REVIEW: “Adjuva” by Arkady Martine

Review of Arkady Martine, “Adjuva”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Since starting SFFReviews, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to first lines of short stories. The first line of this one is excellent:

Michel dreams the dead at Antioch again.

Every single part of this makes me want to know more — who is Michel? What does it mean to “dream the dead”? Is Michel at Antioch, or the dead? And why is Antioch important? And what does it mean, he is doing this again? Has he done it before? What happened then?

A very good way to start a story.

The rest of the story continues good: Is it a time-travel story? Is it a ghost story? It is both, and neither, but in the end what I find mattered most to me was the relationship between Michel and Thomas. Their life clearly hasn’t been either easy or straightforward. But that they are still together after all that they have been through, the sheer amount of time that they have lived through together, I found sweet, and heartwarming. There is a depth of history underpinning the story, a sense of the vastness of time. It is a story that made me glad to have read it.

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REVIEW: “Assassin in the Clouds” by Robert R. Chase

Review of Robert R. Chase, “Assassin in the Clouds”, Asimov’s Science Fiction January/February 2018: 112-128 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

Phil Fogg is working undercover as a travel writer and attempting to prevent the assassination of Dr Takashi Kamiji on a cruise ship – the Francesco Lana de Terzi – floating through the clouds on no set course except the will of the winds. Fogg must keep tabs on Kamiji, try to find the would-be assassin who is resorting to increasingly more volatile methods, and figure out why anyone would want to kill Kamiji in the first place.

This novelette has a good sequence of action events and the setting is unique while still holding a classic ‘whodunnit’, closed room (or, in this case, boat) scenario. We spend a lot of time with Fogg trying to work the case throughout the ship and it keeps the narrative humming along nicely between assassination attempts and fight scenes. The one problem I had with it was that Fogg was almost too competent and I felt this weakened the threats to Kamiji’s safety.

 

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REVIEW: “A Feather In Her Cap” by Mary Robinette Kowal

Review of Mary Robinette Kowal, “A Feather In Her Cap,” Fantasy & Science Fiction 134, 1-2 (2018): 216-227 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Standback.

A quick, delightful caper.

Biantera was once a gentlewoman, now reduced a humble milliner — which she’d mind a whole lot less if not for her mother’s constant complaints. We immediately discover Biantera wears more than one hat:

She made damn good money as an assassin, but if her mother was upset about the supposed millinery business, Biantera could only imagine what she’d have to say about the Other job.

The constant juxtaposition between hatmaking and murder makes for great roguish fun, and Biantera’s methods are clever and refreshing. Recommended.

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REVIEW: “Solicited Discordance” by Matthew Hughes

Review of Matthew Hughes, “Solicited Discordance”, Asimov’s Science Fiction January/February (2018): 95- 110 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

Detective Erm Kaslo has been hired to find and bring back rich heir Delabond Shekhar, suspected of being seduced into a common scam to hunt for treasure on Bessarene – a continent on which nano and native organisms have been left to fuse and evolve into a dangerous wilderness. To make matters more interesting Delabond’s potential seducer practices ‘solicited discordance’ – an approach to living which challenges physical and intellectual comforts. However, as Kaslo follows the pair to Bessarene, he discovers that there is more going on than he initially suspected.

A neat space opera adventure story. The plot and world were interesting and the action sequences at the climax were fun. However, the narrative had a lot of dense paragraphs of description, historical context, and a lengthy section speculating on what was happening off-screen which I found slowed the pace.

The idea of solicited discordance is an interesting one – someone deliberately devoting their life to experiencing discomfort and difficulties. However, as the character in question wasn’t our perspective character, it was a bit more peripheral to the story than the title suggests.

 

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REVIEW: “Jewel of the Heart” by Matthew Hughes

Review of Matthew Hughes, “Jewel of the Heart,” Fantasy & Science Fiction 134, 1-2 (2018): 86-144 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Standback.

