BOOK REVIEW: The Saints of Salvation (Salvage Sequence, #3) by Peter F. Hamilton

Peter F. Hamilton is definitely my favorite science fiction author, and since since science fiction is my favorite genre, he is probably my favorite author overall. He is on my short list of must-buy authors that also includes literary mystery writer Tana French, epic fantasy writer Brent Weeks and British speculative fiction noir aficionado Richard K. Morgan. My must-read list of authors is much longer and includes people like Louise Penny, Peter V. Brett, Alastair Reynolds and many, many mystery-thriller authors whose series I’m making my way through methodically and contentedly. Hamilton has a special place in my heart as the author of the Night’s Dawn trilogy, which is probably my favorite science fiction work. But his duology Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained is not very far behind that classic at the very top of my list of most esteemed reads. Hamilton’s books are huge sprawling works, often thick tomes running into page lengths of 4-digits, peopled with large casts of characters and featuring mind-bending technologies and bizarre physical phenomena. Hamilton’s latest work is another trilogy, intriguingly called The Salvation Sequence. (This is intriguing because maybe this sequence of books won’t end at three? Hamilton has written many books in what is called the Commonwealth Universe but none of his prior book series using a majority of the same characters and/or same timeline has ever had more than three entries.) The third book in The Salvation Sequence is The Saints of Salvation, which follows Salvation and Salvation Lost. As I have mentioned before, there are certain themes that often reappear in Hamilton’s works and many, if not all, of these are also present in the Salvation Sequence. Some of these themes are: a futuristic/utopian society, disruptive technology (often involving novel transportation methods), culturally opaque aliens, incredibly wealthy and powerful tycoons, secret/double agents and extinction-level threats to civilization. In The Saints of Salvation, the two timelines of the plot from the previous books in the sequence (one plot line depicts the invasion of Earth by previously benevolent aliens and the other plot line is 10,000 years in the future where technologically advanced humans are planning to strike back against the aliens after the surviving human refugees escaped into the empty spaces of the galaxy) eventually intersect in a surprising way. Time, especially the manipulation of time as another feature of the physical world like gravity, becomes an increasingly important of the story in The Saints of Salvation. The animating reason behind the alien invasion of Earth is that the aliens claim to have received a message from the future from a being whom they call “The God at the End of Time” telling them to bring as many sentient creatures to him as they can. The aliens’ response to their God’s message is to seek out intelligent civilizations and place individuals in life-preserving cocoons in their ships and take them to their secret enclave until the end of time. The aliens have been doing this for literally millions of years and are often an order of magnitude more advanced than the other civilizations they meet/cull/kidnap and bring back to their enclave, whose location is their greatest secret. We learn that the aliens have the ability to slow and accelerate the passage of time, which they use to maintain the alien civilians they have collected in stasis. Humans eventually also learn how to manipulate time as well, which makes travel at relativistic speeds over vast distances possible within a human lifetime. Hamilton’s books are often peopled with huge casts of characters, many of whom don’t make it to the end. The Salvation sequence is anchored around a group of five main characters, called the Saints. One of the key plot points in the first two books when we’re experiencing the story told in two time lines set thousands of years apart is to try and figure which characters in the earlier time line become beatified as Saints by the surviving humans in the later time line. In The Saints of Salvation, we follow the Saints for a large part of the story. The other main thread in this books follows two advanced humans, named Dellian and Yirella, who lead a cadre of humans in the far future that are trying to finally get revenge on the aliens who forced humanity to abandon Earth and go into hiding millennia before. One way that The Saints of Salvation and the other books in the Salvation sequence is very different from prior Hamilton works is the depiction of gender. As an indicator of technological and sociological advancement, Hamilton has characters who are non-binary and uses specialized pronouns (like sie, hir) to describe them. This occurs in the earlier timeline (which is set in the early 23rd century), where humanity has started forming habitats with their own cultural and social standards. In addition to non-binary characters, there are also characters who cycle between more male and more female presentations. In the beginning these depictions of gender can be somewhat distracting but eventually the reality of non-binary or (literally) gender-fluid characters becomes pretty standard. None of the main characters are non-binary but several of the important/pivotal ones, especially in the last book, are. A definite gap in the diversity of Hamilton’s characters is the lack of any openly LGB characters as we would perceive them, although there is some same-sex attraction (and perhaps bisexual sexual activity?) portrayed. Interestingly, he often does go out of his way to indicate racial and ethnic diversity in his books, and this is true here as well, although white British people are (unsurprisingly) over represented. Overall, The Saints of Salvation is a fantastic final entry in another amazing, mind-bending space opera written by a science fiction grandmaster operating at the peak of his powers. If you have enjoyed his other similar, equally impressive works, such as Pandora’s Star / Judas Unchained, the Night’s Dawn trilogy, Great North Road, and A Night Without Stars / The Abyss Beyond Dreams, I am very confident you will enjoy the Salvation Sequence as well.

