On Books
by Peter Heck
Mirrored Heavens
by Rebecca Roanhorse
Saga Press, $29.99 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-534-43770-8
The concluding volume of Roanhorse’s “Between Earth and Sky” trilogy follows a handful of characters in a fantasy world loosely based on Native American cultures in the pre-contact era. Among them are Serapio, an avatar of the Crow god; Naranpa, who embodies the Sun god; Balam, a rich merchant who is learning sorcery in hopes of becoming the Jaguar Prince; and Xiala, daughter of the queen of an island nation ruled by women.
As the novel begins, Serapio has taken control of the city of Tova, driving out Naranpa, who has fled to a village in the far north. Serapio is now eliminating all those who would defy his power. Many of his enemies—aided by Balam—are gathering in the southern city of Hokaia to mount an expedition against him. Among them is Iktan, the former Tovan Priest of Knives, Naranpa’s closest friend and ally when they were both young students in the city. Now they are on different sides.
Each of the characters is caught up in the larger plot revolving around the conflict between the Sun and Crow gods. Tova is under a spell of perpetual darkness, which began as Serapio took power from the Watchers, a group of priests who governed the city and prohibited the use of sorcery. Balam and his allies believe they can end Serapio’s reign if they bring their armies to the city by the summer solstice. To increase their power, they have sent soldiers to Teek, Xiala’s home island, to seize a fleet of fast boats they believe to be there. Meanwhile, Naranpa has apprenticed herself to a wise woman who she hopes will teach her to enter the realm of the gods and take the fight against the Crow god to the celestial level.
For his part, Serapio has been presented with a prophecy by the matron of the Coyote clan. As is common with prophecies, the wording is unclear, but he decides to undertake a series of cynical manipulations that he hopes will avoid the prophecy’s worst implications. Several of the steps in this process involve Okoa, a trained warrior of the Crow clan who finds himself torn between loyalty to his clan and to Serapio, whom his clan distrusts.
The various characters work to achieve their goals by any means necessary—including dark magic, assassinations, and outright conquest. Several of them—notably Xiala, while trying to oppose the occupation of her home island—discover powers they previously only suspected might be in their grasp. Xiala puts her newfound abilities to use in an attempt to find her way to rejoin Serapio, whom she met when he journeyed from his southern homeland to Tova on her boat. Balam is also making every effort to reach Tova and a final showdown with Serapio. Inevitably, all the forces converge in a final confrontation—which turns out not quite as anyone might have expected.
Roanhorse deftly moves the viewpoint from one character to another, keeping the reader in suspense as to what is about to happen to each of them. She effectively generates sympathy with each of them, even those on opposing sides in the larger battle. The result is an absorbing, three-dimensional look at a richly imagined culture, with a strong, conflict-filled plot driving it. If you’ve read the earlier volumes in this trilogy, you won’t need my urging to pick this one up. If not, be sure to read the whole trilogy; Roanhorse has established herself as one of the most interesting voices in current fantasy.
* * *
This Great Hemisphere
by Mateo Askaripour
Dutton, $29.00 (hc)
ISBN: 978-0-593-47234-7
Askaripour’s second novel begins with a homeless Black woman in near-future New York going into labor. Taken to a hospital, she gives birth to a baby who turns out to be invisible. Jump forward five hundred years, and we find ourselves in a world where that mutation has bred true, and a significant portion of the population are Invisibles—“vizzies,” as the less tolerant members of the dominant population of the Northwestern Hemisphere (“DPs”) call them.
Taking literally the title of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel The Invisible Man—an award-winning look at what it means to be Black in a racist society—Askaripour (who is also Black) creates a sharp future analogy to race relations in America. Invisibles are considered stupid and lazy, good only for manual labor and domestic work. A few are talented athletes or singers, while others are sex workers. All are required to wear special collars that are always visible to the DPs. Many also paint their faces and/or wear clothes. The power structure is made up entirely of the DPs, almost all of whom are strongly invested in keeping things as they are.
