Review by New York Times Review
JUST IN TIME to surf the wake of the latest Star Wars film comes GALACTIC EMPIRES (Night Shade, paper, $17.99) , a collection of compact space epics anthologized by Neil Clarke and written by some of the biggest stars and up-and-comers in the genre. The 22 stories featured are all stand-alones, though several are set in pre-existing fictional universes: Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch is here, as is Neal Asher's Polity. All of the stories range widely in theme and style, sharing only the experience of sudden, sometimes jolting immersion into complex societies and exotic circumstances in the far future. There's an unavoidable tension in these mini-sagas between the need to quickly introduce readers to a bizarre setting and the need for an engaging narrative arc - but nearly all of them pull it off. The newer writers tend to take more risks and feature more engaging characters. Gwendolyn Clare's "All the Painted Stars," for example, veers away from the usual human protagonist, taking readers instead into the mind of a tentacled alien cop who must cooperate with humans to solve the mystery of a lost civilization. Aliette de Bodard's "The Waiting Stars" offers a painfully contemporary tale of young Vietnamese women taken from their own "savage" people and forcibly re-educated to serve a society of cold artificial intelligences. By contrast, the established writers tend to focus on ideas and settings more than characters, and to follow well-traveled storytelling paths. These can be fun too; one notable example is Brandon Sanderson's "Firstborn," the overlong but otherwise delightful tale of a born loser slouching along in the shadow of his military-genius older brother. One or two of the stories devolve into a travelogue, with characters and plot merely painted on for flavor, but over all this anthology is mostly hits, remarkably few misses. Highly recommended. ADAPTING ANY PROSE novel to the graphic format is an audacious undertaking at the best of times, but translating Octavia E. Butler's fearsomely powerful work in particular must surely have been a herculean task. Yet Damian Duffy and John Jennings have managed it with their version of KINDRED (Abrams ComicArts, $24.95), giving her most accessible novel - as noted in an introduction by the acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor - fresh life. The story itself is the same one that's been studied in countless university courses on race, gender and literature since its publication in 1979. Dana, a young black woman living in modern-day California, suddenly begins traveling backward in time to the early 1800 s, where she is compelled again and again to save the life of Rufus, the scion of a Maryland plantation owner. The mechanism of her movement through time and space is never explained, and is ultimately irrelevant. What matters is that Dana must cope with the realistically depicted, gruesome horrors of slavery - which Butler in fact "cleaned up," according to a well-known 1991 interview in the journal Callaloo. Perhaps more horrifically, Dana must struggle with a fuller understanding of the damage slavery inflicted on everyone it touched, free and slave, then and now - not just violence and family disruption, but an ugly mix of societally reinforced Stockholm syndrome, toxic codependency and dehumanization. Duffy and Jennings's adaptation retains the spare, almost baroque feel of Butler's narrative, down to its ominous chapter headings (e.g., "The River," "The Fall"), rendered in all-caps on a black background. This is a story heavy in dialogue and internal narration, although some of the interiority is necessarily lost to the visual format. The art here, which is angular and line-heavy and somehow apocalyptic, fits the weight of the material perfectly. This helps to make up for narrative lost, through stark renderings of blood or vomit or the ashen skin of a hanged woman. The adaptation does not flinch from the ugliest parts of Butler's text. (Parents hoping that the graphical format may work better for teenagers, take warning.) A worthy and powerful supplement to a classic. IN A STRANGELY small galaxy, the civilized peoples of the nine inhabited planets live in constant fear of the Shotet, a tribe of fierce multiracial scavengers. After the Shotet kidnap a boy named Akos and his brother for mysterious reasons, Akos has no choice but to go native, learning how to fight and earn armor to survive. Akos has a few advantages, however, including genetically imbued language skills and, more important, a special "currentgift," or unique magical ability, which is capable of shutting down others' currentgifts. This naturally makes him useful to Cyra, sister of the tyrannical Shotet leader; Cyra's own currentgift grants her the ability to project, and experience, constant agony. Akos alone can ease her pain. That they end up a couple is hardly a spoiler. So things go in CARVE THE MARK (Katherine Tegen/HarperCoiiins, $22.99), the latest outing from Veronica Roth. Roth is the author of the best-selling Divergent series, and like those books this one seems destined - designed, even - for film adaptation. The story focuses less on Cyra than on Akos, who is by turns vulnerable, tough and talented at combat. The plot is also familiar: A young woman trapped in a brutal system must fight to win freedom for herself and her male companion, eventually fomenting a rebellion against her oppressors. The whole thing turns out to be a power struggle between roughly four factions - special families, that is, whose members are bestowed with predestined fates. There's some jumbled, vaguely science fictional worldbuilding involving spaceships and people from planets of darkness or planets of heat, but frankly Roth could've set the whole thing on a single planet and cut down on the potential special effects budget. This story is simpler than it sounds, and even more clichéd than this synopsis suggests. It will doubtless make money hand over fist. ANOTHER