Title: The Saints of Salvation.
Author: Peter F. Hamilton.
Pages: 528 pages.
Publisher: Macmillan.
Date Published: October 20, 2020.
Date Read: January 17, 2021.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Chaos Vector (The Protectorate, #2) by Megan O'Keefe

Chaos Vector is the second book in the space opera series called The Protectorate written by Megan O’Keefe; it is the sequel to Velocity Weapon. The world-building in Velocity Weapon and Chaos Vector is impeccable; these books are set in the Thirty-Fourth Century where humans have inhabited multiple star systems due to the existence of Casimir Gates that allow faster-than-light travel. The biggest secret in the inhabited universe is the technology that is used in the gates, which are created and controlled by Prime government. One of the interesting features of the first book was the inclusion of multiple time lines, one of which described how Alexandra Hallston, the founder of Prime Technologies back in the Twenty-First century, came to discover gate technology. The inclusion of vignettes following Hallston's story continues in the second book and is clearly going to be a source of major surprises about the foundations of Prime society as the series goes forward.

The main characters in The Protectorate books are Sanda Greeve and her brother Biran. When we meet Sanda she is in the Prime military, on active duty in an ongoing war between Ada Prime and Icarian, a neighboring system. In the first book, Sanda was captured by enemy forces and injured; she wakes up from a medically induced coma and she’s had her left leg amputated below the left knee. It turns out that her captor was actually an Icarion super-weapon, an AI-enabled warship named The Light of Berossus that has speed and weapon capabilities far exceeding anything Prime possesses. Sanda eventually bonds with the intelligence in control (which she calls Bero) and at the end of Velocity Weapon  she has been reunited with Biran safely at home while Bero disappears into the void to try and learn more about his creators.

Biran is Speaker of the Keepers of Ada Prime. A Keeper is someone who has been granted with the near-sacred responsibility of keeping a portion of the knowledge of how Casimir Gates work securely in a microchip embedded in their brain. Keepers are the elite of the elite in Prime society. They go through a number of aptitude tests in order to be admitted to an academy from which future Keepers are selected. Access to any information/knowledge about specific technologies that could conceivably be used to discover how gates work is harshly regulated and only Keepers can access it. As Speaker, Biran is the mouthpiece for the Protectorate, which is the small group of Keepers who are tasked with making executive decisions for the Prime government. (One small quibble with the books is that they really do not make it clear how the government of Prime works—are there terms for the Speakers on the Protectorate? How exactly are they selected? Mundane but important details like this are necessary to give the reader a sense of the politics of Prime and are generally missing, or not repeated frequently enough that I can’t remember them.)

The plot(s) of both books are extremely complex, and the stories are filled with multiple jaw-dropping reveals and twists. I don’t want to reveal or spoil any of these so instead I will discuss some other highlights of the books which may help explain why I am so enamored with them.

First, the characters of Sanda and Biran are presented with exquisite nuance and well-defined clarity. Sanda is a kick-ass older sister who finds herself in a bewildering series of deathly dangerous situations and constantly makes the right choice. Biran is in a similarly bewildering thicket of political alliances which he has to successfully navigate. Sadly, he doesn’t always make the right choice. But by giving the reader access to their inner thoughts we are always right there with Sanda and Biran as they wend their way through the treacherous plot. That makes for a tremendously exciting reading experience.

Second, the prominence of diversity in both books is extremely attractive and rewarding to me. Biran and Sanda were raised by a gay male couple and clearly they both love both their dads. With one leg Sanda is disabled (or the better term would probably “differently abled”) and having a hero in an action-packed military sci-fi story who also needs a wheelchair sometimes to get around and regular worries about her prosthesis is definitely unusual, but O’Keefe makes it work, because Sanda is awesome! She is clearly heterosexual, and we thought Biran was too, until the later chapters of Chaos Vector make it clear he’s also attracted to guys. (Yay!) Although there's no sexual scenes in the books, remember we do have constant access to Sanda's and Biran's inner thoughts, so.... In addition to the diverse main characters there is a major supporting character named Mx. Arden Wyke who has near-legendary computer hacking skills and is ‘enby’ (non-binary) and referred to by the pronouns them/they/theirs seamlessly. Another major supporting character is revealed to be an ex-boyfriend of one of Sanda’s dads. The author also makes it clear that many/most of the characters would not be racialized as White in our contemporary social context. The author goes out of her way to mention that the ancestors of most of the inhabitants of Ada Prime are from Ecuador, which is apparently where the first space elevator was constructed on Earth a millennium before, which explains why most people on Ada have brown skin and very dark hair. The diversity of the characters is an integral, impressive and important aspect of these books.

