Science Fiction & Fantasy Archives | Page 45 of 66 | BookPage

by Annie Metcalf

Farway Gaius McCarthy is on the verge of becoming a Recorder like his mother—a time traveler who records history in digital data streams—when something goes wrong. His final simulated test is sabotaged, and he’s expelled from the Academy. Becoming a time traveler means even more to Far since his mother, Empra McCarthy, and her mission team disappeared years ago: He’s determined to find Empra somewhere in time. So when the opportunity arises to time travel outside of the law, smuggling historic objects for a wealthy dealer, Far doesn’t think twice.

A year later, Far and his team have pulled off multiple heists in their time machine, the Invictus. But on their latest mission to retrieve an invaluable book that sank with the Titanic, they’re waylaid by a girl who already has the book, and she's demanding a place on the squad. Far immediately recognizes her as Eliot—the saboteur from his simulated test—but he’s forced to agree to her terms. With the mysterious and determined Eliot on board, Far and his crew are pulled into a literal race against time that could change—or even erase—their past, present and future.

Invictus is a meld of historical fiction, sci-fi and heist story rolled into one thrilling tale. Graudin (The Walled City) brings readers into the heads of all five members of the Invictus’ crew, revealing sweetness and insecurity in the face of epic events. While the novel at first appears to be the story of one exceptional boy, much of the action is carried out by the female crew: Imogen, Eliot and Priya. Perfect for teen readers eagerly awaiting the next season of “Doctor Who,” Invictus is a head-scratching, fast-paced adventure with surprising emotional heft.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy Fantasy

Williams’ fresh, funny tapestry

Review by Chris Pickens

by Chris Pickens

One moment in Quillifer, Walter Jon Williams’ lavish fantasy novel, stands apart from the grand opulence, banquet hall intrigue and humming action that sweep the reader along in the rest of the book. Fresh out of jail and caked in blood, the narrator and namesake of the book surveys his apartment. It’s full of trinkets, trophies, keepsakes and memories of a young life lived to the extreme thanks to a wild sense of ambition that’s taken him clear across the world. But instead of glory, he sees meaningless things, cluttering a life he fears has barely been lived at all. It’s these imperfections in Quillifer that make him so fun to follow.

The first book in a planned series, Quillifer overflows with richness and enchantment. There’s a lot to build on for future books, but it’s Quillifer himself that’s the star of the show. In a genre dominated by ensemble casts like that of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, it’s refreshing to rely on just one voice.

When we first join Quillifer, he’s using every bit of his good looks, innate charm and abundant self-regard to strut and preen through his well-appointed life as a lawyer in Ethelbight, an ocean port in the country of Duisland. When sea raiders sack the town and kill his family, Quillifer’s life is upended as he finds himself riding to the capital of Selford to ask the monarch for help (and build a career for himself).

Williams, known for a long catalogue of Nebula Award-nominated science fiction, dives headlong into epic fantasy with high-spirited gusto. He renders each scene of court life in Selford with ever-increasing visual detail, giving each castle and royal courtier their own decadently fashioned identity. The colorful friends and enemies Quillifer meets along his way enter and leave his life like guests at a party rather than tools in a save-the-world quest. And at the center of it all is Williams' wonderful protagonist—a flawed man, learning to live with his faults in a world destined to reinforce them.

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Science Fiction & Fantasy Science Fiction

Murder, mechs and mayhem

Review by Gerry Paige Smith

by Gerry Paige Smith

A scion of a political dynasty, Ingray will do anything to gain her mother’s favor, best her unscrupulous brother and secure the inheritance that only of them can receive. In a desperate move, she invests everything she has in a shady plan to secure and revive a convict from stasis, in the hope that they have access to venerated cultural documents called vestiges. If successful, her discovery could take down her family’s greatest rival. But the moment her prisoner awakens, they claim a different identity. Left with no clear allies, depleted resources and saddled with crippling self-doubt, Ingray’s bold strategy to become her mother’s heir unravels as her actions inadvertently pluck apart the threads barely binding a fragile peace between civilizations.

Returning to the universe of her bestselling Imperial Radch trilogy, Ann Leckie shifts her storytelling vista from a galactic scale to an individual’s journey to find their place on the grand stage. Leckie’s use of alternative pronouns for gender (“e”, in addition to “he” and “she”) creates an honest space for characters to reveal who they are, unburdened by preconceptions of identity. Leckie’s rendering of Ingray is especially compelling—riddled with misjudgments and tearful vulnerability, she nevertheless embarks on criminal actions, sparking an planetary crisis in the process.

