The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

 What a frustrating book!  I loved the language, the writing, and the premise -- who wouldn't want a talkative fig tree to tell every other chapter of a family story centred on the tragedy of the Cyprian civil war? But as the book progressed the author choose to tell several pivotal chapters in the voice of a character retelling the past. Given that the book already contains multiple timelines, why not let the reader experience those scenes directly by setting them in the past? It would have made our emotional connection far stronger.  While we're at it, I felt that the author was signalling a far more complex story of pain and guilt around the fate of the proprietors of the Happy Fig. Instead we are shown a tragic but incidental coincidence. The author kept pulling her punches.

My final complaint is that the denouement of the fig tree's story felt anti-climatic.  Sometimes your magical realist fig tree can just be a magical realist fig tree, you know?

Overall, I loved the first half of this book.  I just wished it had lived up to the promise of the opening pages.

The Stargazer's Sister: A Novel by Carrie Brown

What odd choices! That's my initial impression of The Stargazer's Sister, a novel based on the life of Caroline Herschel, astronomer and assistant to her illustrious brother William (discoverer of the planet Uranus).  Brown makes several significant changes to the historical record (most notably, deleting the existence of William's son and notable scientist John Herschel), adds several imagined characters (two of whom are inserted to give Caroline's life some romance), and omits some of the documented events in Caroline's life that I personally find most interesting.  

Overall, I still found this a relatively engaging novel, especially as it made me think about the entire genre of historical fiction. Obviously there are always gaps in the historical record, which is where the imagination of the historical novelist comes in. Perhaps just as obviously what draws an author to a particular subject will be the aspects of that subject that they find more interesting -- which may or may not align with the reader's interests.

Which is to say that Carrie Brown is most concerned with Caroline's internal life, especially her intense devotion to her brother and to his work, and she is not as concerned with Caroline's intellectual life and with her scientific accomplishments.  Personally, I found this disappointing.  The Stargazer's Sister is not the book of Caroline Herschel's life that I would have written, or that I would have preferred to read.  That doesn't make it a bad novel, but I would warn readers primarily interested in the Herschels to read some nonfiction instead (like The Georgian Star, which is quite engaging), or even Caroline Herschel's memoir. 

Orlanda: A Novel by Jacqueline Harpman

 So this novel is an example of why I don't keep "To read" lists, why I hate searching for something to read in Libby, and why think that the internet and the algorithm is the death of discovery.

I would never have picked this book up if I hadn't run across it in the library.  Orlanda was on a "New titles" shelf near the door, and somehow the combination of the title, its 50s style modernist cover, and the note under the author's name stating "author of I who have never known men" (which I think I've heard of?) whimpelled me to pick it up. ('Whimpelled' is an inadvertent coinage, but it's perfectly apt so its staying). 

I took it out.  I read it almost immediately.  I'm really glad I ran across it.

Bookstores. Libraries. Physical copies of books that enter your life, and sometimes wait patiently on your shelf for years until it's the right time for you to read them. That's how I want my reading life to unfold.

Anyway, what is this book, and why am I glad to have found it?  Orlanda was inspired by Orlando by Virginia Wolf, and our heroine is in fact reading Orlando as the novel opens. Unlike Orlando, where the protagonist mysteriously changes gender multiple times over a fantastically long life, in Orlanda the protagonist looks up from her reading, bored, at a beautiful young man having a coffee in the same cafe -- and half of her soul leaps. From that point on, half of Aline remains Aline, 35 year-old literature professor with a staid life, and half becomes the carefree, carelessly sexual Lucien Lefrene. 

This is not a novel premise for a novel -- viz Orlando, of course, but also Larque on the Wing by Nancy Springer (winner of the 1994 Tiptree award). What makes Orlanda compelling is the execution.  The writing is wonderful.  

Let us listen too for awhile.  Schumann had such a brief life that we owe it to him to devote a few moments to his music. Time kills us, second after second, and we fools continue to be impatient. Oh! for tomorrow, next week, for the moment we're awaiting finally to come. But, reckless soul, it will all end! Suppose you tried instead to enjoy the present? Stop, listen. Your heart is beating, thick blood flows through your veins, you are alive, make the most of it now, don't say that enjoyment will come later. It's here, it's happening now, and it won't last long, every note of the concerto dies away. When you come to the end of the first movement, you can play the record again, but you can't restart the record of your life, for that is only played once.

And the structure is interesting too.  The story is told by 'the author', who addresses the reader directly, as in the passage above, explaining, exhorting, popping into the perspectives of Aline, Lucien, Orlanda, Orlanda's lover, Lucien's sister, etc. as needed to move the story along.  It's lovely to read something that isn't in the ubiquitous "close third person" that is de rigeur in modern genre fiction.  And it's lovely to occasionally read something literary.

What is the message of the book? Of course, as in Larque, Harpman chooses a sexy 20 year old gay male persona to be the foil for her middle-aged female protagonist. But the sex (from which 'the author' mostly deliberately and prudishly turns her face and her pen) isn't the point. The point is both to compare the freedom and care-freedom possible in young male life with the repression and responsibility common to 'properly raised' middle class women. (One of Orlanda's first acts after being freed from Aline is to bound energetically across a station platform to catch his train, enjoying the exhilaration of unself-conscious movement, the freedom not to care about snagging his stockings or looking weird.)  But Harpman digs deeper too.  The two halves of Aline's severed soul both relish their freedom from one another, but they are also increasingly attracted to ..... Each other? Themselves?  Would we be our own perfect companions? What do we need from others? What do we need from ourselves?

Just a few of the questions that Orlanda raises, but of course does not answer because this is literature, not a user manual.

An enjoyable brief read, republished in English to mark the 30th anniversary of its original publication in French.  (A book that would be very different if written today, as highlighted by the new afterword provided by a modern novelist who ponders and then rejects the hypothesis that Aline is trans.)

The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi

One of the reasons that I write these blog entries is that they help me clarify my thinking about a book. That means that writing them is work -- I'm not just putting my thoughts 'on paper', I'm thinking things through as I write, which typically means a fair number of false starts and rewriting. I see words on the screen and what I've written leads to new thoughts, or sometimes I realize that what I've written is not really what I meant.  After that there's the process of making the sentences and paragraphs into a coherent narrative.

