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By Nico Vreeland, on July 6th, 2011  Author: James S.A. Corey
2011, Orbit
Filed under: Sci-Fi
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
In the middle of the solar system, a rattletrap ice-hauling spaceship called the Canterbury lurches to a stop so its shuttle can investigate a distress call from a dead ship. James Holden, the Canterbury‘s second-in-command, leads the shuttle team. As soon as the shuttle docks with the wreck, a stealth ship uncloaks, blows up the Canterbury, and hightails it.
Holden broadcasts the details of this deception to the entire solar system, and includes the fact that the fake transponder the Canterbury responded to—the bait in the trap—bears the insignia of the Martian Navy. And that’s how you accidentally start a war.
Meanwhile, on a space station in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, an alcoholic cop named Miller gets tapped to investigate the disappearance of a rich man’s daughter. He soon finds that she had something to do with the Canterbury‘s destruction, and his fate becomes tied to Holden’s.
For 300 pages, Leviathan Wakes is grade-A science fiction: precise, entertaining, imaginative, and adventuresome. It flags a bit down the stretch with a relatively silly major conflict, and then it gets boring when the third act turns out to be one big drawn-out fight scene. However, if you’ve been looking for an engrossing, classically molded space opera epic, this is a solid one. …
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By Paul Kirsch, on July 1st, 2011  Author: Dan Simmons
2011, Reagan Arthur Books
Filed under: Mystery, Thriller, Sci-Fi
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| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
10 |
Whenever I read a book by Dan Simmons, I learn something new about life, love, and literature. The man knows how to hook his readers. He grabs the emotional center of mass and never lets go. He also taps the intellectual core, using literary allusion and some well-worn clichés to recontextualize the story on the page. By engaging the reader on this risky and intelligent ground, Simmons crafts his books as equal parts thriller and college seminar.
His latest novel, Flashback, is the story of ex-detective Nick Bottom, who submerges into the depths of memory-enhancing drugs in order to revive an investigation gone cold.
His case is deceptively simple: the murder of a wealthy executive’s heir. Except that dozens of detectives failed to solve it already, and Nick’s only resource is his drug-addled memory. Using a combination of high technology, altered consciousness and ham-fisted detective work, Nick hacks and punches his way toward the shocking conclusion. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on June 2nd, 2011  Author: Chris Wooding
2009, Spectra
Filed under: Sci-Fi
Get a copy at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
| Originality.... |
2 |
Ever since the show Firefly was canceled in 2002, that particular brand of fun-loving space opera has been an underrepresented subgenre, both on-screen and in print. That’s a shame because it’s such a simple, satisfying formula: you have a collection of disgraced citizens or small-time brigands, brought together by their common ostracism from proper society, aboard a rattletrap (but stalwart) vessel with its own personality, and led by a charismatic, swashbuckling captain. Together they go on a series of zany, madcap adventures, and on the way they encounter a range of different planets and people, each bizarre but loveable.
Retribution Falls, the first installment in Wooding’s new Ketty Jay series, comes straight out of that fun-loving space opera mold, in fact it hews so closely to the Firefly model that it’d be faster to list the differences between them than the similarities.
With this novel, you’ll get exactly what you expect: dashing adventure, exuberant thrills, and a fun read. You won’t get anything else, like originality or complexity. …
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By Sean Clark, on May 19th, 2011 Author: Scott Westerfeld
2010, Simon Pulse
Filed Under: Young Adult, Historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
| Illustrations... |
8 |
My biggest gripe with Westerfeld’s Leviathan was that it was too much a set-up for a trilogy and not as satisfying a standalone story as the lead entry in a series ought to be. Seeing as Behemoth is the second entry of said planned trilogy, that problem is no longer as glaring. Still, this too acts as a build up for a larger conflict, but rather than leaving us at the precipice, it–as a good middle segment should–aligns the plot’s working pieces then sets things in motions for a hefty conflict in book three. All that aside, this novel features all the aspects that made the first book intriguing, as well as an arguably tighter story arc.
Behemoth picks up with Deryn, the girl posing as a male in order to be British midshipman, and Alek, the Hapsburg prince on the lam, aboard the great flying whale dirigible following the escape at the end of Leviathan. They head for Istanbul, where the majority of the story unfolds.