Provenance is defined as “the history of the ownership of an object, especially when documented or authenticated.” From Ingray’s mission to prove herself worthy of the family birthright, to the questionable documents and vestiges that her entire culture is built upon, the search for individual authenticity and societal validation is at the heart of this novel. In this gripping new tale from the Imperial Radch worlds, Leckie’s Provenance perfectly combines the mercurial foundations of planetary politics with the personal journey of a woman navigating familial conflict as she creates a distinct provenance that gives her sole ownership of her path forward.

Returning to the universe of her bestselling Imperial Radch trilogy, Ann Leckie shifts her storytelling vista from a galactic scale to an individual's journey to find their place on the grand stage.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

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Of miracles and magic

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

by Kimberly Giarratano

Maggie Stiefvater returns with her matchless style in a standalone novel set in the Colorado Desert in 1962. Bicho Raro is a mystical ranch where the Soria family has resided for generations, performing miracles for pilgrims who seek help in banishing their darkness. At the center are three cousins—Beatriz, Joaquin and Daniel. When Daniel, the eldest cousin and saint, breaks the cardinal rule (you can help the pilgrims once, but not twice), he runs off into the desert to await his dismal fate. But generations of curses and darkness will not keep the Soria cousins from saving one of their own.

While reminiscent of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, a classic of magical realism, there are elements of storytelling here that feel unique to Stiefvater: unusual metaphors, sharp prose, unexpected humor and a deft ability to mesh the eerie and fanciful into one seamless description. Thoughtfully paced with intriguing characters, ill-fated romance and complicated family relationships, All the Crooked Saints will satiate fans who are always eager for new Stiefvater work, while bringing new ones into the fold.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Thoughtfully paced with intriguing characters, ill-fated romance and complicated family relationships, All the Crooked Saints will satiate fans who are always eager for new Stiefvater work, while bringing new ones into the fold.

Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

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The second war of the worlds

Review by Michael Alec Rose

by Michael Alec Rose

When H.G. Wells published The War of the Worlds in 1897, the story of a Martian invasion lodged in the cultural imagination as a possible chronicle of catastrophic things to come. Sci-fi master Stephen Baxter faces a formidable challenge in writing an authorized sequel: How might he turn the original readership’s plausible belief in a war between sister planets into a necessary suspension of disbelief for 2017 readers?

As author of collaborative multinovel epics with Terry Pratchett and Arthur C. Clarke, Baxter has the credentials for the task. The thrill of reading The Massacre of Mankind arises from the monumental scope and wild literary conceit of Baxter’s continuation of the story. I would blasphemously suggest an analogy between Scripture (Wells) and Talmud (Baxter): For every scene, every character, every theme in Wells’ account, Baxter provides copious commentary, filling in Wells’ narrative gaps, inventing an entire alternative history for Europe and the world at large, proposing what must have happened after the trauma of a first interplanetary invasion and during the onslaught of a second. (Spoiler alert! In Baxter’s sequel, there’s no World War I, but there remains an uncanny shadow effect of that indelible disaster.) It’s a family affair, too: The ingenious narrator is the sister-in-law of Wells’ original narrator, Walter Jenkins. The feminist edge is delightful and profound. Julie Elphinstone not only tells a broader tale than the hapless and unreliable Jenkins; she actually helps save the world.

There was another reason why Wells’ original story hit a nerve. The tale of a superior technological power (Mars) overwhelming a more primitive civilization (Earth) was a barely disguised allegory for the depredations of the British Empire. The essential truth of The War of the Worlds is that it is not only a possible history; it is the inevitable, tragic fate of all civilizations. Baxter hits the same nerve, and then some.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

Science Fiction & Fantasy YA Fiction YA Fantasy

A dark, thrilling take on Snow White

Review by Jill Ratzan

by Jill Ratzan

Ever since Lynet’s mother, the last queen, hanged herself, the kingdom of Whitespring has been covered year-round in snow. Teenage Lynet, next in line for the throne, has never been cold; her Southern stepmother, Mina, has never felt warm. Lynet and Mina have always cared for each other, but when Lynet befriends Whitespring’s new surgeon, Nadia, secrets are revealed and relationships begin to unravel. Why does Lynet look exactly like her dead mother? Why does Mina believe no one can truly love her? What is this connection that Lynet and Nadia seem to share? At first, King Nicholas and Mina’s magician father make all the decisions. But the female characters triumph, not by playing by the male characters’ rules but by rewriting them.

This is “Snow White” as it’s never been told before. Fans of “Game of Thrones” will relish the loyalties and betrayals, but author Melissa Bashardoust sidesteps most of the violence that characterizes George R.R. Martin’s work. With elements of the medieval legend of the golem, echoes of the movie Frozen and plenty of magic, Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a feminist fantasy not to be missed.