None of this is really a problem, but as I was writing an entry on The Third Rule I started thinking about generative AI. I used to follow a Tech Writing blogger, who is now all in on using AI in his work.  A relative told me this summer that he uses AI to help him generate Linked In content to support and promote his business.  Could I use AI to make writing a blog entry easier?

I put what I'd already written and some bullet points outlining what else I might add into Claude AI.  

I'm sharing the results below.  <spoiler alert>  I didn't actually complete a blog entry using Claude. </spoiler alert>  In fact, the whole experience soured me on completing this blog entry at all!  But I thought I'd share the process in case anyone finds it interesting.

-------------my original opening paragraphs and notes---------------

Here's what I fed into Claude, with the instructions to complete a blog entry for me.

First rule of time travel: You can only travel to a point within your own personal past. Second rule: Your trip can only last 90 seconds. Third rule:  You can only observe.

This is a fast-paced SF thriller. As the book opens we are time travelling to the plane crash that killed the protagonist's immediate family when she was a teen. From there the pace rarely falters as The Third Rule follows its scientist heroine as she struggles to keep her professional and personal worlds from unwinding.

Parts of this book work really well -- I literally gasped when I realized (via a throwaway line) that one of the rules of time travel had just been broken.  The science of time travel is well-done too, and the explanation of how it all works is interesting and plausible. I also liked the way Fracassi added the time travel explanation to the story by introducing a journalist who needs things explained to them -- because the presence of the journalist is a key plot point in Beth's struggle to save her life's work from rapacious capitalists. In the end, the explanation ratchets up the tension rather than slowing down the action. 

Beth's grief at the death of her husband and the impact of that grief on her life 

Points I want to make:

Good Side

• The premise of this kind of limited time travel is interesting.
• I literally gasped when I realized (via a throwaway line) that one of the rules of time travel had just been broken.  
• The science of time travel is well-done too, and the explanation of how it all works is interesting and plausible. 
• I also liked the way Fracassi plausibly added that explanation to the story by introducing a journalist who needs things explained while making the very presence of the journalist a key plot point in Beth's struggle to save her life's work from rapacious capitalists. In the end, the explanation ratchets up the tension rather than slowing down the action. 

Bad Side

• Beth was one note emotionally: she is constantly devastated by past trauma, angry, impatient, stressed and always falling apart
• Jim, the billionaire owner of the Langan Corporation (and Beth's boss) is a cartoon capitalist villain
• Supporting characters are inconsistent/not well drawn
•  Tariq is Beth's assistant,  and is mistreated / ignored by Beth until he suddenly reveals himself to be her biggest supporter and a holder of critical info
• Jonathon the therapist: is he supporting Beth, or betraying her to corporation? There are mixed messages, and in the end I honestly wasn't clear. 
• There is a Chekov's gun situation with Abigail: she takes Beth aside to tell her that despite appearances, she has Beth's back, and then nothing comes of it

• Means of resolving the story was unsatisfying: basically, 'there are some things humans just can't understand', and then everything is mysteriously resolved, the end.

------------Claude's First Draft ----------------

And you can see below what Claude gave me.  My reaction -- OMG this is terrible.

A Time Travel Tale That Almost Sticks the Landing

Book Review: "The Third Rule of Time Travel" by Philip Fracassi

Philip Fracassi's "The Third Rule of Time Travel" presents an intriguing take on temporal mechanics wrapped in corporate thriller packaging. While the book delivers some genuinely clever moments and solid scientific groundwork, it stumbles when it comes to character development and narrative resolution.

What Works Well

The premise itself is compelling—Fracassi constructs a limited time travel system with specific rules that feel both innovative and plausible. Rather than the usual "anything goes" approach to temporal manipulation, these constraints create real tension and stakes. The science behind the time travel mechanism is surprisingly well-researched and explained in ways that enhance rather than bog down the story.

Speaking of explanations, Fracassi makes a smart narrative choice by introducing a journalist character who naturally needs the complex concepts spelled out. Rather than feeling like an exposition dump, this device becomes integral to the plot as the journalist's presence directly impacts Beth's struggle to protect her life's work from corporate exploitation. It's elegant storytelling that actually ratchets up tension instead of deflating it.

The book's standout moment comes when a seemingly throwaway line suddenly reveals that one of the established time travel rules has been broken. I literally gasped when I caught it—a testament to how well Fracassi had established the rules and their importance. These moments of realization make the reader feel genuinely clever for paying attention.

Where It Falls Short

Unfortunately, the character work doesn't match the strength of the concept. Beth, our protagonist, operates on a single emotional register throughout: devastated, angry, impatient, and constantly falling apart from past trauma. While trauma responses can certainly be persistent, Beth's one-note emotional state becomes exhausting rather than sympathetic.

Jim, the billionaire antagonist and owner of the Langan Corporation, feels like he stepped out of a cartoon about evil capitalists. He lacks the complexity that would make him a truly compelling villain—he's simply rapacious capitalism personified without nuance or believable motivation beyond pure greed.

The supporting characters suffer from inconsistent development. Tariq, Beth's assistant, spends most of the book being mistreated and ignored by Beth, only to suddenly emerge as her biggest supporter with crucial information when the plot demands it. Jonathon the therapist sends mixed signals throughout—is he Beth's ally or will he betray her to the corporation? Beth's trust in him wavers without clear reasoning, leaving readers unsure whether this ambiguity is intentional characterization or simply unclear writing.

Most frustrating is the Chekov's gun situation with Abigail, who takes Beth aside for what feels like a significant moment to assure her that despite appearances, she has Beth's back. This setup promises a payoff that never comes, leaving the scene feeling pointless in retrospect.

The Unsatisfying Resolution

The book's biggest disappointment comes in its resolution. After building intricate rules and complex corporate machinations, Fracassi essentially throws up his hands and declares that some things are beyond human understanding. Everything gets mysteriously resolved without clear explanation, leaving readers who invested in understanding the system feeling cheated. It's a frustrating cop-out that undermines the careful worldbuilding that came before.

Final Verdict

"The Third Rule of Time Travel" succeeds as a thought experiment about temporal mechanics and corporate overreach, but fails as a fully realized story. The clever premise and well-integrated exposition show Fracassi's potential, but the weak character development and unsatisfying resolution prevent the book from reaching its full potential. Time travel enthusiasts might enjoy the novel approach to temporal rules, but those seeking rich character work or a satisfying conclusion should look elsewhere.

