Utopia Hunters is the 3rd (out of 4) books in Somtow Sucharitkul's Chronicles of the High Inquest series, which I've been reading out of sequence... so for me this is the last book in the series, I am very sorry to say!
Bet let's start at the beginning. The copy I'm holding here sports a horrendous, sickly faux-fantasy cover. Like the rest of the series, too. I am not sure how Somtow - or these books for the matter! - deserved this. In the end this is the polar opposite of all the Fantasy which currently is masquerading as Science Fiction – this here is very clearly SF, but with just as clearly a (lurid) Fantasy cover, and a series name which also points in that direction...
The book displays a number of events in the run-up to the grand finale of The Darkling Wind (which I read as a stand-alone novel, not realising that it was part of a series – and yes, it works that way, too); most of which were told in the earlier volumes, but this time from a different point of view. It is structured around a number of stories of the inquest, told to Jenjen of the clan of Ir (Darkweavers). These contain a lot of the backstory to the entire cycle as well as stand-alone episodes, all designed to teach Jenjen (and the reader) the history of Ton Elloran, his musician friend Sajit, and to demonstrate the universe they live in and the High Inquest which rules/guides the Dispersal of Man, as told in the words of Sajit: “Man, a fallen being, needed wars to prevent stagnation, to prevent the heresy of utopia. But the Inquest, in its compassion, had taken all the guilt of war upon itself”
Here's my old review of an even older book - Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, a ‘grand book’ of fantastic fiction, providing an alternative history of the end of the 2nd World War, and the history V2/A4 rockets and the people infatuated with them.
The story starts shortly before the end of WWII, in a London bombarded by V2/A4 rockets. Portsman, manager of an organization that performs research in a number of areas (Pavlovian reactions. Para-normal activities and ESP. Statistical analysis of the V2 attack. Go figure…), keeps a map in his office showing the rocket impact sites. Tyrone Slothrop, an American Lieutenant in London, who was conditioned as baby to get an erection on hearing a bang (and not properly de-conditioned), keeps a map in his office, showing the locations of his female conquests in London. The maps match. Somehow Slothrop (who is always ahead of the rocket, sometimes by hours, sometimes by several days) is linked to the A4. Like a Pavlovian reflex, with cause and action reversed in time – he gets his erection BEFORE the bang of the rocket. Or do the rockets follow his movements? Which explanation is less unlikely? And does the fact that you can only hear the rocket approach if you’ve survived the explosion (as it’s faster than sound!) have something to do with this inversion? Slothrop is being watched, studied. Pavlovian, para-normal, statistical. As the war ends he follows the trail of the rocket into the ‘zone’ where it was developed, manufactured, fired. The zone is occupied by a number of armies, all trying to pick up as much rocket technology and personnel as possible. The zone is also home a hotchpotch of strange characters (like Slothrop himself), legal, illegal, intelligence, counter-intelligence, on a spiritual trip, on an ego-trip, or on their way to oblivion - engineers, black marketers, salvagers, victims - you name it.
The story has been shortlisted by the SFWA for the 2011 Nebula Awards - in my opinion it is an interesting piece of fiction, and I can only wish her good luck!
It is set in a near-historical China, and is built around the fact that Wasp (and Bee) Hives actually are intelligent - “it was discovered that the wasp nests of Yiwei, dipped in hot water, unfurled into beautifully accurate maps of provinces near and far, inked in vegetable pigments and labeled in careful Mandarin that could be distinguished beneath a microscope.”
If you love maps, or are fascinated by Wasps and Bees, or, alternatively, are interested in the political subcontext, then have a go!
This is a re-post of my old review of Lion of Senet, the first instalment in the Second Sons Trilogy by Jennifer Fallon, which at the time I found to be a “forced Tour-de-Force, based on a rather standard setup”, and didn’t like all that much… in hindsight I can also state that the series gets better as it progresses, though.
The story unfolds (if that’s the word) in an ‘unruly’ world (in a celestial/geological/social/political sense) with 2 suns, one of which vanishes for a duration of time at regular intervals – but the people have forgotten this. So, during the last ‘Time of Shadows’ (the only one people remember…) a new ‘religion’ called ‘Shadowdancers’ was founded, or rather made up. Made up because the ‘High Priestess’ found out when the sun would return from ancient sources (yep, there’s an elder civilization which has vanished but left artefacts), and used this information for her own power gain. Her grip on power is/was such that she made the current ruler, the Lion of Senet of the title, sacrifice his youngest son to make the sun come back (of course this deed was done at an opportune point in time, ie just before the sun was due to return). She also instigated the Lion of Senet to invade Dhevyn, leading to a bloody war, due to her personal petty grievances with some people on this court.
Chasing the Dragon is the 4th book (out of 5, so far) in Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series. Justina is a British SF author with 9 books to her name – 5 in this series, and 4 standalone novels. Her books have been nominated for a number of awards, but not won any of them at the time this is written.
And, before I start, here is the standard warning for later books in a series – what's below contains, by its very nature, spoilers for the earlier books. If you don't mind, or have read the books already, then go on, otherwide I'd suggest you go and read the earlier books in the series (Keeping It Real, Selling Out, Going Under) first, they are worth your attention in my opinion!
Chasing the Dragon picks up where Going Under left off – Lila is back from a 50 year timout in Under (it felt like days to her); and the world has moved on. Many things have changed – her sister Max is dead, there are new, full body metal/flesh converged 'Androids' based on her initial template (not Elemental-enhanced like she is, though, that wasn't part of the template), and the Otopian Security Forces Agency knows much more now, has a slightly different tack, and is led by a chap called Temple Greer, who Lila gets along with quite well. Well, within definitions of well... he sometimes wonders about his errant charge: “Don't yo ever get rattled, Black? You drag a lost love out of a ghost sea, your parter goes AWOL, your spouse under sentence, you murder a rogue angent, your sister comes back from the dead, and your clothes don't even like you, what? Nothing? When are you gonna crack?” Yes, Lila has definitely learned some lessons in Demonia and later in Faery/Under – and she has brough new (or rather old) powers into play. Not that she likes Tatterdemalion, her armor/dress, or the sword/weapon of intent any better than they like her, but these are her best allies it seems at the moment. And there are whiffs of Dragons (that's one meaning of the title), and other things at large; and the worlds are cracking up...
Study in Shadow is a Novelette byJohn Meaney, written for and published by the Birmingham Science Fiction Group, for the occasion of Novacon 41, where John was Guest of Honour.
The story is a quick, fun, and engrossing read, playing out in two separate threads, which are set in different times but connected through family ties. One side plays in the late 19th and early 20th century, following both a young Arthur Conan Doyle and a mysterious (shadowy, to mirror the title of the story) acquaintance of his; and Emma Carson, an early adopter of Jujitsu and Bartitsu and bodyguard to Mrs Pankhurst (and thus part of the suffragette movement which resorted to violence). The other side plays in the future (2030s), following Irene Cheryl Holmes as she goes to University, and then goes on to conduct ground-breaking research bringing together astrophysics (Shadowlight) and molecular brain research into telepathy. That she's an active MMA fighter is par for the course, both in terms of symmetry of the story as well as for this being a John Meaney story...
Utopia Hunters
Chasing the Dragon
Study in Shadow