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

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A bounty hunt in virtual reality

Review by Kevin Delecki

by Kevin Delecki

Things are not going well for Emika Chen. A bounty hunter in an obsessively digital world, Emika is days away from being evicted from her run-down apartment with no hope of making enough money. Desperate, she decides to hack into Warcross, the immersive virtual reality game that has overtaken the world. Emika’s hack works, to a point. Unfortunately, during the heist, she also glitches into the International Warcross Championship in front of billions of viewers. Emika is convinced she’s going to spend the rest of her life in jail, but then she receives a call from the mysterious (and ridiculously wealthy) creator of Warcross, Hideo Tanaka. He offers Emika a chance to erase her debts and snag the biggest bounty of her life by chasing down a security threat to Warcross. But what Emika uncovers goes beyond the security of an online game.

Taking obvious cues from Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and postmodern tech thrillers, Marie Lu presents an exciting, immersive world with interesting and developed characters the reader will care about. While definitely a can’t-miss for fans of Lu’s Young Elites series, Warcross offers something for readers across all genres.

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

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A snapshot of a world irrevocably changed

Review by Justin Barisich

by Justin Barisich

The eternal beauty of science fiction is this: It takes readers to sometime or someplace else to show them the harsh truths of their own world. In Landscape with Invisible Hand, the vuvv—aliens who’ve come to Earth as benevolent colonizers—make way for humanity to destroy itself by the hand of its own greed.

High school junior Adam Costello enjoys painting landscapes of his deteriorating small town when he’s not on the clock earning his family’s sole income. For cash, he records his saccharine, 1950s-inspired dates with a girlfriend he can barely tolerate just to entertain aliens fascinated with “classic” earth culture. Because the vuvv have descended upon Earth, offering free advanced technology and medicine to the earthlings, the human economy has collapsed as a result. Now the rich hoard wealth behind massive pay walls, leaving regular people to suffer. However, when Adam’s teacher enters his paintings into an intergalactic art competition, he sees a way out. As Adam and his family flounder, he must decide what’s more important: painting pleasantries for profit or making art that captures the truth of humanity’s darkest hour.

In this novella, National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson writes a multilayered and scathing satire of callous economics, wealth disparity and the invisible hand of the market, as well as a metacritical discussion on the worth and value of art. It’s a bleak but necessary lesson in trying to find the beauty in the disastrous, all while learning to recognize when it’s time to dream a new dream.

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Dystopian Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

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The price of silence

Review by Savanna Walker

by Savanna Walker

The idea at the heart of Gregory Scott Katsoulis’ dystopia in All Rights Reserved is a horrifying one. All citizens age 15 and over must pay for every single word and gesture they use to communicate.

Katsoulis explores the implications of this system with all the bleak panache of an episode of “Black Mirror.” His young protagonist is named Speth Jime because those sounds are cheaper than more conventional names. She has to cut her hair in a certain way so that it stays in the public domain and doesn’t grow into a copyrighted style. Lawsuits over the illegal use of copyrighted words are rampant, and families risk going into crippling debt for generations if they run afoul of the draconian rules that govern their society. If they say a word they can’t afford, their eyes are shocked by corneal implants.

Speth has grown up in this system, and her rebellion against it is not a calculated protest. After witnessing a classmate kill himself rather than spend his entire life working to pay off what his family owes, Speth refuses to speak beginning on her 15th birthday and upholds a vow of silence throughout most of the novel. A decision prompted by anger but also fear due to her family’s already precarious economic situation, Speth’s silence begins to spawn similar protests, and she finds herself the center of a growing controversy.

Katsoulis remains deeply invested in his protagonist’s emotional journey throughout All Rights Reserved. Speth is not a natural revolutionary, and her reactions to her imitators range from pleased confusion to embarrassed horror. Her primary focus is to protect and help provide for her family—a brother and sister at home, and parents sent away to work off the family’s debt. When she stumbles into an opportunity with the mysterious Product Placers—the rarely-seen figures who leave targeted gifts in citizens’ homes—Speth begins to make a living perpetuating the very system she’s rebelling against. The push and pull between Speth’s resistance and conformity, while at times frustrating, is nonetheless emotionally realistic given that she has lived her entire life under this repressive system.

It’s a bit disappointing when the story bends itself back into the rebellion template, rather than just following Speth as she does her best to survive in this Dickensian dystopia, where abject poverty is only one wrong move away. But with his excellent establishment of the world of All Rights Reserved, hopefully Katsoulis will give himself the freedom do so in the sequel.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

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A teen takes a Faustian bargain

Review by Diane Colson

by Diane Colson

Dee Moreno’s way out from the confines of her miserable home life is a full academic scholarship to a prestigious Portland boarding school. When the scholarship funds are cut, Dee gets desperate enough to cut a deal with a demon. Or, daemon, as he prefers to be called. The general terms are one wish fulfilled in exchange for one body part, which, in Dee’s case, turns out to be her heart.