Rating: 3/5 stars

A promising concept that doesn't quite deliver on its potential.

---------------------- Michelle edits Claude --------------------------

I thought what Claude came up with was terrible, but both the blogger and my relative had said that in order to get something usable they needed to edit the AI's initial output and/or do a second prompt with feedback on the initial AI output.  

So I started editing. But I gave up in despair before I was done because:

• it wasn't fun
• it wasn't going to be less work than actually writing an acceptable blog entry myself.  And it felt like the end result was going to be inferior too.

When I gave up on editing the AI output, I also decided not to try doing a second prompt.  (See reason #1).

Overall I'd have to say that using AI for a writing task was a fail. Even if you could argue that the failure is on me because I didn't try a second prompt. But I'm willing to live with that.  :-)

<I originally had the text of my attempt to edit Claude below.  But I removed it because I didn't get very far and it wasn't very interesting.>

Night Shift by Natalka Burian

 I found Night Shift on the Science Fiction shelf at the library, but reading the book has made me reflect on book genres and categories of fiction. 

The protagonist of Night Shift lives in 2000s era New York City, working both as a bartender and as a baker. That means that after serving the last drinks of the evening, she dashes across town to a bakery where she makes fine pastries for the morning 'coffee and a pastry' crowd. She can't be late for her second job -- the cafe opens at 6am whether the pastries are ready or not -- and she can't afford to lose the bakery gig because she needs the money to make rent.  But the bar job often runs late and the subway is unreliable, so she is pleased and relieved when a new acquaintance shows her a 'shortcut' between them.

'Shortcuts' are mysterious portals that let you transition between fixed locations within the city -- say from a storage closet in a diner to the backroom of a bar miles away.  Iggy tells Jean that 'everybody knows' about these secret passageways, but all that means is that a few insiders know that they're there (including the staff of the relevant businesses), and that everyone believes that these shortcuts are dangerous, although no one really knows why.

The novel revolves around Jean discovering how the shortcuts really work, how they were created, and who made them.  

So far so good. That's a solid SFF premise. If the explanation leans mystical, the book is Fantasy. If the explanation leans scientific, the book is Science Fiction. Clear, right?

But somehow the book doesn't feel like Science Fiction (even though the explanation turns out to be hand-wavingly sciencey). Instead, I think this is the kind of book agents are looking for when they say that they represent "Speculative".  Sure, the book includes an element of the fantastic (whether scientifically explained or not), but the characters live in the real world that we all share, the protagonist's personal journey and relationships are the heart of the story, and while the fantastical element is important to the plot, it's not important to the protagonist? I'm not sure how to else to explain this last part, except to say that what matters to Jean is the well-being of her former boss, her missing friend, and reconciling herself with the traumas of her past. She fundamentally does not care about the portals. It doesn't even occur to her to say "Teleportation. Holy shit!" And when it becomes clear how the shortcuts were created, no one starts thinking about how TELEPORTATION of all things could be useful or threatening or transformative for society. 'Shortcuts' are simply dangerous, uncomfortable things whose existence needs to be covered up, even for the corporate evil-doers who caused them to exist in the first place. 

That's not a very science fiction way of telling a story.  

There are probably other markers that make this feel more like 'contemporary fiction with speculative elements' than SF that I might be able to figure out if I spent more time thinking about it -- pacing? story arc? -- but in the meantime all I can say is that despite appearances, this is not a genre novel. I find that interesting and a little puzzling, despite my analysis that claims to explain why.

Killers of a certain age by Deanna Rayburn

I've tagged this one "mystery" but it's really more in the vein of "thriller".  

Our heroines are just-retired assassins who were employed by a private organization that was originally founded to hunt down and kill Nazis who had escaped ordinary justice. Now the four sixty-year-old women are reunited for a retirement cruise. We see their glory days as assassins in flashbacks that show them posing as stewardesses, nuns, archeology students and more to carry out elaborate killing plots that rid the world of various drug dealers, crooked bishops, and yes, even elderly Nazis.

In the present day, the women reminisce about their past while commiserating about lost loves, post-retirement life, and the inexorable symptoms of aging -- until one of them notices something that seems wrong, and they are launched into an adventure that requires them to use all of their skills to survive.

This book has a light-hearted tone at odds with the rather brutal murders that are sprinkled liberally across its pages. Because (of course /s) the very idea of a deadly 60 year-old woman is ridiculous.

I could fault the premise, but it seems to form the basis of the entire 'unlikely assassin' genre: it's certainly the rationale behind books like An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good and the entire Mrs Polifax series.

Killers is entertaining despite its many improbabilities and numerous plot holes, and delivers pretty much exactly what you'd expect on every page.  3/5 stars.

Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell

 Another space opera!  I'm not sure why I haven't heard of Gareth Powell, because he's published many books and has been nominated for or won multiple British Science Fiction Association awards. 

Apparently Stars and Bones is the first in new series for Powell, but it reads like a stand-alone. Well-written, well-plotted, with both some interesting original ideas and some borrowed ones (there were elements that reminded of both The Expanse and Ancilliary Justice.)  

The book grabbed me harder than Stina Leicht or L.M. Sagas, although I'm not entirely sure why. Because it had a gripping adventure plot? (instead of centring the relationships? Not that relationships aren't important -- our heroine takes some foolish risks to rescue people that she cares about.)

I'd be up for reading more books by Powell, although for me they fall into the category of "that's  entertaining" rather than "that's amazing".

Psalms for the End of the World by Cole Haddon

 Why?  Why do I feel compelled to finish books?  The world is full of books, my time on this earth is limited, and there is no reason on earth to spend any of it reading books that I'm not really enjoying.  (Other than my recent obsession with meeting my Goodreads/Storygraph annual reading goals. Four books ahead of schedule as of today!)

Yes, I struggled to finish this one.  Yes, I did finish it.  

Was it a bad book?  Not at all.  The cover quotes reviews saying things like "Mind-bendingly clever and utterly gripping" and "Ingenious" and I can see where those comments come from.  It's well-written too.  