Third, the technological details of the Prime universe are believable and very cool. One incredibly important feature of science fiction to me is the realistic presentation of technological advancements. They should be incredible but also somewhat plausible. (Yes I know faster than light travel is not possible but gates/wormholes are at least theorized.) O’Keefe does a good job of presenting the technology of the 34th century in a way that seems realistic. The society has aspects which seem like magic to us, but there are still disparities in status, wealth and power among different sets of people. Those divides do not seem to be based on race or gender but they do seem to be related to one’s birth circumstances.

Overall, Chaos Vector is an impressively strong sequel to Velocity Weapon and one of the best space opera books I have read in several years. If you like the work of Peter Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan and Arkady Martine, I’m very confident that Megan O’Keefe’s Protectorate series will put a smile on your face and a gleam in your eye, it did for me!

Title: Chaos Vector.
Author: Megan O'Keefe .
Page Length: 416 pages.
Format: Kindle.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: July 28, 2020.
Date Read: December 25, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse, #8) by James S.A. Corey

Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth and penultimate book in The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey.
I have eagerly bought and quickly devoured each of the previous books in this fast-paced, high-quality space opera after I stumbled into the first one, Leviathan Wakes, giving it a chance because of  the recommendation from George R.R. Martin. This series (and the author) are at the very top of the short list of my favorite reads and authors. (Others on this list would be anything by Peter F. Hamilton, Tana French, and Richard K. Morgan.)

Tiamat's Wrath takes place a few years after the events depicted in Persepolis Rising. The main characters of the series (James Holden, Alex Kamal, Naomi Nagata, and Amos Burton) are scattered across multiple star systems while more recent additions to the crew/family like Clarissa and Bobbie have also experienced big changes since they were added to the original inner circle. 

Tiamat's Wrath begins with the news of the death of Chrisjen Avasarala, one of the most popular characters in the series (played irrepressibly by Shohreh Aghdashloo in the television adaptation of the books) and probably my favorite character in The Expanse overall. That devastating news basically sets the tone for Tiamat's Wrath, because since it is the penultimate book it is becoming more likely that not all characters will survive each installment, and clearly not everyone is going to make it to the conclusion of the story. In fact, Tiamat's Wrath has the biggest body count of significant characters who die in any of the previous books in the series. In addition to Avasarala, there are other significant deaths in Tiamat's Wrath as well, which I won't mention here but are shocking and saddening when they occur.

The situation in Tiamat's Wrath  is definitely not good for our heroes and for most of humanity in the solar system and the nearly 1300 other star systems that can be accessed by the alien gates discovered at the end of Book 3, Abaddon's Gate. By dint of superior technological and military firepower (fueled by the mysterious alien entity called "the protomolecule" discovered in Book 2, Caliban's War), High Consul Winston Duarte of Laconia is now the de facto Emperor of the known Galaxy and Bobbie, Alex, and Naomi are trying to organize what little resistance there is to Laconian hegemonic rule of humankind. Holden is a prisoner on Laconia, an "honored guest" (read: prisoner/hostage) of Duarte and has been for years since the events at the end of Persepolis Rising. Amos is missing and assumed dead after not being heard of for years after volunteering for a special ops mission on Laconia several years before. Naomi has put herself into a self-imposed isolation as she works as the chief strategist for the Laconian resistance. Alex is piloting the Resistance's biggest ship under Bobbie's command.

The POV characters we get in Tiamat's Wrath are Elvi Okoge (an exobiologist who we first met in Book 4, Cibola Burn, who is now an important scientist in the Laconian Science Directorate), Alex, Bobbie, Naomi, Holden and a surprising new one: Teresa Duarte, the 14-year-old daughter of the most powerful man in the known Universe, Winston Duarte.

While the main storyline is how our main characters fight (and die!) to resist (and successfully!) end Laconian domination of the Sol system and others, another even more important story is how the aliens who destroyed the other aliens who developed the ring gates are apparently trying to figure out a way to eliminate the consciousness of every human in every system where humans live. It is clear those aliens know how to affect the consciousness, because during the course of Tiamat's Wrath there are multiple times that the entire human race (on all planets) simultaneously loses consciousness for a brief (but not insignificant) time. Only Elvi seems to realize how serious the threat to all human life is; all the other main characters are focused on the Laconian threat.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the plot in Tiamat's Wrath is the inside look at the putative Laconian Empire, as seen from the perspective of the 14-year-old Teresa. The way that everyone defers to Winston Duarte, and  by extension his daughter is fascinating (and frightening). The warping of the social fabric of an entire society is clearly depicted and manifests in unusual ways. For example, crushes and friendships between teenagers are nonsensical when one member of the group has the ultimate power to have anyone expelled, vanished or worse. We also get the perspective of Naomi Nagata as she becomes the head of the underground resistance and finds a way to undermine the seemingly omnipotent Laconian empire, even as the attacks by the evil aliens become more disruptive.

