Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: The Skybound Sea by Sam Sykes vs After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

In the third battle of the first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books we have The Skybound Sea (The Aeons' Gate, Book 3) by Sam Sykes versus After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Skybound Sea: Pyr trade paperback, September 2012, 494 pages, cover art by Paul Young. The Skybound Sea is the final volume of the Aeons' Gate trilogy of high fantasy, following Tome of the Undergates (I always read that title as Tomb of the Undergraduates, which sounds like a slasher film set in a sorority house, but alas, it ain't) and Black Halo. I've never met Sam Sykes and I can find no evidence that he existed before 2009, when he published his first piece of short fiction, cowritten with Diana Gabaldon; still, I've decided I like him, because he took the time to explain to the world once and for all that cats cannot solve mysteries. Incidentally, The Skybound Sea wins the damning-with-faint-praise award for the most understated cover blurb ever published, courtesy of John Scalzi: "I do not wish Sam Sykes dead."

As the third in a trilogy, The Skybound Sea starts with the action already in full swing. The book begins with a short summary of the story so far, followed by a scene in which a troubled fellow named Hanth scrambles to prevent a dangerous god called Daga-Mer from being released into the world. Then we check in with Lenk, a warrior I suspect is the main protagonist, who dreams of betraying and being betrayed. Next a man named Dreadaeleon, who is suffering from an unnatural degenerative condition called "the Decay," participates in an autopsy of a "netherling," carried out by companions who dislike and distrust one another.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall: Tachyon trade paperback, April 2012, 183 pages, cover design by Elizabeth Story. After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall is a current nominee for the Hugo Award foe Best Novella (although if it's under 40,000 words, it can't be by much). Kress has already won two Hugo Awards, four Nebulas, and a host of other honors.

As the title suggests, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall follows three parallel timelines. In 2013, mathematician Julie Kahn is helping Agent Gordon of the FBI——with whom she has obvious sexual tension——to analyze the pattern behind a string of bizarre child abductions. In 2014, new strains of bacteria are forming. In 2035, the last few surviving humans cling to life with a time machine, which they use to obtain supplies and reinforcements from the past. They believe the world was destroyed by aliens they call the Tesslies, and that these aliens later provided the time machine for their own ineffable reasons. But none of the survivors has seen one of these creatures, so we don't know if that's right.

The Battle: The Skybound Sea has a brash, bold style——if it's ever filmed, the FX and make-up people will have a ball with the monsters while the score will be very heavy on bass drums. It takes a certain flair to pull this off, and Sykes demonstrates that, right from the book's opening lines:

No matter what god he believes in, a man is not entitled to much in life.

The Gods gave him breath. Then they gave him needs. Then they stopped giving.

I like that line, and the whole prologue, in which Lenk bitterly contemplates vengeance against everyone who has betrayed him. But after a few pages, Sykes' melodramatic style, filling the narrative with "viscous gossamer ooze" and "flaming urine," gets to be a bit much to my tastes. The idea of 470 more pages feels as much daunting as appealing.

Meanwhile, Kress masterfully eases us into the narrative of After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall. We start with an action sequence, one of the child abductions, from the point of view of the desperate abductor. There is an implicit moral issue about what the future remnants of humanity are doing, but Kress doesn't press the issue yet, giving the reader time to digest what's happening. Kress effectively interweaves the different timelines, building interest simultaneously in all three threads, while at the same time suggesting a lesson in how our future is at the mercy of the past and present. The characterization in the opening passage is also strong; I particularly like Pete, the doomed young man of the future, and I very much would like to read more about him. And that desire to keep reading is what the Battle of the Books is all about.

THE WINNER: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall moves into the second round, to take on either Technomancer by B.V. Larson or Pazuzu's Girl by Rachel Coles.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

"The Coldest Room in the House" by Lon Prater :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

My story recommendation of the week is for "The Coldest Room in the House" by Lon Prater, from the Second Quarter 2013 issue of Abyss & Apex. (Abyss & Apex published my story "Random Fire" so, y'know, they're awesome.)

"The Coldest Room in the House" begins in familiar but very well-executed territory:

She'd tried to leave him in a blizzard once, hoping the wind and snow would fill in her footsteps the same way her own creeping indifference had filled in the holes that years of frustration had gnawed into her heart. It was so much like a hollow winter day, this business of being married to a driven man.

Our protagonist Bernice——Bernie to her friends, except her husband calls her Bernsy, even though he knows she hates it because it sounds like a cow——has suffered through an unhappy marriage and feelings of inadequacy because she couldn't have children. Now her husband is dead (heart attack while masturbating to internet porn), but still she hears his voice calling to her from the bedroom, the coldest room in the house.

