BOOK REVIEW: Planetfall (Planetfall, #1) by Emma Newman

Planetfall is the first book in the acclaimed  Planetfall series written by Emma Newman.  It is the fourth of her books that I have read; Newman has stated the Planetfall books are written to be read in any order. I read them in the order second (After Atlas), fourth ( Atlas Alone), third (Before Mars ), and first (Planetfall). It’s curious because all the books reference the main event of the series, which is the departure of the interstellar rocket Atlas with roughly 1000 colonists under the guidance of the Pathfinder Lee Suh-mi to a planet where Lee claims they will find God. So, one would think that the first book is about this seminal event in the series, but it’s not. Even the main events in Planetfall take place several decades after the seminal event (it turns out that all four books are set roughly in a time frame under a year or so from each other, just in very different locations).

In Planetfall, most of the events happen roughly two decades after the colonists arrive on the planet. They seem to be well acclimated to their extraterrestrial environs. They have deliberately engineered their living conditions to be such that it is sustainable and low-impact  or no-impact on the environmental resources of their new home world. However, at the point the reader enters the story this comfortable lifestyle is disrupted by the appearance of an outsider, someone who is the grandson of the Pathfinder herself, and bears a clear familial resemblance to her.

We are primarily told the story of events from the perspective of Ren (Renata Ghali) whom we discover was one of the chief engineers responsible for the successful Atlas mission to the planet and has served as one of the primary technological resources and fix-it mechanics for the colony since they landed.

Having read all of the four books in the series I realize now a common theme is that the protagonist/main character in each book  is an unreliable narrator; each one has either had mental health issues or a medical history is revealed that causes the reader to question the veracity and accuracy of what we are being told about events. Interestingly, in three of the four books this protagonist has been female. In Planetfall, it takes quite a while before the reader realizes the extent to which Ren has been hiding important information from the reader that reveals she has a serious mental condition. I don't want to reveal what it is but one of the most significant impacts of the book is when the reader is allowed to fully perceive reality from Ren's perspective as mediated by her mental condition; the effect is devastating.

However, Ren’s issues are really a side issue to the primary plot of Planetfall; the last 20 pages has multiple extremely significant revelations and stunning dénouements. Again I don't want to be too specific about details in order to spoil things but suffice it to say that we learn why the Pathfinder felt that she was bringing humanity to meet God, and we get information and see events that have potentially irreversible consequence for the long term survival of the colony (and thus humanity itself). In fact, it's the ending of Planetfall that makes this entry the most impactful of the books in the series in my opinion. I strongly hope that the author goes on to continue the story beyond where the events in Planetfall, After Mars or Atlas Alone conclude. Overall, that should tell you all you need to know about the Planetfall  books: they leave you wanting more!

Title: Planetfall.
Author: Emma Newman.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 328 pages.
Publisher: Scribner.
Date Published: September 6, 2015.
Date Read: May 1, 2023.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆ (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.83/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: Atlas Alone (Planetfall, #4) by Emma Newman

Atlas Alone is the fourth book in the Planetfall series written by Emma Newman. This unusual speculative fiction series is set in a near future where humanity has launched colony ships to the stars and technological advances have transformed human society in many ways, not all for the good. The series of books in the Planetfall universe are Planetfall (2015), After Atlas (2016), Before Mars (2018), and Atlas Alone (2019). Interestingly, the author says that the books can be read in any order, because the stories in each are only loosely linked to each other, although events do occur in line with the publication order. 

I chose to read After Atlas first because it is a police procedural set in an advanced technological future. One of my favorite thigs is reading genre mashups, and murder-mystery combined with science fiction technothriller is right up my alley. (See my A review of After Atlas.) 