What's my problem? A number of things. The book has to overcome the fact that it leans into a couple of tropes/conventions that are not generally my favourites:

• Multiple characters, multiple timelines, multiple storylines that have no clear connection
• Reader is lost amongst a random, confusing set of situations in a universe where much of what happens makes little sense.  Rules of the world need to be inferred over many pages (Reader only begins to understand the overall situation about 125 pages in.)

Basically, Psalms 'buries the lede'. Which is not all bad.  Not every book needs to be (or should be!) an adventure full of characters saying "As you know Bob, if the graffelgrommit fails we're all DOOOOOOMED!"  

Equally though, does any book need to be stuffed full of graphic descriptions of post-WWII torture murders of Nazis?  Alongside conquistador murders and slavery torments and beatings by racist cops? Especially when all of these gruesome storylines are actually pretty peripheral to the main plot? They're more in the line of illustrations of the fact that we are operating in a universe with  <spoiler>  many parallel and interconnecting simulated worlds </spoiler>.

Why did I finish?  Because the 125 pages point was well-calibrated. (Any later and sorry, I'm not intrigued, I'm frustrated and bored.)  Because the writing was vivid, and the situations were gripping and/or intriguing (especially the ones that didn't feature graphic violence).  Because I wanted to see how everything came together. (Hallelujah. It did! In books like this it doesn't always.) Because the book had an editor (my guess :-) who insisted on the rare chapters that included clear explanations.  Because I could skip the most graphic descriptions of horrible things.

But mostly, because I'm stubborn.  Otherwise I'd have stopped at about page 250 (of 538).  

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinsin

 Well, this is a change of pace. You know how I said I like 'cozy' books? The Traitor Baru Cormorant definitely doesn't qualify.

Baru Cormorant is a story of colonization, told from the point of view of one of the colonized people (like Mission Child by Maureen McHugh).  As in all stories sympathetic to colonized peoples (like Ancilliary Justice by Anne Leckie), the background of the book is quite grim.  Baru is removed from her family as a child and is educated in the colonizer's school to teach her both the values of the colonizers and the specific skills that will make her useful to Empire. As in The Poppy War by RF Kuang, our protagonist overcomes her disadvantaged background to excel in the imperial service exams.  From there Baru takes up a challenging post in service to the Falcresti empire. Her secret goal is to remain true to her family and her birth society.  She wants nothing more than to find a way to free Taranoki from imperial rule.

This is a morally complex story with a morally complex protagonist and a surprising but inevitable conclusion.  And while the book has its moments, overall it's very dark from page one through to the end.  As a writer I admire and hope to learn from Dickinsin's skilled use of foreshadowing, but I am not planning to read the two sequels.  At the moment I'm not up for reading more dark stories set in dark worlds.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3)

 Or, in other words, a three volume omnibus that includes All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Fugitive Telemetry, and System Collapse.

Yes, of course I've read Murderbot before.  But the books are mostly novellas and were previously released only as hardcovers at ~$26.99 each (or $99 CAD for the first four volumes).  And while I admire and very much enjoyed Martha Wells fantastic adventure series -- ouch.  I originally read all of these in library e-book editions.

When I discovered that the Murdot Diaries had finally been released in a more affordable paperback omnibus edition, it was time for an immediate purchase and an immediate re-read.

What do I think, five years after I first discovered our snarky, anti-social, but very much anti-murdering-humans rogue SecUnit?  

Firstly, and most embarrassingly, that I was unwittingly highly influenced by these books as I composed my own latest novel.  It's not that I didn't know what Murderbot was like as I wrote.  It's more that I absorbed rather more Murderbot than I realized or intended, and it came out on the page.  Oops.

Not that being like Murderbot is a bad thing in and of itself.  The books crackle with energy and personality, and you can't help but sympathize with SecUnit's desire to stand in a corner and watch media in preference to watching the humans it's trying to protect do their very best to get killed. Murderbot's snarky but relatable personality is why the series was such a hit, and why I (very much hope) that Martha Wells is now financially secure.

Highly recommended, even though by Book 6 I was starting to feel that it was time for Murderbot to have a little peace and happiness instead of another adventure.

A Pale Light in the Black by K.B. Wagers

I picked this up book up and put it down about three times when I was at Powell's in Portland.  I'd managed to squeak in an extra 3/4 of an hour for myself in the bookstore while everyone else was occupied, and I spent most of that time in the SFF section torn between the books that seemed like great comps and the books that I most wanted to read -- with the added complication of the question "will I ever find this again elsewhere?"

In the end, Loki's Ring is one of the books that made it home with me (on the 'I may never see this again' principle), while the K.B. Wagers books were at the top of the 'I guess I can't buy ALL THE BOOKS' pile.  But I made a careful note of the name and titles and managed to find the first book of Wagers' NeoG series at the public library recently.

If you want a brief summary of A Pale Light, you could do worse than the pull quote on the front cover "If The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet had more kickboxing matches and death-defying space rescues, this would be the book. -- Max Gladstone, author of Empress of Forever".  To whit:

• Protagonist is the rebel daughter of a powerful family who is following her own path -- CHECK
• Narrative centres a 'found family' of loveable misfits -- CHECK
• Female, NB, and queer characters are central -- CHECK
• Spaceships and adventure -- CHECK

But of course A Pale Light in the Black is its own book.  Our loveable band of misfits are members of the interplanetary Coast Guard (the NeoGs, or Near-Earth Orbital Guards), making this book a kind of modern Military SF.  In sharp contrast to most space operas, the team's immediate goal is not saving humanity or fighting aliens or protecting Earth.  The crew of Zuma's Ghost really wants to do well in the Boarding Games, an inter-Service Olympics that features events like computer hacking, cage fighting, and simulated 'take over the occupied space station' competitions.  Of course that's not the only plot -- the main drama involves the prodigal daughter finding her confidence as she becomes a fully integrated member of her NeoG team, while simultaneously uncovering a nefarious plot that OF COURSE involves her family and its business interests.

What did I think of the book?  Unlike some of the SFF I've reviewed lately, this is not a debut novel.  Wagers published five books before this one,  and their experience shows.  Characters are all three-dimensional, dialog is seamless, description is well-chosen, and the action moves along.  You care about Jenks (the tough, orphaned Petty Officer who would much rather get in a bar fight than admit that she might have Feelings for someone), and for Max, our low-confidence high competence protagonist.  Overall the book is very competently done, entertaining, and I enjoyed it a lot.  