This first part of the tale is a standard ghost story, but worth reading for the superb writing. But then the story takes an unexpected turn, as Prater uses his haunting to show that resentment of one's partner can turn into a kind of addiction. The story plays out effectively, and serves as a wonderful metaphor for how a couple can both become trapped in an unhealthy, codependent relationship.

Lon Prater is a fellow winner of the Writers of the Future Contest (for "Deadglass" in Volume 21), and his short fiction has appeared in such publications as Borderlands 5, Apex, Daily SF, IGMS, and many others. He has self-published some of his longer work, most recently That Time We Saved the Planet.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: The Snow by Ross S. Simon vs. Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston

The second match-up in the first round of Bracket Six of Battle of the Books features The Snow by Ross S. Simon against Earth Unaware (The First Formic War) by Orson Scott Card & Aaron Johnston. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

The Snow: Damnation Books trade paperback, March 2012, 145 pages, cover art by Dawné Dominique. The Snow is the debut novel of Ross S. Simon, who sometimes masquerades under the name Sam Ridings. The Snow opens on Leif Erickson's Viking longship, in the middle of a fatal meeting with the Norse trickster god Loki. We skip ahead to 1942 aboard a German U-boat, where a Nazi warrant officer has a strange encounter, presumably with the same deity. Next in Loki's path is a modern-day New York stockbroker. Across town, our protagonist Donald Holly is attacked by a possessed bum, prompting him to decide to move back to Minnesota. But it does not appear Loki is through with him.

Earth Unaware: Tor hardcover, July 2012, 364 pages, cover art by John Harris. Earth Unaware is the opening volume in the First Formic War series, a prequel to Card's classic novel Ender's Game. Orson Scott Card is a four-time Hugo Award winner along with a great many other honors, and clearly one of the preeminent science fiction writers living today (although many who dislike his politics pretend otherwise). Aaron Johnston is a former improv comedian who coauthored the novel Invasive Procedures with Card and has adopted many of Card's books to screenplays and graphic novels.

The opening of Earth Unaware takes us to the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Pluto, where clans of humans mine comets for valuable metals. Our teenaged protagonist Victor Delgado learns that his best friend Alejandra is being sent off to live with another clan, because the elders feared the two of them were falling in love, and love affairs within the clan are taboo. Victor deals with his pain by working hard on an invention that will ease his clan's mining operations. The first 25 pages end with Alejandra's sister confiding in Victor that she has detected an object approaching the solar system. The object is decelerating, suggesting it just might be an alien spacecraft.

The Battle: The opening pages of The Snow feature some gruesome imagery and high-voltage action, albeit a little over the top for my tastes. (The scene of a bloodbath is described as "the dead flesh, the severed heads, mangled arms, legs and penises"; a Nazi soldier fires his gun while screaming, "Eat motherfucking blazing lead!") But the first 25 pages do not give us much reason to feel connected to the protagonist Donald Holly.

And that is where Orson Scott Card always excels. He immediately gets you interested in and sympathetic toward his main characters. Here, right from the opening page, Card and Johnston convey Victor's heartbreak at losing his best friend, all because the clan elders believed he was falling in love with her, which he promptly realizes he was. The authors succeed at making Victor an engaging character right from the outset, even if I find Victor's reactions rather too coldly rational for a teenager. (Throughout the Ender series, Card's young characters do not behave like ordinary children, but that is because they are all super-geniuses; the same has not been established as to Victor.)

Having opened with an emotional punch, Card and Johnston quickly turn to showing us some of the nuts and bolts of mining operations on the edge of the solar system. Then they finish the opening chapter (which is exactly 25 pages——obviously Card & Johnston have written this novel with the Battle of the Books in mind) with the suggestion that humanity may be on the brink of its first contact with an alien species, contact that Ender readers know will not go smoothly. It is an exhilarating opening sequence.

THE WINNER: Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston

Earth Unaware advances to the second round, to face False Covenant by Ari Marmell.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six, First Round :: False Covenant by Ari Marmell vs. Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers by Clay & Susan Griffith

We begin the first round of Bracket Six of the Battle of the Books with False Covenant (A Widdershins Adventure) by Ari Marmell vs. The Kingmakers (Vampire Empire: Book Three) by Clay & Susan Griffith. The winner will be the book I (Aaron) most want to continue reading after 25 pages.

False Covenant: Pyr hardcover, July 2012, 280 pages, cover art by Jason Chan. False Covenant is the second book in the Widdershins YA series. The first book, Thief's Covenant, competed in the Winter 2012 Battle of the Books, defeating Mark Hodder before falling to Stina Leicht. Marmell has written three other original fantasy novels as well as various tie-in works.

