(Insert Memorable Quote Here): Please Excuse Me While I Try To FIND One.

I’ll just step right out here and admit for all the world that Sci-fi is not my typical genre. I always said I like to read a bit of everything, but I didn’t read any Douglas Adams until this year, and if someone recommended a novel that was set in the future, I pretended I had had my library card revoked. Until sj.

sj has introduced me to so much sci-fi I never thought I would like. The Dresden Files, Ready Player One, the Firefly television series – I am still not ready to talk about that one. It was only 14 episodes long but affected me very deeply. All I can say right now is that I would spend the rest of my life with a Malcolm Reynolds action figure under my pillow. Ahem. Excuse me a moment. I seem to have something in my eye…

Anyway, if sj offers it, I tend to read it. Eventually. Enter Zenn Scarlett by Christian Schoon. She had received this book along with a few others free as an ARC and asked if I’d be interested in one of them. She even let me choose because that’s the kind of friend she is. I picked the one about  a vet on Mars. A vet! On Mars!  Weird creatures, a whole new world to learn about. What’s not to like, right? Turns out, quite a bit, actually.

I’ll start with the good parts. The world-building was solid. Granted, I have not read a ton in this genre, but the setting was unique enough to please me. The author does a great job with the science. It’s all plausible. Underneath it all, the plot line was decent, though a bit predictable, with a bit of a mystery thrown in. I could relate to the protagonist at least a little – a young woman trying to establish herself in a difficult career. There were enough setbacks to make her realistic with enough successes that I didn’t write her off as hopeless. I could root for her. Sort of.

That’s just it. I re-read what I have written so far. I know. This review is wishy-washy. So was the book. Here’s the real truth.  I didn’t care one way or the other about either animal or character. I was never sure if Hamish, a giant talking bug and the one creature I actually liked, was supposed to be comic relief. I never laughed. I did want to hug his little thorax a time or two, but as a character he just wasn’t developed enough. There’s a scene at the end that, with a few rewrites, could bring me to my feet cheering. But not as it is currently written.

The only strong feeling this novel evoked was antipathy revolving around one creature. Katie the little rat-creature-thing that Zenn kept as a pet gave me the ever-loving creeps. She was written to be cute and cuddly and maybe with her own line of plush if a movie gets made and all. But I skimmed the scenes she was in.  First of all, her name was Katie. I adore that name, but everyone else is Fane or Mai or Otha, so the name “Katie” jangled. And then there was the signing. Like, sign language. I was bothered by that so much. Rikkasets are supposed to have intelligence comparable to chimpanzees, but she apparently understood concepts like “soon” and “later.” I questioned the ethics of keeping her as a pet if she had such mental capacity.

The plot was there, but it was muddied. Unnecessary bits need to be cut to help the pacing, which is painfully slow at times. The author tries to avoid info dumps by explaining everything in dialog but still ends up telling, not showing. I read that the author was a former script writer, so his over-reliance on dialog makes total sense. But knowing that doesn’t make me like the book more.

My overall impression is that this book could have done with another round of edits. Which author compared novels to sculpture? Stephen King? Anyway, the comparison is spot on. The elements in Zenn are there. Knock off a bit more marble here and there and give it a thorough polish. Zenn Scarlett could be perhaps not a masterpiece, but a solid work to be proud of. As it is, I give it three stars out of five. The solid writing and world-building are what rescues it in the end.

Zenn Scarlett will be out April 30 in US/Canada/ebook, everywhere else May 2.  For ordering information, please visit the Strange Chemistry page.

“Life is nothing more than a slow descent into madness.”

Oh, Lee Battersby.  You sure showed me, huh?  When I said I enjoyed but didn’t love The Corpse-Rat King last August, it’s like you took it as a PERSONAL CHALLENGE and decided to write a book you knew I would LOOOOOVE.

What?  That’s not what happened?  Oh.  Hm.

Well, anyway.

For the rest of you – if you’re too lazy to click that link up there, The Corpse-Rat King was the first of Battersby’s Marius don Hellespont novels, in which a downright scoundrel is mistaken for the King of the Dead, and the only way he can extricate himself from the situation is to find them a new King.

The Marching Dead picks up several years later, after Marius has settled into a staid rural existence with Keth, his One True Love.

Life is decent, if boring, and Marius has learned to derive pleasure from the small things – like aiming the cat at the stickerbushes he’s planted outside the window.

