Tag: Books: Science Fiction

Review: All the Birds in the Sky

Posted 27 May, 2020 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

All the Birds in the Sky
By: Charlie Jane Anders
Format/Source: eBook; courtesy of Tor.com reading club

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.

I’ve long been following io9.com back when Charlie Jane Anders was editor of the site. So naturally I was curious when I heard she had written a book and was stepping down from that site to write full time.

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Review: Plum Rains

Posted 8 May, 2020 by Lianne in Uncategorized / 1 Comment

Plum Rains
By: Andromeda Romano-Lax
Format/Source: Paperback; my purchase

2029: In Japan, a historically mono-cultural nation, childbirth rates are at a critical low and the elderly are living increasingly long lives. This population crisis has precipitated a mass immigration of foreign medical workers from all over Asia—as well as the development of refined artificial intelligence to step in where humans fall short.

In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse who has been working in Japan for the last five years, is the caretaker for Sayoko Itou, an intensely private woman about to turn 100 years old. Angelica is a dedicated nurse, working night and day to keep her paperwork in order, obey the strict labor laws for foreign nationals, study for her ongoing proficiency exams, and most of all keep her demanding client happy. But one day Sayoko receives a present from her son: a cutting-edge robot caretaker that will educate itself to anticipate Sayoko’s every need. Angelica wonders if she is about to be forced out of her much-needed job by an inanimate object—one with a preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it. While Angelica is fighting back against the AI with all of her resources, Sayoko is becoming more and more attached to the machine. The old woman is hiding many secrets of her own—and maybe now she’s too old to want to keep them anymore.

In a tour de force tapestry of science fiction and historical fiction, Andromeda Romano-Lax presents a story set in Japan and Taiwan that spans a century of empire, conquest, progress, and destruction. Plum Rains elegantly broaches such important contemporary conversations as immigration, the intersection of labor and technology, the ecological fate of our planet and the future of its children.

I first heard of Andromeda Romano-Lax when I picked up her first book, The Spanish Bow (review), which is still a favourite read of mine. Since then I would pick up whatever is her latest book when I come across it. So I had no idea this was her latest book until I was browsing Indigo one time.

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Review: The Consuming Fire

Posted 11 October, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)
By: John Scalzi
Format/Source: eBook; my purchase

The Interdependency, humanity’s interstellar empire, is on the verge of collapse. The Flow, the extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible, is disappearing, leaving entire star systems stranded. When it goes, human civilization may go with it—unless desperate measures can be taken.

Emperox Grayland II, the leader of the Interdependency, is ready to take those measures to help ensure the survival of billions. But nothing is ever that easy. Arrayed before her are those who believe the collapse of the Flow is a myth—or at the very least, an opportunity that can allow them to ascend to power.

While Grayland prepares for disaster, others are preparing for a civil war, a war that will take place in the halls of power, the markets of business and the altars of worship as much as it will take place between spaceships and battlefields. The Emperox and her allies are smart and resourceful, but then so are her enemies. Nothing about this power struggle will be simple or easy… and all of humanity will be caught in its widening gyre.

Yaaaaah, book two! I enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, The Collapsing Empire (review), so I was curious to see how things panned out for the characters after the end of the book. Contains some spoilers ahead!

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Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War

Posted 20 September, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 4 Comments

This is How You Lose the Time War
By: Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Format/Source: Paperback; my purchase

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters, and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.

The title first piqued my attention, followed by the premise. So I had to pre-order a copy for myself.

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Review: The Collapsing Empire

Posted 19 July, 2019 by Lianne in Books / 1 Comment

The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)
By: John Scalzi
Format/Source: eBook courtesy of the Tor.com book club

Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible — until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war — and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Flow is eternal — but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals — a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency — are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

I don’t read nearly as much Scalzi as I should lol. Then this book popped up in Tor.com’s First-In-a-Series book club (or whatever it’s called…it’s something along those lines) so I decided to check it out 🙂

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