RT Book Reviews: Shakespeare fans, this book was written for you! The witty, seductive characters, the incredible plot — there is no doubt that all types of YA readers will find something to swoon over in this high school love story.
Apr 242018
Apr 202018
Booklist: Everyone’s favorite Murderbot is back. The second installment in Wells’ Murderbot Diaries picks up where All Systems Red (2017) left off, with the series’ titular character seeking answers to its origin by traveling back to where it first went rogue to learn what really happened.
Along the way, it makes friends with an intelligent research transport ship and agrees to protect a group of naive researchers whose discoveries make them a target for murder. Murderbot is one of the most delightful characters in current science fiction: a killing machine who chooses to be a good person, a robot who suffers from crippling social anxiety, a sarcastic misanthrope who really just wants to be left alone to watch TV. The relationship between Murderbot and ART (the intelligent ship) adds an entertaining The Odd Couple element to the story.
Like the first book, this one is a fast, fun, exciting read, and the series keeps getting funnier. Perfect entertainment for a quiet evening.
Apr 192018
Publishers Weekly: [An] outstanding debut. . . . Finley’s complex portrayal of his heroic lead will carry readers through plot developments that would come across as unconvincing in the hands of a lesser writer. X-Files fans will be enthralled.
Apr 132018
Tor.com: Bear deftly weaves this exploration of relationships and vulnerabilities, betrayal and compromise… Though this is a short volume—while being a long novella—the characters are elegantly drawn as entire individuals.
For all that Stone Mad has a lot to say about relationships, it avoids didacticism. Bear has an argument here, but it’s definitely an argument, with no easy answers. The only answer, it seems, is compassion and choosing to be kind—the same vein of kindness that runs underneath the entire story.
I loved Stone Mad. I found it powerful and deeply full of meaning. As well as entertaining: Karen is a magnificently engaging character, and a compelling one. I hope to see Bear write more about her, because she’s enormously fun.
Apr 112018
Tor.com: In Justina Ireland’s fantastic new young adult novel, Dread Nation, the world is upended when the dead rise from their graves at Gettysburg. In order to salvage what’s left of the US, the Civil War ends in a compromise that frees the enslaved but forces them into combat schools that train them to slay the undead shamblers.
Ireland tapped into our collective knowledge of the past and dreams for the future and poured it into Dread Nation. She revealed the truth of the real America by rewriting the fictional one.
When I think of using young adult fantasy fiction to explore systemic racial oppression, a nineteenth century zombie apocalypse isn’t the first thing to come to mind. Yet in Justina Ireland’s more than capable hands, it works.
Apr 092018
Publishers Weekly: Megan, who aspires to be a theater director, is focused on finishing her senior year and fulfilling the acting requirement she needs to get into the Southern Oregon Theater Institute. But then she’s cast as Juliet, opposite Tyler’s Romeo. Owen, a new boy with theater aspirations of his own, enters Megan’s life, and as their friendship grows she misses all the signals that Owen might be the love she didn’t know she wanted.
Real-life romantic partners Wibberly (the Last Oracle series) and Siegemund-Broka (making his YA debut) collaborated in this theater-centered novel, with a predictable will-they/won’t-they romance at its core. As Megan spends the bulk of her time with yet another guy who’s wrong for her (Will), Owen is there in the wings. The coauthors wisely balance out the romance with family drama, and Megan’s commitment to a future life in the theater will please readers who share a similar love of Shakespeare and want a little romance to go with their drama.
Apr 022018
B&N SFF Blog: Anne Bishop blazed onto the genre scene in the late 1990s with the Black Jewels Trilogy, a fantasy epic filled with violence, blood, and revenge that somehow mostly leaves readers with lingering impressions of its beautiful empathy, kindness, and impish sense of humor. This deeply affecting mixture won the hearts of many fans then (including mine), and remains her signature today. In this sense, her new urban fantasy LAKE SILENCE fits perfectly into her bibliography.
Bishop has always been skilled at building playful, enticing worlds, and she’s filled this one with some of her best characters yet… Fantasy trappings aside, there is a deep emotional core to Bishop’s books…
The power of community is important too—if there’s anything LAKE SILENCE tells us, it’s that getting through a tough situation literally takes a village—a village full of people who probably don’t look like you, act like you, or have your same values. You might not like some of them—you might even have to forget that you were taught to look at them as less than human. But you won’t survive without the village, so you may as well get on with figuring out how to deal with it. Because the Lady of the Lake is watching. And she’s pissed.
Mar 292018
Publishers Weekly: Bear’s Karen Memory (2015) introduced her stubborn and spunky heroine, Karen Memery, a teenage sex worker who saved her late 1870s Pacific Northwest town from threats foreign and domestic. Now Karen and her beloved, Priya, are preparing to enjoy their first night in their new home when traveling spiritualists dredge up an old, seemingly supernatural mystery poised to cause mayhem. Naturally, Karen wants to investigate. Though this novel lacks the scope and some of the sheer raucousness of the first, all of the characteristics that make Karen memorable are glowingly apparent on every page.
Elements that would feel clunky from a less talented author—such as Karen’s habit of constantly flinging herself headlong into danger because of deep regrets about her past—all seem natural and inevitable by the finish. Subtle touches guarantee that every character is colorful, no matter how fleetingly introduced.
Bear’s fans will definitely want to catch Karen’s latest adventure.
Mar 232018
Locus: It’s always a treat to read a Martha Wells story, and it turns out that her Murderbot Diaries are an especial delight… Artificial Condition is a story that balances its disparate elements with exceptional skill. It’s perfectly paced, and Wells brings both a strong sense of humour and deep pathos to Murderbot’s character and to their voice. Murderbot, for all their insistence that they’re not really a person, is a very human sort of bot.
There’s plenty of cool shit in this space operatic future, and Wells makes excellent use of the varied potential of her setting for different sorts of stories. Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol are tight, tense, entertaining adventure stories that nonetheless have quite a lot to say about ethics, power, and personhood. I recommend them whole-heartedly, and I really hope that Wells chooses to write many more.
Mar 212018
Booklist: Polk has created an amazing new world with hints of Edwardian glamour, sizzling secrets, and forbidden love that crescendos to a cinematic finish. Many disparate elements are expertly woven together to make this debut a crackler, with layers like a nesting doll and just as delightful to discover.
Witchmark is a can’t-miss debut that will enchant readers.