forefront of the reader’s mind as the survivors try to evade infected individuals. We’re led to believe this is Elizabeth Knox’s unique take on a story we’ve all heard before.

It’s not, of course. Knox rarely takes the expected route in any of her fiction, and WAKE is no exception. As soon as the violence dies down, it becomes clear the infected weren’t zombies. So what were they? Why were the survivors spared? And how are they meant to cope with any of it?

Women In SF&F Month: Women In Comics

If you've been around the blogosphere for any length of time, you surely know about Fantasy Cafe's Women in SF&F Month. Every April, Kristen invites a slew of guests to take over her blog and talk about issues related to--you guessed it--women who work in science fiction and fantasy.

This year, I've contributed a post about twelve of my favourite women who write and/or draw comics. You'll find it over at Fantasy Cafe (of course).

While you're there, be sure to check out the multitude of other posts. They cover such topics as the importance of recs lists, the gender system in Rachel Hartman's SHADOW SCALE, identifying with female characters, and notable debut authors, to name just a handful.

You want to enter the Winner's Choice Giveaway, too. Y'all know I'm gonna tell you to pick Karin Lowachee's WARCHILD if you win, but there are plenty of other great possibilities if you're not into painfully amazing military SF.

And hey, if none of the books on that list appeal, you can always throw your name in for the Readers' Recommendations Giveaway, for which the winner can pick any book from the big giant list of SFF by women. In fact, enter that giveaway as well as the winner's choice one so you'll have twice as many chances to win WARCHILD.

(I really, really want you to read WARCHILD. Really.)

My Year With Marvel: Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye

A superhero-shy friend recently asked me for comics recs. "Read HAWKEYE!" I said. “It’s about non-superpowered superheroes not being superheroic.”

It's a good soundbite and one I've stuck to in the intervening weeks, but it's also a touch misleading. Clint Barton and Kate Bishop, the two Hawkeyes, are most certainly heroic, caring people in the non-super sense. It’s just that HAWKEYE focuses on the smaller stories that happen between the earth-shattering missions.

No one goes to outer space in HAWKEYE. They don’t tangle with evil mutants or face off against vengeful gods. Instead, they clash with tracksuited mobsters from Little Irkutsk who harbour dastardly intentions towards small Brooklyn communities. They help regular people deal with devastating floods. They ensure soon-to-be weds have at least one orchid at their wedding. They fight street-level battles to keep folks safe.

If their heroism occasionally falters... well, they’re people as much as they're heroes. And sometimes people mess up.

My Year With Marvel: Annihilation

I didn't make it very far into the Marvel Universe before I hit a snag: my first Major Crossover Event.

Said event was INFINITY. A couple of issues of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY tied in with it and left me confused as all hell. The biggest crossover I'd encountered in my late-90s comics days was the need to buy both X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN to get the full story each month. It was a tad hard on the wallet, yeah, but it was easy to follow.

INFINITY was not. I tried reading the first couple of issues of what I took to be the core series, but they only confused me more. A quick spot of Googling told me that was because INFINITY required a ton of switching between various titles, not to mention a good grounding in Jonathan Hickman’s vision of the Avengers.

It was all a bit much for my introduction to crossovers, so I did even more research and decided to travel further back into the Marvel Cosmic timeline to ANNIHILATION. This mid-noughties crossover event is basically a Marvel Cosmic relaunch in which many classic characters come together to fight an invasion that threatens to overrun the galaxy. ANNIHILATION takes place concurrently with CIVIL WAR but has minimal ties to that larger, earthside event.

It proved an excellent starting point for the following reasons:

Review: Saga, vols 1-4 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

It’s past time we talked about SAGA.

I mean, if you’ve ever asked me for comics recs, I’ve either told you to read it or squeed with you if you've already done so. SAGA is currently the comic, by which I mean it's the latest comic to sweep into my life and bowl me over. Y’all know I read (and rave about) a lot of the things, but it’s rare for me to get deeply, all-consumingly excited about one. So when another of the comics¹ lands in my lap, it kicks things up a notch. I wander around in a comics-addled daze for anywhere from a month to several years. I tell everyone about this wonderful, glorious text. I push it like it’s my job. And sooner or later, the people around me start to listen.

SAGA isn’t just a comic. It’s the comic, and you need to read it.

What’s it about, the uninitiated among you ask?

The war between the winged citizens of Landfall and the horned people of its moon, Wreath, has raged on for as long as anyone can remember, and boy is it ever bloody. Since the destruction of one celestial body would mean the destruction of both, each side has called for a sorta-truce on their home turf and instead taken the fight to various other moons, planets, comets, and what-have-yous throughout the galaxy.

You can imagine how much this thrills the rest of the galaxy.

