Recommended for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's work, fans of supernatural horror literature who are looking for a fresh voice in a new location. Yes, Recommended for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's work, fans of supernatural horror literature who are looking for a fresh voice in a new location. Yes, we have the isolated house with strange goings-on, but it is this strangeness that Moreno-Garcia delivers with cunning technique. There is a subtlety that she introduces the "weird" into the mundane and before you realize it, you are questioning reality in this story....wisps of eeriness at the edge of perception. Like a classic "gothic" novel, Mexican Gothic is a slow burn with simmering atmosphere...to be read with patience to savor the moments. The namesake of a character is a direct reference to this work's aesthetic antecedents : Taboada. Carlos Enrique Taboada was a director of Mexican horror films from the 60's and 70's. Here is an article Moreno-Garcia wrote more than 10 years ago about this figure: https://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/bl...
I have read and enjoyed Moreno-Garcia doing science fiction, fantasy, horror/weird. This novel, following last year's phenomenal Gods of Jade and Shadow, is a testament of her sustained quality of late. If you are looking for more Moreno-Garcia in this mode of horror/weird, check out more of her work, including editorship at her publishing company: https://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/...more
Sheffield seems to have a quiet reputation as a hard sf author, publishing regularly in Analog in the late 70s and 80s. Although he doesn’t come up to Sheffield seems to have a quiet reputation as a hard sf author, publishing regularly in Analog in the late 70s and 80s. Although he doesn’t come up too much anymore in discussions of the field, that could be my own echo chamber. I was intrigued by this and spent a few weeks looking into his work, seeking out something to try. Unfortunately, Summertide didn’t work for me.
I can try to work out what was there, what I like and what I didn’t like….But I still can’t figure out why it took me a week to read a 250 page paperback. This was the first book in a series called Heritage, which is lauded as one of his lasting achievements. The central plot device was the catastrophic effects of a tidally locked planet during…summertide. This conceit is used like a hangin carrot for the reader, many characters continuously warning about it. These passing comments did not create the high stakes effect for me it was going for. Perhaps I didn’t feel for the character..There were a handful of them all with their own motives down on this planet, Quake. The final climax seemed easy dialed in.
The space opera dressing was there with distant humans on the arm of the a spiral galaxy. The alien’s sense functionality was interesting, although it still didn’t make them “alien” enough for me. I appreciate that they needed a “translator”. The whole ancient artifact thing really got my attention and I thoroughly enjoyed how this was treated in in the text. Chapters alternated with entries from a scientific catalog, each artifact from the vanished alien race. This has narrative echoes throughout the whole book. It made for some wonder and speculation and got points with me for creative textual treatment.
There is evidence that Sheffield or this particular series of books has some influence on other hard sf authors. I recall some particular things here done (better) in Alastair Reynolds. In this series, humans leaving earth and colonizing space is known as The Expansion. It is could be easily suggested that this gave a spark to the name of the James S.A Corey project.
Underneath the BDO trope, space opera scope and the treatment of science as plausible grounds for how the universe in Summertide operates, there remains a pulp-adventure core to this. I can dig that. For what that is, this book was not bad. For me, it lacked that wide wonder of Banks’ Culture or the atmosphere of Revelation Space.
Maybe I’ll continue the series. Please fight me. I am open to more suggestions of Sheffield’s work. ...more
Humans travel to a new planet to explore and colonize only to discover that organic life is not what it appears. I enjoyed the biological science and Humans travel to a new planet to explore and colonize only to discover that organic life is not what it appears. I enjoyed the biological science and the social-political relations and discourse that were necessary to make this a plausible future colony. Each chapter is told from a new POV as each next generation advances. This device unfortunately made for an impermanent, fleeting connection with characters. There was one notable distinction. One that outlives each human: A sentient flora named Stevland. In 1979 there was an intriguing, but since forgotten soundtrack album called Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants made for a documentary based on the famous book about plant perception/sentience. That album was produced by a certain Stevland Morris, otherwise know as Stevie Wonder. Kudos to Sue Burke for that little detail....more
The setting is a space opera. So you are on this ship or that ship…going here and there across the galaxy. There’s cool alien tech, strange races, in The setting is a space opera. So you are on this ship or that ship…going here and there across the galaxy. There’s cool alien tech, strange races, intrigue with different factions vowing for their own interests, ect. ..There is no war going on here, per se, but there is some moments of conflict and aggression. I am personally interested in stories and novels set on a ship, but I don’t always need space battles and stuff like that all the time in my sf…..(please feel free to recommend!)
