I enjoyed Planetfall last year, which I read during Sci-Fi Month 2015, but I was stunned by how much more I loved After Atlas, a “companion” novel which takes place in the same world but follows different characters and has a completely different story line. After Atlas references some events and characters from the first book, but you certainly don’t have to read it first in order to enjoy this one. In fact, if you haven’t read Planetfall, I highly recommend starting with After Atlas, simply because it’s the better book. After Atlas is basically a murder mystery, and nearly the entire story is focused on detective Carlos Moreno digging into the murder of high-profile cult leader Alejandro Casales. Carlos is shocked by Casales’ death, a man who was a beloved father figure to Carlos when he was a child. Taken against his will by his father to live in a cult, a secluded fortress called the Circle where all technology is banned, Carlos’ only bright memories are spending time with Alejandro, who taught him to live off the land. When the forensic team suggests the death could be a suicide, Carlos knows Alejandro’s death is much more than it…

A lot has to go wrong for the world to turn into an alt-physics realm of vertically-distributed islands, hovering in a breathable atmosphere, populated entirely by amnesiacs. Clearly those things have gone wrong at the beginning of Will McIntosh’s clever and absorbing novel, Faller, and much of the forward momentum of the story is fueled by the reader’s desire to find out how things could have ended up in such a disastrous and improbable state. I am a great admirer of several of McIntosh’s previous books, which are built on a foundation of big ideas, but always propped up by vivid and believable characters. Faller very much continues in that tradition. On what comes to be called Day One, when a man awakens on what seems to be a broken and floating chunk of a city. The man has no knowledge of who he is, where he is, or why the world is full of inexplicable machines, whose purpose no one can remember. The clueless inhabitants face a number of obvious crises, most pressing among these being distressingly-limited amount of food, which more or less instantly generates a Hobbesian struggle for survival. In his pockets, our protagonist finds three things…

An Import of Intrigue is the second installment of The Maradaine Constabulary. It delves deeper into the politics impacting Maradaine and also exposes more about Satrine’s past and Jinx’s magic. Once again, I found myself more interested in the characters than the actual case they are working on.  Full disclosure, I often don’t do well with detective mystery books, so that is not surprising based on my reading preferences. The investigation the book centers on is a murder of a high ranking member of one of Maradaine’s cultural groups. The evidence at the scene points in a multitude of directions, leaving virtually everyone a suspect. To complicate the investigation, and add to the story, Jinx is having a bit of a personal crisis with his magical abilities. So not only do they have to solve the case, Jinx also has a mystery of what is happening to him and his magic. Is he starting to go mad like some members of his family? Or can he find a cause and solution. In this book, I felt like my engagement with the plot may have been hindered a bit by the introduction of all the different cultural factions that were central…

Books that get the five star treatment from me often have an emotional component to them, which would probably explain why I have consistently given the novels in the Blackthorn & Grim series full marks. That’s because every single one of them has been a boatload of feels, and this third installment is no exception. In fact, Den of Wolves might be the most poignant and moving of them all. I’ve laughed and cried with these characters through their triumphs and tribulations, and now I finally understand that everything we’d been through had been gradually building up to this crucial novel. If you have not had the pleasure of meeting Blackthorn and Grim yet, the two of them make up one of the most extraordinary partnerships I’ve ever read, and their shared experiences in the previous books have only deepened that bond of trust and friendship. Blackthorn is a wise woman, her job to mend and heal and cure, but deep down inside she is still broken and raging with her desire for revenge on Mathuin of Laois, the man who destroyed everything she ever loved. The only thing keeping her from acting upon that anger is an oath she…

The Motion of Puppets is a darkly enchanting tale based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  I really enjoyed this.  To be frank, I was completely intrigued.  The author spins a tale that is compellingly horrifying and, well, I just couldn’t put it down. The story starts off with a newlywed couple.  To an extent they come across as an unlikely couple, Kay is a performer, currently holding a position in the Cirque as an acrobat and her husband Theo is an academic, a little older than Kay and usually with his head in a book.  And yet, the two of them are in love.  They’ve found that special something that just works for them and they’re happy.  Until one evening, when Kay, after having finished the evening’s performance, accepts an invitation to go for a small soiree with some of the other artistes.  Of course one drink leads to three and soon enough Kay is walking home alone, wary of footsteps that seem to be echoing in her wake.  She spots a light on in a window.  It’s the toy shop that she’s been strangely fascinated with, especially the old puppet in the front window.  The shop has never…

