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WoGF Review: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Nadine Gemeinböck (Linguana) has been reading fantasy for as long as she can remember. She started blogging about books on SFF Book Review in 2012, hoping to keep track of what she read and how she liked it. The book blogging community has since helped her open her literary horizons and thanks to WWEnd, she is currently working her way through NPR’s Top 100. Her blogging resolution is to review more foreign language books and finally take the plunge into a big, swooping space opera.
I’ve wanted to read Lauren Beukes for a while now but I always thought I’d start with Zoo City, whose description somehow spoke to me the most. Then I listened to the book review and interview with the author on Speculate! and the decision was made. “Time traveling serial killer” sounded too good to be left on the TBR.
The girl who wouldn’t die, hunting a killer who shouldn’t exist… A terrifying and original serial-killer thriller from award-winning author, Lauren Beukes. ‘If you’ve got a Gone Girl-shaped hole in your life, try this’ Evening Standard “It’s not my fault. It’s yours. You shouldn’t shine. You shouldn’t make me do this.”
Chicago 1931. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature – it opens onto other times. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen ‘shining girls’ through the decades – and cut the spark out of them. He’s the perfect killer. Unstoppable. Untraceable. He thinks…
Chicago, 1992. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Tell that to Kirby Mazrachi, whose life was shattered after a brutal attempt to murder her. Still struggling to find her attacker, her only ally is Dan, an ex-homicide reporter who covered her case and now might be falling in love with her. As Kirby investigates, she finds the other girls – the ones who didn’t make it. The evidence is… impossible. But for a girl who should be dead, impossible doesn’t mean it didn’t happen…
Jo Fletcher Fridays: Be My Enemy by Ian McDonald
One of the cool things about our Jo Fletcher Fridays series is all the new authors that we get to help introduce to our fans. Snorri Kristjansson and Evie Manieri are the first of several new authors in the stack of books from JFB but for this, our third go ’round, we thought we’d pick an author who’s a little more familiar. Have you heard of Ian McDonald? Well, of course you have. This guy has been nominated for every genre award under the sun. So how cool is it that we’re giving away 5 – count ’em – 5 trade paperback copies of his book By My Enemy? Pretty damn cool, I’d say.
You know the drill. Re-tweet this tweet, like it on Facebook or comment here in the blog for your chance to win. Do all three and triple your chances! We’ll have a drawing and announce the winners next Monday so tweet away.
Be My Enemy
Everness, Book II
by Ian McDonald
Everett Singh has escaped from his enemies with the Infundibulum – the key to all the parallel worlds. But his freedom has come at a price: the loss of his father to one of the billions of parallel universes in the Panopoly.
E1 was the first Earth to create the Heisenberg Gate, the means to jump between worlds, but it was quarantined long ago. No one goes in . . . and nothing comes out. But E1 has something that Everett needs: the means to find his father.
It’s lucky that he has the support of Captain Anastsia Sixsmyth, her daughter Sen and the unique crew of the airship Everness, because Everett is about to discover the horrifying secret of E1 and, with it, his deadliest enemy.
What people are saying:
“Chock-full of awesome… . Airship-dueling, guns-blazing fantasy… .” – Paola Bacigalupi, Author of Ship Breaker
“[An] exciting first sequel to outstanding series opener Planesrunner… . Smart, clever, and abundantly original, with suspense that grabs your eyeballs, this is real science fiction for all ages. More! More!” – Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
I’ve heard great things about this series and Mr. Bacigalupi – no stranger to “chock-full of awesome” himself – likes it so there you go. And just look at the cover art on this edition from JFB! Really stunning. You know you wants it, Precious, so re-tweets it!
Don’t forget to check back Monday to see if you’ve won and every Friday for more free books from JFB!
WoGF Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
Rae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: None
Ace/Genderqueer characters: ?