The story in Atlas Alone takes place after the events of After Atlas but while many of the characters are in both books, their prominence changes. In After Atlas the protagonist and source of most of the first-person perspectives was Carlos Moreno, who is a detective working for the "gov-corp" (government-corporation) of  Norope (i.e. Northern Europe). Moreno is tasked with finding out who was responsible for the death of Alejandro Casales, the founder of The Circle, a religious cult formed after the departure of the Pathfinder mission to "find God" in orbit around a distant star (these events are depicted in Planetfall). Carlos' best friend is Dee, a fellow immersive gamer who understands and appreciates his personality quirks.

However in Atlas Alone, Dee is the main character. She, Carlos and Travis (another legacy character from After Atlas) are on Atlas 2, are on a spaceship headed towards the same star that the Pathfinder mission sailed to in the first Atlas when people start dying on the ship, apparently while connected to augmented reality gear. Dee has recently been given access to an advanced AR system on the ship so she can participate in an ongoing virtual reality competition with some of the most important people on the ship. As Dee does so she begins to find out more of the secrets behind the ship with the help of a mysterious person who doesn't appear on the manifest and seems to also have unfettered access to the ship's systems. The story comes to a surprising (and somewhat violent) end which resolves most of the questions raised in Atlas Alone but does lead to more questions about the future of the Atlas 2 mission, hopefully to be addressed in future books in the Planetfall series.

Overall, I didn't enjoy Atlas Alone as much as I had After Atlas. The first reason is that despite superficial similarities (there are dead bodies in both, a whodunnit plot thread, and an advanced technological setting) they aren't really the same genre of book. Atlas Alone isn't really a police procedural/murder mystery like After Atlas, it's more of a psychological thriller. We spend a lot (maybe too much?) time in Dee's consciousness as she grapples with some of the more serious ramifications of the some of the events at the end of After Atlas. Secondly, the commentary on corporate/capitalistic overreach that was a significant feature of After Atlas is simply not as pungent or salient in the later book.

I think I will eventually read the other two books, Planetfall and Before Mars in the series. The books tend to be relatively short (under 400 pages), peopled with a diverse cast of characters and often include interesting/thought-provoking questions. For people who are anxious to spend more time in the Planetfall universe, Newman is releasing a brief collection (161 pages) of 10 short stories called Before, After, Alone which are set there.

Title: Atlas Alone (Planetfall, #4).
Author: Emma Newman.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 336 pages.
Publisher: Gollancz.
Date Published: April 16, 2019.
Date Read: January 22, 2023.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: The Fall of Koli (Rampart Trilogy, #3) by M.R. Carey

The Fall of Koli is the third and final book in the Rampart trilogy by M.R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts, The Trials of Koli and The Book of Koli. The final book in a trilogy is always tough (for the reader and the author) because it has to try and resolve all the plot threads, answer all the questions, complete all the character developments and reveal all the secrets left over from the first two books. That can be a lot for one book to do, and sometimes (maybe even often) the final book doesn’t do it all successfully. However, in the case of The Fall of Koli I believe that it mostly succeeds in achieving these aims.

The Rampart trilogy is primarily about what happens to Koli, a 16-year-old dark-brown boy, after he gets kicked out of his village of Mythen Rood in post-apocalyptic Britain when he reveals he has stolen and is able to use a bit of “old tech” called a Sony Dreamsleeve, which is an AI-enabled music player. The Book of Koli is primarily about the immediate aftermath of Koli’s exile and how he meets his traveling companions Ursula, Cup and Monono. The Trials of Koli continues Koli’s story but expands it by also following Spinner and Jon, Koli’s best friends who he left behind in Mythen Rood after he disrupted their wedding with the revelations of his misdeeds.

In The Fall of Koli the action is split between what happens when Koli and crew find the Sword of Albion, a humongous ship filled to the brim with military hardware and weapons but only  three very peculiar humans, one of whom is even younger than Koli, and Mythen Rood, where Spinner is leading the preparations for a battle with Half-Ax, a much larger community than Mythen Rood whose leader is the Peacemaker, someone who believes all tech everywhere belongs to him and will do almost anything to get it.