For me, an incredibly attractive aspect of Tiamat's Wrath and The Expanse series as a whole is the diversity of the characters. This is (obviously)  easier to see in the television adaptation but the authors make it explicit in the book as well. Non-white characters (such as Naomi, Elvi, the Duartes, Cortázar and Bobbie, to name a few) have incredibly significant parts to play in the story. The inclusion of non-heterosexuality happens casually but intentionally among various secondary characters which for an LGBT reader like myself is quite affirming. The effort to be consciously inclusive is a clear feature of the book (and show).

SPOILER ALERT!!

By the end of Tiamat's Wrath  our four main characters are actually back together (on the Rocinante no less!) which was incredibly satisfying (if a little improbable). It brought back nostalgic memories of where the entire story began, way back in Book 1. It’s nice that Book 8 basically has a “happy ending” but this does make me suspicious that Book 9 may not....

Regardless, things are teed up perfectly for an exciting conclusion to the entire 9-book series in the final book. I can't wait!

OVERALL RATING: FIVE STARS

Title: Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse, #8)
Author: James S.A. Corey.
Paperback: 534 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: March 29, 2013.
Date Read: May 24, 2019.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan

Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan is the latest book by the author of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies) and especially Thirteen/Black Man, the last of which is set in the same universe as Thin Air. Morgan is known for his futuristic, noir, sci-fi thrillers featuring ultra-violent, surgically enhanced, anti-heroes who often have a weak spot for the underclass in society. He is one of my favorite authors and I have wanted to read Thin Air since I learned this book was in the work in 2015. I bought it on Amazon and it arrived on its publication date but I delayed reading it until the holidays.

In Thin Air the protagonist is named Hakan Veil, an Earth-born mercenary who has been trapped on Mars for over a decade (earth years) after his last job protecting a space ship for a mega-corporation ended in a way displeasing to his bosses and almost fatally for the nearly indestructible Veil.

One notable feature of all Morgan’s work, which is one reason that it is catapulted to the top of my must-read lists, is his ability to convey a sense of place, culture and history in the settings of all his books, regardless of genre. Typically this feature of novels is referred to as “world building” but with Morgan the term doesn't do justice to the immersive nature of his writing. Although he is primarily known for his hard science fiction, he has also written an epic fantasy trilogy called A Land Fit For Heroes (The Steel Remains, The Cold Commands, The Dark Defiles) which also has a fascinatingly complicated backstory and setting.

The Mars of Thin Air is a compelling, technologically advanced, market-driven dystopia, with a rich history and multicultural, multi-ethnic populace struggling under the stewardship of staggeringly corrupt political and juridical officials. Morgan embeds his story in the long colonial history of the red planet under the forces of COLIN (the Colonization Initiative), an entity which has appeared in several of Morgan’s science fiction works set in the far future of humanity. COLIN is the organization which is responsibility for the expansion of humanity into the solar system and beyond. The author also describes a civilization on the red planet which is buffeted and sculpted by the amorality of corporate greed, organized crime and unregulated capitalism.

Morgan begins Thin Air in medias res as he thrusts the reader into a setting where Veil immediately maims and kills people, some of whom appear to be innocent bystanders but some who are also clearly responsible for horrible acts themselves. The effect is that we as the reader are not really sure if we are to identify positively or negatively with Veil as the protagonist of the story. Is Veil a hero or a villain? Morgan likes his characters to be morally nuanced, with situational ethics and malleable loyalties, and Veil is another example of this type.

Another feature of Morgan’s work are his bewilderingly intricate plots and Thin Air is no exception to this rule. The primary plot is centered around Veil’s task of protecting a COLIN Earth functionary who has come to Mars to investigate the curious case of an Earthbound lottery winner who disappeared before he could collect his prize. This reveals some obvious corruption (cui buono?) and the fact that several powerful forces are trying to control and dominate the future of Mars society. Of course, at some point Veil loses contact with his charge and it becomes clear that she may not be who she appears to be and that there is far more to the disappearance of the erstwhile lottery winner than meets the eye at first blush.

Overall, Morgan’s Thin Air  is an exciting, action-filled and intelligent take on a suspenseful mystery thriller set in a dystopian future society on Mars. If you like any of Morgan’s previous work (especially Thirteen) you will almost certainly also enjoy Thin Air. A lot.

FIVE STARS.