My only criticism is a tiny pet peeve -- in real life of course people have full, multi-part names, they have titles ('Commander'), they have nicknames (and sometimes more than one  ('Jenks', 'Dai')).  And of course in real life these names and titles and nicknames might bear no obvious relationship to one another. But in fiction...oy.  Introducing multiple people in the first few pages while referring to each person in multiple different ways?  Realistic? Sure.  Effective?  I dunno.  I'm a person who has trouble enough keeping single names of the real folk that I meet straight. But take this criticism for whatever you think it's worth -- I'm also not a huge fan of the style of high fantasy that throws you into an unfamiliar situation without explanation and expects you to be satisfied by finally figuring out what was happening on page 1 by reading page 452. 

Loki's Ring by Stina Leicht

 Another space opera!  More spaceships, ship AIs (and other artificial persons) as characters, an interstellar crisis, even a ring world.

This one took me a long time to read, and I wasn't sure why.  The writing was good, the characterizations were distinct and consistent, characters were sympathetic, there was lots of action and clear stakes.  So why did I keep putting it down and not getting back to it for days?  Why did I find Doppelganger more gripping?

I think the first reason is the most important, and I'll simply make it by gesturing at the world around me.  If you're reading this in years to come, remember what the first month or two of the Trump II administration was like.  It's hard to concentrate.

The second reason didn't strike me until after I finished the book.  When I thought about the story I'd just read, I realized that at its heart, Loki's Ring is women's fiction.  The central conflict is not between the Norton Alliance and the TRW.  The struggle that drives the book is not Gita's need to rescue her AI daughter.  The mystery is not why illicit miners were trying to harvest something from the surface of Loki's Ring, and the horror is not the dastardly virus liberated by their efforts.  No, the central conflict of the book is internal to Gita:  she has to come to terms with the fact that there was no way to prevent the tragedy that she is haunted by, and she needs to reconcile with her family (including her AI daughters) and her estranged former partner. The mystery is exactly what happened (before our story begins) and how it has affected each character.  The true struggle is for personal growth.  

In other words the space opera elements are merely trappings, in the same way that Calamity by Constance Fay is a romance, even though it features spaceships and scrappy space adventurers and an interstellar villain volcano lair. 

Then it all made sense.  Loki's Ring didn't grab me because while there's nothing in the least wrong with women's fiction, it's not the kind of story that I generally read, and is not the kind of story that generally grabs me.

I have to admit that I don't really understand how all of this works from a writerly perspective.  I mean,  a space opera (or a mystery) without romantic elements or personal dilemmas or character growth would probably be dull.  So why does a romance (or woman's fiction) leave me cold? What makes a story something that I find compelling?   The stakes can't be purely personal?  Hm....maybe that's it.  While the events in Loki's Ring include dramatic escapes from wrecked spaceships, alien attacks, and at least one big spaceship fight -- that's not what *matters* to the characters. What matters is dealing with their colleague's agoraphobia.  Reconciling with their estranged friend.  Letting down their family.  Bringing themselves to say that they're sorry.  Admitting that they were wrong.  You know, the actually important stuff that everyone has to deal with in life.

Hmmm...learning by reading continues.

And now for a break in the routine....

 By reading some straight SF, not space opera!  Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton takes place in the United States of America in 2065, as a genocidal war breaks out between Humanists and the Federals.  

Humanists are ordinary people who are violently opposed to the existence of cyborgs:  humans with  neurological implants, embedded enhancements to their musculature, live contact with infospace, nanobots running through their bloodstreams to repair physical damage, etc. etc.  The Federals are the same-old, same-old folks who may or may not be enhanced (depending on their personal financial circumstances or their military enlistment status), who live in or run everyday society of 2065.  

Our hero Mal is an independent AI who inadvertently wanders into the conflict between the two types of monkey when he downloads himself into the neurological implant of a recently deceased Federal soldier to see what it's like to live in meatspace -- and gets trapped when his link to infospace goes down.

The cover calls this book "darkly comic", which pretty much covers Mal's adventures incompetently pretending to be human as he first collects a posse of misfits, and then tries to escape with them across Humanist lines back to Federal infospace while Bad Things happen all around.  Well-written, funny, gripping and thought-provoking, even if I refuse to believe that a game of Guess the Cube Root of the Square of the Output of the Random Number Generator would be any more fun than the base game of Guess the Output of the Random Number Generator for a bored AI trapped in the head of a sleeping host human.

What I've been reading: Space Opera Edition II

As I continue to read modern space operas, I'm noticing (perhaps belatedly) some strong general themes:

• Written by women
• Usually include banter/smartasses/clever dialog
• Strong female leads
• Lots of queer characters and queer relationships
• Romance is common, as are found families, scrappy space rebels (think Harrison Ford), and AIs

Now on to more detail about my most two latest reads: Full Speed to a Crash Landing and The Floating Hotel.  Firstly, I'd have to say that these two are among the best of my most recent batch (which includes Calamity, Cascade Failure, Barbary Station, Finder, and Under Fortunate Stars from Space Opera I).  

Neither of these two books has any obvious "writerly" flaw, both were engaging, and neither was too long.  

Quick competent fun = +++

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis (published 2024)

This one had intrigue, banter/smart ass comments, and a hint of romance (or at least passing lust).  So, in some ways it's a mirror of Calamity by Constance Fey.  But Calamity is a romance and Full Speed is a sexy space heist.  Full Speed is told in the first person, by an unreliable narrator, and is about a galactic salvager/scavenger who is rescued as she's running out of air by an official government salvage crew who's come to investigate the wreck that she's plundering.  

Parallels with my work:  banter, spaceships

The Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (published 2024)

Can I complain that a book isn't what I expected if it delivers exactly what's on the tin?  I ordered this after reading its Amazon preview pages, and thought that it was going to be about Carl, the abused orphan from a terrible mining planet who is kindly taken in by the staff of a luxury hotel spaceship (the Grand Abeona). Instead, the book is fundamentally about....drumrollllll....the hotel itself.  

Each chapter follows a different character (although Carl, who becomes manager, does get a few), and together the characters' stories tell us about the Galactic Empire that the hotel traverses and gradually, all about the hotel itself.   At the heart of the book is a mystery, which creates an overarching plot that emerges from the individual character's stories.