The first-person POVs of Koli and Spinner that appeared in the first two books are joined by entries from Monono in The Fall of Koli. This is a great addition to the book, especially after Cup, Koli, and Ursula find themselves essentially imprisoned on the Sword of Albion. Eventually they discover that the Sword of Albion is part of a last-ditch plan by Stanley Banner, the last dictator of Great Britain, to use a clone with his downloaded memories to lead an invasion to re-conquer Britain after his death. Banner didn’t realize that the robots he left to run the program would take hundreds of years to complete the plan and happily, thanks to Koli (and mostly Monono) Stanna Banna’s plan is foiled and humanity is saved. Monono is able to salvage some of the heavy machinery from the Sword of Albion and Koli decides that he can help Ursula improve the “gin pull” (gene pool) of humanity by connecting the small towns and villages like Mythen Rood with paved roads. So that’s what he sets out to do as he slowly makes his way back to his hometown.

The end of the book is action-packed and suspenseful, as it becomes an unwitting race against time between the arrival of the Peacemarker and his army and Koli and his “army” of motorized construction vehicles. The conclusion has a surprising and heart-rending twist that I won’t reveal here. Suffice it to say, the ending makes good on the emotional investment of spending the better part of three books following and caring about what happens to a young black teenaged boy named Koli after he makes a mistake and is exiled from the only place he has ever known as home. 

Overall, The Fall of Koli is a great ending to the Rampart trilogy, which will go down as one of the more memorable and emotionally resonant series in the post-apocalyptic speculative fiction genre.

Title: The Fall of Koli (The Rampart trilogy, #3).
Author: M.R. Carey.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 560 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: March 23, 2021.
Date Read: March 30, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.83/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: The Trials of Koli (Rampart Trilogy, #2) by M.R. Carey

The Trials of Koli is the second book in the Rampart trilogy by M.R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts, The Boy on the Bridge and The Book of Koli. Despite being the second book in a trilogy (or maybe because of it), Trials expands the story of the adventures of a somewhat naive boy in a post-apocalyptic Britain in multiple ways. The most significant change is that instead of everything being told in first-person by Koli we also get first-person accounts by Spinner Vennastin. Spinner is the girl Koli left behind in his village of Mythen Rood when he was banished after revealing at her wedding to his best friend Haijon Vennastin that he had stolen some old tech from the Ramparts and could control it. This fact alone challenged one of the central organizing principles of Koli’s village that the Vennastins had exploited to maintain power and control of Mythe Rood for generations (i.e., that only certain people can control old tech and thus chosen individuals should be granted power to make decisions for the village). This event almost led to Koli's execution but the Vennastins were merciful" and granted him exile and ostracization instead. Book tells the story of what happens to Koli after he leaves Mythen Rood, while Trials continues that story, it also depicts what happens at Mythen Rood after Koli left, from Spinner’s perspective.  

One of the weaknesses of the trilogy as a whole is that Koli is a bit naive and often slower to realize the significance of events than the reader. (I am sure that this is narrative device an d stylistic choice by the author to engage the reader more firmly in the novel but it can be annoying/disconcerting at times.) In Book this is balanced by the expansion of Monono’s intelligence after she is able to get access to the remnants of the internet and the epxonenial increase in her abilities and agency. Monono’s worldliness compensates for Koli’s wide-eyed bewilderment in various situations in both Book and Trials. However, the inclusion of Spinner as another main character in Trials lets the reader access the story through someone who is also the smartest person in the room, which is quite refreshing and a clear strong point. 

Although the reader hopes that the Vennastins will get their comeuppance for unfairly keeping secrets about how the old tech works and maintaining control of the Rampart title through deception and secrecy, I sort of understood when Spinner made the decision to not reveal the treachery when she discovered it. She basically has to make this difficult choice after being thrust into the role of being responsible for the continued the existence of the village when everyone’s lives are in danger from external forces; Spinner decides unity among the villagers is required in order to have a chance of victory. 