Widdershins, the heroine of False Covenant, is a skillful young thief in the medieval city of Davillon, with the minor god Olgun her constant companion. The book opens with Widdershins, in her alter ego as the young lady Madeleine Valois, attending a high society party hosted by Clarence Rittier, the Marquis de Ducarte. Widdershins is casing the place for a late-night robbery. But when she returns that night, she finds another band of thieves with the same plan, and the City Guard lying in wait. The opening pages also give us a glimpse of a high-ranking clergyman, Bishop Sicard, engaged in some surreptitious dealings.

Vampire Empire: The Kingmakers: Pyr trade paperback, September 2012, 391 pages, cover art by Chris McGrath. The Kingmakers is the third volume in the Vampire Empire series, which places vampires in a steampunk/alternate history universe with elements of romance. The Griffiths are a husband-and-wife writing team, who started out doing tie-in work, before launching the Vampire Empire series.

The Kingmakers opens with trench warfare pitting the Equatorians, fiercely loyal to Empress Adele, against a vast horde of vicious vampires. In this universe vampires are powerful and have the ability to fly, but they can be killed by ordinary means, without need for a stake to the heart. Sirdar General Anhalt leads an Equatorian army, aided by the famous warrior Greyfriar (himself a vampire), bogged down outside Grenoble, France. The Empress herself comes to their aid, using her power of geomancy to fend off the attacking vampires. The Empress and Greyfriar are in love, but he cannot approach her while she uses geomancy. The Empress is determined to use her power to take the fight to her vampire adversaries.

The Battle: These are both sequels, so a key to this Battle will be which author(s) can settle me quickly into their novels' universe. False Covenant has an advantage going in, that I read 50 pages of the previous volume, which I found most interesting——it took a spirited effort by Stina Leicht to knock Thief's Covenant off.

False Covenant also has an effective opening, quickly reintroducing us to Marmell's charming young protagonist Widdershins, with some amusing banter between Widdershins and her companion deity Olgun. Marmell gives us a good action scene early on, while unobtrusively summarizing his setting of Davillon and its complex web of competing religions. Marmell tells the story with a fun narrative voice. I especially liked that in the opening scene, party guests are scandalized by the incompetent servants working for the Marquis, which later proves a clever hint that the servants were really disguised Guardsmen laying a trap for Widdershins and her fellow thieves.

The Kingmakers has a good premise: steampunk with lots of vampires. We only get a glimpse of the Empress in the opening passage, but it is already obvious she is an admirably strong-willed female character. But the initial 25 pages do not give me a very good sense of what vampires actually add to the authors' steampunk setting. There is a horrific battle scene in the early pages, but is it any more horrific than real trench warfare? Placing a vampire battle in World War I trenches doesn't make much sense to me——what is the trench for when the vampires can fly and they don't shoot at you?——and has the unfortunate effect of making the fight seem familiar instead of strange.

THE WINNER: False Covenant by Ari Marmell

False Covenant advances to the second round, to take on either The Snow by Ross S. Simon or Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston.

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Battle of the Books, Bracket Six

Announcing Bracket Six of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books!

Battle of the Books continues with Bracket Six. For why we decided to do a Battle of the Books, click here. For the rules, click here.

Previous Battle of the Books winners have been Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear, The Man from Primrose Lane by James Renner, The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis, The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Harmony (alt.human in the UK) by Keith Brooke.

Aaron will review and judge Bracket Six, which features a new group of sixteen (16) contenders. (Amy pulled together and formatted all the book cover graphics.)

We've selected four "seeded" books -- four we are especially looking forward to (marked with asterisks) -- placed one seeded book in each quarter of the bracket, and then filled in the rest of the bracket randomly.  Here are your matchups.

First Quarter of Bracket:


Ari Marmell
False Covenant
(Pyr)
vs.
Clay and Susan Griffith
Vampire Empire:The Kingmakers
(Pyr)




Ross S. Simon
The Snow
(Damnation)
vs.
Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston
Earth Unaware
(Tor)***

Second Quarter of Bracket


Sam Sykes
The Skybound Sea
(Pyr)
vs.
Nancy Kress
After the Fall Before the Fall During the Fall
(Tachyon)***



B.V. Larson
Technomancer
(47North)
vs.
Rachel Coles
Pazuzu's Girl
(JournalStone)

Third Quarter of Bracket:


Tim Lebbon
London Eye
(Pyr)
vs.
Liz Williams
WorldSoul
(Prime)



James S. A. Corey
Caliban's War
(Orbit)***
vs.
Robin D. Laws
Blood of the City
(Paizo)

Fourth Quarter of Bracket:


Bernd Struben
The13th Zookeeper
(Strider Nolan)
vs.
Megan Powell
No Peace for the Damned
(47North)



Ian McDonald
Be My Enemy
(Pyr)***
vs.
Rowena Cory Daniells
Besieged
(Solaris)

To see the whole bracket, click here.