Title: Thin Air.
Author: Richard K. Morgan.
Paperback: 544 pages.
Publisher: Gollancz.
Date Published: October 23, 2018.
Date Read: December 30, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Witch Elm by Tana French

Wow! Tana French proves yet again why and how she is the Queen of Literary Mystery Fiction. After writing six (ok, maybe five) exquisite entries in what is now known as the Dublin Murder Squad series, French decided to release a standalone mystery The Witch Elm (or The Wych Elm) which is not even indirectly connected to her much-celebrated prior works. When I discovered in late September that Tana French had a new book coming out soon, I pre-ordered the hardcover from Amazon instantaneously. There are a handful of authors for whom I do that for (Peter F. Hamilton, James S.A. Corey, Richard K. Morgan come immediately to mind) and there are none others in the mystery fiction area (although new books by Ian Rankin, Louise Penny, Adrian McKinty and, more recently, Val McDermid are all on my must-read-as-soon-as-I-can list).

The Witch Elm  is very different from French’s other books, which are generally police procedurals set in the context of murder mysteries and generally have police detectives on the Dublin Murder Squad as the main character for whom we get first-person perspectives.

Instead, The Witch Elm has Toby Hennessy as the main character, and for an extraordinarily long period of time (well over 100 pages, possibly close to 200) there is no sign of a dead body and no sign of anyone from the Dublin Murder Squad. There goes Tana again, breaking those genre rules and upending her readers expectations!

Toby is a very odd choice for a main character of a book that ends up being an intricately plotted murder mystery, since he’s a 20-something, blonde, attractive, upper class white guy who begins the book basically bragging about how lucky he is. His charmed life is shattered by a scene that happens very early in the book, where sudden violence befalls Toby, leaving him injured and potentially permanently incapacitated (due to a vicious blow to the head).

French is deploying and deconstructing the literary device of the unreliable narrator as a central trope of the book. Toby potentially has permanent brain damage which affects his perception of events around him as well as his memory. We the reader literally can not believe what Toby perceives to hear and see. But it also becomes clear that Toby has always been oblivious to what goes on around him due to his inability to perceive the effects of marginalization on people who do not share his class and gender.

As the plot develops (and the dead body finally arrives) we are engulfed by a complicated and multifaceted network of familial relationships that involve jealousies, slights and resentments which are sourced from events in the characters’ pasts. Toby is the only child of a pair of well-to-do parents (mom is a professor and dad is a barrister) and has grown up with two other similarly situated cousins, Susanna and Leon, who are about the same age and attended the same secondary schools as Toby. They have literally known each other their entire lives and in some sense are closer than some siblings. Their parents all vacationed together and  would regularly leave the 3 kids for weeks at a time during holidays at the home of their parents unmarried brother Hugo, at a grand old house called The Ivy House. Even now, when Toby, Susanna and Leon are nearly 30 and their grand-uncle Hugo is nearly 70 the extended family (Susanna is married and has 2 kids of her own, Toby has a longtime girlfriend named Melissa) attend weekly Sunday dinner at The Ivy House, which  almost serves as another character in the book. French delights in using her command of the language to describe its coziness and provides the reader with a real sense of place. It’s during one of these Hennessy family gatherings that a human skull is discovered in the wych elm on the grounds of the Ivy House, leading to multidirectional finger pointing and eventually actual suspicion between various pairings in the trio of cousins about how much and what each of them knows or remembers about the past and the supposed suicide of a teenaged classmate 10 years before. The notion of suspecting and being an object of suspicion of the people whom you have literally grown up with animates the emotional resonance of the book.

French uses the evanescence and plasticity of memory as another trope with which to redirect the suspicions of Toby, our unreliable narrator and the reader towards various possible suspects. She also (somewhat rashly) seizes the opportunity to conduct another anthropological survey of the social lives and mores of Dublin teenagers. This was at the heart of what I think of as her worst book, The Secret Place, which revolves around the discovery of the body of a teenage boy on the grounds of a posh private girls school. Happily, I think she’s more successful and insightful at the portrayal of modern-day teenage life in The Witch Elm. I am curious as to why French wanted to return to depicting that particular milieu when there are so many others to choose from.

Typically, for me, the joy of reading a Tana French novel has been sourced in her mellifluous, oftentimes  surprisingly piquant prose as she describes conversations between characters who are usually experiencing the worst times of their lives, either during a police investigation into the death of a loved one or recalling situations that dredge up the emotions and feelings that led someone they knew to commit (and/or conceal) a murder. Happily, that Tana French is well represented in The Witch Elm. What is missing this time is the voyeuristic perspective she usually provides the reader by allowing us to see the discovery, detection and resolution of crime(s) through the eyes of a member of the Dublin Murder Squad. Surprisingly, this is a minor loss.