Here’s where this gets difficult for me to write.  There are literally TENS OF THINGS I want to discuss, but to do so would mean spoiling the crap out of this book for you guys.  And since Angry Robot was kind enough to avoid spoilers in their blurb, I don’t even really feel comfortable wading too far into those waters.

Since I’m not being a spoilery asshat, here are some things you can look forward to, should you decide to pick up The Marching Dead:

• Real and true ASSASSIN NUNS, not those stupid assassin nuns I’ve written about before that don’t really do any assassinating.
• Too many eff bombs for my reader to accurately count.
• Some kind of icky sex.
• “You’re fucked.  Love Dad”
• Some of the best fantasy worldbuilding I’ve encountered in a very long time, with nary an infodump in sight.
• A particularly poignant scene that made me cry my eyes out.
• Tons of laughs, many of them of the uncomfortable variety.

One of the things I loved most about The Marching Dead is that it works well on its own.  I don’t think you need to’ve read The Corpse-Rat King to appreciate it at all.  It’s difficult to find books in a series lately that effectively standalone, but this one definitely does.  That’s not to say I don’t think you should go read the first RIGHT THIS SECOND to prepare yourself for this one (US and ebook release March 26, everywhere else April 4) because I totally do.

There.  Now you have your reading assignment for this week.  Go read the first book, then pre-order this one.

I need someone I can discuss them with.

(Thanks for the eARC, Angry Robot!)

Book Review – The Mad Scientist’s Daughter

“Ugh, Amy.  This book is a ROMANCE.  I did not KNOW it was a romance when I started reading it.  I DON’T LIKE ROMANCES!”

That’s a paraphrasing of an email I sent when I was about a quarter of the way through Cassandra Rose Clarke’s The Mad Scientist’s Daughter.

I’ve talked before about how I’m not a big fan of romances (like real romance, not the ridiculous PNR stuff that is closer to erotica than romance, and anyone who thinks it’s truly romance is effing delusional) in the books that I read, so I was really disappointed to find that this book was less about the Mad Scientist’s Daughter’s Android Tutor (which is what the blurb would have you believe) and more about…relationships.

Wow, that’s a lot of parenthetical asides, even for me.

So, since I like it when Heather D. reads my reviews, I’m trying really hard not to wade into spoiler territory here, which makes this difficult to write.

It’s not only difficult to write because I don’t want to spoil things for any of you, but because I’m kind of still in the process of digesting the things I read.

I wanted to like this book when I requested the eGalley, then I DIDN’T want to like it when I discovered it was more romance than sf, and then I grudgingly found myself falling in love with the story.

I never say that things are beautifully written, but this book was.

I rarely weep while reading, but this book made me ugly cry more than once.

I don’t generally rate books that I found to be triggery so high, but here this one is with more than 4 stars (4.4/5 according to Mandy‘s review rubric).

Sorry for being so vague, but this is one I’d like you all to discover for yourselves.

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter will be available in print (US and Canada) and ebook (everywhere) January 29th.  The UK print version drops February 7th.  You can find more information (along with how to pre-order) over at Angry Robot.

Thanks to Angry Robot for the review galley.  This book was exactly what I needed this week, even if I didn’t know it when I started reading.

Book Review – Nexus

Bluh.  I feel like I shouldn’t even be calling this a review, because I’m not sure it’ll end up being one.

I was way into the idea of this book very early on because of that oh-so-very-intriguing tagline.

Mankind gets an upgrade

I mean…right?  Yeah, that totally sounds like my kind of thing, y’know?

AND THE COVER!  [swoon]  Seriously, that’s an amazing cover and contributed to my whole sense of “ZOMG MUST READ THIS NAO!”

The titular (heh) Nexus is a nano-drug that allows for mind-to-mind communication, and the first few pages were kind of hilarious with our main character testing out the drug with programs that allow him to be a smooth lothario…only there’s a glitch that ends up – look, that part is pretty funny and I’m not going to ruin it for you.

…and it’s not like there weren’t other parts that were interesting, because really the story could have been pretty great.

I did say “could have been” though, I hope you noticed that.

The ideas presented were new enough that I found myself extremely disappointed when the story devolved into just another spy-thriller-zomg the government is EEEEEVIL novel and I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t just finished Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series, which was very similar thematically (but with zombies instead of nanotechnology).

