Review: Supersymmetry by David Walton

Supersymmetry is a great followup to Superposition. In my review of Superposition I pointed out one of the great character moments for Jacob Kelly was his connection with his teenage daughter Alessandra. In Supersymmetry we leave Jacob behind and follow his, now twin, daughters, Alex and Sandra, as they try to solve the mystery of an imploded stadium and battle the varcolac again.

I really liked all of the primary characters. Alex and Sandra, who are the same person split by contact with the varcolac in the first book, are so similar and yet Walton does a good job of diverging them and showing how much a person can change in 15 years. Angel, the robotics geek who helps Sandra out with the stadium disaster investigation, is perhaps the first book-crush I've had in a long time. Ryan Oronzi, the scientist who "rediscovered" Higgs projector technology, is misguided and arrogant in a very believable way.

My one criticism holds over from last book, the villain (not the varcolac) was too evil for my tastes. It's hard to know how cackling-madperson they would have come across in print, but in audiobook they were maniacal.

The pace remained brisk, the science remained interesting. Walton tackles a host of topics including Last Tuesdayism, multiverses, black holes, and time travel. And like last time all of the science is explained in an accessible way, making this perfect for casual lovers of science.

I will almost certainly pick up future books by David Walton.

Audiobook Review: Clariel: The Last Abhorsen by Garth Nix

Published in 2014 by HarperCollins
Awards: 2015 Locus YA nominated
Challenges: Pick and Mix, New in 2014

Rather than making it feel like an afterthought, I will begin by praising the audiobook narration by Graeme Malcom. I never felt like any character didn't fit their voice and he never pulled me out of the flow of the story. Some stories need the narration to have distinctive flair, but this one didn't, and Mr Malcom filled the roll of storyteller well.

Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen is the story of how Clariel, a member of the Abhorsen family but not The Abhorsen, starts down the path to becoming Chlorr of the Mask, a powerful Free Magic sorcerer and villain. At first it didn't seem like a great book. It didn't meet my expectations. But once again I found that I was the one that was wrong, not the book. It all clicked into place once I realized that "lost" has many meanings when applied to Clariel.

Lost = Adrift

Lost = Astray

Lost = Wasted

Lost = Unremembered

Clariel is not a hero; she's a teenager, of age with Sabriel and Lirael, and she is an outsider, coming from a small city on the edge of a vast forest to the capital. She is on the cusp of adulthood, still under her parent's guidance but confident in where she wants her life to take her. She has strong ties to the forest city of Estwael and has secretly been training to be a Borderer, a protector of the forest. When her parents suddenly move the family to Belesair, the capital city, to further Clariel's mother's career, Clariel is severed from the roots she has put down in Estwael. She does not take the change well and continually plots her escape from the city. That is the first way that Clariel is "lost". She is adrift.

Once her goals are yanked out of reach, Clariel finds that she is both stronger and more vulnerable than she ever thought. She comes into contact with a Free Magic being and is immensely tempted by the power it can offer her. She has the strength to take that power, but is so desperate to get back to her familiar life in the forest that those powers are able to steer her to their own ends. I won't give too much away, but you already knew she ends up a villain. This is the second way that Clariel is "lost". She is led astray.

Again, without giving away too much of the plot, but knowing where Clariel ends up, it is clear that her heritage as a member of both the royal lines and the Abhorsens, combined with her natural inclinations, put her in a position where she could have been an important person. Her friendship with her cousin Bel, also an Abhorsen and enthusiastic about bringing the position of The Abhorsen back to its former vigilance and effectiveness, could have helped her to be an asset to the kingdom, whether she ended up as The Abhorsen or not. But none of that can come to fruition. Clariel's potential is lost, wasted.

Her story is unremembered by the time Lirael encounters Chlorr of the Mask. By that time, no one cared or could care that Chlorr was once a young woman with innocent ambitions and intentions. Clariel is truly lost.

There is a lot to like about this book besides just the variations on the theme of "lost". Bel is a wonderful character. I'm a bit sad that Garth Nix has not announced a plan to tell Bel's story. He is tenacious, clever, and sincere, exactly the type of character I like to read about. We haven't gotten to read a story of a "typical" Abhorsen, if such a person could exist, and I would like to see the Old Kingdom with renewed strength before the decay that we know is coming.

Clariel is also asexual and refreshingly undramatic about it. The story is not a discovery of her lack of sexuality, but it is an integral part of her character, avoiding the "just happens to be ____" and "just happens to not contain romance" cliches. Clariel could not just be replaced with a sexual character and Nix doesn't pretend that romance couldn't be a part of this story.

And Mogget. Mogget is here, not in his full glory, but certainly in his full Moggetness. He's part of the "astray" variation on "lost", and his interactions with Clariel are a joy to read.