I thought the book was very well done.  It was engaging, had well-developed and believable characters, and the overall conceit was well-executed in that the many threads came together to build to a "surprising but inevitable" conclusion (which is the goal of a mystery plot!)

This is advertised as a cozy and I can see why:  Carl (and the culture of the ship) is kind, you can describe the collection of characters as a found family, and the premise of a luxury interstellar floating hotel staffed by waifs who love their work is fundamentally sweet.   But there is a dark heart here: an oppressive Galactic Empire with a sadistic agent who uses torture as a tool.  I find it hard to categorize any book that includes torture as cozy, even if the perpetrator eventually faces consequences (albeit for murdering a colleague, not for the torture itself).

Parallels with my work: oppressive Galactic Empire, spaceships, most characters are decent and doing their best

What I've been reading: Space opera edition

 As I've been preparing to seek an agent to represent my cozy space opera, I've been reading recent books in the genre both to understand the current marketplace and to find "comp titles" that I can use for my query.  Here are some of the books I've read recently:

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee  (published 2016)

Rebellion. Heresy. Interplanetary War.  A brilliant undead general released from storage/captivity and assigned to help our protagonist triumph in an otherwise hopeless battle.   Lots of intricate world-building and factional strife. Military SF with calendrical magic. 

Parallels with my book:  honestly?  spaceships.  

Barbary Station by R. E. Stearns (published 2017)

Lesbian space pirates.  That's probably enough to entice most potential readers of this book to open its covers.  When you discover that the lesbian couple in question are seeking to join the space pirates because of their overwhelming student debt...well, slam dunk for reader identification for most Gen Zs. Add in corporate bad guys and a struggle to prove yourself to the pirates while simultaneously trying to save innocents in a battle against a malevolent AI -- all the adventure boxes have been ticked.  The book does have its flaws, though.  From a writerly perspective, I found that the writing has weak POV. Weak POV weakens a reader's engagement with the characters, which I believe is what's behind statements like "I started losing interest" and "For some reason I just never connected" in the top Goodreads reviews.

Parallels with my work:  relationship between the two main characters is critical to the story, as is a powerful AI.

Cascade Failure by L.M. Sagas (published 2024)

Banter.  Smart ass perspectives.  Clever observations.  All things that should really have enhanced this adventure story about a Guild deserter who hitches a ride on a spaceship and ends up working with its crew to save the universe from a planet-killing conspiracy.  The book has a lot of action, plot twists, a found family, and fun characters, but the author is a bit too much in love with the clever things her characters say, think, or do -- sometimes to the point where it interferes with the story.  The voices of the various character are also not always distinct, which can be confusing.

Parallels to my book: space opera, intelligent spaceship as a major character, banter.

Calamity by Constance Fey (published 2023)

Constance Fay does a better job with the banter: it amuses the reader and enlivens the book without ever slowing down the action or getting in the way of the story.  Calamity is a romance about a down-on-her-luck spaceship captain forced to take a dubious commission from an influential Family, along with accepting that Family's handsome son as her security chief.  Deception and adventure follow, along with lots of steamy scenes, most of which have nothing to do with the secret villain volcano lair that they uncover.

Parallels to my book: space opera, romantic themes, banter.

The Terraformers by AnnaLee Newitz (published 2023)

AnnaLee Newitz does not write space opera.  Or at least her previous two novels (Future of Another Timeline and Autonomous) each take place on a future Earth and are "time travel" and "AI" books respectively.  This one is not space opera either: it takes place in a far future on a single distant planet being terraformed by an all-powerful corporation for human use. It draws a bit from the Kim Stanley Robinson school of SFF, in that the book is not really a narrative about one set of characters that has a beginning middle and an end.  Instead it is the story of a civilization (or interlocking civilizations) developing on a planet over the long centuries that it takes for the planet to be altered into the form desired by its "owners".   I have trouble with this kind of book.  It's a great forum for exploring ideas, but no matter how skilled the author I tend to lose engagement when one set of characters vanish and the next appear. 

Parallels to my book:  unusual romantic relationship (intelligent cat and an intelligent train).  

Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings (published 2022)

Very interesting premise: a spaceship unexpectedly and disastrously trapped in a space rift discovers that they are not alone.  Trapped alongside them is the Jonah, the ship whose heroic crew legendarily rescued humans and Felen from a permawar 152 years ago.  How can this possibly be?  The novel explores issues of history and heroism as it unravels the future (and maybe the past) of the unexpectedly mundane and frustrating real people who need to work together to address the current crisis.  Flaws?  Maybe I'm spoiled by Connie Willis's Blackout / All Clear, but Under Fortunate Stars never addresses the possibility/fear that actions taken in the present could alter actions recorded in history or talk about what that could mean.

Parallels to my book: not very many.  spaceships?

Finder by Suzanne Palmer (published 2019)

Intergalactic fixer turned repo man Fergus Ferguson is looking for a stolen spaceship so that he can return it to its rightful owners.  Instead, from page 1 he's thrown into a civil war as competing factions within this remote (and somewhat bizaare) human habitat struggle for power within their fractured society, all while being watched over by enigmatic aliens who might just intervene.

Parallels to my book: space opera. spaceships. enigmatic aliens. Characters with alliterative names.  Characters who mean well and try to do the right thing through a facade of toughness. 

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (published 2023)

A thoroughly brainwashed teenager on an isolated space station does her impressively accomplished best to forward the aims of the awful leader of her awful society -- until her beloved brother cracks and flees.  Or did he?  

This book skillfully immerses you in the mind of a fanatic teen, doing the difficult work of drawing a sympathetic portrait of an unsympathetic character.  It does so to help you truly understand the depth of the trauma that formed her, and to show you her character arc of learning and growth.   2024 Hugo Award winner for best novel. 

Sadly, when I mentioned this as a "good book that I've read recently" to the agent most interested in my novel, her response was "brave choice".  Sigh.  I like writing hopeful books about basically good people, but that's not the only way to help create a better future.

Parallels to my book:  MC who likes to follow the rules, but who learns and grows. Repressive society.  Redemptive arc.