Marko, a soldier from Wreath, grows so sick of the constant fighting that he turns himself in to Landfallian forces as a conscientious objector. He expects to live out the rest of his short life in a prison camp, but his prospects change when Alana, a winged soldier with pacifistic ideas of her own, is assigned to guard him. They connect; Alana busts Marko out of jail; they go on the run; they get married; and, most importantly, they have a winged, horned baby named Hazel.

Neither Landfall nor Wreath can allow Hazel’s existence to become public knowledge, so both sides contract an assortment of freelancers, soldiers, and governmental officials to kill the couple and recover the proof of their illicit affair. It doesn't go particularly well for anyone..

Anyone except the reader, that is, because the resulting story is amazing.

No, seriously. Amazing.

Review: The Just City by Jo Walton

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

You’re liable to see THE JUST CITY marketed as fantasy, and that’s entirely fair. Divine magic forms the story's backbone as the goddess Pallas Athene pulls philosophers from throughout human history and plunks them down on prehistoric Santorini with instructions to found the Just City from Plato's Republic. The magical setup aside, though, I think THE JUST CITY'S heart is more closely aligned with social science fiction.

A rough summary: Apollo can't fathom how Daphne could have preferred becoming a tree to having sex with him, so he asks his sister Athene to help him figure it out. When Athene's explanation proves beyond his understanding, she suggests a stint in the Just City might help him get a handle on how other people view the world. Apollo agrees, and promptly arranges to be born as a mortal boy and sold to the City’s recruiters so he can experience a full human lifetime within Athene's social experiment.

Apollo, in his human-with-divine-knowledge guise, narrates about a third of the novel. He shares this duty with Simmea, an Egyptian girl brought to the city at the age of eleven as part of the first generation of model citizens, and Maia, a Victorian philosopher who helps conceive of and design the Just City. Their perspectives--interested outsider, native, and architect--combine to give us a portrait of an ideal society that scarcely needs Sokrates’s scathing condemnation to reveal its practical flaws.

Just so's we're all clear on where I'm coming from with this review, I have a degree in Classics but I’ve never read Plato’s Republic. I focused on Civilizations and can tell you heaps of things about the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, plus an ungodly amount about art and architecture and some bonus Fun Facts About Sparta¹, but I’m somewhat lacking in philosophical knowledge. The Languages students studied Plato and all them; we Civilizations folks stuck to Herodotus and his ilk².

What I’m saying is, I Do Not Know My Stuff where Plato is concerned--and while I’m sure THE JUST CITY is more intellectually exciting if you’re well versed in Plato, I’m here to tell you you don’t need to be. Enter with a willingness to engage with the ideas you find herein, coupled with an enthusiasm for philosophy, and you’ll do just fine.

2015's Most Wanted

I love me a bandwagon, so let's talk about a few of my most anticipated releases of 2015.

Some of these are probably wishful thinking, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few frightfully important titles, but I figured I might as well give y'all a snapshot of what I'm looking forward to reading as soon as ever I can.

None of the post-August releases have cover art yet, so I've used author photos to represent those books. All such images were pulled from the authors' websites, Wikipedia, publishers' websites, or Goodreads.

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman - March 10

This sequel to SERAPHINA was perhaps my most anticipated book of 2014--until it got bumped back a year. Still, the wait is nearly over! Hurray!

I'm so excited about the book that I'm tempted to actually ask for a review copy, but I'm also way too shy/anxiety-ridden to cold-email a PR rep. Since it never showed up on NetGalley (sadness), I guess it's the library for me.

Review: Burndive by Karin Lowachee

I couldn’t read another book after WARCHILD. I just couldn’t. I futzed around for a couple of days, poking at comics and short fiction as I waited for a chance to visit my local used bookstore in search of more by Karin Lowachee.

Thankfully, BURNDIVE was waiting for me. I don’t even know what I’d have done otherwise. Probably moped around for the next few months, disconsolate and inclined towards long, loud complaints about the state of the world.

I get a touch dramatic about fiction.

BURNDIVE is a very different book from WARCHILD, so I worked hard to temper my expectations (which were all tangled up anyways, since I’m the kind of reader who always fears any and all follow-ups to a beloved book.) It took me about a hundred pages to get used to the different approach and the wildly different main character, but once I settled in I was hooked but good.

This second volume relocates the action to Austro Station, where Ryan Azarcon lives the privileged life of a rich university dropout. He’s got his drugs when he can sneak them past his bodyguard, his parties when his mother lets him out of the apartment, and no responsibilities to speak of. In the absence of any better activity, he spends his days playing his guitar and trying to escape the shadow of the terrorist attack he witnessed during his last months on Earth.

His shiftless life becomes anything but when major news comes in from the far reaches of space: his father, captain of the warship Macdedon, is in peace talks with the aliens against whom he’s waged war for as long as Ryan can remember. And the fallout lands squarely at Ryan’s feet.