Matthew Hughes’ stories are usually colorful, pulpy, and a lot of fun. Previously, he’s written tales of Henghis Hapthorn, the sardonic discriminator; Raffalon, the overconfident rogue; and others. In his last few stories for F&SF, Hughes has been developing a new character, Baldemar, a wizard’s henchman who’s far more level-headed than the wizard he serves. Baldemar’s watchwords are caution, keen observation, and always paying what he owes.

Baldemar’s previous outing won him the attention of a powerful sentient artifact — who, in this story, plucks Baldemar away from his master, and sets him on a mission in a dream-like plane, operating on fairy-tale logic. His goal is unclear, but he is instructed to mind the difference between story and dream, and to follow his instincts.

The story is full of fun and vivid scenes — from the overbearing Helm whisking Baldemar to and fro as it pleases, to the odd, unsettling doll that becomes his companion for the quest.

That being said, it also has a very aimless feel to it. The quest is, fairly explicitly, an arbitrary one; it’s a “test” Baldemar needs to “pass,” and there isn’t really any potential for outcomes or repercussions more interesting than “pass” vs. “fail.” The dream logic is definitely dream-like, but that leaves the story feeling like a sequence of random events, with no sense of progression or significance. I found it fun and goofy and entertaining, but I just didn’t stay excited for it at full novella length.

Perhaps most disappointing, I don’t feel Hughes has found his feet with Baldemar as a character yet. I love Baldemar’s extreme soberness whenever it makes an appearance:

“I don’t suppose,” Baldemar said, “that the way out is to ask you to bring back the door?”

“No, but it’s good not to limit your thinking.”

But those instances feel few. Far more often, Baldemar is called upon to “trust his instincts,” a fairly vague instruction, which mostly winds up meaning “do some arbitrary thing that advances the plot, when the author chooses.” I’m sure that an entertainingly sober character is more challenging to write than an entertainingly flamboyant one. Hughes has managed it marvelously in previous stories, particularly in Baldemar’s introduction, “Ten Half-Pennies”. I’m sorry this one doesn’t reach the same heights, and I look forward to seeing more of Baldemar.

 

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REVIEW: “The Astrologer on the Fifth Floor” by Karl Dandenell

Review of Karl Dandenell, “The Astrologer on the Fifth Floor”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 101-116 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I remember reading a few months ago a review of an Asian #ownvoices novel where the reviewer complained that when the MC looked in the mirror, the words they used to describe themself didn’t include any of the typical cue words that white people use to describe Asians, and the bafflement that arose from other people at this curious criticism.

As a white woman myself, I’m not in the best place to raise the following reversal of this criticism, but since it was one of the things that impressed upon me the most at the beginning of the story, I think it’s worth mentioning. Dandenell’s MC, Harrison Leong, is “an Asian businessman” — a fair enough description from an omniscient narrator, though I did find it a bit odd to include the description since the surname should’ve been enough of a cue — and he is up on the fifth floor to meet Mr. Norbu, the titular astrologer. It is this sentence that struck me as strange:

Leong saw a short, middle-aged Asian man with a neat beard and sparkling eyes (p. 102)

I can’t help but think, is that really what Leong saw? Or did Leong see someone like himself, see simply “a short, middle-aged man with a neat beard and sparkling eyes”? Would he have seen Mr. Norbu as Asian, or would that have been the working default, just as my own mental narration never tells me when I’m seeing another white person, it only tells me when I’m seeing something that is not my default, not the norm within the cultural context that I live in.

I otherwise enjoyed the story, which flitted from POV to POV in a way that seemed seamless rather than disjointed. I’m not sure how the story fits the theme of “abandoned places”, but I decided not to let slavish adherence to a topic destroy my pleasure in a good tale.

Sara L. Uckelman3 Comments

REVIEW: “The Lost City of Leng” by Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo

Review of Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo, “The Lost City of Leng”, Asimov’s Science Fiction January/February (2018): 33-65 — Purchase Here. Reviewed by Kiera Lesley.