A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers (published 2022)

The most recent novella by the top current author for "found family", "hopecore", and "cozy SFF" books.  Follows the wanderings of an itinerant "tea monk" and their robot companion as the two of them search for answers to the question "what do people need?" .  Set in a distant future that is long past the fossil fuel era.

Parallels to my book:  positive message, fundamentally good characters,  optimistic.

Sexton Blake: The World-Shakers (by Desmond Reid aka Rex Dolphin)

 Sexton Blake starred in thousands of pulp stories published (or produced) in the UK between 1893 and 1978.  The World-Shakers dates to 1960, when Blake's main competitor for readers was James Bond.  

What did I think?  

Sexton Blake is to James Bond as James Bond is to War and Peace.  

Recommended for manly men with square jaws and for those whose sense of irony is stronger than their feelings for literature.  10/10 for having a villain who resides in a secret volcano lair.

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard (with a few thoughts on Becky Chambers and The Goblin Emperor)

After finishing the first 100 pages or so of The Hands of the Emperor I mentioned to my partner that I'd just started a book where the private secretary to the God-Mage Emperor convinces the emperor to go on his very first vacation to a beautiful remote location with only his closest staff on hand.  "Then everything goes wrong!" my partner said, with a smile, to complete my sentence.

Well, no.  Not in this extraordinary book.  That's not what happens at all.  In fact, you could say that nothing much actually happens in the next 638 pages.  And yet I was grabbed by this book in a way that I haven't been grabbed by the three most recent SFF novels that I've read  (The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, The Terraformers by AnnaLee Newitz, The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison). I read for hours every day, stayed up late to finish chapters, kept reading when I should have been doing something else.

What gives?  How on earth does that even work?

As a writer, you're told about the three act structure -- the bones of storytelling that apply to screenplays, novels, short stories.  It's the basic structure of story that makes a narrative feel satisfying: Act 1 introduces us to our hero and the challenge that launches them into action. Act 2 exposes the true nature of the threat, forces the hero to make choices, and ends at a dark point.  Act 3 is where the hero takes charge, makes sacrifices, and then triumphs (or fails).  Formulaic?  Yes and no.  There are lots of templates, analyses, and formulas out there, but the best of them acknowledge that there are many ways to meet these milestones, and many ways to tell a story.  Their point is that this basic structure is engrained into how stories are told in Western societies, and that by paying attention to this structure you can make your story better in the same way that getting the balance of salt, sweet, acid, and unami right in a recipe can make the food you cook more appealing.

However, The Hands of the Emperor does not follow three act structure.  Neither do Becky Chambers' books.  The Goblin Emperor (by Katherine Addison) doesn't so clearly set aside the three act structure, but definitely falls into the category of 'A book where nothing bad happens'.

What on earth gives?  

Well, spoiler, it's Character.  It comes down to character.  Becky Chambers writes characters that people love in a society that people love, and despite the fact that her people live in a complicated ever-changing interstellar space opera universe, the challenges her people face are fundamentally personal. For example, in The Galaxy and the Ground Within, a group of travellers is temporarily stranded at what amounts to an interstellar truck stop, and the book is about discovering what personal challenges these odd assortment of characters are facing (and how they resolve them).  The Goblin Emperor has a clearer narrative arc -- our exiled hero is called back to the palace to become emperor when his father and all four of his elder brothers are killed in an airship accident.  But that's only the first chapter!  The bulk of the book is about Maia overcoming the trauma of his isolated upbringing to become a good emperor by being true to himself (transforming his society in the process).  

The Hands of the Emperor is about Cliofer (Kip) Mdang, who begins the novel as private secretary to the all-powerful, magical, and semi-divine emperor and ends as Viceroy to that emperor, just before the emperor leaves on his magical quest to find his successor.  This isn't a startling transformation: Cliofer is the emperor's most trusted advisor and head of the imperial bureaucracy at the beginning of the novel, and takes on (vaguely defined) additional responsibilities as the book progresses. The actual events of the book simply explain how Kip has become who he is, explores his relationship with his emperor and with his family, and shows how Kip transforms his society through his steadfast adherence to the fundamentals of the culture of his isolated provincial home province.

Why is the book gripping-ish?  Despite being too long, and despite some tedious repetition?  In the end, because you care about Kip.  He's both immensely competent and immensely modest, so modest that it takes you a long time to see how improbably much he's accomplished. Much like the Goblin Emperor, Kip is decent in every way, always does the right thing, and triumphs over his not-very-threatening adversaries.  

I've heard books like this called "competence porn", and "hopecore".  I believe they're popular because in this broken world of ours, who can resist a fantasy world where someone decent put things right?  

 Victoria Goddard is self-published (successfully!).  Becky Chambers started self-published, and was so successful that she was picked up by a major and has since won a Hugo.   Addison is traditionally published, at perhaps the cost of including more plot in her books.  

I think the distinction is important.  I don't think that any traditional publisher would take a book without (much) plot, particularly one as long as The Hands of the Emperor (738 pages in paperback, in case you aren't clear on the math).  But I wonder if at some point that might change: Becky Chambers has sold a lot of books, and it seems that Victoria Goddard is doing well.  If they do, in 10 or 15 years, will all those internet pages on novel structure look different than they do today?

Babel by R. F. Kuang

 I pretty much hated this book, and I am struggling to understand why. 

First of all, why would I expect to love this book?  Well, what's not to love?  

1. Kuang is an award-winning author, whose books have been best-sellers.  Those factors should mean that her books are both well-written and engaging.  
2. As far as topics go, Babel takes place in a fictionalized fantasy version of 19th Century Colonial Britain, featuring a hero who is a half-Chinese scholar born in Canton.  It's an interesting setting, with an interesting premise.
3. Kuang is a first generation American whose parents were born in China. She herself is a scholar of Chinese history and culture.  The book should be told from a highly expert and insightful perspective. 
4. Babel features an anti-colonialist hero who first joins a secret society designed to undermine British hegemony, and then builds a student-worker coalition as part of a rebellion against colonialism.

All good, right?  

Alas, in practise I stopped reading Kuang's first novel, The Poppy War, half-way through and I had the same impulse half-way through Babel. 

This time pushed to the end, trying to understand what wasn't working for me.

