Book Review: Substrate Phantoms by Jessica Reisman
Mysterious doings on Termagenti station, and the story of a tortured survivor of an exploration gone wrong, both external and internal, are at the heart of Substrate Phantoms, a debut space opera novel from Jessica Reisman. Substrate Phantoms features a strong character-based focus for the novel, playing firmly in the more literary side of the genre as it explores a story of what only slowly and painstakingly is revealed to be one of a first contact with the Other. The novel primarily follows a pair of characters whose stories touch and eventually converge. Jhinsei was part of a tube team, one of the groups on Termangenti Station sent as troubleshooters for various systems on the complex and sometimes badly functioning orbital habitat. In the prologue of the novel, he and his team check out a problem in the station in an area near where a mysterious derelict spacecraft has long been stashed. Things went…bad on that mission, to the point where Jhinsei, the most junior member of the team, was the only survivor. Eighteen months later, now in a safer dead end job, the consequences of that expedition and what really happened to Jhinsei start to emerge. Jhinsei has started to hear and see things, including the voices of the dead members of his team. And other things have started to happen in his presence as well. These strange events around him bring Jhinsei and what happened to the attention of some very powerful people on the station. This will put Jhinsei on the run from those he cares about, and ultimately the station itself.
326. Joyce Chng (a.k.a. The Werewolf Whisperer — Starfang: Rise of the Clan (An Interview)
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode326InterviewWJoyceChng/Sandf–Episode326–InterviewWJoyceChng.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSWerewolves in space, Chinese-diaspora, and merchants, oh my! Joyce Chng joins Jen and Paul to discuss her Space Opera novella, Starfang: Rise of the Clan. We talk about the everything from how Joyce was influenced by Singapore’s maritime traditions, to children on the bridge, to werewolves, of course! And don’t believe Joyce when she tells you she can’t write romance because Starfang proves her wrong! We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below):
Book Review: The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley
I came to Kameron Hurley’s work early, getting a copy of God’s War back at the beginning of her career, and following her work and worlds since. Sometimes I’ve had questions or issues with her work, but throughout, the “blood, bugs, and brutal women” that have been a hallmark of all of her worlds and characters have sustained my reading interest and been a welcome expenditure of my reading time. It was thus with great anticipation that I picked up The Stars Are Legion, the new Space Opera from Hurley. I started this review and continue to engage with the author on a metatextual as well as a textual level because her work responds to that sort of analysis. No writer is separate from her creation, but some writers are very intimately connected to what they write, how they write, and why they write as they do. Hurley falls into this camp. So, I went into the novel with expectations that there would be strong female characters, violence, perhaps worldbuilding that might frustrate me a tiny bit, and a harsh and high contrast verse that engages my senses. In photography terms, instead of a placid and straightforward landscape or portrait, Hurley’s work pushes pixels in both directions, sometimes discordantly, to deliberate and eye-arresting effect.
Book Review: Avengers of the Moon by Allen Steele
It takes a lot of moxie to decide you’re the one to take a character beloved from pulp magazines and anime and update it for a 21st century novel. Allen Steele has already proven that he has that moxie, having given us a novella on “The Death of Captain Future”, but that story wasn’t about Captain Future so much as about a fan of the pulps in which that hero first came to life. Twenty-odd years later, he’s at it again, but this time he’s gone all out to make Captain Future a hero for our times. Did he succeed? If by “succeed” one means creates a perfect pastiche of the hokey and wholesome tales of yore while subtly correcting for modern advances in scientific knowledge and attitudes about the Other, then he more than succeeds. Avengers of the Moon has all the feel of an early 20th century planetary romance, without any of the “mistakes” that let us smile behind our hands when reading the originals he draws on. It’s not set in the “distant future” year of 2015. There are no aliens living in caves on the moon or on the other planets in our solar system.* Weapons and gadgets and space travel are more plausible for modern readers (and cool as heck!). The nom-de-guerre of Captain Future remains but is treated as a childish embarrassment that others gently rib Curt Newton for adopting. Etc.
Book Review: The Weight of the World by Tom Toner
The second novel in Tom Toner’s Amaranthine Spectrum sequence, The Weight of the World continues the story of the descendants of humanity across local space 125 centuries into the future with a continued exploration of its range of characters set across an era of change and uncertainty for the immortal masters of the Firmament and their would-be supplanters alike. What The Weight of the World brings for a reader of the original book, The Promise of the Child, is the continued development of the plotlines whose tapestry began in that first book. There is Lycaste, of course, now far from the simple home, the Eden, really, that he had been driven from in the events of the first novel. Here, he continues his perambulating journey, a pawn of forces that seem determined to use him as he simply, still, like Odysseus wants to return home. But duties, promises, responsibilities and the vicissitudes of conflict drive Lycaste forward. Too, other characters met in the first novel show up here. The knight Ghaldezuel, for instance, continues his lonely, rambling quest across the worlds. Sotriis and Jatropha, two of the immortal Amaranthines whose lives seem as fragile as their own world, and others, continue to make their way in this time of tumult.
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.