We follow the story as seen by three main characters. Candace, known as “Sweetmint” to her fellow invisibles, is a talented young woman who embarks on a career as apprentice to a famed inventor—a lucrative job in itself, with incredible prestige and potential for someone of her origins. The other two viewpoint characters are DPs: Stephen Jolis, a politician in line for the top post in the hemisphere, and Guard Director Curts, a police commander who’ll do anything necessary to maintain the social order.
The plot kicks into gear when the Chief Executive of the Hemisphere is assassinated. Preliminary evidence points to Shanu, Sweetmint’s estranged brother, as the primary suspect. Sweetmint believes her brother is incapable of the murder, and determines to find him before the law does. Curts, for his part, pulls out all the stops to close the case—the actual facts don’t matter, as long as Shanu is brought to “justice.” And Jolis is one of two candidates to replace the leader, the other of whom is known to be “soft on vizzies.” Clearly, the fate of the nation will be in the winner’s hands.
Sweetmint’s search for her brother becomes a race against time, as Curts and Jolis put on the pressure to bring in the assassin—dead or alive—before the leadership election, which is to be decided by an elite group of electors. In her search, she finds herself moving through all the layers of her society, interacting with poor working invisibles as well as the elite of the power structure—often at considerable personal risk. Meanwhile, Curts and Jolis are playing their own high-stakes games, and while they have more resources and security than Sweetmint, in their way, they have just as much to lose as she does. This naturally increases their desperation, along with their willingness to go outside the rulebook to attain their goals.
Askaripour creates a complex and largely convincing society, given his initial fantastic premise. Sweetmint’s quest gives the reader a grand tour of the future world, with enough surprises along the way to keep the reader off-balance. And when she does find her answer, it’s nothing anyone expects—and yet it’s a logical consequence of the overall theme of the book. As with much of the best SF of the past, this one forces the reader to look at some tough questions, and resists the temptation to provide easy answers. By all means, put this one on your must-read list.
* * *
Rhymer: Hoode
by Gregory Frost
Baen, $28.00 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9349-2
The second book in Frost’s “Rhymer” trilogy takes place roughly a century after the first volume. Following the deaths of his wife and family, Thomas Rhymer has become a hermit, living alone in a forest hut. His contact with the Elves in the first book of the series has given him extended life, and he avoids contact with others so they won’t ask awkward questions.
A few of the forest outlaws know him, though—among them Robert Hodde, who has shown him the occasional kindness, thinking him a harmless madman or “woodwose.” So when Hodde, gravely wounded, stumbles into Thomas’ hut with a tale of a prelate who “melted away” after being shot with an arrow, and two knights with strange swords who accompanied him, Thomas knows the Elves are back, and that he must do what he can to stop them from taking power in this part of England.
He begins by changing his overall appearance to mimic Hodde, who has succumbed to his wounds. Setting off into the forest, he first encounters a knight, Sir Richard atte Lee, who challenges him when he attempts to cross a log bridge over a stream. After defeating him in a quarterstaff joust, Thomas questions him about recent events, learning that the year is 1252, and that there is evidence the Elves are beginning to infiltrate the local power structure.
Meanwhile, Little John, a member of Hodde’s outlaw band, goes in search of Hodde and finds his body, stripped of its clothes and weapons, at Thomas’ hut. Assuming the knights who killed Hodde have taken his belongings and kidnapped the “woodwose,” Little John sets off to track them. But before he has gone far, he happens upon an opening elven gate, and sees more “knights”—whom he now recognizes as demons of some sort—emerge.
Thomas and Little John both make their way to Nottingham, where they meet members of the Wait, a sort of town watch. Thomas takes the name “Robin Hoode,” claiming to be a distant relative of the dead outlaw; he also enlists Little John, who’s seen enough to know something’s wrong, in the fight against the Elves. And from here out, various incidents and characters from the Robin Hood myth find their way into the plot. Since the Elves have the ability to take on the appearance of anyone at all, there’s no guarantee that anyone is who they seem at any given point—although Thomas can often spot an impostor.
