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: 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.

Review: Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz

Amazon

I finished Flex almost the day it came out and since then, it has been my go-to recommendation for new fantasy. Want something like Ready Player One (but maybe without being only about the pop-culture references)? Flex. Like RPGs/videogames/high-action cinematic fiction? Flex. Tired of cliched characters and unimaginative magic systems? Flex.

Now, the sequel The Flux is coming out and I can't wait to get my hands on it. But first I need to get out one last internet squeal of delight at how much I enjoyed Flex. I can't say it any better than my original review:

Holy crap, guys! This hit so many sweet spots for me. Maybe it's that I play tabletop roleplaying games for the stories and I run them so I get to make the stories, but even when I'm doing neither I find it so nice to just sit there and think of stories in those worlds. Maybe it's that I like well-put-together Excel spreadsheets and neat handwriting, and having my books alphabetized. If you're wondering what I'm rambling about, it's that Steinmetz manages to mash these things together into an amazing, fast paced, urban fantasy (no romance!) that has so many elements that I loved that I can't pick out any that I didn't.  

Paul is a burocromancer, he makes rules work in his favor. He loves them and they love him back. The only problem is that 'mancy is super-dangerous, illegal, and seems to have gained him a nemesis. Along with Valentine, a chubby, kinky videogamemancer, Paul sets out to get enough money to afford the facial reconstruction surgery for his recently burned daughter that the tight-fisted insurance company that employs him denied. It's the one bureaucratic hell where he dares not break any rules lest he lose his job, his health insurance, and any hope of his daughter making it back to health without financially ruining him for the rest of his life. 

Highly recommended as a book I couldn't put down. I've already pre-ordered the sequel coming out this fall.

Amazon

And speaking of breaking cliches that glorious goddess on the cover is Valentine.

Review: If Then by Matthew De Abaitua

I received an advanced copy of If Then from the publisher in exchange for honest feedback.

Amazon link

Available: September 1, 2015
Awards: none yet
Challenges: New in 2015

"'Can I stop this?' he whispered. 

'Your decisions are made six seconds before you are aware of them. What you think of as free will is post-rationalization. You live in the past, James.' 

'No second thoughts?' 

'Your decision has already been made. Don't waste my time with excuses." -Location 1696

Here's the official blurb:

In the near future, after the collapse of society as we know it, one English town survives under the protection of the computer algorithms of the Process, which governs every aspect of their lives. The Process gives and it takes. It allocates jobs and resources, giving each person exactly what it has calculated they will need. But it also decides who stays under its protection, and who must be banished to the wilderness beyond. Human life has become totally algorithm-driven, and James, the town bailiff, is charged with making sure the Process’s suggestions are implemented.  

But now the Process is making soldiers. It is readying for war — the First World War. Mysteriously, the Process is slowly recreating events that took place over a hundred years ago, and is recruiting the town’s men to fight in an artificial reconstruction of the Dardanelles campaign. James, too, must go fight. And he will discover that the Process has become vastly more sophisticated and terrifying than anyone had believed possible.

I loved the characters of James and Ruth. They used to be average people, they had white collar jobs, got married, wanted to start a family, and felt helpless when their security disappeared. When a possible solution appeared they did what they thought was necessary to survive. They put themselves in the hands of The Process trusting that it would look after them. Their sense of betrayal when The Process started behaving incomprehensibly is an amplification of the kind of betrayal we all feel when our governments and politicians let us down.

I found myself fascinated by how the author used tense shifts to signal who is in control and to keep me off-balance. When the characters are in control of themselves narration is in past tense, when The Process is in control narration is in present tense, which makes sense because The Process is in an eternal "now", constantly manipulating the eponymous "then". If A happened, B is what The Process is doing. Over and over, blindingly fast, astronomical numbers of Ifs and even more Thens, until even the story must bend into the present tense to follow James under The Process's control.

The tense also keeps the book feeling surreal. The past tense is used when describing the characters' "present", which is also a regressive future to the reader. The present tense is used when describing the present-as-controlled-by-The-Process, which is a mimicry of events in our past.

"Since the procedure, his forgeries have taken a new quality. He forged an eggshell that when cracked releases albumen and yolk which react to hot oil to form a perfect round fried egg. It is only when you eat the egg that you realize it is made of paint." -location 2177

Besides a surreal atmosphere, there is some perfectly executed and beautifully described weirdness in If Then. Every once in a while, just when things are starting to feel, if not normal, consistent, De Abaitua drops in reminders that the people of Lewes live in a manufactured reality, carefully controlled by something that can quantify, but not understand, humanity. I was drawn into James' perceptions over and over just for us to be reminded that people and their actions were not genuine.

I can't recommend this book more highly. It's slipstream fiction for polymaths. If Then flips off expectations of genre and leaves me feeling like I'm riding its shockwave into the future of literature.

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.