It's not that Kuang is a young academic, and that her books show it.  The protagonists of both the The Poppy War and Babel are brilliant, penniless young students, but the struggle of the heroine of The Poppy War to triumph in the imperial entrance exams kept my attention.  So did the beginnings of the academic journey of the hero of Babel, who is scooped out of China as a young boy, and set to intensive study of Latin and Greek to prepare him for Oxford and his future at the Institute of Translation.  Babel continued to hold my attention as 'Robin Swift' enters Oxford and encounters his first real friend -- fellow student Ramy-- and as together they build their academic careers through their first years of university.

But about half-way through Babel my interest really began to flag.  There were lots of events -- so many events!  So much drama! -- as Swift and his classmates struggle with various challenges at Oxford, year by year, and as Swift encounters his mysterious brother Griffen and the even more mysterious Hermes Society.  

But at some point I stopped caring.  Maybe there were simply too many events?  It felt as if this story could have been several books.  Or perhaps the problem is that Kuang should have pruned this story to create a more satisfying overall story arc.  As it is now there were too many challenges, too many mini-crises and resolutions, with no clear emotional direction for the overall story.

It didn't help that I felt a limited emotional connection with the characters.

Only Robin our hero was fully-drawn.  To a lesser extent Ramy also comes alive on the page.  But we don't see enough of Griffen to understand him, or care about him and his passions.  (When we finally do begin to understand Griffen, it's because Robin tells us about him, not because Kuang shows him to us.) Dr. Lovell is an evil colonialist.  Letty is a caricature, and annoyingly, one whose character and life story don't feel true to 1830s England.   Victoire hardly existed at all until the very last pages of the book.

Then there are the plot problems that start coming thick and fast from the midpoint onwards. Why would Babel overlook what seems to them to be Robin's treachery? Why do they also send the other 4th year students to China alongside Robin, when those student's skills are irrelevant to the project at hand? And how does it happen that four of the most brilliant scholars at Oxford are so beef-witted about covering up a crime? 

And then Kuang suddenly kills off most of the characters to create a crisis point.  

I 'm so old I remember when it was considered edgy to kill off central characters!  But instead of it being a shock that enlivens the story, here killing off central characters feels like a contrivance -- one that makes it hard to feel invested in the story's ultimate outcome.  It doesn't help that our hero claims to be devastated but we don't feel that devastation.  Or that our Hero and his remaining brilliant colleagues (and their revolutionary working class allies) seem so naive about strategy.  

Am I a curmudgeon?  Undoubtedly.  Can I write a book as good as R. F. Kuang's?  Of course not.  Will her writing improve as she matures and gains both more life experience and more writing experience?  I hope so.  Or maybe I am just being far too curmudgeonly in even saying that!  She's writing relevant books that appeal to a best-selling-sized audience, an audience that cares more about her passion, her perspective, and her world-view than the flaws that I see.

Good for her.  May she write many more. I just doubt that I'll read them.

----------------Addendum--------------------------------

I attended the Surrey Writer's Conference this past November, and a comment that Mary Robinette Kowal made there stuck with me.  Roughly "Readers will love your work for what you do well."

Readers love R.F. Kuang for what she does well -- write stories from a uniquely Asian perspective, foregrounding the experience of People of Colour from non-Western cultures.

Babel does this extremely well -- it makes Imperial Victorian England an entirely new place to a Western reader situated in a culture that mostly sees this era through the eyes of contemporary authors like Dickens (where the Empire that makes his society possible is invisible) or modern authors like Neal Stephenson (who use the era to create a romanticized steampunk past). 

Even the annoying ahistorical Lety serves a purpose in this perspective:  she exists to allow Kuang to vividly illustrate the idea of 'white women's tears' and the impact on POC of supposed white allies who don't see their own privilege and whose words and actions centre their own experience instead of supporting those of POC.

I can see and appreciate those values.  I took them too much for granted in my previous review, perhaps because there remains something about how Kuang paces her stories that really doesn't work for me, making me focus on all of the elements of her books that annoy me, instead of all of the things that she does really well.

Everyone knows your mother is a witch by Rivka Galchen

This book has a great title.  Who wouldn't pick it up off the shelf? The title also really captures the voice of the protagonist and the tone of the writing.  It's thematically appropriate too.  If there isn't a book award for titles*, there should be, and Everyone knows should be nominated.

Title aside, Everyone knows your mother is a witch has a lot to recommend it. First of all, it's short.  Yeah for short books, and especially for short historical fiction!  There's a time and a place for wrist-busting world-building, but Everyone knows shows that you don't need to include pages of historical background, detailed descriptions of places, people, and things, or write in an accurate historical dialect to capture something essential about a time and a place and a person.  Instead, Everyone uses the voices of the accused witch (Katharina), her neighbour Simon, and the depositions of Katharina's accusers to build a compelling picture of an aged widow whose sharp eyes, sharper tongue, and complete lack of tact turn much of her community against her.

So read about Katharina Kepler, the illiterate mother of Imperial Mathematician (and famed physicist) Johannes Kepler, laugh at her observations of the ducal governor Einhorn (the false unicorn), smile at her fondness for her cow Chamomile, and ponder the fate of this "frighteningly intelligent woman -- also a fool". 

You won't regret it.

(*The Diagram Prize is awarded to the book with the oddest title, which is not at all the same.)

What have I been reading?

I just realized that I haven't blogged in a couple of months. Here's a few of the books I've read recently: 

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

I got this one for Christmas and tackled it mostly to be completist. I'm glad I did. Mantel writes wonderfully well, of course, and there was something satisfying about seeing Cromwell's story to its tragic conclusion. 

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

This book is yet another example of why I should overcome my baseline prejudice against literary fiction.   It's the first person  life story of an unreliable narrator, with a closing twist that makes you want to turn back to the first page to understand everything that went before.  Given that it's a novella, I should probably do that, even though the book definitely falls into my literary novel stereotype of being 'about the boring struggles of boring middle class people'.

The Duke of Uranium by John Barnes

Was there really a market for a Heinlein juvenile in the year 2002?  I was surprised (and disappointed) by this book after reading Barnes' Orbital Resonance, The Sky so Big and Black, and Candle. 

Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

A surprising number of Golden Age mysteries are well worth reading.  Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Josephine Tey's books are all still entertaining reads. And then there's Margery Allingham.   Maybe she wrote better books than Dancers in Mourning?  This one wouldn't convince me to read more of her back catalogue.