Frost gives us an entertaining variant of the Robin Hood story, mixing the familiar elements with original twists arising from the Elven invasion. The plot concludes satisfactorily—not always the case for the middle book of a trilogy—while leaving the reader curious as to what lies in store for Thomas in the third installment. A rich fantasy world, with more than the usual degree of imaginative invention. Recommended—though if you missed the first installment, you’ll want to read it before taking this one on.
* * *
The Downloaded
by Robert J. Sawyer
Shadowpaw Press, $14.95 (tp)
ISBN: 978-1-989398-99-9
Sawyer’s latest begins when twenty-three astronauts uploaded into a quantum computer wake up to discover that they aren’t on their starship, as expected, but in the Earthside facility, just outside Toronto, where the computer is located. And judging from the condition of the world outside the building, civilization has collapsed during the five hundred years they’ve been on ice.
But that’s not all. Another group uploaded into the computer is also waking up. These aren’t a handpicked group of scientists and technical specialists, but thirty-five convicted murderers, put into virtual-reality prison as an experimental program. And unlike the astronauts, the convicts expected to wake up after only ten months, though they’d experience thirty years of prison time while they were asleep. Needless to say, these two groups are not instantly compatible.
Luckily, the computer complex has its internal power sources, and its team of maintenance robots has kept the building intact and functional. Also, the astronaut team includes doctors and other specialists, so there’s a core of skills to keep the survivors alive and healthy in the short term. But in the long term, they’ll need food and other supplies that weren’t included in the computer center—after all, nobody expected it would need to support fifty-eight astronauts and murderers for any length of time.
After some initial conflict, the two groups begin to decide on a governing structure—basically a sort of participatory democracy. They also begin to explore the outside world, and discover that some people have survived, notably a group of Mennonites who’ve kept alive the old ways, including viable farms. Most city-dwellers were wiped out in the initial catastrophe that destroyed the technology that civilization depended on. But there’s a bigger problem in the not-too-distant future: a large asteroid is scheduled to strike Earth in seven years’ time. There’s no surviving that one.
Sawyer tells the story through interviews with a number of the characters, both astronauts and ex-convicts, both men and women (including one woman reawakened in a male body), as well as one of the robots. This allows him to fill in their backstories, which in the case of the ex-cons are both varied and interesting in their own right. As one would expect, the five hundred-year period between our time and the reawakening of the characters hasn’t been a completely blank page, and Sawyer uses the events of that interim to bring about a satisfactory resolution to the larger plot problems. A good story by one of the most inventive writers in current SF.
* * *
The Hidden Queen
by Peter V. Brett
Del Rey, $30.00 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-9848-1711-2
The second in Brett’s Nightfall Saga focuses on two central characters, Olive Paper and Darin Bales, whom we met as children in the first in the series, The Desert Prince. After battling a powerful demon who used mind control to subvert his opponents, both Olive and Darin are now young adults, beginning to come into their very different full magical powers while still struggling to find their identities.
Olive, raised as a princess, is in fact androgynous—and is accepted as a young man by the warriors following her. And in fact, Olive’s magically enhanced strength and martial training are more than a match for most ordinary human opponents. But those who have known her from childhood are likely to see her still as a princess—which complicates matters upon her return to the Hollow, her home city. The society of these novels is more open to fluidity of gender than ours—while Olive’s advisors urge her to marry as a way to secure alliances, they don’t especially care whether the spouse is male or female.
Darin, for his part, is of humbler stock, though his father was one of the great heroes of the Demon Wars that were the prequel to the current situation. Darin’s magic is subtler, showing itself in music and in a “slipperiness” that lets him hide in obscure corners and slip through closed doors. He also has enhanced senses—in particular, he can smell people’s moods and even make a good guess at what they’re thinking. Partly because of this, Darin tends to avoid crowds or close interaction with others, except for his long-time friends like Olive.