I felt like the fact that much of our (as readers) knowledge of this future society came to us through infodumps taking the form of “interviews” and “briefings” and that was just sloppy worldbuilding.  No, really.  If I’m reading something where each line is denoted with who is speaking, I’m going to get annoyed and bored REALLY FAST.  I think that’s why it took me SO LONG to finish.  Nexus was a book that I kind of enjoyed while I was reading it, but getting to the point of picking it up was a chore.

I didn’t hate it, I just couldn’t bring myself to care.  I read fiction to lose myself in the characters and worlds I’m reading, and I wasn’t able to do that with this one.  I probably won’t be picking up the sequel, but since I enjoyed the sciencey bits (in particular the notes at the end) more than I did the narrative, I’ll be checking out Ramez Naam‘s non-fiction title (More Than Human:  Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement) and I think I’ll find that to be more what I was expecting.  For realsies, I look forward to reading that one – so I’m not counting this as a loss since I wouldn’t have known about Naam’s non-fic if it weren’t for this book.

Would I recommend it?  At the beginning, I thought I’d be telling Trev and Yogs to read it, but now I’m not so sure.  If exposition doesn’t bother you and the thought of a futuristic spy thriller makes your knees weak, then definitely check it out.  If that doesn’t sound like your thing – don’t bother.  I’m not about to get all shouty about this one either way.

Thanks (once again) to Angry Robot for the eARC.  [crosses fingers that the next one will be more her cuppa]

Book Review – The Corpse-Rat King

One thing I didn’t really take into consideration when I decided to take some time off after Puttin’ the Blog in Balrog was the possibility of falling behind on my reviews.  I woke up this morning thinking “Oh, hey!  It’s release day!  Everyone can finally go buy Seven Wonders and Mockingbird!”  This was immediately followed by the thought “Crapcrapcrap, I totally forgot to review The Corpse-Rat King, which is ALSO OUT TODAY!”  What?  These aren’t the things you guys usually think of immediately upon waking?  Hm.

Anyway, Lee Battersby’s The Corpse-Rat King.   I downloaded the eARC and started it shortly after it became available for the Robot Army.  The blurb sounded promising, and it was another pretty, shiny cover.  That’s one thing I can always guarantee the Angry Robot folks will get right, a cover that will suck me in, because – yes, I admit it – I’m totally shallow that way.

Marius don Hellespont is a corpse-rat.  He hangs around battlefields, waiting to pick the pockets of the people who weren’t lucky enough to survive.  We learn not long into the book that this is just one of the many hats Marius has worn throughout his life.  One of the pockets he picks is that of a king, and due to a misunderstanding (in which Marius pretends to be dead to avoid capture AND lets his apprentice be taken captive and killed) the dead of the underworld think HE’S a king and can take over the job of ruling them.  Cos, they need a king in the underworld, what hey.  Obviously, Marius is no king (even if he’s got a crown in his pocket) and convinces the dead they need to let him go to find them a REAL KING – something he has no intention of doing.

If you click the image above, you’ll be taken to the goodreads review page and can see that almost all of the other reviews absolutely LOVED the beginning of this book, which made me feel like maybe I was missing something.  I thought it was okay, but not great, and almost put this book away for good without finishing it.  I read two or three other books while I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to finish before I heaved a great sigh and decided to pull up my big girl pants and soldier on.

I’m glad I did.

While I found the beginning slow (to the point of almost adding it to my DNF shelf) and had a difficult time overcoming my aversion to what I thought was overuse of the world “whilst,” (sorry, that word bugs me like no other) the rest of the book makes up for the shortcomings of the first few chapters.

How could I fail to like something that features inadvertent cannibalism and a mad (dead) king that loved his favourite horse a little too much?  I couldn’t – fail to like it, that is.

Seriously, I’m glad I kept reading because it really did get better after what I thought was a slow beginning.  I LOVED the final third.  Again, though, if you take a look at the other reviews, you’ll see that most people seem to agree that the beginning was good, no matter their opinion of the rest of the book.  Maybe I was just taking too many Contrary Pills the day I started, or something.  I don’t know.

It’s not a perfect book, and I’m not running to add it to my favourites shelf, but it was definitely good enough that I’ll read the next book by Mr Battersby.

You can read an excerpt from the book and find pricing and sales information over at Angry Robot.  Like I said at the beginning of this rambling review, The Corpse-Rat King is out today in the US and will be available everywhere else Sept. 6.

3.5/5 stars – I laughed quite a few times and enjoyed the references.  The flolloping made me happy.

Kate, I think you’ll like this one.  Art, I’m almost positive you will like it.  Everyone else, your mileage may vary.