Even a few days after I finished it, this book is sitting well with me. I'm glad that it exists and I'm eager for new stories set in the Old Kingdom.

Audiobook Review: Superposition by David Walton

Amazon link

Published: April 2015 by Pyr
Challenges: Pick and Mix

I've taken to reading the Tor.com monthly "what's being released this month" posts. Not only do I get to find out if there's anything I want to read, but it's a good exercise in recognizing what type of blurbs do and do not cause me to pick up a book (Good: things that sound like Firefly/Star Trek episodes and weird fiction. Bad: galactic empires and coming of age quests). On September's list was Supersymmetry by David Walton. My eyes perked up like the ears of a confused cocker spaniel. The blurb sounded right up my alley and--¿don't I recognize that name, David Walton? Several clicks down the internet road later I was pleased that I had recognized the name--he won a PKD--and mad at myself because Supersymmetry is the second book in a series and ¿how did I not know about the first because it sounds awesome too! Ah yes, because it only came out in April, though Note To Self: make sure I'm following people who read stuff like this when it comes out. A few clicks later and the audiobook for Superposition was in my Audible library and I was ready to go.

Superposition is about Jacob Kelley, a theoretical physicist, who is accused of murdering his old friend Brian, also a theoretical physicist. Brian was doing research that is the quantum physics equivalent of picking up the big Latin tome with Cthulhu on the cover, so naturally things got scary and he reached out to Jacob who, being a rational man, said something along the lines of, "I don't care what the voices in your head told you about your magic powers, stop pointing that gun at my wife!" The book follows Jacob as he tries to solve Brian's murder while on trial for it.

Everything was perfectly paced. The courtroom drama, the action, the science (and science speculation), all came at exactly the right times and exactly the right durations to keep me listening. For all of that, some of my favorite moments were character moments: Jacob has a teenage daughter, Alessandra, that he didn't connect with until they were left alone to cope with tragedy; A minor character and her husband have an emotionally moving scene in which they disagree about their daughter in relation to her disability. These scenes (plus a few more) made me feel emotionally invested in the book, and I like that Walton didn't shy away from them. He leaned in to the emotion and allowed his characters to be genuine. The emotional connections elevate the book from pure fun to a wholly engaging read.

And though it always seems like an afterthought to talk about the audiobook narration, it is not. LJ Ganser did a great job of making Jacob feel intelligent, incredulous about the events going on around him, and genuinely scared for his family. With Ganser's narration I was able to get the feel that Jacob's smartass nature is only suppressed because of the circumstances. It's a great narrator who can help the listener understand the characters better.

Amazon Link

I was delighted to realize, upon finishing Superposition, that its sequel Supersymmetry has just been released. LJ Ganswer also narrates the audiobook and I have already picked it up. Unless Supersymmetry is terrible (which I doubt) David Walton is going to be an author whose books I autobuy.

Audiobook Review: The Engines of God

Amazon link - Audible link

Published in 1994
Awards: 1997 Arthur C Clarke award nominated
Challenges: Pick and Mix Challenge

In The Engines of God a team of archaeologists are forced off a planet just as they are on the verge of making the discovery of a lifetime. Listening in audiobook, I honestly can't remember the names of any characters except Hutch the pilot. I'm not going to look them up, not out of laziness, but because they don't matter. This is not a book about characters Each character has a name, a profession, and a quirk. Hutch is a pilot who is friendly. There's a xenophilologist who is stuck up.

Heck, I can't even remember all of their quirks and I just finished listening to this hours ago:

Which guy was it that Hutch was having a relationship with?
 Rule out the guy who died and there are still two guys it could be.
Doesn't matter.

Who's Angela?
 Did she just show up or was she on the last mission?
  What is her profession?
   What is her quirk?
Doesn't. matter.

What does matter, and why you might read this book, is the xenoarchaeology. It starts with the excavation of an underwater complex on an alien planet and an inscription on a rock tower in an artificially created pseudo-city on that planet's moon.

Imagine your best drill-seargent-meets-academic on the phone and here is my inner monologue for the first third of the book:

Why create this pseudo-city?

Ok, but who created the pseudo-city?

If the inhabitants of the planet didn't do it, why is the inscription in their language?

We need to decode this inscription now!

What do you mean we don't have enough examples of the language to decipher the inscription?

I don't care, get more then!

WHAT DO YOU MEAN POLITICIANS ARE BLOWING THE PLANET'S ICECAPS IN 7 HOURS?!

Well, you'll just have to stop it.


I won't spoil how that turns out, but you're hooked, right?

Follow the clues, do some action archaeology, maybe some action xenophilology, right to the heart of the puzzle. Love or hate the solution, it was an entertaining ride.