Another feature of a French novel is her penchant for breaking the rules of the detective mystery form she is writing in. From the unresolved issues in her brilliant debut novel In the Woods and the stunning audacity of The Likeness to her clever refusal to center multiple books on the same detective(s) in her ongoing mystery series, to the disastrous dabble with the supernatural in The Secret Place, French has blazed her own trail in the British police procedural genre. In The Witch Elm she goes even further, by centering the book around Toby, a self-centered, entitled “git” who is oblivious to his own privilege (and prejudices). French is (I think) trying to reveal and skewer the perspective of the Tobys of the world, while she simultaneously uses his lack of awareness to misdirect the reader to the central mystery at the heart of the novel. 

In the final chapter of the book, after the major reveal of “whodunnit,” she breaks the rules of the genre again (multiple times!) so successfully that I was forced to give her my top rating and applaud her daring. This is the case, even though early in my reading of the book I had harbored disappointed misgivings about The Witch Elm’s eventual place in French’s oeuvre (“uh-oh, I think this may be another misfire like The Secret Place!” to “Oh my goodness what just happened? I have to re-read that entire section!”). By the end I felt she had surpassed the cool, precise excellence of The Trespasser, which up to that point was in a statistical tie in my heart with Broken Harbor for my designation as her best book. The Witch Elm, in my opinion, is another example of French operating at the top of her game, expanding and demonstrating what a literary genre novel can and should be. Another triumph.

Title: The Witch Elm.
Author: Tana French.
Paperback: 509 pages.
Publisher: Viking.
Date Published: October 9, 2018.
Date Read: December 18, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A+/A (4.16/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: #AlteredCarbon Renewed For 8-Episode Season 2 With New Lead Anthony Mackie

Yay! Good news from Netflix today: they announced that they have renewed one of my favorite television shows, Altered Carbon, based on the amazing Takeshi Kovacs books by Richard K. Morgan, for a second season which will be 8 episodes long and star Anthony Mackie in the lead role. The first season was 10 episodes long and starred very tall (and very Caucasian) Joel Kinnaman in the lead role. It started streaming on February 2, 2018. That season was an adaptation of the first book, Altered Carbon, which is set in a future world where consciousness can be digitized and downloaded into different bodies, called "sleeves." Presumably the second season will presumably be an adaptation of the second book, Broken Angels. Kovacs is beamed to another planet far away from earth and is re-sleeved into a new body, which will be played by 39-year-old African-American Mackie. It's actually one of my favorite books so I am definitely looking forward to seeing Season 2 of Altered Carbon.

BOOK REVIEW: Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

This is the second book written by British space opera author Alastair Reynolds (best known for his Revelation Space series) featuring Prefect Tom Dreyfus set in the Glitter Band . The first Glitter Band book was initially called The Prefect (see my A review) but has been re-issued as Aurora Rising. 

A fascinating feature in the same universe as the Revelation Space books, the Glitter Band is a collection of 10,000 habitats created by humanity in the same solar system as the planet Yellowstone (which is featured in his masterpiece, Chasm City).Through the use of technology the roughly 100 million individuals that live in the Glitter Band participate in a form of ongoing, continuous electronic democracy (via electronic cranial implants), voting frequently on any and all decisions that would affect the Glitter Band as a whole.  Glitter Band citizens have a mutual agreement to be policed by a group called Panoply which is staffed by people called Prefects. There is no other centralized government and while there are local constabulary forces distributed in the Glitter Band, the primary authority tasked with preservation of Glitter Band security is Panoply. Generally, humans are able to craft their habitats and set rules and policies and practices in each habitat as they wish (with Common Articles protecting individual rights). Additionally, there is no faster than light travel and there are no aliens, although technology has advanced 

Of course the Glitter Band is a fascinating setting for all sorts of stories and in various Revelation Space books it has varied in prominence with Chasm City probably the book where it has the largest impact on the plot. In the Revelation Space trilogy the Glitter Band has failed, riven by a computer virus which destroyed implants, thus devastating the key technology on which the society was based. It’s referred to nostalgically in several of the books as a sign that the golden age of human civilization has past.

However, the stories in Aurora Rising and Elysium Fire are set in an earlier time line, when the Glitter Band is still quite intact (but perhaps not flourishing)  and it serves as a backdrop as Prefect Tom Dreyfus investigates crimes and solve mysteries. To me this is awesome because mystery and police procedurals are some of my favorite genres (along with space opera science fiction) and it is always a pleasure to see genre blending done well.

One feature of basically every book (I think) I have read by Reynolds is that there are always appear to be questions raised of self-identity and the presence of either split personalities or repressed memories is common in many of his books. So for example, person A is really person B but A may not even be aware of the fact because their memories of their existence as B have been wiped but the memories slowly resurface. Or perhaps B is deliberately hiding as A because B has committed horrific crimes or actions and wants to avoid detection by authorities or people who would seek revenge on B if they were to be found. It’s clearly a theme that Reynolds likes to explore in various ways as it recurs in almost of his books.

Another recurring idea in Reynolds's work is artificial intelligence, i.e. the notion of sentient machines. He also makes use of technology that allows a “backup copy” of a human personality to be stored and then run in virtual reality environments. These “betas” are like somewhat out-of-date shadows of the original person, but they are a way of implementing quasi-immortality. It's interesting that fellow British SF author Richard K. Morgan uses the same basic idea of human personality storage and takes it in a very different direction in the Takeshi Kovacs books which have since been adapted as the popular Altered Carbon series for Netflix.

I’m spending a fair amount of time in this review discussing various aspects of the setting of Elysium Fire because I want to make the point that the  world-building is a key highlight and central feature of the story; I have probably just scratched the surface in the depiction and description of the interesting futuristic aspects Reynolds includes in his work in general, and in these Glitter Band novels in particular. (I could totally see a TV series set in the Glitter Band, couldn't you?)

Anyway, I don’t want to leave the impression that the story or plot are weak aspects of Elysium Fire by going on and on about the setting. The plot basically involves the mysterious death of multiple citizens and Panoply's reaction to this alarming situation. The rate at which the deaths are being discovered is increasing (there’s a lovely discussion of exponential growth early on that would make any mathematics professor like myself proud) and Panoply is starting to panic as they realize that if the exponential growth rate is extrapolated in time, the entire Glitter Band civilization could collapse in hundreds of days. Tom Dreyfus and a protege of his, Thalia Ng, are tasked with tracking down leads on what could be the cause of these suspicious deaths. For the reader (who has read the other Revelation Space books) we are wondering “Is this the beginning of the end for the Glitter Band?” Especially as a certain individual named Devon Garlin takes advantage of the crisis to raise doubts about Panoply’s ability to protect Glitter Band citizens and explicitly calls for habitats to revoke Panoply’s authority and promote secession and dissolution of the Band itself.

These multiple threads comprise a very complicated tale of murder, revenge and intrigue set in a society with fascinating and fantastic technology written by one of my very favorite authors writing science fiction today. I don't want to give any more of the plot away, but I can say that a major character from the first book (Aurora Rising) makes an important return appearance. It also would seem likely that it is possible we could get future books featuring Panoply and the Prefects set in the Glitter Band, either before or during its inevitable collapse.
Title: Elysium Fire.
Author: Alastair Reynolds.
Paperback: 432 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: January 23, 2018.
Date Read: March 2, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A

#AlteredCarbon is Now Streaming on Netflix!

The screen adaptation of the Richard K. Morgan novel Altered Carbon is now available on Netflix!
The ten episodes of the first season are titled:

1. "Out of the Past" (pilot directed by Miguel Sapochnik)
2. "Fallen Angel"
3. "In a Lonely Place"
4. "Force of Evil"
5. "The Wrong Man"
6. "Man with My Face"
7. "Nora Inu"
8. "Clash by Night"
9. "Rage in Heaven"
10. "The Killers"

I have been waiting a long time for this! Happily, it is getting very good reviews and it is apparently a high-budget, high-quality entry into the televised science fiction and fantasy canon which includes such award-winning shows like Game of Thrones (HBO), The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu) and The Expanse (SyFy).

The book is one of my favorites (see review) and is the first in a trilogy, so perhaps we have two more seasons to go?

Netflix's Altered Carbon IS Arriving 02/02/18 (And Looks Awesome)!

The next great television show based on a science fiction/fantasy books is going to be a reality soon! It was announced in January 2016 that Netflix had ordered a 10-episode season of 1-hour episodes based on Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs trilogy: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies. These books are set in the 24th century where humanity has expanded to about a dozen worlds and the most notable technological change is the development of human conscious transfer and storage. One consequence of this is effective immortality because once a body begins to fail, one can transfer one's consciousness into another body. In fact, for the super-rich there's no reason to wait until death to do this consciousness transfer from an , and so the bodies that store consciousness are known as "sleeves."

Netflix has now announced that the series is called Altered Carbon will be available on the streaming service starting February 2, 2018! In addition to announcing the release date, a number of teaser and trailer videos have been released and they look AMAZING!

and
One quibble I have with what I have seen of the show (in the trailers) so far is that in the books Takeshi Kovacs (the primary protagonist) is described as being "of Japanese and Eastern-European descent" but in the Netflix television adaptation he is being played by an actor named Joel Kinnaman who looks pretty fair-skinned (he's a Swedish actor). Kinnaman is quite attractive, but the non-white hue of most of the characters in the books (as far as I remember) was definitely mentioned. I don't think this will become a huge talking point as the series starts getting more prominent public notice, but I do find it somewhat troubling. I believe they will explain it by referring to an original "sleeve" Takeshi had where he is played by a Korean-American actor.

