Titan by John Varley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Titan is a rather surprising and accomplished find among ANY SF collection. There's a lot of imagination and world-building stuffed in these pages. I'd say it's better than Farmer's Riverworld series, but since I hadn't read them all, I can't say for sure.

Here are the really cool bits: Varley literally builds a world with a vast intelligence playing god within it. I was reminded of Bear's Eon at first until I realized that Titan came first and the whole tunnel of alternate dimensions doesn't show in Titan, either. :)

BUT when it comes to sheer adventure and exploration and learning about the modified intelligent creatures within it, Titan wins the contest hands down. I was already hooked by the Saturn expedition even with the whole 70's sex focus (which got old pretty quick), but everything else surrounding it, even the cocaine addiction, did wonders for getting my interest high. Cirocco Jones is a rather interesting female captain. After things go to hell and the strangeness begins, I'm all behind the rest of the novel.

Except.

I'm of two minds about the end. One part of me was all nuts over the SF and Fantasy homages. I really got all giddy over the way Varley incorporated everything and the twist at the end were just so delicious that it turned this damn solid worldbuilding hard-SF novel into a popcorn read.

And the very same twist and incorporation of nerdiness kinda threw me for a loop.

I almost wanted more mystery and a much more complicated reveal rather than a gimmie *oh that's cool* crowdpleaser. There was already so much going on. It almost feels cheap.

And yet, I loved it and it makes me yearn for the next book! Oh, the conflict.

Even so, everything about this was pretty jaw-dropping and gorgeous and the whole idea is made all the more delicious because it's fully realized and focused. It has more reveals than Rama, more intelligent life than Eon, and enough nerdy entertainment to fill three books of lesser quality. :)






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2017 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really shouldn't be scared of year-end-reviews, but it's 2017. There's plenty to be afraid of: Presidents, deaths of heroes, the One Ring to Rule Them All and In The Darkness Bind Them... well, you get the idea... BUT...

The good news is: good books ain't a part of that fear. ;)

On to my absof***ingfavorite picks. :)

Early in the year, I was thrilled by a re-read of Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning and the sequel Seven Surrenders. Near the end of the year, I'm just as thrilled or even more thrilled by the third book, The Will To Battle. These are super smart and philosophical and hard SF. I am very impressed with these mind-rich wildly entertaining rides. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they stand out as classics of literature and much more than just interesting SF. They're deep, imaginative, extremely well written, political, theological, and especially ethical. :)

Peter Newman's Vagrant series continues to thrill with Epic fantasy mashing up with hard SF, demons running rampant on a futuristic, much-changed world. Malice and The Seven continued to amaze with quality writing and especially the fantastic ride of pure gory imagination.

Alan Moore's Jerusalem was a mind-trip and a half and super fun and confusing and creative as all hell. It's going to require about four or five reads.

Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle, the whole damn thing, was a real blast. It's a good year for demons walking the Earth, but some are bigger and brighter and more deadly and overpowered than others. :) This one was wildly satisfying.

Brandon Sanderson's huge epic trilogy is even better on the re-read and the new third book was absolutely brilliant.

The conclusion to Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy was even more brilliant. :)

The latest book in the duo's James S. A. Corey's Expanse, Persepolis Rising was a real surprise and an even huge blast. Big action. :)

I've read a lot of other great books, too. Much more than I can really do justice here, but I can name a bunch of authors, like Logan Keys, Pauline West, and Drew Cordell who are like heroes to me. :)

And then there's also all my old favorites like Charley Stross, C. J. Cherryh, and Alastair Reynolds. And a 15th re-read of Dune, of course.

There are new standby favorites, too, like Jodi Taylor, Daniel Wilson, Dennis E. Taylor, and Daniel Suarez.


And of course, I'd be rather stupid not to mention that I'm doing a lot of writing, myself. I've finished three books. Wrote approximately 210 thousand words this year, including reviews. :) It's a calling. :)


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Legacy of the Demon by Diana Rowland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is definitely a series for you if you love:

A: Insane powerups
B: Enormous changes in the world thanks in part to the efforts or mess-ups surrounding the characters we know and love and those we love to hate.
C: Hybrid UF/Epic Fantasy.