As the story begins, Olive, Darin, and several close companions are concluding their stay at Fort Krasia, the desert stronghold where they fought the demons. They have learned that the demon they fought, Alagai Ka, is raising a queen who will—if not stopped—give birth to hordes of new demons. At the same time, both Olive and Darin’s mothers have gone missing—possibly dead at the demon’s hands. They and their companions are determined to kill Alagai Ka and his queen and, if possible, rescue their two mothers—both of whom are powerful sorceresses. These two missions form the central plot line of the novel.
Of course, there’s plenty more for both protagonists to deal with as they make their way toward the conclusion of this volume. Olive learns from several prophecies that three of her many half-brothers will attempt to kill her to prevent her from assuming her father’s throne. She must also gather forces for an assault on a demon-infested underground city—bringing together several groups who are historic enemies.
Darin, meanwhile, finds himself betrothed to Rojvah, a young woman who seeks thereby to escape her assigned role as a religious leader. At first, both seem to take their betrothal as a subterfuge—especially the introverted Darin, who’s uncomfortable with any sort of intimacy—but inevitably they find themselves growing closer. At the same time, the two of them plus Rojvah’s brother Arick—who would rather become a warrior—begin playing music together, an alliance that will turn out to have powerful effects later on.
All this is interspersed with travel through several distinct subcultures, pitched battles with demonic forces, political maneuvering, and building tension as Olive and Darin follow separate missions into what is effectively unknown territory. It all ends with a significant—but, from all appearances, by no means final—victory in the fight against Alagai Ka. And the two protagonists find themselves wondering what still remains for them to do to make their world safe.
You’ll definitely want to read The Desert Prince before starting this one—the complexities of the society and the relationships of the characters would be next to impossible to figure out without knowing them from the earlier book—but this is very much a worthy sequel. I’m looking forward to the third volume.
* * *
Uncanny Vows
by Laura Anne Gilman
Saga, $18.99 (tp)
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1596-6
As Gilman’s “Huntsman” series continues,, Aaron and Rosemary Harker, the brother/sister team who track down supernatural incursions in the early twentieth century, are sent to investigate the case of Franklin Congdon, a young lawyer in a mysterious catatonic state.
The pair believe they have been sidetracked by the Huntsmen organization since their previous adventure, in Uncanny Times, presumably because their report on the incident fudged details about the methods used to solve the problem. This new case—involving the family of an important supporter of the Huntsmen—could be a test to see whether they can get results without rocking the boat. If they somehow screw it up, they could lose their position as Huntsmen—and their only source of income.
They drive to a Boston suburb, taking along their enormous hound Botheration, whose supernatural powers are impressive in their own right. Checking into a hotel, they find another Huntsman in residence—a disturbing suggestion that they’re being checked on, although he claims to be on the way to another town.
The Harkers then make a visit to the victim’s family, the Ballantines, who live in a house that displays its owner’s wealth in an unassuming, if unmistakable, way. Mrs. Ballantine, the victim’s sister, tells them she had visited her brother’s office on some business, to find him unconscious—with a hint of a mysterious “shape” near the body, although she says it might have been a trick of the light. She also mentions, in passing, that their home has been the target of minor vandalism, mostly broken windows.
The next day they visit the victim’s office, only to learn very little more—but they begin to suspect that the fey might be involved. And Aaron, walking Botheration outside the hotel at night, senses an uncanny presence nearby—though it goes away when he challenges it. Something is obviously going on, though they aren’t getting any closer to finding out what happened to the young lawyer. The Harkers continue to press, widening the investigation as more attacks take place. They encounter more uncanny beings and uncover secrets both in the victim’s law firm and in the community at large.
Gilman does a fine job of keeping up the tension while exploring a colorful historical period (given an extra bit of color by the addition of supernatural elements) and a varied cast of characters, both human and uncanny. Aaron’s acquisition of an automobile—and Rosemary’s discomfort with the vehicle—provide a nice element of period fun. The solution to the mystery is both surprising and, in the context of the plot, convincing. A nice second installment to an entertaining series. I’ll be watching for more of the Harkers and the Huntsmen.
