Reviews and Comments

For a story that's 1000 years old, I found it remarkable - and somewhat depressing - that people haven't really changed all that much over the centuries.

The biggest hurdle I needed to cross was coming to grips with the cultural and literary symbols and metaphors that drive the story forward. The story contains as much poetry as much as narrative and figures prominently in the interactions between various characters. Characteristics like penmanship - this or that person has an elegant hand - and family relationships contribute context.

While it's touted as, perhaps, the world's first novel, it reads more like the world's first serial. Each chapter, an episode in an ongoing chronicle of the golden Genji, so beautiful and elegant he cannot be long for the earthly realm. In Murasaki Shibiku's eyes, he's something of a rogue among the ladies, collecting a harem of those who have attracted his attention over his long lifetime.

Eventually the story evolves into a family saga, Genji's children and associate relations finding a place in the story. Most of them follow the same paths to success and/or ruin as Genji marked out for them.

For me, the book was a challenge. Trying to appreciate how much more elegant and beautiful the writing might have been in the original Japanese. Trying to understand the metaphors and symbols. I come away from it certain that much of its charm must be lost because I failed in those efforts.

One thing came through. The stories that Shibiku tells could have come from any modern soap opera. The triumphs and tragedies are all personal, all character driven based on the underlying culture and mores of the time - much as they would be in a modern tale of court intrigues and romances.

Just without today's Happily Ever After endings.

Recommended for anybody wanting to immerse themselves in the cultural history of Japan.

Transparency: I picked up a copy from ebooks@adelaide and just grabbed this cover/description from the Open Library.

Great characters make for great stories and The Jump Point has a raft of great characters.

The story orbits around Mahra Kaitan - freebooter, mercenary, and refugee from a destroyed homeworld. Then there's Timon Pellis - enigmatic, charismatic captain of The Dark Falcon, a ship with more than a few surprises under its skin. Against them, or maybe with them, Vidor Carr - a man who knows what he wants and isn't afraid of doing whatever it takes to get it.

But what of the Sirona themselves? Mysterious aliens who appear and disappear at will, always willing to trade until they aren't, with apparently deadly consequences.

James has assembled all these parts into an intricate tale of mystery and misery, a veritable Swiss watch of a story with each part keeping the whole ticking along.

Highly recommended.

If you haven't tried a cultivation novel yet, this is a great place to start.

Yrsilla spins a magical tale of a girl plucked from a miserable existence of hardship and poverty flung into the very foreign realms of privilege and wealth. Off balance from the start, she slowly builds her knowledge and confidence to rise through the ranks of the Argent Peak Sect. As she grows in power, she undertakes the very difficult task of facing up to her past and choosing to grow as a person. It's a great reminder that in this genre - like litRPG - leveling up in skill can't replace the character's arc.

It's always the characters that draw me into a story and Ling Qi held me spellbound. I particularly liked the use of music as a vehicle for her growth. The setting intrigues me and the story ended on the right notes to make me wish I had more time to read.

Highly Recommended.

I blazed through this book in a couple of days. I loved that it explored a steampunky world being changed by a new source of energy, upsetting a precariously balanced applecart. The socio-economic underpinning gave steampunk a fresh take in a Second World setting.

The main characters - Alf and Rich - played well with and against each other, backed up by a solid cohort of supporters, opponents, and various others. The world of grit and steam, of science and wish, of rich and poor felt like one I could step into and - if not find my way - at least know who to ask. The story itself twisted and turned just enough to keep me engaged and not so much that it felt gratuitous.

Too often steampunk gets treated like a genre instead of an aesthetic. In The Diamond Device, M. H. Thaung uses the steampunk aesthetic - airships, steam-powered vehicles, and fantastical devices - as a lens focused on humanity in this often light-hearted but quite serious look at how technology and people relate.

Highly Recommended.

I reviewed another book by this author a few days ago: books.theunseen.city/user/nlowell/review/67754/s/ive-got-a-secret#anchor-67754

I love Paranormal Women's Fiction - stories about older characters finding magic sometimes love. It's a refreshing change of pace from the standard tropes where young people have all the fun. Second Chance Magic did not disappoint me.

Lorna Addams and her two friends discover the key to a hidden door and a book that has been lost for a generation. Opening the book opens a new chapter in each of their lives. This one happens to be about Lorna.

The characters are warm, funny, and engaging. We don't see much of the small town but the sketch is more than enough to establish the setting and set the mood for the story.

The plot? I loved it. Just enough predictability to make me feel like I knew what was happening, but just enough twistedness to keep it from being too cliché.

Highly Recommended.

Brian Fence has a winning combination with Librarian. The main character, Lenna Faircloth, provides the driving force to push the plot across a complex and interesting territory in this Second World fantasy.

The magic system, perhaps not unique, but different enough to draw me into the story without making me feel like I'd seen it all before.

The details in the world provide the pièce de résistance. Well thought out, specific enough when they matter and fading into the background when they don't. Sufficient to reward a careful reader but not all so well camouflaged that the casual reader might find the story wanting.

Highly Recommended.

M.H. Thaung has a winning combination here.

Terrific world building. Engaging characters. Tightly woven story. All the things I look for in the first book of a series.

The secret paranormal powers fuel the story engine as the Powers-That-Be try to control a secret that threatens to unseat them from being Powers. As the story unfolds, the tightly held secret appears to be threatened by the very actions involved in trying to maintain it.

Jonathan Shelley is at the crux, pressured from his superiors but less and less comfortable with the things he's asked to do.

And Thaung spins the tale masterfully.

Highly Recommended!

Honestly, there's no mainline, just many subplots braided like garlic.

I have to give Eliot props for meticulously constructing "provincial life" in exacting - sometimes excruciating - detail, yet always with a light hand. The various plots deal with all the circumstances listed on the tin. The characters seem at turns real enough to step off the page and too stiff to bend with the paper they're printed on.

Did I like it? No. I read it as part of my read a classic a month goal for 2023. I wanted to see what this book was about and to study the story structure and Eliot's technique.

Did I learn anything? I don't know. Maybe. The style and tone, the loose relationship with the reader that he shares with Melville's Moby Dick. The use of recurring themes in different subplots - sometimes each looking at the same circumstance from an opposing perspective.

Recommended - But

Set aside some time for this one. It's rare for me to need more than 2 days for a novel. This one took over eight.

Meierz threw me right into the middle of the story and took my breath away while I tried to make sense of it all.

Murder, mayhem. Sometimes violence that seemed all too gratuitous yet became obviously necessary in this story of love, loss, and redemption. A lot of my enjoyment came from sorting out the details of Tolari versus human cultures. I'll leave those details for the reader to explore because they kept me turning the pages to find out all I could.

Farryn and Sharana - literally star-crossed lovers - battle a hostile world where pride and ambition drive them apart and set them on the path to find themselves before one or both of them are "sent into the dark."

I loved this story and found extra time to read because the characters and the setting drew me in and made me want to experience it more.

Highly Recommended.

BookReviews #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction

Caselberg mixes a potent cocktail of detective noir with science fantasy in this first Jack Stein novel.

Wyrmhole presents a frighteningly real universe where money, science, and the paranormal combine to create a culture that's as much warning as promise. The characters - especially Heironymous "Pinpin" Dan and Joshua Van der Stegan - feel so real you almost want to take a shower after meeting them.

Jack Stein - a Psychic Investigator - finds himself chasing his own tail in search of missing miners, a missing minor, and the meaning of his own existence. When a seemingly straightforward case of industrial tragedy takes a turn for the weird, Stein gets pulled into the seemingly incompatible worlds of alchemy and quantum physics. He's forced to rely on an abused pre-teen savant, a too-competent clerk, and his own brand of eldritch luck to solve the case.

Stein represents the noir detective so well, he could almost have come straight from the 1940s. Disillusioned. Self-destructive. Tortured by a past he can't seem to leave behind.

Highly recommended.

This book is brilliant, shining like a flake of its namesake stone. Cutting as a razor.

What it's not is beautiful in the typical sense of symmetry and pleasing form.

The language keens a banshee wail - wonderful and terrible. It attacks the reader by depicting the violent - often brutal - life on a fantastical desert peninsula in a three cornered dance of power, politics, and passion. It shows rape and slavery with an unflinching gaze, stone-like with its lack of compassion, even as we're given a glimpse of life among the dunes and palaces in this far off, but perhaps familiar world.

And therein lies its power.

The characters scintillate on the page, roaring at you with their darkest desires and dearest hopes. The narrative slowly exposes the world like the unfurling rind of a pomegranate that reveals the blood red seeds held in a supporting layer of culture, myth, and prophecy. The plot unravels slowly at first, picking up speed and heat like an Egyptian dancer's diaphanous veils, hinting at what lies beneath with each roll of the shoulders and ting of the zills.

Hidden behind the darkness and bloodshed, we find glimpses of humanity, of love, of passion - even beauty, but always contrasted with the harsh realities of life in the White Desert.

Highly recommended.

Anne Wheeler has a winner with this series. Straight-up Space Opera in the finest tradition.

Tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies, royalty, commoners and the occasional faithful retainer dance through the plot in a masterfully choreography of tension, betrayal, redemption, and loss. Two empires vie for supremacy and perhaps only one can survive. Only time - and the next three volumes in the series - will tell.

Want a great Space Opera that's not all "shoot-em-up" and "missiles at four light-seconds?" Grab a sample of this book and tell my you can resist reading the whole thing. I dare ya.

Highly Recommended.

This is another one of those book 1's that make me want to binge my way through the series that follows. Alas I have a pile of samples still ahead of me, but I'll be coming back to this series before too long.

The story starts out naturally enough, but soon turns surreal. It reminded me of Carlos Casteneda's The Teachings of Don Juan without all the psychotropics.

The sumptuous language kept me turning pages as Rowena navigated the confusing and confused transition from human to something else - something more. Collins leaves the metaphorical meanings of it all to the reader, but this reader - at least - came away with a very strong feeling of hope and well-being.

Yes, there's a well-developed plot. The ensemble cast of characters revolving around Rowena's sun shine in her reflected light and create their own web of magic on the pages. The world itself seems made of magic - if only the humans would take the time to see it.

Then there are the trees. I love the trees.

Highly Recommended.

Rowan is forced to give up her cherished identity as a steerswoman and take on a new one in order to survive. The story is as much about her struggle with identity as it is battling her physical foes.

Kirstein has done a masterful job of world building, characterization, and plot. The world unfolds like an old map, covered with interesting places you might like to visit. Her ensemble cast - Bel the Outskirter, William the Would-be Mage, and Rowan Steerswoman - sparkle and dance across the pages pulling me along the story's twisted path.

I ripped through this book in a couple of days and now face a quandry. Do I follow the steerswoman's path to book 2 or keep working through the big pile of samples I have waiting?

Decisions, decisions. One thing I do know. Rowan is one of those characters who will haunt me for awhile.

Highly recommended.

A fascinating tale of psychic aliens, stranded settlers, and colonizing insects.

The setting is the main attraction here, the characters supporting the introduction of this world where none of the natives speak because they don't need to. Through a series of steps and missteps, the survey crew sent to Chara have to survive first contact with not one, but two, alien races. It turns out to be more difficult than anyone might have imagined.

Recommended.