Rating: PG
Writing style: 4/5
Likable characters: 5/5
Plot/Concepts: 3/5
In Ned Henry’s day, historians are very much involved in time travel, but unfortunately their main source of funding happens to be a tyrannical woman who is obsessed with renovating Coventry Cathedral. Lady Schrapnell will stop at nothing to find the bishop’s bird stump, a particularly ugly metal urn, and Ned has been coerced into making more time-jumps than is healthy.
So what is the cure for time-lag? A long break from changing time periods, hopefully far away from where Lady Schrapnell can order him around. Summer of 1888 in Victorian England, for example. But Ned isn’t about to get much rest, because it seems an incongruity has happened due to a certain fellow historian saving a drowning cat. Now Ned and Verity (the cat-rescuer) must try to correct all the impossible details of the timeline—if they don’t, marriages may never have happened, children may not have been born and grown up to fight in wars which may not have been won after all.
Elysium Review
Straddling a tense line between entertainment and bland moralizing, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp has taken a huge step backwards with his newest film Elysium. I had high hopes for this one, believe me. The trailers looked visually original with an interesting if unambitious setup. Blomkamp’s first film about alien visitors failing to find a home on Earth was surprisingly original, fun, and even rather intelligent. Blomkamp’s second film about the so-called 99%’s ressentiment against the very rich is an even more cartoonish take on the subject than The Dark Knight Rises.
“Damn it, Damon, stop shooting the car!”
The setup for this story is sort of a hodge-podge of earlier futuristic dystopias. Our planet in 2154 is overpopulated (never mind the very real impending population implosion), and the very rich have absconded to a paradisaical satellite named Elysium (complete with artificial gravity, never mind that the damn circular thing doesn’t spin), which apparently acts as its own sovereign nation (whose ruling cabinet can be deposed with a simple computer reboot, to hell with democracy), and which also jealously defends its territory against aggressive immigrants (never mind that an on-board missile defense system would make more sense than hiring one “rouge” agent with a really good gun to shoot them down from Earth), who slip in by simply flying into the open atmosphere of the satellite (apparently the rich are too cheap to build a roof, and who’s worried about cosmic rays?), and who only want to use Elysium’s magical healing machines for their ailments (all machines conveniently placed in the living or dining room of every Elysian home!). The sci-fi trappings of the film are so utterly absurd and poorly considered that I couldn’t stop laughing at the screen.
Not only that, but Blomkamp apparently has no sense of time and space. At one point a group of hunters is flying a hovercraft around L.A. airspace on the hunt for Max Da Costa (Matt Damon), and have sent out half a dozen video-equipped drones throughout the city to help locate him. His face shows up on one of their drone monitors, and the leader tells them to turn the craft around to get him. No less than five seconds later they fly up to Max, him still holding the drone in his hands. Unless the hovercraft had a teleportation device we didn’t know about, it should have taken them much longer to arrive at their destination. Little problems like this, and worse, show up repeatedly in the film. One that really bugged me was that Elysium always seems to be easily visible from the Earth’s surface at all times, regardless of a person’s location, the local pollution level, or the distance between Elysium and Earth.
The dialogue spitting out of the characters’ mouths is just as inane as the rest of the film’s problems would suggest. There’s a lot of unearned sentimentalism surrounding Max and his childhood love Frey (Alice Braga). Jodie Foster plays Jessica Delacourt, a government minister in charge of the sort of military operations which make Elysium’s president queasy, but she speaks only cliched dialogue which tells us nothing of her inner life, and she plays it with an odd accent that seems entirely unlike the accents of her fellow aristocrats. Even America’s favorite bad guy actor William Fichtner has lines that could have been written by a teenager (“I need to be busy not talking to you now”). Matt Damon is playing his usual Bland Action Man role, so there’s not much going on there. The only actor who’s even not boring is Sharlto Copley, who played the “racist with a heart of gold” Wikus in District 9, and who here plays a South American mercenary named Kruger. I never thought I’d watch a big-budget science fiction film that had worse writing than Avatar.
