Reviews of Science Fiction and Fantasy novels by Jessica Strider, a former bookseller and avid reader. You'll also find shout-outs to SFF books, medieval history book reviews, tidbits and more.
I worked at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto for 10 years, until it closed in 2014. During my time there I planned themed endcaps and did author interview displays.
For several years I contributed book reviews, New Author Spotlight posts and a Recommended Readings with Professionals column on the SF Signal website.
I've got a BA in Medieval History from the University of Toronto.
I'm an avid photographer and crafter, and started making my own greeting cards a few years ago.
Signum Dinios Kol is still an apprentice and only recently became assistant to the Iudex Investigator Anagosa Dolabra. So he’s nervous going alone to a murder scene and examining it for evidence. But he’s an engraver, altered to have an eidetic memory. The mode of death is horrifying and unusual enough that the investigation kicks up more questions than answers. When several other people die in the same manner in a city close to the sea walls, they go to investigate. But the wet season has started, and with the rains come monstrous titans, whose rampaging path has not always been stopped by the walls.
This is a murder mystery set in a very unique fantasy world. The first few chapters require a LOT of concentration, as you’re learning about the characters, the world, and the murder. Once the story moved to Talagray I found things easier to keep track of and really started enjoying the complexity of the case.
The Empire is large and complex. The book gives a real feel for the beaurocracy the underpins its workings and how important maintenance and the Legionnaires that man the walls keep it safe. I loved learning about the Sublimes and how various people have been altered to do specific jobs. I’d love to learn more about Apoths and their work in later books.
Dinios is dyslexic and needs to keep that fact hidden. His inability to easily read and write causes some problems with his investigations. He’s a serious young man and believes in the importance of what he’s doing. He notices everything, making him the perfect protagonist for a mystery novel.
Ana’s clearly autistic, and it’s interesting seeing how her direct questions and observations disconcert people. She absorbs a lot of varied information and is able to see connections others miss.
I appreciated that you’re given all the information the investigators have, so it pays to pay close attention. I found the case fascinating, with several interconnected parts, and enjoyed trying to piece things together on my own. I managed to figure out several things before they were revealed, which is always fun.
If you’re looking for a very different fantasy world and like a good mystery, pick this up.
Pros: lots of twists, great characters, interesting magic system
Cons:
Three years have passed since the events at the Mountain. Orso, Berenice, Sancia and Gregor have created a library for scrivers in Foundryside. But after celebrating a major acquisition, Valeria, the hierophantic construct, warns them that Crasedes Magnus, first hierophant, is being reborn. The gang jumps into action, using their various skills to stop the most powerful entity in existence from enacting his plan.
This is a real rollercoaster of a read. There are so many twists as the group faces off against several powerful enemies. I was really shocked by some of things that happened.
The characters were great and felt fully developed. Berenice and Sancia have such a loving relationship. While it was unfortunate seeing Gregor’s pain, I appreciated that his unresolved trauma was dealt with.
The author continues to do interesting things with the unique magic system. I loved seeing the various ways twinning could be used.
This book didn’t wrap us as nicely as the previous one, nor does it end on a similar positive note. While it’s not exactly a cliffhanger, it will leave you wishing the third book in the series was already out.
Pros: thought-provoking, interesting characters, good social commentary
Cons: lots of adult content
In a future America, the hit reality TV show is Vigilance, where active shooters are sent into unprepared locations to see if the people there have what it takes to survive.
This novella is told through the perspectives of two people. First is John McDean, a marketing man and head of Vigilance’s production team. The second is Delyna, a bartender whose patrons are hyped to watch the next episode of their favourite show.
Don’t pick this up if you don’t want to read the following: mass shootings, excessive swearing, and masturbation. While not as violent and profane as some books (possibly due to its shorter length), there’s a lot of adult content here.
What’s also here is some actual reasons behind why such a show is popular and what that says about the people who would watch it. Murder as reality TV (or just people being hunted for sport) isn’t new in the SF field. But quite often the violence is left unexamined. Yes, there’s often a vague hand wave to the fact that it’s a form of oppression, but Battle Royale is one of the few stories I can point to (and I’ve read/seen quite a few of these in long and short form) that actually posits a reason for why such a show is put on in the first place (though Battle Royale had a very different reason for it than Vigilance). Not only does Vigilance make you think about the story and society in general (especially today’s gun culture in the US and all of its mass shootings), it works to make the violence in the story - which could otherwise be gratuitous - deeply uncomfortable and horrifying instead of entertaining. These aren’t characters in a book fingering their guns. These are your neighbours, your friends, your family members.
Delyna’s got some great scenes, especially once the TV show starts. Her story is where the social commentary really shines, in several ways.
It’s short enough to read in one sitting, but will stick with you long after.
Three years ago Sancia Grado was a slave. Now she’s a skilled thief, hired to pull off a very difficult job. The payout means she can finally get a physiquere to fix the scar on her head and remove the metal plate beneath it that was scrived to allow her to hear the thoughts of every object she touches. But the item she steals is connected to the Occidentals, also known as hierophants, those who became like gods, able to use scrivings to change reality itself. Suddenly the plate in her head’s the least of her worries.
This book was amazing. I’ve only mentioned Sancia’s plot thread, though there are several others that intersect with hers once the book gets going. She’s a thoroughly engaging protagonist, and while her scrived state makes her fairly powerful in some respects, that’s balanced by the pain speaking with objects causes her.
I absolutely loved Clef. He’s such a fun character, coming out with all the sarcastic, swearing, responses people would love to use but don’t because they want to be polite. The book does have quite a lot of swearing, which I sometimes found jarring and other times thought fit the situation nicely.
The worldbuilding was intricate and detailed, with several layers to it. The main setting is the city with it’s four campos and the commons, but other locations are mentioned. History comes mostly in the form of mythology - which different sources report in different ways.
The magic is unique and hard to describe in few words. It’s remarkably… logical, though it takes some time to wrap your brain around what the people are doing.
The plot is interesting, with several threads wrapping around each other. There is some downtime to get to know the characters and let them figure out their next moves, but the majority of the book is one daring break in or escape after another.
As I said, it’s an excellent book. If you’re looking for a unique fantasy novel, I highly recommend this.
Pros: emotional punch, multi-layered plot, great characters
Cons:
It’s been thirteen years since Sigrud last saw Shara Komayd, but the news of her assassination still hits him hard. When he goes looking for those who killed her, he stumbles into a series of plots started years past. He also has to locate and protect her adopted daughter, Tatyana, from Shara’s enemies.
This is the third book in the Divine Cities trilogy. While it was possible to read book two of this series as a standalone, the personal connections and plot twists of book three require having read at least the first book, though I’d recommend reading both before starting this one. Knowing the close connection between Sigrud and Shara is what propels the first half of this book, with Mulaghesh making an appearance and Signe’s name showing up several times. But it’s Shara’s presence that infuses the story, and Sigrud’s regrets regarding his treatment of the women in his life that completes it.
In many ways this book takes the plot of City of Stairs and brings it full circle, explaining some of the mysteries that book left open as well as some of the mysteries surrounding Sigrud himself.
I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Sigrud as the main point of view character considering how straightforward he is. But he’s quite fascinating once you get into his mind. And while he isn’t the planner that Shara was, he’s quite intelligent and figures things out pretty fast.
It would have been nice to get to know Tatyana better, but I loved Ivanya. It’s strange seeing the future of a fantasy world, and seeing how people affected by the great events in one book pick up the pieces of their lives - or transform themselves completely - because of them. Ivanya is cool under pressure, having prepared for years for what’s coming.
The plot has several layers to it, some of them get pulled back quickly, while others take a while to be revealed.
This is a brilliant end to a brilliant series, and I’m not ashamed to say that it had me in tears several times.
Pros: brilliant world-building, fascinating characters, intricate plot, thought provoking
Cons:
Prime Minister Shara Komayd calls General Mulaghesh out of retirement to ostensibly do a ‘vacation tour’ in order to keep her pension. In reality, she’s being sent to check out a mysterious metal discovered in Voortyashtan that has potentially Divine qualities, and the disappearance of the last operative who was sent to investigate it. Voortayshtan’s harbour is currently being cleared out by a company from the United Dreyling States, who need this contract to keep their struggling economy afloat. Meanwhile, the commander of the military base there, a man Mulaghesh served under during the Summer of Black Rivers, has to navigate through local tribal politics. Then a grisly murder takes place.
This novel is set several years after The City of Stairs, but while some characters overlap, you don’t have to have read the first book to understand and enjoy this one (though the first book was absolutely brilliant, so you really should read it). You’re told in broad strokes what Shara’s been up to in the intervening years, but this is really Mulaghesh’s story. Sigrud becomes a big player later in the book, but again, nothing from the first book is required to understand this story or the characters.
A LOT happens in this book. There are numerous plots interwoven, and they’re all fascinating. The world itself is wonderfully real. The politics are complex - in every nation - the characters are products of their lands, cultures, families, and pasts - especially their regrets.
Mulaghesh is a wonderful protagonist, and not one seen very often. She’s an older woman, one who’s had a hard life and who understand the difficult choices made in war. She curses, she drinks, she smokes cigarillos and she’s forthright and honest. She’s also quite clever, figuring out several difficult mysteries. And she has nightmares about the time she served and the things she did during her years of service.
Signe, in command of the harbour reconstruction, is also a great character, dedicated to her job and helping her nation rise above its recent past of piracy. She’s another hard and clever woman, but very different from Mulaghesh. She’s also had a difficult life, but has chosen to use her time to make a better future for everyone.
It’s great seeing non-European based fantasy. This book is engrossing and will make you think about war, soldiers, politics and more.
Robert Jackson Bennett's brilliant City of Stairs came out yesterday. It's good. Go read it.
On twitter, while mentioning the book, someone pointed out this video Bennett did a few years ago. So I watched it, and couldn't stop laughing. It's a kind of book trailer. Alas the book isn't real.
Pros: intricate world-building, fascinating plot, diverse characters, thought provoking
Cons:
Three hundred years ago the people of Saypur rebelled against the Continent, killing its Gods and enslaving the populace as they had been enslaved. Continental history has been suppressed and any mention of the Gods and Their Miracles is considered a criminal act. With tensions high in the ancient capital of Bulikov, it’s not surprising when a Saypuri professor is killed while studying the history of the Continent. Shara Thivani, an intelligence officer with an unhealthy interest in said history, goes there to investigate, and finds more than a simple murder.
While the content and scope are decidedly different, the closest parallel to this book I can think of is Dune by Frank Herbert. Instead of a distant planetary system in the future, City of Stairs deals with gods and an imperialistic past, but the weight of its history and the intricacy of the plots left me thinking, numerous times, of Dune. This was likely helped by Bennett’s use of quotations from historical sources and politicians at the start of each chapter, something Dune employed to help disseminate information without resorting to info dumps. If you want a more modern comparison, then Mad Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead comes to mind.
The book captures your attention with the troubling and thought provoking first quote from The Book of the Red Lotus, one of many holy books for one of the Continent’s 6 Divinities:
And Olvos said to them: “Why have you done this, my children? Why is the sky wreathed with smoke? Why have you made war in far places, and shed blood in strange lands?”
And they said to Her: “You blessed us as Your people, and we rejoiced, and were happy, and they were willful and ignorant of You. They would not open their ears to Your songs, or lay Your words upon their tongues. So we dashed them upon the rocks and threw down their houses and shed their blood and scattered them to the winds, and we were right to do so. For we are Your people. We carry Your blessings. We are Yours, and so we are right. Is this not what You said?”
And Olvos was silent.
The idea that the Continent’s people were chosen of the Gods is central to the book. What does it mean when you’re backed by divine right? And conversely, what does it mean to those you enslave, that they are not? Turning the tables on their oppressors, the Saypuri have become what they once hated. It’s clear that despite the time that has passed both sides are still heavily influenced by their past, even if the people no longer have a proper understanding of their history. Old tensions and hatreds cloud modern judgement and ensure that the people of Saypuri keep those on the Continent in poverty, rather than letting them rebuild and start over.
But that’s not the only thought provoking issue the book goes into. It’s hard to read this book and not compare the philosophies it espouses to the conflict in Gaza*, though the book would have been finished long before the fighting there started up again. My original thoughts were that the book drew on experiences from the British occupation of India, though I don’t know enough about that to know if any specifics were cribbed. The book has a ‘what if India managed to rebel earlier and ended up subjugating England’ feel to it. Saypuri character names sounded Indian to me, which helped this impression. Though the Continental names sound Russian, so Bennett may have been cribbing from several real world occupations, rather than just one. Or none at all. Regardless, I love fantasy that makes me think about the real world and its history. I’ve not studied colonialism in any detail so this book was fantastic in that it helped me understand more of the complexities surrounding it including the underlying resentments, the hold the past has on you and the inability descendants have with moving on.
Though the core cast of the book is fairly small, there’s a large enough supporting cast to give the book a grand, epic, feel. The cast is nicely diverse, with several people having visible disabilities (a limp, a missing eye, a facial scar), there’s a prominent homosexual who must hide what he is in the still ultra-conservative Bulikov, and the people of Saypur, we are told, are a dark skinned people. The Saypuri are an equal opportunity country with women in numerous positions of power, though the protagonist is still referred to as ‘my girl’ by an older gentleman of her nation, showing that not everyone there is progressive.
The book did a remarkable job of showing world building through subtleties rather than overt references or gratuitous scenes. For example, rather than have someone raped, the protagonist is quietly asked if a particular official’s female servant is pregnant, implying both that the official was one to use his position of authority to get sex, but also that women of the subjugated race face these kinds of dangers/pressures.
This is a brilliant novel, the kind of book aspiring authors should read over and over again to see how Bennett made his characters and places come alive. If you like intense world-building of the style used in Frank Herbert’s Dune or Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead, pick this up. If you’ve been looking for diverse characters, pick this up. Seriously, pick this book up. You won’t regret it.
* Since not everyone’s familiar with the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, the Israelite people were promised a land (modern day Israel) as long as they were righteous. To claim the land they first had to remove the people inhabiting it. Over time the country was conquered by successive groups and the majority relocated and eventually scattered. While none of that directly contributes to the current conflict, there’s a lot of religious underpinnings that indirectly affect things (Zionism being just one of them).
I can’t remember exactly when I realized this, but when I was a kid and was just starting to read on my own, I started to notice that some stories did something to me. Not all of them did it, only a few. It was sort of like just opening up the hood of a car and poking around in it, rearranging a few gears or so. The change wasn’t always huge, and it wasn’t always a good change, but it was there. I figured that I’d like to do that, maybe, that I could someday reach out and poke people and make them feel the same thing I was feeling, or see the things I saw, if only for a second or two. It seemed like a nice idea.
> In the books you’ve written, who is you favourite character and why?
I’m not going to mention any works in progress, ‘cause that’s cheating, so I’d have to say Connelly, the protagonist of Mr. Shivers. He’s got a watchful inwardness that I find extremely appealing. He’d sit on a hill for days watching what’s in front of him, just figuring out what he wanted to do. And he’s also an extremely wounded creature, something so spiritually marred that he can barely move or speak. Somehow I knew exactly what he’d do, or what he’d say and how he’d say it. He was the easiest thing in the world to write.
> If you could live in your fantasy/sf world, would you? Would you live in somebody else’s?
Oh man, absolutely not. The fantasy world I created is meant mostly as a crucible, something with immense pressures and temperatures so you can put a person in it and see what they’re really made of. Pare them down so you can find out what makes them tick. There’s always that urge to push ourselves to extremes to see what shows up in us, but what if you chose wrong? What if something showed up you didn’t want to know was there? Under the right circumstances, that can happen all too easily.
If I could live in any fantasy world, I suppose Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere would be an interesting place. Sure, there’s a hundred ways you can die, but you can say the same about normal life.
> What was the first novel that you wrote and how long did it take to write it?
This is my first novel, and I started it somewhere when I was twenty-two and finished it when I was twenty-three. Writing doesn’t stop there, though – it seems to keep going on, whether it’s in editing or for promotions. A lot of the time I feel like I’m still writing it. Maybe it won’t ever stop.
> What was the most fun book signing, convention, etc. you’ve attended and why?
I went to the World Fantasy Convention last October, and that was a hoot and a holler. I sort of feel like I’m out on my own a lot of the time, writing and reading the stuff I do, so it was nice to meet fans of all shapes and sizes and chatter on with them. Also, they had parties on the upper floors about every night, so if you wanted to pound absinthe and rub elbows with Jeff Vandermeer and Garth Nix, you had plenty of chances.
> When and where do you write?
When I wrote Mr. Shivers, I was a tech support agent for The Home Depot, a home-supply store. It was a call center, but nothing genuinely technological – sometimes I got the impression that when they needed new hires they just swung by a bus station and asked if anybody wanted to make a buck. My job was supporting the paint machines, which took a painfully long time to reboot, anywhere between five to twenty minutes, and since rebooting was the first line of defense, we had a lot of waiting during a call. So, whenever that down time happened, I’d open up Mr. Shivers and just start pounding away on it. I’d say about forty to sixty percent of that book was written waiting for the damn paint machines to start. Maybe that’s colored the book, I can’t tell.
Nowadays I write at home. I try to write in silence, while over-caffeinated. It helps my mind, but it’s rough on my heart.
> What’s the best/worst thing about writing?
The worst thing is that writing is sort of like building a house from the inside-out in the dark. You have a general idea where you want the living room to go and what kind of wallpaper to use, but you can’t be sure if you actually got it where you want it or not. You’ve got to wait for someone else to come along so they can see it from the street and tell you what you’ve done, or even if it’s going to stand up on its own.
Sometimes it turns out you were actually building a cabin instead of a mansion. Other times you’ve put the toilet in the kitchen. And sometimes you’ve just knocked it out of the park when you thought you just had a real fire hazard on your hands. It’s hard to tell.
Sometimes you can, though. Sometimes you can just feel it working, fitting together, becoming a whole. That’s the best thing about it.
> What is something you didn’t know about the publishing industry before you had your first book published?
In these internetty days, you can do everything from your home or office. This means you can get a book published almost purely by email, and only talk to people on the phone a handful of times. That surprised me. I bet it’s easy to have a real career going and never see your agent or editor face-to-face. I’ve only seen mine once for both.
After a while, it kind of feels like being in a shack out in the middle of nowhere with a telegraph and trying to keep track of the stock market, or a war. You get these odd little messages letting you know what’s happening, but you never see it in person. Sometimes you wonder if it’s actually going on, or if it’s a hoax. When the box of hardcover books with your name on them arrives you can be pretty sure it’s actually happening, but I was still suspicious.
> Do you have any advice for hopeful authors?
Read widely. Read everything, and not just in the genre you want to write in. There’s some really interesting stuff going on out there in the corner of bookstores, and it’d be a shame to miss it.
> How do you discipline yourself to write?
It’s more about how I discipline myself not to. For me, it’s an addiction. Every time I get an idea I pull out the Blackberry and send myself an email. One day my wife’s going to throw that damn thing out the window. It’ll be interesting to see if I jump after it, if she does.
To be published on January 15th, 2010, Mr. Shivers is a hard book for me to review. I loved it. The writing was superb. The main character developed over time making the ending the only one possible.
So what's the problem? The ending was predictable. In fact, I predicted it about a quarter of the way through the novel. Is that bad? Not necessarily. The inevitability of the protagonist's ... end (since I don't want to spoil the book) creates tension in the reader that really forces you to keep reading. It reminded me of a story by Chaucer. I'll let you figure out which one. Ultimately the ending left me a bit unsettled and not entirely satisfied.
And yet, this was a book I COULD NOT PUT DOWN. Even though I wasn't interested in depression America, I found Connelly, the protagonist, so intriguing I had to read on. And Mr. Bennett brings the era to life, both in terms of the living conditions and the belief systems of the time.
Mr. Shivers has dome something bad. Several bad things actually and Connelly intends to make him pay for one of those things. While Connelly tracks him across America, becoming a hobo on the train lines, he encounters others who want to make Mr. Shivers pay.
The real question is not so much whether Connelly will find him or not - he's determined to do so or die trying - but whether Mr. Shivers is even human, and therefore able to be stopped.
Try not to read the back cover as it gives away a piece of information that the book holds in reserve until later in the story, doling out bits of Connelly's past as he continues his quest.
And make sure you have some uninterrupted time in which to enjoy the read. And remember, though it's not particularly gory, it is a horror novel, so the unsettled feeling at the end is probably intentional.
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