Some notes on the field:
-- Several of the books are difficult to classify, but by my best count, 6 are science fiction, 4 high fantasy, 3 urban fantasy, 1 YA fantasy, 1 YA science fiction, and 1 horror.
-- The field is comprised of eight men, five women, and three collaborations (James S.A. Corey is two people).
-- The contestants include 5 books from Pyr, 2 from 47North and 1 each from established publishers Orbit, Paizo, Prime, Solaris, Tachyon, and Tor and small publishers Damnation, JournalStone, and Strider Nolan.
-- 4 of the books are labeled as book one of a series, 7 are books continuing an existing series, 1 is a tie-in to the roleplaying game Pathfinder, and the rest appear to be stand-alone books.

We will begin announcing results on Wednesday, and try to make a Battle of the Books post every other day from then until we are done. Best of luck to all the competitors!

"The Visited" by Anaea Lay :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

My story recommendation of the week is for "The Visited" by Anaea Lay, from the April 2013 issue of Lightspeed magazine. This is Anaea Lay's second SROTW.

"The Visited" is the obituary of musician Manuel Black, written by a former fan and lover. Black became a huge celebrity, because his music somehow helped people to make sense of the "Visitation," when everyone in the world had a vision of an unnaturally beautiful man or woman, accompanied by an intense sense of longing. But our narrator was a devoted fan even before the Visitation; here she describes his earlier work:

It’s still him, but now he’s angry. He hasn’t found his Morrisonian black leather pants yet, but he’s not afraid of the audience anymore. Curls fly around his face as he stares them down, challenging them to answer the questions he raises with his lyrics, to justify the world in the face of his seething despair and melancholy. Critics of the time wrote the music off as angst-ridden wankery. Audiences found it unpalatably depressing and turned instead to catchy dance pop. Listen to it now and you’ll realize his melancholy was a foreshadowing of the post-Visitation malaise waiting for all of us, that his anger was founded in an optimistic belief that things could be different if we’d just bother to acknowledge they ought to be.

In this elegantly written story, Lay makes no attempt to explain what the Visitation really was. Her focus is on the enigmatic Manuel Black, and how an artist's work can transform the meaning of what is happening in his audience's lives, to tragic or transcendent effect.

I once had a friend, who had been a Deadhead in an earlier phase of life, try to explain what compelled fans to follow The Grateful Dead from concert to concert, but I didn't understand the communal experience he was describing. "The Visited" is a piece of fiction, a form of art, yet it enables me to appreciate my friend's real-world experience in a way his factual words couldn't——and oddly enough, that's just what this story is about.

Book Review Teaser :: God's War by Kameron Hurley

New on Fantastic Reviews is Patty's review of God's War by Kameron Hurley.

Here's a some from Patty's book review of God's War :
Kameron Hurley has a serious thing for bugs. Inventor of a subgenre of the New Weird, she initially described her first novel God's War as "retro-cyberpunky," but added: "It's funny, when you don't have a word that describes exactly what you want, you sort of just cobble them together from existing words. Because I think what I meant was, you know, steampunk without the steam, but with a little cyber, only organic-cyber...er, organic punk? er...Bugpunk."

For Hurley, bugs are integral to credible world building. And for the most part, it works, as shown by the novel's 2012 Nebula Award and James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award nominations. Bugs enrich the landscape of God's War to the point where they are a fact of everyday life and a major component of the economy....Bugtech is used for powering automobiles, practicing medicine, detecting weapons, and other feats of magic/science....

God's War occurs on the planet Umayma, colonized thousands of years ago by humans. The two countries where most of the action takes place, Nasheen and Chenja, have been involved in a centuries-long war whose reasons for fighting have been forgotten.

The protagonist is Nyx, a solid woman, broad through the hips and breasts, and heavily muscled. In short, she's a brick house. Her physical aspect only reinforces her unstoppable nature. Like the terminator, she just keeps coming back....

To read the entire review -> God's War

Book Review Teaser :: Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear

New on Fantastic Reviews is Aaron's review of Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear.

From Aaron's book review of Range of Ghosts :
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear won the very first bracket, the Winter 2012 bracket, of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books, and a wonderfully deserving winner it was.