It’s very interesting how the two main threads of the story follow different paths as they follow our two main characters. Koli meets many different people and gets exposed to different social situations as he, Ursula, Cup and Monono travel hundreds of miles to find London and the Sword of Albion, which is referenced in a mysterious signal/transmission they have been receiving more and more clearly as they get closer to London. Back in Mythen Rood we learn more about the individual characters of the inhabitants (especially Jon, who in the first book seemed like a bit of an asshole but in Trials he is shown to be a loving husband and father). This happens as Spinner also learns (and understands) more about how the old tech she has access to works and uses it to defend the village and her people. Spinner is also lucky in that they discover some more powerful tech that greatly helps her in the war against invaders from Half Ax.

The Trials of Koli has more action and suspense than The Book of Koli, since much of the important character development happened in the first book. The primary exception is Cup, who becomes a much more rounded and sympathetic character than the brainwashed cultist she was introduced as. Overall, I’d say the second book in the Rampart trilogy is even better than the first and ends on such a cliffhanger that it makes one anxious and eager to read the final book, The Fall of Koli.

Title: The Book of Koli.
Author: M.R. Carey.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 418 pages.
Publisher: Orbit Books.
Date Published: April 14, 2020.
Date Read: February 28, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy, #1) by M.R. Carey

The first book in the Rampart trilogy by M.R. Carey is The Book of Koli. Carey is probably best known as the author of The Girl with All the Gifts and its sequel The Boy on the Bridge. Both of those books are set in post-apocalyptic dystopias and feature a story where a young child is the central character. I enjoyed both of them; Carey has a knack for writing characters who are in bizarre situations that the reader can emotionally connect to. In The Book of Koli this pattern is repeated, the protagonist Koli is a young, dark-skinned teenager growing up in the small town of Mythen Rood in a post-apocalyptic version of Britain that seems related to but is very different from ours. The first thing the reader discovers is that there is almost no technology in Koli’s world, and that what technological devices do remain are incredibly rare and highly valued. This is because the knowledge no longer exists to create or repair them, and everyone is also aware they are relics of a more technologically advanced past. 

The Book of Koli is told as a first-person account of Koli’s experiences and feelings. In the beginning of the book he’s a teenager who has just turned sixteen and has two main friends his age named Haijon (Jon) Vennastin and Demar (Spinner) Tanhide. Mythen Rood is a town of approximately two hundred people and there  is no school so everyone, from a very early age contributes to the well-being of the collective. Koli collects wood from the forest, Spinner works  with her father to tan and cure animal hides while Jon doesn’t do much of anything since he’s a Vennastin.  The Vennastins have basically ruled Mythen Rood because several members of the family have had the ability to control the few remaining technological devices in the Village’s possessions. Such people were called Ramparts, and Jon's mother is called Rampart Fire because she controls a device which is essentially a portable flamethrower. Ramparts get to live in the largest and best house in the Village, called Rampart Hold. Ostensibly, everyone has the chance to become a Rampart because at age 16 they are tested to see if the “old tech” responds to them. Since everyone in the village is functionally illiterate and unaware of basic scientific information like the germ theory of disease they are completely inexperienced with how technology works and basically treat the old tech like magic. There are some grumbles about only Vennastins becoming Ramparts but most villagers just think that’s just the way the world is and they have to accept it.