Much has been said about how this series starts off as a cool UF with a cop who can summon demons and how it becomes an epic nightmare between the demon world and Earth and now the Core with immense magical and racial reveals. It starts out usual and then becomes something really big, with Kara Gillian leading the defensive charge. Add a war between Demon Lords and the WORSE enemy from the Core and we have the stakes all the way up to utter destruction of both the Earth AND the beautiful Demon World. (Yeah, I know, it's beautiful. Get over it. ;)

Kara's abilities are on par with those of Demon Lords now and most of that is thanks to the capture and harnessing of the jerk that tried to turn her into a meat puppet. I really enjoyed how she grew as a person, too, while having her enemies in her power. She didn't succumb to a rage-filled torturesque montage no matter how much we as readers *MIGHT* have enjoyed that. :)

And as for action and worry and the twists and turns of WAR, the plot was fascinating and dire. Rifts opening up all over the world with demons pouring through is kinda bad, after all. The end is cool as shit.

My only complaint is probably a personal one. Maybe it's a lazy thing. But there's a lot of names that start with Z and enough weird demon names throughout the text as to give me a minor headache trying to sort them all out and keep the connection. I can understand the need for a big cast of characters when we're dealing with an incursion on a massive scale, but things like this can annoy to the point it pulls me right out of the tale. Fortunately, it's not bad enough to make me lose any real threads, but it is a bit of a WTF moment unless you're actually good at long lists of names along the line of the Iliad. :)

Regardless, the tale always focuses on Kara and keeping her as an anchor was an excellent call. I had a great time with the entire novel and I'm astounded at just how many changes have come over the worlds. War-torn Earth, indeed, with gigantic monstrosities lumbering across cities. Hell ya! Wooooooo! :)


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The Moon Maze Game by Larry Niven
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Back forever ago, I used to rave about the Dream Park books. They were everything I imagined good imaginative fiction ought to be when it's right next door to us but catering big time to the whole gamer crowd that's out there.

What I mean is it's a SF and Fantasy fan's dream, mixed with LARPing and such a huge budget. Before, we were dealing with a fantasy theme park pulling out all the stops for the Princess of Mars or Voodoo mysteries and mixing it all with high-tech hijinx and murder and real mystery all along. This is well before the days of Ready Player One and even before Tad Williams' Otherland series.

I really wanted to like visiting the real Moon and having an all-out Wellsian adventure, adding a total steampunkian theme with magic users, thieves, and princes... and because this takes place at a much later date than the other Dream Parks, we're actually having the full-blown adventure ON the moon.

Cool, right? LARP it up with full props and live cameras and a world betting on your death, and don't forget the massive rewards and sponsorships!

Well, um... maybe I never got into the actual characters in this one. I liked the twists and turns in the overall plot and I have no issues with crossover books as long as the excitement is high, but the people I actually needed to root for were kinda lacking. There might have been a few other issues, too, but that's the big one for me.

Even so, there was a ton of cool action and surprises and as a straight adventure, it hits all the right geek buttons, classic SF buttons, and modern gamer buttons. This totally panders to us. :) It doesn't save the novel from the issues I brought up, but it did keep me reading with a good deal of interest. That's not all that bad. :)

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Now Wait for Last Year by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I treated myself to a rather more obscure PKD book to end out the year. I've always loved just how wonky his works can get, but here's the really interesting aspect of Horselover Fat's writing: it's never really wonky.

In fact, it has heart. Especially when that heart is breaking, the story is still devoted to some of those most human questions: how to go on when life is hard.

The old saying, "All's fair in love and war" holds doubly true here. Earth is caught in a conflict between two factions of aliens and we've sided with the humanoid types and have been stuck in a tug of war for an awfully long time. The main character, a doctor named Sweetscent, is caught in a difficult marriage, a conflict between duty and hate and tons of difficult questions. He's at war with himself just as much as the human race can't seem to find a way out of the interstellar war.

Enter the drug JJ-180, highly addictive and damaging, but happens to have some serious temporal properties. Namely, it allows you to jump years ahead in time to see the world as it will be. Unfortunately, it's much worse than crack, too, and withdrawal is terminal in days without another dose.

It turns out that it is not only a manufactured drug designed to decimate a populace, but it has the added ability to spawn one's consciousness and self in alternate realities. Add the conflicts of the war efforts and some sneaky back-and-forths with world-lines, and we've got a dual story of the Earth President's life and Earth's flailing status in the war and Sweetscent's attempts to make his own life better as alternate versions of the drug sends him both forward and back in time, spawning alternate versions of everything, as he tries to fix or break his marriage.