Elizabeth Bear is still a fairly new author - her first novel Hammered appeared in 2005 - but it feels like she is a veteran of the field. She has already published over twenty books, ranging between science fiction and fantasy in both series and stand-alone books, and she has won the Campbell Award for best new author and two Hugo Awards for her short fiction.

Range of Ghosts is the first in Bear's epic The Eternal Sky fantasy trilogy, drawing heavily on the history of the Mongol Empire. As the story begins, the Great Khagan has died, and his descendants have fought a bloody battle over succession, the kind of civil war that actually fractured the Mongol Empire. Temur, grandson of the Great Khagan, fought on the losing side for his brother. Temur survived the battle only because he was so grievously wounded he was left for dead....

...Our second major viewpoint character is Samarkar, from the neighboring Rasan Empire. Samarkar has willingly left her powerful family and undergone surgery leaving her barren, so that she may train to be a sorceress. Sent to investigate reports of dark sorcery, Samarkar encounters Temur...

To read the entire review -> Range of Ghosts

“The Long View” by Van Aaron Hughes :: Patty’s Story Recommendation of the Week

Hi.  Let me introduce myself: I'm Patty Palko, a new reviewer to Fantastic Reviews.  I thought that my first post should concern Aaron's story "The Long View" just published in the March/April 2013 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  I was afraid that Aaron would be too humble to tout how great this story really is.  So, I thought I would do it for him.

"The Long View" follows genetic engineer Emzara Ghali-Gordon on a trip into deep space with a shipload of colonists.  Many authors have used faster-than-light drives, suspended animation, or multi-generational ships to bridge long travel times.  Instead, Aaron's Ghali-Gordon is responsible for altering the settlers' genetic code to slow their bodies to 1/20th their normal speed.  Aging a mere 6.25 years for a 125-year journey is an ingenious method of allowing humans to explore the universe.  As a doctorate holder in the biological sciences, I was impressed with how well the science and complications of gene therapy were communicated.

Yet from the beginning, it is clear that this is a tale of loss:

What makes a person decide to desert everyone she knows and leave the whole world behind?  My name is Emzara Ghali-Gordon, and the first time I did it was easy.

Through the well-integrated flashbacks, Emzara describes her history as jabaan, or "coward," for fleeing her native Egypt due to its unprogressive ways.  As the story advances, her actions result in an emotional impact wrapped within an unexpected ending.  It's time well spent following this sympathetic character to find what she gains, and loses, along the way.

(If you like "The Long View," I recommend my favorite Hughes story "The Dualist," from the anthology Writers of the Future Volume 27.  There is some damn fine storytelling in those pages.)

Battle of the Books, Bracket Five :: Wrap-up

We have just concluded Bracket Five of the Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books. There were good, competitive matches along the way, perhaps even some upsets. Hope you had a good time!

Congratulations to Keith Brooke's Harmony (aka alt.human), winner of Bracket Five of the Battle of the Books! Let's give a round of applause for all the participating books!

To see the whole bracket, click here.

All sixteen of these books are now available. Listed below are the featured books, sorted alphabetically by author. Click on the book title links to go that book's most recent book battle review.

The Croning by Laird Barron (Night Shade)
Paradox Resolution by K.A. Bedford (Edge)
This Case Is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova (Tor)
Harmony by Keith Brooke (Solaris)
The Devil's Nebula by Eric Brown (Abaddon)
Kangazang! Star Stuff by Terry Cooper (Candy Jar)
Wildcatter by Dave Duncan (Edge)
A Guile of Dragons by James Enge (Pyr)
Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor (Tor)
The Express Diaries by Nick Marsh (Innsmouth House)
Nightglass by Liane Merciel (Paizo)
Railsea by China Miéville (Del Rey)
Fated by Alyson Noël (St. Martin’s)
City of the Fallen Sky by Tim Pratt (Paizo)
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (HarperCollins)
Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem (Solaris)

Some of these books and authors may be new to you, but after reading Aaron's book descriptions and battle reviews, I hope some of them sparked your interest. Perhaps we introduced you to a few new books. Only one book can win the bracket, but there were many good books in the competition.

Battle of the Books match-ups are decided based on reading a sample of the book. Most upon reading a mere 25 pages or 50 pages. So if a good book starts slow, in this review format, it may face an uphill battle. These matches are inherently subjective. Battles are decided based on which book the reviewer, Aaron, would rather continue reading.

Stay tuned for Bracket Six of Battle of the Books. We have another sixteen books lined up for the next competetion. Aaron will be reviewing. We'll be announcing the new group of contenders soon.