Month: March 2023

Quick Reviews – March 2023

On March 30, 2023

Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton, published 14 March 2023.

Mickey 7 is back, or should I say he’s still alive? It’s two years after Mickey bartered for his “freedom” from being an Expendable by hiding a bomb with the Creepers. Spring has come to Niflheim and there are problems with the reactor core. To ensure everyone’s survival before the next winter comes, Mickey has to get the bomb back from the Creepers, but it’s gone. What follows is a road trip to recover the bomb from a different tribe of Creepers.

The novel has a plot, but it’s not important. Mickey will save the day, because he is the Chosen One. 
Blech!

1/5 Harpy Eagles

What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris, published 2005.

The first novel in a dark mystery series set in Britain in the early 19th century, right around the tumultuous time when the Regency was about to be declared. Sebastian St Cyr is implicated in the murder and, knowing himself to be innocent, takes it upon himself to find the murderer. 

Truly liked to see a mystery set in the early times of the Regency. St Cyr is a likable hero and there are interesting secondary characters. The writing is engaging and the chapters are short, which made the novel a pageturner for me.

4/5 Harpy Eagles

Weyward by Emilia Hart, 02 February 2023.

The cover is gorgeous. The writing is excellent. The three storylines are well-interwoven. That should all make this a five star reading. Do. Not. Be. Fooled. By. The. Cover. This book is darker than you’d think. It’s full of domestic violence, sexual assault, male abuse and subjugation of women, furthermore stillbirth, abortion, miscarriage, mutilation, suicidal intentions.
 
Three timelines. Three women. Three, let’s call them, hedgewitches are fighting for their independence by using insects or birds to free themselves from their male oppressor/s and/or use the animals for their vengeance.

There is nothing new in these three stories. We’ve read it all before. Women being oppressed by the men in their lives, be it father, husband, family members, neighbours, clergy, men of law. Women being at fault just because they are women. 

I appreciate what Hart did here, interweaving the three stories, but even at the end of the book we cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. The end of the book is the circle closing, to make sure the three stories can interconnect.

2/5 Harpy Eagles

The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2055 – Doomsday Book

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On March 30, 2023

In 42, Reviews

People have told me to read this book with words like:

it won the Hugo and the Nebula awards
it’s Time-Travel into the 14^th century
you are a history nerd and love Sci-Fi/Time-Travel stories

I must say there is one thing Connie Willis got right, during an epidemic that’s fortunately being quarantined early on, there is a shortage of toilet paper and we are reminded of it at least once every chapter. Having lived through the great toilet paper crisis of 2020, I can say this was the most accurate prediction about the future the book had to offer.

For a book written in the late 1980s and first published in 1992 it lacks in extrapolation of existing technology and culture. It basically goes one step forwards and two steps back. Oxford, Great Britain, in 2055 is as backwards as the 1960s. The height of modern technology, ignoring the time travel device that is never really explained, are video telephone landlines which cannot take a message. My cultural highlight of 2055, a university student kisses a girl in the hallway and that leads to uproar about his amoral behaviour. Oy vey!

Okay, Willis might not have nailed the future, but surely the past she must have? Nope! The fourteenth century is dirty, everyone stinks, walks around in rags and it’s actually a wonder how humankind survived after all. Kivrin, the MC, is equipped with the latest information about the fourteenth century; you know, the century of the witch burnings (17^th century onwards), the century where basically everyone is a cut-throat or a rapist, where people are exactly as filthy as cliché wants us to believe. Furthermore, her brain-enhancer-translator doesn’t work properly. She cannot understand Middle-English although she has spent three years learning the language. She understands Latin, though. And I’m still wondering why Kivrin had to learn German for this trip. It can’t have been 14^th century German, otherwise the little genius and her translator might have worked out what the people are talking about.

Long story short – I’m no Connie Willis:

Past timeline: Kivrin is stranded in 1348 instead of 1320, where she was supposed to land. She falls ill with the plague. The dirty, smelly people, who aren’t all cut-throats even if they are dirty and smelly and scarred and in ragged clothing, help her. She’s bedridden for a long time, but needs to get to “the drop”, the site where she landed and will be picked up again.

Future timeline: It’s Christmas time. People have left the university in droves to spend the holidays with their families. The only available time travel technician in all of Oxford comes down with a virus infection shortly after Kivrin was sent into the past. That’s the catalyst for the lockdown of the city. The techie dangles important information before the senior staff, but falls into unconsciousness every time he might be able to help out with his information.

I see what Willis wanted to do with the book. There was supposed to be a certain allegory between both timelines. There was supposed to be some comic relief. But what I will remember: Not all people in the 14^th century were cut-throats, especially the children were adorable. Toilet paper is going to be scarce during a lockdown.

1/5 Harpy Eagles

Homicide Homeschooling Handbook

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On March 10, 2023

In Hidden Gems, Reviews

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes, published 21 February 2023.

Have you ever wondered what a college for assassins would look like? Probably not. Rupert Holmes has given this idea a lot of thought, though. The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts is the finishing school where the discerning student will learn all there is to know about successfully deleting a person without the deletion backfiring on them. The school’s motto: “Do in others as you would have others do in you.”

This hopefully first novel of a series is set in the 1950s. In this at-home study guide McMasters dean Harbinger Harrow offers the case studies of three pupils, engineer Cliff Iverson, nurse Gemma Lindley, and incognito Hollywood star Dulcie Mown, who all have an ethical reason to delete their employer.

The first part of the book shows why and how students arrive at McMasters’ secret location. We get to know some teachers and their subjects as well as lots of ambitious students who are showing off their acquired skills at every opportunity.

In the second part of the story, Holmes lets us root for the three would-be-killer graduates of McMasters as they all try to finish their respective theses – as the successful deletion of their target is called. Failing is not an option as it would result in successfully being deleted themselves. You only leave McMasters by graduation or in an urn.

A witty murder mystery that was a delight to read, and I am hoping the second volume in this educational at-home course will be available soon.

5/5 Harpy Eagles

Hole-y bookshelf, batman!

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On March 8, 2023

In 42, Reviews

Finna by Nino Cipri, published 25 February 2020.

Ava and Jules work minimum wage jobs at a Swedish big-box store. No, not that one, another one. The one with wormholes opening inside their showrooms; where Ava and Jules have to use a device called FINNA to find a customer who has been sucked into the multiverse through that wormhole. They are definitely not paid enough to risk their lives in alternate universes, but the customer is king; and your boss is your overlord.

Fun novella about what might happen if a wormhole opened in an IKEA that is definitely not an IKEA.

3/5 Harpy Eagles

CutLass at the ready!

By TheRightHonourableHarpyEagle

On March 4, 2023

In Dungeons & Bookdragons, Reviews

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty, published 02 March 2023.

From the cover of the US edition you might conclude this is a YA fantasy novel. The UK edition cover might make you revise that idea. Whatever idea you come to in the end, did you think of a tall, brown skinned, middle-aged female pirate who leaves her ten-year-old daughter behind to rescue the daughter of a former crew mate?

It’s a swashbuckling tale of Amina’s first adventure after having left her pirating ways when her daughter was born. You’ll encounter a woman torn between the love for her daughter and family as well as her first love her ship and the sea. There are mythical creatures, sea monsters, magic, fights with mythical sea creatures and, we’re among seafaring people, cussing and drinking.

If you liked Pirates of the Caribbean and are more than ready for another pirate adventure with a daring captain and her middle-aged crew in the Indian Ocean at medieval times, then get this book as soon as possible.

4/5 Harpy Eagles