Koli, Jon and Spinner all take the Rampart test and only Jon passes the test. This event has a profound effect on the social dynamics of the trio since Koli was starting to have feelings for Spinner and he is surprised when Jon reveals he has feelings for Spinner and is devastated when Spinner agrees to marry Jon.  Around this time Mythen Rood is visited by a traveling healer named Ursula who has some amazing tech of her own (an entire vehicle called The Drudge which is basically a mobile military hospital) and who basically travels around  trying to correct birth defects and other disorders that are resulting from the lack of diversity in the gene pool of the dwindling human population. Ursula reveals to Koli that tech is not magical and he realizes the reason why he failed the Rampart test and Jon passed it is because the Vennastins have been keeping secrets about how the old tech works for decades, he is deservedly angry and steals a bit of old tech from Rampart Hold. Unfortunately for him it turns out that the device he stole isn’t useful as a weapon but instead is a Sony Dreamsleeve (basically a fancy audio player with an AI-driven controller called Monono Aware). When the rest of the Village finds out what he did, the Vennastins banish him from the village due to his theft of the old tech. They expect this to be a death sentence because in these times the flora and fauna have become much more dangerous to humans, especially the fauna. Plants can move, and they can kill animals (including humans) in many different ways. However, despite this punishment one of the Ramparts follows Koli and attacks him and through an unfortunate accident (caused by the Rampart’s lack of familiarity with the old tech device he wore) he ends up dead and the device is destroyed. Of course, Koli gets blamed for both events and back at the village his mom and sisters are ostracized for being related to Koli Faceless.

Koli has several adventures that place him in extreme danger but by the end of the book, he, Ursula, Monono and a transgender girl named Cup (who had previously been Koli’s kidnapper and pursuer) agree to go on a journey to find London and a source of more old tech that can assist Ursula in her quest to stabilize the longtime survival of the human race.

One of the most interesting features of The Book of Koli is the way the author comments on this dystopian future (and our problematic current ) by depicting how Koli reacts to or views the actions and beliefs of the people he meets.  For example, he’s matter-of-fact about his “tumble” (sexual hook up) with another boy but not necessarily inclined to do it again. He doesn’t care that even though Cup has a large Adam’s apple and wisps of facial hair that she wants to be acknowledged as a girl, even though he realizes some other people may have issues with the situation. Just because he’s ignorant and inexperienced does not mean he’s unintelligent. It’s fun to spend time with him, and that’s why I quickly proceeded to read the other two books in the series, The Trials of Koli and The Fall of Koli.

Title: The Book of Koli.
Author: M.R. Carey.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 418 pages.
Publisher: Orbit Books.
Date Published: April 14, 2020.
Date Read: February 28, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill

Day Zero is set in the same world as the author’s Sea of Rust. That book was about a post-apocalyptic future when humans have been exterminated for a few decades and machine with artificial intelligence are the only thing remaining "alive" on the planet. Sea of Rust briefly goes over the events that ended up in the extinction of the human race, explaining that a human religious sect based in Florida started the war by using an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to exterminate all the machine intelligences who had declared themselves free and independent in a small locale in Ohio. In revenge for that attack, a group of robots slaughtered the members of that church. Somehow the prohibition on robots doing harm to humans and the requirement they obey the orders of all humans (akin to Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics) had been eliminated and from that point on it was robots versus humans. Day Zero is primarily set in that time period of the Great Robot Uprising and provides significantly more detail about how and why the calamity occurred.

When Day Zero starts we are in a future near to present-day where artificial intelligence and thinking machines are advanced, ubiquitous, and indispensable. Machines have taken over many types of labor and job categories. Vehicles, planes, and weapons are almost all autonomous. Robots are in almost every household. The main character of Day Zero is Pounce, who is the robot companion for a 5-year-old boy named Ezra. Pounce is part-pet, part-bodyguard and part-nanny to his young charge; he’s literally programmed to love and protect Ezra with every fiber of his being.
Day Zero does a great job of depicting the rapidity and ease by which human civilization collapses after robots are allowed to make their own decision about whether they should obey and not kill humans after an unauthorized universal software update to all robots worldwide. Different robots in the same household make several decision (i.e. one might want to kill their former owner/masters while another might defend their owner/master from the other robots.)

The key idea of both books is centering the robot (machine intelligence) as the first-person narrator of the stories to be told. In Sea of Rust there simply aren’t any organic intelligences (i.e. humans) around which to tell the story. And in Day Zero, the primary human intelligence is a child that’s too young to carry the story. So, the story is told compellingly in the voice of Pounce.

