Mining the Genre Asteroid: The Coming of the Quantum Cats
“… Pohl’s thesis, in this book, is that people are a mixture of nature AND nurture. The relatively retiring Nicky DeSota IS the same person as the hardbitten general, or the philandering Senator, and when push comes to shove, they can transcend their natures, or their upbringing, as the case may be. …”
Book Review: The Cost of Power: Return, by Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Gabe and Ruby’s story is the heart of The Cost of Power: Return, by Joyce Reynolds-Ward. Their story in this iteration, looking at the oeuvre of the author, is to be one of a series of futures/worlds in a multiverse of stories revolving around the Martinieres in general and Gabe and Ruby as well.
Review: Multiverses: An anthology of alternate realities
I myself have been a fan and enthusiast, one might even say a connoisseur of multiversal fiction, since I got into a car with Prince Corwin and Prince Random and drove from Westchester all the way to Amber.
Book Review: The Masked City, By Genevieve Cogman
Universe-traversing Librarian Irene Adler and her assistant the dragon prince Kai return in The Masked City, second in The Invisible Library series following the titular volume in the series. After settling themselves in the Quasi Victorian world of airships, Fey nobles and derring-do, Irene’s life is, if not precisely stable and uneventful, at least predictable. Find rare books for the library in this alternate London, dodge machinations of local villains, spar with her bête noire, and get into adventure after adventure. Routine, right? Second novels, especially following on high-concept hot ideas like the interdimensional traveling library and librarians of Cogman’s series, are tricky. How do you keep the material fresh? How do you avoid the temptation to “do bigger, and more” as a easier substitution for the harder tricks of building on worldbuilding without making it unstable or unpalatable, and developing characters and their arcs in interesting and meaningful ways? The second novel in such writing is harder than the first, and for me as a reader, with the baseline established, I am looking for that growth and development, and read for it.