(I gave a breakdown of the basic conceits of the series in my review of Leviathan, so if you haven’t read it go check out that first–but in brief, this is a steampunk retelling of World War One, where the machinist “Clanker” Eastern Europeans are in conflict with the “Darwinist” Western Europeans’ army, which is built around giant creatures created by manipulating evolution into complex living vehicles and biological weapons. So by whale dirigible, I mean it’s literally a huge, floating, armored whale.)  …
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By Nico Vreeland, on May 18th, 2011  Author: Justin Cronin
2010, Ballantine
Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi (vampires)
Get The Passage, in paperback, at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
| Compared to Hype... |
2 |
[Minor spoiler alert: this book came out last year, and this review contains a few small details from relatively late in the book.]
I don’t know why I keep believing that a modern vampire book could be good. I believed it when The Strain came out, and I believed it about The Passage, too. Color me shamed, because that’s twice I’ve been fooled.
The Passage is not a good book. It’s a literary author’s attempt to write a genre novel without much experience or skill at writing plot. If plot holes or inconsistencies make you mad, avoid it. If however, you need a single book to get you through a weeklong vacation, it just came out in paperback and, at nearly 800 pages, it’ll give you some bang for your buck.
Let’s get into the details. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on March 17th, 2011 [This hilarious collection of surreal stories is a C4 Great Read.]
 Author: Patrick Somerville
2010, Featherproof Books
Filed under: Literary, Humor, Sci-Fi, Short Stories
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
I know the pain of reading a book that’s been called “funny” because it offers nothing else, and I know how genuine comedy needs nothing else to captivate. And so I take it very seriously when I say that Patrick Somerville’s story collection, The Universe in Miniature in Miniature, is hilarious.
And while there’s a lot more to this collection, the nature and tone and quality of its humor is what makes it great. Unlike the straining, jesterly comedy of “comic novels” like The Sheriff of Yrnameer, Somerville’s humor doesn’t compromise the writing or the story, but only ever adds to it. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on March 10th, 2011 [This awesome sci-fi novel is a C4 Great Read.]
 Author: Dexter Palmer
2010, St. Martin’s Press
Filed under: Literary, Sci-Fi
Get this book at Powell’s Books
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
10 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
These days, almost every new novelist’s debut work provokes a messy orgasm of praise from both critics and other writers (praise that often exudes a clinging desperation, the way I imagine drowning rats grab each other in hopes that together they might float). I was not surprised, then, that Palmer’s first novel came festooned with gushing blurbs and breathless capsule reviews.
But I was surprised that it delivered.
The Dream of Perpetual Motion is indeed “dazzling” and “endlessly inventive” and “an achievement” and all the other overused praise phrases. It’s smart, intricate, and superbly written, and it deserves every bit of acclaim it’s received. Whether you’re a sci-fi nut or a book club snoot, you should read this book. Let me tell you why. …
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By Sean Clark, on February 18th, 2011 [This clever YA fantasy is a C4 Great Read.]
Author: John Connolly
2009, Washington Square Press
Filed Under: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Young Adult
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
I stumbled upon Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things a few years ago and really loved it. At some point I’ll go back and reread it for review, then probably crown it a Great Read too. That book was engrossing, surprisingly deep, and quite dark. Despite being about demons trying to incite Armageddon and annihilate the human race through a trans-dimensional wormhole, The Gates is not a dark book. It provides levity with cheeky humor and a colorful cast of characters (both demonic and not).
Samuel Johnson, who is 11, and his personable dachshund, Boswell, while staying out past their curfew, espy a weird Satanic ritual take place in a neighbor’s basement. The neighbors are possessed by demons and set about opening a gate to Hell in order to allow The Great Malfeasance to lead his army through and destroy the planet. How did the first demons get through? Because of a tiny particle that escaped the CERN hadron collider. …
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By Sean Clark, on January 21st, 2011 Author: Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy
2010, Quirk Classics
Filed Under: Sci-Fi, Humor
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
2 |
At least one of the following statements is true: 1) The “literary mash-up” genre had its flash-in-the-pan moment with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and is no longer interesting. 2) Ben H. Winters isn’t very good at writing literary mash-ups. I’m pretty sure the second is true, but I wouldn’t fight very hard if you argued for the first or both. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on January 6th, 2011  Author: Charles Yu
2010, Pantheon
Filed under: Sci-Fi
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
5 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Yu’s second book and first novel, is a remarkable achievement. It’s a tangled, metafictional narrative about a time machine repairman named Charles Yu who discovers a book (written by himself in the future) called “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,” which is a convenient find because he’s about to be killed.
Yu the author handles the various threads of his story—especially the rigorous pseudo-scientific explanation of time travel and how it intertwines with the novel’s metafictional elements—with superb confidence and skill, especially for a first-time novelist. On top of that, he writes excellent prose.
Science Fictional has just one weakness: there isn’t much of a story here. While it’s a well-crafted book, it’s a bad novel. …
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