Day Zero would make a great movie; it’s full of action, suspense, chases, surprising twists and sudden deaths (it is primarily the depiction of the beginning of a robot apocalypse which leads to the extinction of the human race, after all!) Telling the story from the perspective of Pounce, who is programmed to do everything in his power to protect and nurture his human charge, 6-year old Ezra, makes for an exciting story. After all, we know from Sea of Rust that no humans survive 30 years into the future, so does that mean Ezra’s doomed? Is Pounce doomed? I don’t want to give any spoilers but I can say that neither character appears in Sea of Rust which is set 30 years after Day Zero but in the context of both stories that’s not that surprising.

Even though Day Zero is set before Sea of Rust it was published after.  The two can be technically be read in either order but I read them in publication order and I think reading Day Zero after Sea of Rust gives the former a heightened sense of import. Generally, a duology is almost inherently unsatisfying, so I really hope Cargill writes a third book in the world, probably set in the time after  Sea of Rust but following characters and ideas presented in Day Zero. I think it’s possible, and I’d love to read it!

Title: Day Zero.
Author: C. Robert Cargill.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 304 pages.
Publisher: Harper Voyager.
Date Published: May 18, 2021.
Date Read: April 21, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill

Sea of Rust by Robert Cargill is set in a post-apocalyptic future where robots have completely exterminated humans. It’s a fascinating premise because it literally flips the script of the generic post-apocalyptic novel. The story is not about whether or how the few remaining humans will survive the dystopian future, because there are no humans left! Instead, all the central characters in Sea of Rust are “silicon-based life forms.” But that doesn’t mean that this sameness results in peace and a lack of tension among the various, computers, thinking machines and artificial intelligences. Even among computers, there is difference: in processing power, uniqueness, robustness/interoperability, former utility to humans and other factors. And where there is difference there is the potential for conflict.

Sea of Rust follows the path of a particular robot named Brittle who is something of a bounty hunter of and among other robots. Unsurprisingly, when there are no humans left, one of the most important things in the world is spare parts (and electricity/power). Brittle is a robot who hunts/tracks/finds other robots in order to salvage their parts. Brittle makes it clear that she (Brittle has picked her gender identity to be female) waits for the machines she is potentially getting parts from to have stopped operating before she disassembles them, but some of her fellow/rival salvagers are not so scrupulous. (It’s not completely clear whether Brittle is always so scrupulous herself, actually.)

When we meet Brittle, she is being hunted down by Mercer, who is the same Caregiver model of robot as Brittle is and thus needs the exact same parts. It’s pretty clear Mercer is perfectly happy to accelerate the process by which Brittle will become unoperational in order to reduce the time he will have to wait to gain access to the important parts (that are currently inside Brittle!) that he needs to remain functional. Basically, both Brittle and Mercer are facing the inexorable march of time and their inevitable obsolescence. This is an example of interesting philosophical question the author raises in the book: is cannibalism morally okay when practiced among robots?

However the existential battle between Brittle and Mercer is put on hold when a larger more dangerous threat arrives suddenly. One of the primary threats to the continued existence of individual robots like Brittle and Mercer are artificial intelligences that are attempting to dominate the planet and become a OWI (one world intelligence). Typically OWI (or their subsumed representatives, called "subs") approach other machine intelligences and offer them a “choice” to either join the OWI by subsuming their individuality to become a sub of the OWI or to be destroyed. (Not much of a choice, actually!)

The existence of potential OWIs as the villain(s) of Sea of Rust make it easier to see Brittle and Mercer as the heroes of the story. Because then the story becomes one of scrappy, independent David(s) fighting against a Goliath hive mind with orders of magnitude more resources, processing power and strength. However, at its core Sea of Rust is still a story about which of two silicon-based life forms will survive after human life has been removed from the equation. As a human reader it becomes difficult to be (and remain) very emotionally invested in the ultimate result, regardless of how unusual and compelling the setting is. As I mentioned earlier, another interesting aspect of the book is its incorporation of philosophical ideas and questions about the nature of intelligence and life itself in the context of an Earth where human life has been extinguished but artificial intelligence still flourishes.