* * *
The Icarus Job
by Timothy Zahn
Baen, $28.00 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9325-6
Third in Zahn’s “Icarus” series, featuring a team of “crockets”—evaluators of new worlds for possible development and colonization—who’ve been recruited by a top-secret government organization.
Gregory Roark and his partner Selene—a member of an alien race, the Kadolians, whose sense of smell is far more sensitive than a human’s—are on the track of portals—ancient alien machines that can transport users instantaneously over interstellar distances. As the book begins, they get an offer from a criminal boss, Cherno, who wants them to transport a passenger to a destination to be named later. At the same time, a shady character named Trent asks if they are interested in a highjacking job.
Roark and Selene learn that Cherno has a portal he doesn’t know how to work, and they’re pretty sure he’s stolen it from the Patth, a powerful alien race they’ve had contact with in previous books in the series. To keep Cherno from expecting too much, they tell him the portal needs a matching unit at the other end to work its magic, and he gives them an additional assignment—finding where the match to the one he has might be.
They pick up their passenger, but their suspicion is aroused when the person who comes aboard their ship appears to be different from the one they first met. Then they learn that their passenger is Nicole Schlichting, an assassin with a legendary record of successful missions. The obvious question is who her target is, and whether they need to prevent her from completing her assignment if it turns out to conflict with their own mission. To their surprise, she turns out to be willing to help them out of several scrapes—complicating any decision about her.
Meanwhile, the Patth have learned about Cherno’s portal, and appear ready to do whatever it takes to recover it. If Roark and Selene happen to find a matching one, they’ll gladly take that one, too. And Trent—plus whoever he’s working for—seems to be angling to get into the game, as well.
Zahn builds up the complications as Roark and Selene travel from one world to another, carrying the assassin wherever she directs. Eventually all the elements of the plot come together, while another mystery—involving the vanished alien race that may have been the creators of the portals—comes into focus as the possible theme for the next book in the series. A great space adventure, with noir overtones, in a well-drawn interplanetary setting.
* * *
Mind Burn
by Rhett C. Bruno and T.E. Bakutis
Black Stone, $27.99 (hc)
ISBN: 978-8-200-99642-1
Set in a future where most of the world have installed cybernetic implants known as Portable Brain Assistants (PBAs), this novel begins with novice detective Cowan Soto on his first case—a multiple homicide. In theory, such a crime is impossible. The PBAs are supposed to make their wearers incapable of violence against another person.
Cowan and his partner, Jeb Forrester, soon figure out that the killer had an illegal PBA, hacked to allow her to kill. And when another would-be killer takes a shot at the detectives, they learn that the hacker is named Galileo—although they know nothing about his whereabouts or real identity. And when they go to arrest a doctor who reportedly installed the illegal PBA, he commits suicide while being questioned about Galileo. Like the two previous subjects of their investigation, he has been “puppeted”—his PBA taken over by whoever has created the backdoor into its program. Now that the doctor has died, they appear to be at a dead end.
Cowan has an ulterior motive for joining the Cybercrimes Investigative Division. He’s hoping to find information on his fiancée, Ellen, whose memory was erased a year ago (the “mind burn” of the title). Cowan feels responsible because the two of them were working on a project to tweak PBAs to let them dodge security provisions. When corporate security found out, they swooped down to arrest them; Cowan escaped, but Ellen was mindwiped, and her whereabouts are unknown. Now he hopes to find her, even if she no longer remembers him—and access to police records could be the key to doing that.
Meanwhile, there are other cases for the detectives—the first of which takes them to a hostage situation in a waifu parlor—a cyber-brothel where clients take their pleasure with virtual partners. The owner, Sonne, tells them that her clients’ PBAs can’t disconnect from the simulations. Someone has taken them over, and she hopes the police can solve the problem, reluctant as she is to involve them. Cowan manages to solve the problem and find the perpetrator, but he soon learns he hasn’t seen the last of the brothel owner—or her powerful, well-connected sister, Kate Lambda.