Stella Maris is a remote planet where hostile races live in peace under the unlikely shelter of a Weird portal. When the corrupt Expansion comes to ‘investigate’, deserter Yale and former slave Ashot fear the worst – knowing that the Expansion sanctioned mass murder on Braun’s World. Will the Weird keep them safe? Star of the Sea is the fourth book in the Weird Space universe. It continues the story begun in The Baba Yaga, and it’s probably better to read that book first (although previous Weird Space books are optional for added galaxy-building). Me, I jumped straight into the universe with Star of the Sea because it sounded intriguing. Starting here is technically feasible. The opening chapters include enough recaps to make it clear what you’ve missed, and it’s achieved without feeling like a lot of awkward exposition. As the novel is told largely from the perspective of new characters (Yale and Eileen O’Connor), there’s no sense that you should already know what they’re about. Even where characters from The Baba Yaga take centre stage (Maria, sole adult survivor of The Baba Yaga), I didn’t get the impression they had previously had starring roles. In spite of this, my core criticism of the book is that it didn’t do the work to build its characters. This might have made forgivable if they’d been introduced in a previous volume, but as…

The Lives of Tao and the subsequent books in Chu’s fantastic series were some of my favorite books from the past few years, so you can image how excited I was to find out he was starting another series set in the same world. The Rise of Io takes place some years after the Tao books (and I say “some years” because I’m not exactly sure how many) and contains many of the elements we’re familiar with, if you’ve read that series. But this time the setting is Surat, India, and the main character is a tiny but fierce and plucky girl named Ella Patel. Like Roen before her, Ella is thrust into the life of the quasing against her will when she unwittingly becomes host to a Prophus named Io. But Ella and Roen couldn’t be more different. Ella might be one of my favorite fictional characters ever, I simply loved everything about her. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. If you haven’t read the first series, here’s a little background about this world. The quasing are an ancient alien race who crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago, and since then have evolved and managed to survive…

When I was first offered a copy of Vick’s Vultures for review, the press release promised a mix of Firefly and Mad Max. That was enough to catch my interest. When I had a chance to talk with Scott Warren about the book, he also mentioned Discworld having influenced his tone. That was enough to pique my interest. When I actually sat down to read it, I discovered that its Firefly sense of roguish adventure was cut with a good deal of Star Trek vibes. That was enough to sustain my interest. I loved the concept of this right from the start. Humanity has progressed to the point where we’re a legitimate star-faring race, but in doing so we’ve discovered how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Races like the Malagath, the Dirregaunt, and the Kossovoldt have been around for eons, progressing far beyond anything to which we could aspire. They are the forces of power in the universe, with each of them controlling thousands of worlds. In order to compete, we have legitimized a form of interstellar piracy, scavenging alien ships for whatever technology and secrets we can, making our own ships into mechanical monstrosities of mismatch technology. Culturally, those races have…

Color me pleasantly surprised – a book that ostensibly bore many hallmarks of your average possibly-YA-but-maybe-not fantasy novel in fact turned out to be a very refreshing and unique read. I honestly didn’t expect to like this book so much, especially since my feelings for the story fluctuated so wildly for most of the first half. However, all traces of uncertainty were washed away by the time the plot ramped up to its brutal climax and staggering conclusion. The Queen of Blood introduces us to the world of Aratay, a place where humans and nature spirits coexist in a state of precarious equilibrium. Spirits see humans as invaders in their domain, and given the opportunity they would gladly see us all dead. But while the spirits are destructive forces, they are also one with the natural world, and without them there would be no rain, no fire, no life. So humans have learned to adapt. In Aratay, a Queen holds control over all the spirits in the area and protects her people from harm. To choose a Queen, girls with an affinity to sense and manipulate the spirits are identified and invited to an academy to learn how to use…

The Facefaker’s Game is an entertaining coming of age story that features a number of familiar, but quite likable, tropes. I want to stress that it’s not a negative to contain tropes. I firmly believe these are traits that are so common because they can be quite enjoyable, which is the case within The Facefaker’s Game. The book has enough originality within it’s magic and characters to make the old familiar feel fresh and fun. It feature a 14 year old boy, with no family, trying make it on the mean streets. And trust me, Burroughside is mean. In addition to the gangs of orphans and criminals, there are also monsters that come out at night. People don’t risk breaking curfew because staying out past dark pretty much typically means your life. Another interesting/mysterious feature of this book was certain people (though they don’t call them people) who would appear in Burroughside with no memory of who they are. The word amnesia was never used, but that is the general idea. And with no memory, no place to live, their lack of defenses against the monsters of the night means they are not likely to live long. It’s a mystery of the world that leaves you guessing a bit…