WORK THAT seems designed for the big screen - or more likely the small screen, given that it's organized into episodes and seasons - is bookburners: season 1 (Saga, paper, $21.99), a collaborative effort by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty and Brian Francis Slattery. Originally produced by Serial Box as an intriguing experiment in serial fiction for mobile devices, the 16 episodes that first appeared in 2015 have now been compiled into a single volume by Saga Press. The story is fast-paced and pulpish. The police detective Sally Brooks is interrupted one night by her hapless brother, who's carrying a mysterious ancient book and is terrified he's been followed to her apartment. He's afraid of the Bookburners, a shadowy "men in black" type of organization said to hunt down rare-book thieves. After she sees her brother open the book only to become instantly possessed by an ancient malevolent entity, Sal finds herself embroiled in a whirlwind caper, occasionally terrifying, to try to save him. Naturally, she joins forces with the Bookburners, who turn out to be a special division of the Vatican Library employed to hunt down dangerous artifacts for capture and safe storage in the Black Archives. Think hackers and traveling exorcists, but for books. Turns out they could also use a good cop. If that sounds like lighthearted, slightly silly fun, it is. Each "episode" of the serial is noticeably picaresque in style - lots of action sequences, horror visuals and witty banter, but not many moments of narrative pause or introspection. As a result the characters aren't especially complex or deeply rendered; it's an ensemble cast, though Sal remains the main character throughout. And the peril rarely feels genuinely perilous. This seems intentional, too, however - rather like watching a TV show with episodes that can be skipped or watched out of order, and characters who remain comfortably predictable throughout. Maybe this isn't the kind of show that's going to win a lot of Emmys; it's more the type that could win a devoted audience and keep going for season after season. Probably ideal for commuters looking for pleasant popcorn reading to start or end the day. N. K. JEMISIN won a 2016 Hugo Award for her novel "The Fifth Season." Her latest book is its sequel, "The Obelisk Gate."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
This anthology, assembled by the publisher and editor of Clarkesworld magazine, collects stories centered on vast and expansive far-future societies. Although some of the stories do feature futuristic civilizations with seemingly feudal political structures, others depict civilizations that are only imperial in the sense of their wide and expansive scope. All of the stories featured in the collection are reprints, many of them from previous anthologies of space-opera or far-future sf stories, with the rest taken from various magazines (including Clarkesworld). Highlights include entries from established names, such as Ian McDonald's Verthandi's Ring and Greg Egan's Riding the Crocodile, as well as entries from relatively newer authors, such as Gwendolyn Clare's All the Painted Stars, Aliette de Bodard's The Waiting Stars, and Yoon Ha Lee's Ghostweight. The stories vary in tone from introspective to breezy and in content from speculative far futures to more traditional space-opera action, making this collection a definite recommendation to any reader looking for a wide range of engaging and enjoyable reading experiences.--Keep, Alan Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This hefty anthology of imperial SF covers great space battles, small dramas within an empire, hopeless bureaucracy, and even living space stations, zooming in and out to capture every nuance as protagonists return a lost princess of the empire (Melinda M. Snodgrass's "The Wayfarer's Advice") or rebel against subjugating aliens (Tobias S. Buckell's "A Cold Heart"). Some stories truly span empires. Brandon Sanderson's "Firstborn" tells the story of a young man whose only military talent seems to be an uncanny ability to fail spectacularly, and how he uses this weakness to defeat the greatest military strategist the galaxy has ever known. Robert Charles Wilson's "Utriusque Cosmi" spans eons as a strange force sweeps over the entire universe. Others have a more intimate scope. Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "The Impossibles" deals with a single case in an interspecies court and what loss or victory might mean to an overworked lawyer. In Ruth Nestvold's "Looking Through Lace," a linguist immerses herself in trying to understand a mysterious culture. The diverse array of stories ensures that there's plenty of interest for any fan of large-scale SF. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
As editor Clarke points out in his introduction, when most people hear the term galactic empire, they immediately picture Darth Vader and Star Wars. But there is a long history of star-faring empires in the genre, with stories that imagine our human tendencies to explore and conquer among the stars. While some of the writers here consider the human-alien conflict, as in Paul J. -McAuley's "Winning Peace," there are other tales about the attempts to communicate and cooperate as recounted in Ruth Nestvold's "Looking Through Lace" and Gwendolyn Clare's excellent "All the Painted Stars." Standouts from authors' established worlds include Ann Leckie's "Night's Slow Poison," set in the universe of her "Ancillary" novels, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "The Impossibles," about an overworked lawyer in the world of Rusch's "Retrieval Artists" series. VERDICT The stories gathered here, all of which have appeared elsewhere, show the huge range of possibilities of the chosen theme. Contributors make for a mix of newcomers and seasoned veterans alike, including Aliette de Bodard, Brandon Sanderson, Naomi Novik, Robert Silverberg, and Ian McDonald.-MM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