And lastly a hat tip to Tom Weiner for narrating the audiobook. It was perfectly good narration, can't find any fault.

Audiobook Review: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

Published in 1966
Awards: 1966 Nebula Nominated, 1967 Hugo Winner
Challenges: Pick and Mix
Rating: 7/10

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is an excellent book. I can see why it stands out among Heinlein's novels as well as why it has endured as a popular science fiction novel more than 50 years after its initial publication. The story of the revolution of the Lunar penal colony against its Terran oppressors is compelling on both an intellectual and emotional level. The character of Mike, the sentient computer, is fascinating and still feels original even after it has been copied many times over by other authors.

Lloyd James does amazing narration for the book. I love his voices for Mannie and Mike and his female voices match the pitch and tone that I imagine for those characters (i.e. a bit of a caricature of real people).

I have complex feelings about the book, as I do many books of this era, because of their casual treatment of violence against women. If it were a theme of the book, rather than a scene or two that most people could ignore, I don't believe it would continue to be the classic that it is. And yet, the power of women is a theme. In Heinlein's Lunar colony, the relative rarity of women gives them a different status in society. It's presented as a feminist utopia. Women can choose as many mates as they like and have sex with anyone they want. If someone is bothering them they have the protection of every man. For example, when a tourist dares to hit on a young woman (rather than the other way around) the men around her rage with possessiveness. They very nearly throw the tourist out an air lock, but cooler heads prevail (thanks to the protagonist) and everyone settles for the punishment of the beating they had already administered and a fine. Heinlein seems to think that because anyone who doesn't treat a lady well is put to death, that it is the women in control instead of the men. I can't help but get the feeling that at any time the men could change their mind about how things work and the women would find that they had no power all along. A woman has no choice in being protected and I suspect she has no choice but to be available to men either as a "slot machine type" (Heinlein's phrase) or as a wife. If the men stopped getting the hope of access to a woman they would stop giving the women a choice about the matter.

The other scene where it becomes excruciatingly clear how Heinlein feels about women and their power is when Wyoming, the female protagonist, first meets Professor Bernardo de la Paz. She is in a hotel room with Mannie, the narrating protagonist, and he does something to irritate her. When the professor enters the hotel room, Wyoming jokes that Mannie raped her. Throughout the conversation she reiterates her minor irritation with Mannie by calling him "rapist". Heinlein has written a world where a woman would lie about rape in order to punish a man for a slight against her. In this world the punishment for him is summary death and the punishment for her lie is negligible. This is such common knowledge in the world, that it is a joke to everyone when a woman pretends to exercise this power knowing that it won't be taken seriously this time. It's a threat joke. It's Wyoming telling Mannie that if he ever did get out of line she would have him killed. But it's also a threat joke from Heinlein. He's telling male readers that women in our society fake rapes to get men punished and even in a situation where women already have all the power, they will be petty with it. Though some will argue that he wasn't "meaning to say that", this is how systematic sexism works. Regardless of intent, the harm is still done. It's all so disconnected from the reality of rape and societal power, especially in the 1960s but even true today, that it made me feel sick listening to that scene.

In all, I liked The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, but even reading the book "in context", even with this book being "not as bad" as other Heinlein books when it comes to misogyny, I am reminded of what my place in this imaginary world would be and it taints the fun of escaping into the story.

Audiobook Review: Half Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older

Amazon link

Published 2015 by Roc

Challenges: New in 2015

Rating: 7/10

I don't read a ton of urban fantasy, but it's a subgenre that I'm probing. I have several books from the genre in my to-be-read queue. My experience so far has been limited to single novels (like the excellent Brown Girl in the Ring) and couple of ongoing series (Dresden Files and The Petticoat Protectorate), but, adding Half Resurrection Blues to that list I am beginning to see a pattern: When a book is anticipated to be the first book in a series, that book is spent getting over the protagonist's back-story. Once they have accomplished this, the character can really spread out in their world and the books get better and better.

In Half Resurrection Blues, Carlos de la Cruz, a half-dead soul-catcher for The Council of the Dead must face a threat intimately connected to his own past. By learning how he died, he can begin to understand how to defeat a villain who wants to tear down the walls between life and death.

The Brooklyn of the book, peopled with all the variety of ethnicities, backgrounds, and personalities that many books ignore, is vivid and lively. Even the many ghosts who inhabit the city add to a feeling of life.

This book was not perfect, but in perspective of a series and as a follow up to Salsa Nocturna (which I thoroughly enjoyed) it was good. Daniel José Older does his own narration, which turned out to be an excellent choice. He brings Carlos to life and gives the narration a rhythm that another narrator might not have captured. Not only will I be moving on to the next book in this series, but if Older is the narrator, I will make sure it's the audiobook version.