There are other interesting tidbts about the show in this Entertainment Weekly article: the pilot was directed by Game of Thrones alum Miguel Sapochnik (S6E09: The Battle of the Bastards) and the budget is rumored to be the biggest ever for Season 1 of a show (and remember House of Cards had an estimated budget of $100m for its first two seasons, or approximately $4.5m per episode).

I can't wait see this show on February 2, 2018!

With Game of Thrones probably off the air until the end of 2018 at the earliest and Season 3 of The Expanse shot but no airdate released (but expected to be sometime in 2018) we are living in the golden age of television based on speculative fiction classic works (by George R.R. Martin and James S.A. Corey, respectively).

BOOK REVIEW: The Spider's War (The Dagger & The Coin, #5)

The Spider's War, the fifth and concluding entry of the Dagger and the Coin series by Daniel Abraham is a delight. The story has gotten so sprawling, with the consequences for our characters so significant that it is heart-breaking at times. You can see my ratings of the first four books (The Dragon's Path, The King's Blood, The Tyrant's Law, The Widow's House) on Goodreads. I was actually somewhat surprised to discover that I had not written a full review of one of these books for this blog, because they have been on my end-of-year "favorite reads" list multiple times (2012, 2014). Anyway, since The Spider's War is the last book in the series I definitely want to include a full review this time.

The Dagger and the Coin series is populated by a rich set of characters. The main ones are Cithrin bel Sarcour, Geder Palliako, Dawson Kalliam, his wife  Clara Kalliam, Colonel Marcus Wester and Master Kit. Happily (or sadly, depending on your perspective) not all of the main characters who we get to know through the roughly 2000-plus pages of this epic tale survive the denouement in The Spider's War. (In fact, some of the characters I just mentioned don't even make it that far.)

One of the key aspects of the series, in my eyes, is its focus on economics and the verisimilitude the author brings to a fantastical tale involving multiple "races" (really different species) of intelligent, speaking animals together with priests, dragons and war. 

In fact, there is a LOT of war in The Spider's War. (I really think it should be called The Spiders' War since I believe that the  primary conflict is referring to multiple spiders in this case.) What the book does VERY well is demonstrate that along with war comes suffering and death and conquest. I like how the book doesn't sugarcoat the horrors of war. It depicts it as something horrible (but in some situations, inevitable.)

In the end, the fate of humanity comes down to an incredibly suspenseful, action-packed sequence where several of the characters I mentioned are literally trying to save the world; this sequence is very well done and is a fitting ending to not only the book, but the series as a whole.

Although I do think that The Spider's War was was probably not the most compelling entry in the 5-book series, overall I think the series ended quite well and I would recommend the series as a whole to anyone who is interested in intelligent epic fantasy and who has enjoyed the works of  authors like Brent Weeks (The Night Angel trilogy, the Lightbringer series), Brian Staveley (The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne), Michael J. Sullivan (The Riyria Revelations) and Richard K. Morgan (A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy).

Title: The Spider's War.
Author: Daniel Abraham.
Paperback: 528 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: March 8, 2016.
Date Read: June 2, 2016.

GOODREADS RATING: 4.5 STARS.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

YAY! Netflix Announces 10-Episode Deal To Adapt Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon

Wow! The number of my favorite works of fiction that are becoming multimedia projects is increasing. Of course if you follow this blog you'll know that I have been a big fan of Game of Thrones (adapted for HBO from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin) and I'm currently ecstatic that the first season of James S.A. Corey's The Expanse series is on SyFy.

Yesterday, Netflix announced that is going to adapt Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon into a 10-episode streaming series. There are three books in the Takeshi Kovacs series (Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies), which are set in the 25th century and are an exciting combination of noir mystery and far-future cyberpunk science fiction. Here's the description by io9:

Altered Carbon is set in the 25th century, where humans live all across the universe and consciousness can be transferred from body to body, making death a thing of the past. It follows a centuries old soldier who is “resleeved” (their word for transferring consciousness) into the body of a police officer and must then explore a huge conspiracy. 

Writer and producer Laeta Kalogridis, who co-wrote Avatar and Terminator Genisys, bought the rights to the book and its sequels several years back, after co-writing a movie script that didn’t get picked up. She’ll now serve as writer and executive producer. 

“Altered Carbon is one of the most seminal pieces of post-cyberpunk hard science fiction out there,” Kalogridis said at that time. “A dark, complex noir story that challenges our ideas of what it means to be human when all information becomes encodable, including the human mind.”

It looks like the production team is strong as well (although Terminator Genisys mostly sucked) the studio SkyDance is well-versed in big special effects movies and is exactly the right place for this adaptation. VERY psyched about this news!

I don't understand why producers are not knocking down the doors of two of my other favorite sci-i authors Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth saga and Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space books would make awesome movies or television series.