The novel is actually fun as hell and thought-provoking and it holds up really damn well. It comes out of Phil's heavily productive mid-sixties SF adventure period, riding close on the heels of his Hugo for Man in the High Castle. It's polished, full of great ideas, action, and best of all, the kinds of hard questions about living through bad relationships that he has a lot of experience with.

Suicide is a big one. So is weakness and sliding and emotional abuse and power dominance games in relationships. I remember his take on all that across so many of his novels. It's hard and it's honest and it is also beautiful even if it's difficult. It's messy. Like war.

But it also feels genuine.

I won't say this is my favorite PKD novel, by a long shot, but it's definitely worth the read and it's still a sight better than most SF out there. :)

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A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm actually rather impressed by the first Seven Kennings novel and I'm certain I'm going to be anxious to read the rest... but why?

That's pretty easy, actually. Seven nations and several races of giants and regular humans trying to get along in a pretty close approximation of Vikings and Druids, with light magic, no gods, and many peoples just trying to do their damn best with the whole survival thing and understanding their world.

We get PoVs from the peoples of both the Giants and the Humans and it's the normal kind of thing that makes them go to war. Population migration, settlements without permission, misunderstandings, pride, and a whole gamut of impressive and realistic reasons that are often skimmed or just plain ignored in Epic Fantasies of this caliber.

The magic is certainly not overpowered, either, but even so, big things can be accomplished with it. Unfortunately, the old idea (and disadvantage) of using magic means that it drains your life. Fast. It's a good balance and it even feels real. A few of the more interesting Kennings (types of magic) range from water, fire, illusion, animal calling, and arbor magic.

Just imagine Bards and Skalds and a mix of Icelandic and Germanic peoples, with Dirges, bonfires, and the whole feel of Vinland mixed with the Druidic order, Volcanic peoples, and the drive to find and understand the missing Kennings, the far-off lands, the Abyss that separates nations... and you'll get a very nice feel for this book. :)

I really had a good time. Hearne has always stood out in my mind for his quicksilver grasp of mythology and history and his ability to weave such into pretty awesome stories. His Iron Druid novels are some of my favorite UFs. He turns around his knowledge and weaves a tapestry of many cool cultures and lands rather than anchoring them all in individuals like he did in the UF. He's building a broad mythology here from scratch and the hints that all the Kennings will become ONE is scary.

It almost feels like it could either be a combining, a synthesis, or the complete eradication of all but one or the complete death of magic across the board. The way that these nations rely so heavily on the Kennings, however, means that we can probably expect genocides and shifting alliances, a complicated battle royale of races and peoples as interesting as you please.

This author has my trust. I'm really looking forward to how this will pan out. :)

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A Lot Like Christmas: Stories by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've always been a big fan of Connie Willis and so I couldn't really find any fault in reading an actual Christmas story (or stories) EVEN on XMAS if it was coming from her. Sometimes you've simply got to pick your battles, and Connie Willis is like the John Mclaine of Xmas Stories.

I'm not saying she strangles Xmas with a chain or uses wildly inappropriate western sayings. I mean, she could, I'm sure, but that isn't what happens here. She might get a bit angry at It's a Wonderful Life, however, so all these lines do blur.

:)

I suppose the one thing I love most about these is how Connie Willis's storytelling skill is nearly perfect no matter the sub-genre she twists it. I mean, these Xmas stories are all genuinely uplifting while avoiding sentimentality, very critical and humorous in equal amounts, and a great number of them are filled with the dead or futuristic worlds or even a murder mystery involving apes.

Yes, apes. Merry Xmas!

Above all, every one of these stories is easy as hell to read, are down-to-earth, full of fantastic human consequences, and is full to the brim with humor. I won't say that any of them are knock-down brilliant... but in terms of reading a master storyteller who knows her craft and has well-researched probably EVERYTHING about Xmas from stories to movies to poetry from a lifelong obsession, she can't be beat. She covers all the angles, from dark revenge stories to romantic comedies to murder mysteries to time and space traveling Aramaic-speakers to aliens in a hunt for JUST THE RIGHT GREETING to a VERY white Xmas.

And I have to agree with her. It's a Wonderful Life is FLAWED as hell. :)

I never read the other collection of Xmas stories, which might be a blessing in disguise. Even so, there are five new ones in this book. Either way, it doesn't really matter. I can read her stuff all day long. :)

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

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