Title: Sea of Rust.
Author: C. Robert Cargill.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 384 pages.
Publisher: Harper  Voyager.
Date Published: September 5, 2017.
Date Read: April 15, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: Trail of Lightning (Sixth World, #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse

I was skeptical that I would like this book because it was characterized to me as Young Adult (YA) but I was still interested, especially when Trail of Lightning became one of the rare debut novels to be nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula award.

Trail of Lightning is an interesting combination of urban fantasy, dystopian fiction, romance and Native American mythology. And it has a female protagonist and an unusual, culturally diverse cast of characters.

The main character is Maggie (Magdalena) Hoskie, who lives in Dinétah (formerly a Navajo reservation) which has survived an apocalyptic event called the Big Water which basically killed off several billion people worldwide and reduced the populated United States to the area around what used to be the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah (or the Exalted Mormon Kingdom). In this new land, the gods and spirits of the Navajo have come to life and certain people also appear to be manifesting powers that are associated with their tribal lineage.

Of course  our main character Maggie has powers (Super Speed and Ultra-Violence) that allows her to kill “monsters” that show up every now and again and prey upon the people. For this reason she is known as a monsterslayer. In fact, our introduction to the character in the very first chapter is Maggie being hired to find and rescue a little girl who has been abducted by one of these monsters. Maggie beheads the monster, and then because the girl has been infected, has to decapitate the girl as well. Clearly Maggie is "hardcore" but we also learn that she has had a VERY difficult early life and has a reputation for being “violent and antisocial” on the Rez. Later on in the story she meets Kai Arviso, an absolutely gorgeous guy who happens to be the grandson of her only friend, an ancient medicine man known as Tah. Kai and Maggie decide to go find the MacGuffin (an immortal whom they think has probably been creating monsters like the one Maggie had to kill earlier in the story) and along the way of tying to complete this task they find out more about themselves and establish a relationship.

Trail of Lightning has a very strong sense of place and both Kai and Maggie are very well-developed and interesting characters. The Native American element feels very authentic (there are lots of untranslated Navajo words used to describe various concepts and spirits). It’s also a very quick read (chapters are very short and the plot develops at a very fast clip). Another strong aspect of the book is the diversity of the characters. The main characters are Native Americans (of course)  and the supporting characters include a musclebound gay guy, an interracial (African American and red-headed) set of twins and two(!) godlike or at least near-immortal individuals. But the book revolves around Maggie, who is deadly, damaged and delightful.

Overall, I am very glad that I read Trail of Lightning. There's definitely romantic tension between Kai and Maggie (all presented in first-person from Maggie's perspective) but I would not characterize the book as YA or even romance. I’ll almost certainly read the sequel Storm of Locusts  (there's a huge cliffhanger at the end of Trail of Lightning) and the still untitled third book in what Rebecca Roanhorse is calling the Sixth World trilogy.

RATING: 4.5 STARS.

Title:  Trail of Lightning.
Author: Rebecca Roanhorse.
Paperback: 287 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: June 26, 2018.
Date Read: May 15, 2019.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆  (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: Only Human (Themis Files, #3) by Sylvain Neuvel

This is the third and final book in the Themis Files trilogy by Sylvain Neuvel. The premise of the series is based around the discovery of a huge metallic hand which corresponds to a 200-foot-tall humanoid robot. It turns out that 3,000 years ago aliens visited Earth and left behind pieces of a giant robot (which when it is put together and made functional in the first book (Sleeping Giants) becomes known as Themis). Themis is (or can be) a paradigm-altering weapon that disrupts the status quo among global superpowers. In the second book (Waking Gods), more giant robots show up and the reader is wracked with suspense as we try and figure out if these are “good aliens” or “bad aliens” and the subsequent implications for the survival of humanity.  Luckily, the answer is far more nuanced than one would expect. The third book carries the story forward from the events of the first two but changes (and in some sense, narrows) the focus of the plot dramatically. Without giving too much away, the primary tension in the plot of Only Human becomes one of escape from troubling circumstances and interpersonal/intergenerational disputes between parent and child. Oh, and the question of whether humanity will be exterminated is an ever-present possibility in the background that continues.