We are in the first person POV of an engineer, Haimey Dz, on a salvage mission with a small crew somewhere deep in the “scar” of “white space”. There is a great character in the form of a ship ai. With that, as well as the neuro- augmented, transhuman stuff, not to mention the political piece of “this society vs that society” , I was reminded of Banks’ Culture books, which I love dearly.
At its core, Ancestral Night deals with identity and memory. We slowly learn of Haimey’s backstory. We are told from the start about her origins with her feminist family “clade”. They raised her with ideologies that she has broken from but still continues to reconcile. She has been traumatized by witnessing her girlfriend’s death in suspicious circumstances -a story that unfolds itself. Haimey constantly confronts her past and debates with what is right and wrong. This moral ambiguity was a cleaver device that had me as a reader questioning what side she is on with increasing tension. There is also a centerpiece relationship that is developing with a character from another society with their inherent ideologies abound. We question both sides. And that dialogue is with the reader until the end of the story.
Ancestral Night reads slow like a classic social novel with internal monologues on the nature of many ideas and emotions and our main character working things out along the way. Haimey reads old books on the ship and mentions George Eliot’s Middlemarch and other people of 19th century letters. Maybe this voice was Bear’s deliberate project - who knows? I dug it. Sometime I scan through the pages of a book and if I see less dialogue marks and more pure narration, I am drawn in. Don't get me wrong, of course I enjoy reading dialogue. But when I see paragraphs and pages of a character ruminating on a subject to themselves or the reader, then this can be be a plus. Some authors can give details of moment to moment ongoings with no dialogue and as I reader I am engaged, if done well. Does this go without saying? It is a matter of skill if they can sustain such a voice without what others may criticized as a “slow slog”. That is the real talent of a writer, no? Kim Stanley Robinson has reminded me in interviews and through his work, that the novel has always been about day to day life. Now in Ancestral Night, we are on a ship going from one place to another. And going from place to place takes time….and time in this story is measured in “dias” and “ans”. And Bear does not hold back in bringing me engagement in those details and moments.
In SF I look for awe and wonder. I like some science technical stuff that I may not understand but makes it seem plausible. I need some social-politico-philosophical issues being grappled with to make the world feel lived-in and true. This one really delivered on all accounts. Chapter 10 and 11 included some sublime passages of awe and wonder that I seek in my sf. This was my first book by Elizabeth Bear. It was a great introduction. We are told this is a new series called White Space, but the story can clearly stand alone. I understand this has far ties to her Jacob’s Ladder series, but I didn’t feel I was missing anything. I definitely look forward to the second book, Machine. ...more
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P Djèlí Clark takes place in an alternate-1912 with airships and brass vessels and Cairo is at a cultural crossroads.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P Djèlí Clark takes place in an alternate-1912 with airships and brass vessels and magic. Now let me say, I get put off by the accoutrement of “steampunk” these days as that aesthetic has been done and done. Yet there is so much going on HERE in a non-Western setting that you can put all the preciously dour, Dickensonian, bronze-goggled, gas-lit, coal-black-London fog-Steampunk to rest.
Haunting of tram 015 is a FRESH TAKE.
Yes, we have mechanical calculators but we also have boilerplate automatons, clockwork djinns, Arabic occult lore, a Zar ceremony led by a revolutionary sheikha, and a plethora of Mid-Eastern sweets, treats and teas! There are cultural references from North Africa along the Silk Road to Central Asia enriching the world of this story that had me checking wikipedia and googling history. The setting becomes fully formed on its own read, but it is also shared world with Clark’s novelette, A Djinn in Cairo.
P Djèlí Clark has a way with both words and telling a story. At the sentence level he is descriptive and stylish. Narrative-wise, he can spin a rip roaring yarn. I gobbled up Black God’s Drums in one sitting…Enjoying its shadowy New Orleans with Haitian pirates, Orishas, voodoo, and all its leaping out of windows, rooftops, hidden alcove. So with the same pulp-like pace, complete with derring-do and panache, The Haunting of Tram Car 015 had my attention from go.
Two agents from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural are recruited for an investigation. Something is haunting a tram system. ("Actually its a telpher system" - but that's another point ;) Story sounds simple, but there are twists and turns that kept my interest for its 100 pages. These two agents, Hamed and Onsi, are distinct and particular. I really appreciated that they came from slightly different backgrounds and locations. For me as a western reader, I was already once removed from the cultural setting, but with this minutiae, now making me twice removed, pleasingly nuanced my ignorance. It was subtle characterization that did not give Hamed and Onsi a dynamic point of difference, but just reinforced how Cairo is a melting pot of cosmopolitanism. There’s social change brewing in the back ground-becoming-foreground of the story that I don’t want to reveal. But it surely gives The Haunting of Tram Car 015 an enriching, hopeful twist.
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