An adventurous sequel to At the Mountains of Madness. A journalist joins an eccentric group on an expedition to Antarctica to help the “cukes” face off against Shoggoths in exchange for loot and scientific knowledge.

I’m going to state this upfront – I didn’t particularly like this novella. I enjoy new Lovecraftian work, especially set in Antarctica and one thing Rucker and Di Filippo did really well in this piece was to capture the “Good ol’ boys” adventure tone. The crew and mission were fun, the description of the subterranean lake was evocative, and the Elder Gods’ activities and motivations were appropriately fascinating and unknowable to the protagonists.

However, I found the story problematic in some ways, particularly Vivi’s characterisation and Doug’s incessant sexualisation of her. I also had some problems with Doug’s motivations, the pacing through the middle, and the subplot introduced somewhat suddenly towards the end.

There may have been more mileage for people more well-versed in Lovecraft than me – there were lots of references, shout outs and tie-ins here. I’m also wondering if there was satire or humour that just didn’t come across for me in this piece.

Overall, this piece didn’t really resonate with me and I found this a bit lacking compared to some of the more progressive and innovative contemporary Lovecraft-inspired work.

 

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REVIEW: “Borrowing Ark Sutherland” by Meghan Cunningham

Review of Meghan Cunningham, “Borrowing Ark Sutherland”, Luna Station Quarterly 33 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The title of the story is hard to parse, until one reads the first sentence:

Like a rental bike returned with a tire puncture, Ark woke up in a stranger’s apartment.

Ark is a person, and one in very curious circumstances indeed.

The circumstances under which Ark has become someone — something — that can be borrowed are not very pleasant. Cunningham’s story is a future-set SF story, and it’s not a hopeful future, but rather one rife with segregation, destruction of nature, and sordid hook-ups.

There was a lot going on in the story that I found difficult to keep track of or to hang together in a sensible story; I often felt like I was missing a necessary piece or two, trying to figure out who the various characters were and what exactly was going on — is Ark the one borrowing or the one who is being borrowed? Half-way through the story, I was still unsure, though by the — rather abrupt — end I had figured some things out. Certainly the complexities of the story merit reading it more than once, although both times through felt more edifying than educational.

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REVIEW: “My Heart is a Prayer” by Ryan Row

Review of Ryan Row, “My Heart is a Prayer”, Podcastle: 510 — Listen Online. Reviewed by Heather Rose Jones

There are stories where the poetic language grabs my ears and carries me through to the heart of the tale even when I’m not sure where it’s going. There are stories where the tale itself grabs me and the language becomes the unnoticed medium that conveys it. “My Heart is a Prayer” falls somewhere in the vast middle between those two. The words are full of lyrical imagery but I had to re-start my listening a couple of times because I couldn’t find a story to latch on to and my mind wandered off and lost track of what I was hearing.

To some extent, that listening experience matches the content of the story fairly well. A creature that is not human, that is only just coming into its understanding of itself, describes the experience of that becoming and understanding. Eventually we get the context of its experience: two alchemists, devastated (and possibly driven mad) by the death of their child, pour all their art into undoing that death and in the process capture an entity they hadn’t intended. The disaster their success could generate dangles by a thread–and is still dangling at the story’s end.

In structure, this falls in the type of story that I feel works better in audio than on the page, but in actual execution the elusive, unfocused nature of the first half came very close to losing me entirely.

(Previously published at Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores which, alas, has a completely unreadable display interface and makes it impossible to determine what the original publication date was.)

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REVIEW: “Glitch” by Lauren C. Teffeau

Review of Lauren C. Teffeau, “Glitch”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 27-37 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

The abandoned place in this story is not a real one but a virtual one — a desolate landscape built out of lines of code composed by many hands. But when the hands of the most important coder, Razor, are abruptly lost, so too are the lands that Razor constructed, and it becomes twice abandoned.

The unnamed narrator’s story is the story of why Razor killed himself, and what it was he sought to hide by doing so. Part sci fi, part horror, all just a bit too close to reality — and with an unexpected twist at the end.

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments