Book Review: The High Ground by Melinda Snodgrass
Her Imperial Highness Mercedes Adalina Saturinia Inez de Arango, the Infanta, the eldest daughter of the Emperor of the Solar League, has a problem. She’s a woman. Her father, the Emperor, has managed, like English King Henry VIII centuries ago, to wind up with no male children to name as heir. The conventions and expectations of his society make naming a female heir a dicey proposition, especially because the Heir is expected to attend and graduate The High Ground, the “star fleet academy” of the Empire. The High Ground, however, has never had female cadets before, and so the attendance of the Infanta is a change too far for many. Thracius Ransom Belamor, to his chagrin called Tracy by everyone, has a different problem. In the aristocratic, near feudal world of the Solar League, being from the middle class and unconnected to the noble Fortune Five Hundred families means that his scholarship to the High Ground is a poor billet indeed. In social circles far beyond his normal station, even aptitude and hard work may be far short of what Tracy needs to survive, much less succeed, at the Naval academy. The High Ground is the first in the Imperials series by Melinda Snodgrass, and tells the story of Tracy and Mercedes’ attendance at the titular High Ground.
Excerpt from The Found and The Lost by Ursula K. Le Guin
We here at the Skiffy and Fanty Show are big fans of Ursula K Le Guin. At least one of us thinks she’s Nobel Prize for Literature worthy-good. So, today, we present an excerpt from The Found and the Lost, the collected volume of Le Guin’s novellas from Saga Press. The other volume in the recently published set, covering her shorter fiction, is The Unreal and the Real. Gorgeous covers, the both of them.
Book Review: A Little Knowledge by Emma Newman
Fourth in the Split Worlds series, and in some ways a brand new start after the original trilogy (Between Two Thorns, Any Other Name, All is Fair), A Little Knowledge by Emma Newman brings new opportunities, changes, and challenges to the characters in Newman’s urban fantasy world. Talking about those characters, their changes, and what Newman does with them is necessarily spoilery for the first three novels. This review assumes that you are all right with spoilers, or you have read the first three novels. Newman’s title “A Little Knowledge” seems to invoke the often misquoted line from a poem by Alexander Pope, “A little learning is a dangerous thing”. And that is definitely true of the three major protagonists in the novel. All of them have been raised to positions of power, with ideas of what to do with that power, but find that the actual application and use of that power for what they want and need to do is much trickier than they ever expected. Even in an urban fantasy world, there are no magic wands to wave.
Book Review: Breath of Earth by Beth Cato
In an alternate early 20th-century world where Japan and the US have created a powerful alliance, a secret geomancer struggles to protect herself and the city she loves from forces seeking to shake San Francisco to pieces in Breath of Earth, the first in a new alternate history fantasy series by Beth Cato. In the alternate world that Cato depicts, there is magic in the world, and the primary form of magic are those magicians who are sensitive to the movements of the earth. These geomancers not only can keep San Francisco tectonically stable, but can channel the bled off energy into a mineral, kermanite, whereupon that energy can be discharged to do work, to power vehicles and other things in the same way that a battery can. Thus, kermanite is an extremely potent strategic resource, and its acquisition and control is part of the reason for the Japan-US alliance. Even better, the novel shows the clear costs and dangers of geomancers. It’s a potent form of magic, but one that can cause not only destruction around the user, but actively be harmful for their health. There are also social costs to being a geomancer, a theme that Cato has explored previously in the Clockwork Dagger series.
Book Review: Cloudbound by Fran Wilde
Fran Wilde’s debut novel Updraft flew onto the scene in 2015. With fliers, cities of bone, invisible skymouths and more in a lean and mean YA format, Updraft was a gust of fresh air in fantasy. Cloudbound takes place not long after the revolutionary events at the end of Updraft. The unjust order of the Spire has been overthrown. The old order is gone. Updraft is upsetting an unjust order. Cloudbound asks, and answers the question — once you have toppled that unnatural order, how do you build a new one? How do you make society work? And what do you do about people willing to take advantage of the chaos, confusion and upset social structures to make their own plans for the future manifest?
Book Review: No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished by Rachel Aaron
The reward for a job well done, is another job. Or another challenge, anyway. Julius Heartstriker has defeated his mother, Bethesda, head of the Heartstriker Clan. Instead of killing her, as a Dragon would be expected to, he has simply defanged her, and proposed a power-sharing arrangement for a council, not an autarch, to rule his clan. This is rather unprecedented for dragons, where might makes right is a way of life. Julius can propose a council, but actually getting his siblings and his mother to go along with this plan is nothing but trouble. And given the large size of the Heartstrikers clan, bringing everyone back to the homestead to meet for this council is a recipe for intrigue…or disaster. Actually getting a bunch of dragons to come together to elect and cooperate in a council, however, isn’t even the biggest problem that Julius faces. Algonquin, the powerful river spirit that rules Detroit, has announced her intent and desire to wipe out all Dragons from the face of the Earth, everywhere, and might have the power to make that threat more than an idle one. Other Dragon clans are rather interested in Julius’ feat in defeating his mother, and scheme and plot as to what this means. The US Government is awfully interested in Julius, the Heartstrikers, and his human mage partner Marci. Especially Marci, given her strange connection to Ghost, who in the two novels of the series has revealed himself to really be much more than Marci first thought.