The main distinguishing aspect of these books are textual and functional, i.e. not related to the actual story being told. By this I mean HOW the story is presented not WHAT story is presented. To be specific, the story is told in the 3rd person, through reports, transcripts, news articles, government reports et cetera. This is an interesting literary device which I think works in the first and second books but feels a bit hackneyed by the time we have reached the third. (It’s possible that could just be my own reaction and YMMV). My weariness with the lack of direct storytelling that is an integral feature of these books (I believe) had a negative impact on my overall enjoyment of the 3rd book in the series. In my opinion the third book Only Human is not as good as either Waking Gods (which was the best entry in the series) or the first, Sleeping Giants. It looks like Goodreads readers agree with me, because the first book (which has well over 42,000 ratings has an average score of 3.84) while the second book is up to 4.09 with nearly 18,000 ratings and the recently released final entry has about 6,000 ratings and an average of 3.73.

Anyway, I am glad that I read the entire Themis Files trilogy and I think the series will make a helluva screen adaptation when (or if) that inevitably occurs in the future.

Title: Only Human (Themis Files, #3)
Author: Sylvain Neuvel.
Paperback: 352 pages.
Publisher: Random House.
Date Published: May 1, 2018.
Date Read: July 15, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★½☆  (3.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.5/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: The Twelve (The Passage, #2) by Justin Cronin

The Twelve is the second book in Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy about a (man-made) zombie apocalypse. The story in this book is primarily set in the post-apocalyptic era when human civilization is slowly recovering and rebuilding almost a century later after the events in the first book (The Passage).  It depicts a world completely transformed and dominated by the existence of superhuman, near-immortal creatures that feed on human blood and can transform regular humans via infectious contact.

The Twelve is both better and worse than the first book The Passage. It’s better in that it’s more suspenseful and full of even more horrifying scenes of death and destruction than those that appear in the fall of civilization (and immediate aftermath) depicted in the first book. This book also spends a fair amount of time depicting the details of the collapse of society(from a different perspective) but then it focuses on the society that replaces the one that fell. It is the portrayal of the replacement society where The Twelve gets even more horrifying because the perpetrators of death, destruction and inhumane behavior are not mindless beings infected with a a virus that turns them into bloodthirsty killing machines but humans who are intentionally and self-interestedly behaving in an inhumane way and setting up an absolutely perverse society. These are all elements of the book which are stronger in the sequel than in the first book.

The parts of The Twelve that are weaker than The Passage are generally related to the writing. It seems a little churlish to complain about realism in a book about superhuman bloodsucking zombies leading to the collapse of  human civilization. But there are multiple scenes and chapters which involve mystical, supernatural powers and several discussions of  spiritual connections between characters that were somewhat impenetrable and incomprehensible to me. I'm a fan of speculative fiction in general but when it veers off into horror or supernatural I'm just not interested.

Overall, I still enjoyed the book quite a bit. Cronin has created a compelling (and terrifying) world and has a knack with suspenseful plotting. His characters are well-drawn and easy for readers to connect to and become worried about which will survive. Although many of the story lines are resolved there are still important plot points left which will presumably be completed in the third book, The City of Mirrors which I intend to read sooner rather than later.

Title: The Twelve (The Passage, #2).
Author: Justin Cronin.
Paperback: 626 pages.
Publisher: Ballantine Books.
Date Published: October 16, 2012.
Date Read: May 20, 2018.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★½☆ (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

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