Acting ability extraction… complete.
[IMPENDING SPOILERS, if you still care.] Unsurprisingly, the film rumbles full speed into the train wreck of its inevitable ending where the magical healthcare machines on Elysium are distributed to all the poor and ailing people of Earth. Sure, I realize that Elysium has more of these machines than it knows what to do with (remember the part about a machine sitting in every living room), but I don’t think that very many of the sick people of Earth will be able to be healed before the machines start breaking down, and then who can still afford to fix them? I get that Blomkamp was going for a sort of anti-Atlas Shrugged story here, but his ideas are even sillier and less realistic than Ayn Rand’s.
The director recently stated in an interview that “I just want to be an artist that’s just left alone.” Well, if he doesn’t clean up his act quickly, Hollywood might leave him alone indefinitely. Elysium had almost four times the budget of District 9, and only a small fraction of the imagination. This is less a sophomore slump than a sophomore suicide attempt. His third film Chappie is set to release next year, so I guess we’ll see if he can recuperate. I’m not holding my breath.
2013 World Fantasy Awards Finalists
WORLD
FANTASY
AWARDS
The finalists for the 2013 World Fantasy Awards have been announced. The nominees in the Novel category are:
- The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
- Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce (Gollancz; Doubleday)
- The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
- Crandolin by Anna Tambour (Chômu)
- Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (Grove; Corvus)
See the full list of nominees in all categories on the Tor blog. The winners will be announced at the 2013 World Fantasy Convention held in Brighton, England on November 3rd.
Our congrats to all the nominees! What do you think of this lineup? It seems The Drowning Girl is here to stay with this 6th award nomination. The Killing Moon is doing well with 3 noms too.
Breaking Bad Meets Star Trek
If there was any doubt that Breaking Bad has lots to do with science fiction, let that doubt be crushed.
JFF: Blood’s Pride Winners!
Our Jo Fletcher Fridays re-tweet contest for Evie Manieri‘s Blood’s Pride has closed. We had 41 entries and have drawn our 3 random winners.
Congrats to our winners:
If you are one of our prize winners please send your mailing info to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can get your books in the mail right away.
Our thanks to Evie Manieri and Jo Fletcher Books for donating the prizes.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
After that stellar Ozymandias recital in the last teaser, I just had to hear more Breaking Bad poetry. Before you interject, “but, Rico…Breaking Bad isn’t science fiction,” permit me to beseech you, on this day to bite me. Chemistry is science. So there.
Steampunk Books and Machine Age Lamps
OK, whatever you think of the steampunk sub-genre you have to admit this lamp is freakin’ awesome. And if you are a steampunk fan what better accessory to have in your home?
This lamp comes from Machine Age Lamps and they have a plethora of options for you to choose from including custom lamps built to your specifications. Each sculptural lamp is one of a kind, signed and numbered and all the gauges and gears are real antiques. Beautiful. I’ve spent a good half hour lusting over these lamps and thought you might like to see them too.
Of course, once you get your funky-awesome new lamp you’ll want something to read under it. Here is a selection of steampunk books for you to enjoy. With everything from vampires to cowboys to Victorian spies to dragons, and even a Dyson sphere for good measure, there is something here for just about everyone.
What steampunk books have you read? Do you have any recommendations for the uninitiated?
Paradox Book Giveaway Winners!
OK, this is a few days late in coming but our Paradox re-tweet contest has closed and we have our winners. We had 70 entries this time around – our thanks to everyone who participated! We picked 3 random numbers from all entries (8, 42 and 51) and here they are. (Our first pick was A. J. Paquette herself – who had re-tweeted the contest – but seeing as she most likely has a copy already we picked another winner;)
Congrats to our winners:
Jamie Smith
If you are one of our prize winners please send your mailing address to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can get your autographed books in the mail right away.
Our thanks to A. J. Paquette and Random House for donating the prizes. We’re looking forward to some great reviews!