Actually, the agreement is a lease on her heart, to be returned after two years of service to the daemon. Thus Dee becomes the fourth member of the Deamon’s Portland Troop of Heartless, already comprised of no-nonsense Cora, physics genius Cal and James, a scruffily cute artist. Dee is quickly introduced to the drill: The deamon summons the heartless to enter “voids,” where their mission is to set off explosives and then race for the exit before the void implodes. Ironically, now that Dee is officially heartless, she begins having romantic feelings for James, who is patient and sweet with her reticence.

Emily Lloyd-Jones conjures a just-right balance of creepiness and pathos in her imaginative construct of demons and their interactions with human beings. The depiction of Dee’s family life could use more substance so that readers are able to empathize with her drastic decision. The characters, while diverse in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation, are functional rather than fully developed. But readers looking for an interesting paranormal twist will enjoy this inventive story.

Diane Colson is the Library Director at City College in Gainesville, Florida.

Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, YA, YA Fiction

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Family secrets, with a magical twist

Review by Annie Metcalf

by Annie Metcalf

Twins Iris and Malina have a special gift, or “gleam,” but it must be hidden from the world. In their small town on the coast of Montenegro, this means the sisters had to stop using their witchy gifts when they became too strong. Iris is naturally aware of people’s scents and shapes—gleaning important information from her observations. Malina’s gift for hearing emotions as music allows the sisters to evaluate who is to be trusted, and who to fear. Over the years, Iris’ skills have deteriorated with lack of practice, and unfortunately, so has her relationship with the twins’ secretive mother, Jasmina. But when a vicious attack leaves their mother technically dead—yet mysteriously alive—the sisters must unearth the wild truth of their heritage.

Though the revelations about the twins’ background are somewhat murky, the power of their love—for themselves, their mother and their respective love interests—is movingly portrayed. A cliffhanger ending and layered, likable characters will leave readers eager for what’s next in this unique new series from debut author Lana Popović.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

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Saga of a princess bride

Review by Sarah Welch

by Sarah Welch

When ruthless Emperor Sikander announces his impending visit to Shalingar, Princess Amrita knows she’ll be required to marry him. Though her heart breaks to give up her family, her home and her first love, she knows it is a worthy sacrifice to protect her people. However, when the visit takes a tragic turn and Amrita finds herself losing much more than she’d bargained for, she sets out on a desperate journey to save what is left—and maybe undo the past.

Aditi Khorana’s second novel, The Library of Fates, is a lovely coming-of-age story rooted in Indian folklore and infused with romance. The primary strength of the novel is the deep, lush world Khorana has built, vividly painting the beauty of Shalingar and juxtaposing it against the political turmoil of the empire.

Princess Amrita is admirable in her utter selflessness, yet still relatable in her teenage ideologies and naiveté, as she seeks out her destiny and shoulders the safety of her entire empire in the face of devastating loss. Though not quite fully developed, the mystical characters who guide Amrita—an oracle, a vetala and members of the cave-dwelling Sybillines—are colorful additions to the rich tapestry of the novel.

The Library of Fates is a perfect read for the lazy days of late summer. Khorana will take readers on a page-turning journey with a surprising yet wholly satisfying resolution.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Library of Fates is a perfect read for the lazy days of late summer. Khorana will take readers on a page-turning journey with a surprising yet wholly satisfying resolution.

Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy

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War of the machines

Review by Leslie Hinson

by Leslie Hinson

June is a modern-day anthropologist who repairs centuries-old automatons—mechanized dolls that come to life. Upon her repair of a Russian writing doll that scribbles, “All who breathe do not live; all who touch do not feel, and all who see do not judge. Behold the avtomat,” June is faced with a brutal reality. There is a world running parallel to her own, in which the avtomat have been fighting for their survival for centuries. Her grandfather encountered an “angel” during World War II that demonstrated superhuman strength and left behind a metal relic. June now wears the relic around her neck, and she soon discovers that it connects her to the world of the avtomat—and she may be the only living human who can help them.

Peter is an avtomat created in the likeness of Czar Peter the Great. His tale begins in a workshop in Russia in 1709 and spans centuries as he lives his nearly immortal life among humans. The avtomat have existed for thousands of years, and much of their technology is lost. A war has broken out among them as they seek the technology to save themselves.

Daniel H. Wilson, a seasoned writer of fiction, nonfiction and comics, also possesses a Ph.D. in robotics. The Clockwork Dynasty is bravely imagined and satisfyingly executed. Wilson has woven a brilliant fictional world into history, making this book a great read for lovers of historical fiction as well as fantasy and sci-fi.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Wilson has woven a brilliant fictional world into history, making this book a great read for lovers of historical fiction as well as fantasy and sci-fi.