The list of cases continues to grow, and with them the realization that Galileo is playing for bigger stakes than were at first apparent. Cowan spends a fair amount of time in the Sim—as cyberspace is known in this society—searching for clues to both Galileo’s identity and Ellen’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, in the real world, they find themselves dealing with everyone from professional wargames players to distinguished academics, all of whom are in some way caught up in Galileo’s manipulations. And as they get closer to Galileo, it becomes clear he’s willing to take more and more direct action to prevent them from finding him.
In the end, Cowan manages to find the answers to both his quests, as well as a new relationship to fill the hole left by Ellen’s disappearance. Along the way, the authors provide plenty of action and intrigue, in a future world that has disturbing parallels to our own—raising the question of just where we want to establish the line between freedom and security, and at what cost. A good yarn that manages to touch on some of the big issues; recommended.
* * *
Briefly Noted
* * *
Termush
by Sven Holm
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
$16.00 (tp)
ISBN: 978-0-374-61358-7
This 1967 novel, translated from the Danish by Sylvia Clayton, portrays life at Termush, a luxury hotel repurposed as a sanctuary for the rich after a nuclear war. The unnamed narrator is one of the “guests” at the seaside resort.
While the hotel provides all the guests’ needs, it’s far from an idyllic situation. There are regular alarms when radioactive dust blows in from one of the affected areas, and the guests must retire to cramped, claustrophobic shelters below ground. In addition, there is dissension among the guests, many of whom believe their considerable investment in the sanctuary should give them more control over events. Then, outsiders arrive, in need of medical attention, and the sanctuary seems even less safe.
This one’s something of a period piece, though recent events including the Covid-19 pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and the Mideast have made some of the sixties fear of nuclear proliferation and a new World War seem a good deal less dated than they might have only a short while ago. A nice introduction by Jeff Vandermeer does a good job of putting the book in context.
* * *
Stations of the Tide
by Michael Swanwick
Tor Essentials, $17.99 (tp)
ISBN: 978-1-250-86248-5
Here’s a reissue of Swanwick’s 1991 novel, with a new introduction by John Clute. The plot follows an unnamed bureaucrat, sent to a backward planet, Miranda, to investigate a character believed to have stolen a piece of advanced—and therefore forbidden—technology.
Miranda is about to undergo a literal sea change, with the oceans rising to cover much of the low ground of the planet’s continents. Many of the planet’s indigenous flora and fauna undergo a change from terrestrial to aquatic forms as the flood occurs. This phenomenon happens every two hundred years, and the residents are preparing to move to high ground in advance of it. The bureaucrat needs to complete his investigation before everything is changed by the inevitable flood. Opposing him is a renegade scientist and self-made wizard, who has plans to reshape the planet to his own liking.
In many ways, this was Swanwick’s breakout novel—a flamboyant book, full of odd bits, unexpected plot twists, and quirky characters. I had a lot of fun rereading it. If by some chance you missed it the first time around, this new edition is recommended.
* * *
Being Michael Swanwick
by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
Fairwood Press, $20.95 (tp)
ISBN: 978-1-958880-14-2
Here’s a collection of interviews in which Swanwick and Zinos-Amaro talk about Swanwick’s work in depth and in astonishing detail. Zinos-Amaro says the book is deliberately modeled on Swanwick’s Being Gardner Dozois, a similar collection of interviews with a writer who did a great deal to shape Swanwick’s own career.
This book happened to arrive at just about the same time as the reissue of Stations of the Tide, so I was especially interested to read Swanwick’s thoughts and memories about that novel. But the whole book is great reading. Swanwick is a born raconteur, and Zinos-Amaro’s questions serve as the springboard for anecdotes about other writers and about the origin of his various stories, along with biographical details about the writer’s life and career. If you’ve enjoyed Swanwick’s writing, or are interested in the writing life and the careers of many late twentieth century SF writers, this is a welcome companion volume—and, even better, a valuable guide to the stories you may have missed.
Copyright © 2024 Peter Heck