J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Beneath the Surface by Rebecca Langham

Genre: science fiction (dystopian)

Pairings: f/f, m/m

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis gay, nonbinary, agender, trans*

Warnings: racism and racist ideology which isn’t resolved until book two, potential for white savior narrative

Rating: 4 stars

 

Review

Lydia is a governor’s daughter, with all the privileges and lack of privacy that comes along with it. Desperate to have some peace in her life, she signs on as a teacher in an underground installation that houses alien refugees. While busy falling in love with Alessia, Lydia is caught up in the burgeoning revolution of the Outsiders and finds herself confronted with a host of uncomfortable truths about her government, corporations, and science.

Pacing

This book had a lot of similarity to The Long Way to a Cold, Angry Planet in terms of being highly character driven, with few explosions. Unlike Angry Planet, however, I found the tension high from the start and had little problem getting hooked into the narrative. Alessia’s plight is palpable through the prologue (a prologue that actually does work, in this instance), and Lydia, though the quintessential Unlikable Protagonist, does show some useful growth.

In many ways this book is more dystopian than sci fi though, so those coming into it hoping for laser gun battles and pew pew shoot em ups will leave disappointed. Those interested in more of a slow world reveal and the biting social commentary that used to be prevalent in dime store SFF novels, will be pleased.

 

Romance

I enjoyed the romance line (primarily f/f, though there was a sub-romance in m/m). Though it began as ‘lust at first sight’, the romance did develop at a steady, believable pace. I found the lead to the fade-to-black scene a rewarding payoff, and the tension between Lydia and the various options for a f/f pairing, for me, helped with could have otherwise been a slow start. The m/m romance line (though admittedly this is WAY outside my lane) was sweet and very appropriate for the characters.

 

Queer Themes

The Outsiders are presented as primarily gender fluid, although binary options are still present. The commentary on gender and sexuality conventions was well stated and fit within the context of the aliens as presented. The ending of the book made the nature of this queerness all the more interesting, and the author’s views on the nature of human gender and sexuality are well articulated. The queer community as a whole should find this book a very welcoming, and refreshing, look at the various iterations of the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

 

The Nitty Gritty

With all that I liked/loved about this book, it did edge into some uncomfortable territory in terms of tropes. Lydia’s narrative is uncomfortably close to that of a White Savior as presented in the first half of the book. There are numerous references to her being the Outsider’s only hope for escape, and in places Lydia sees her role as that of the only one who can help the poor alien refugees. The narrative does not, in fact, play out in this direction, and for the most part the Outsiders save themselves, but readers should be aware that echoes of this trope are around.

I did consult the author about this, as I often do before addressing major concerns in a review, and got more of a view on Lydia as will be presented in book two of this duology. Lydia is meant to be portrayed as a typical sheltered, privileged woman who slowly wakes to the issues around her, but this reckoning doesn’t really break off until book two. Some of this awakening does come on the backs of the marginalized (an Outsider is beaten in front of Lydia, which makes her realize that no one doing anything is problematic), some of it comes from simply interacting with the community. This remains a problematic area of the book for me, however I understand, too, that a great deal of the SJ movement in fiction, especially, is US-based, and I am viewing this through a US lens. The author of Beneath the Surface is Australian, specifically designed the world in this book around Australian detention centers, and as such, it’s not really fair for me to judge the SJ side of the work through a US view.

My second issue with the book comes from, again, a US SJ ideological standpoint. Petra, a non-POV character, but one with a great deal of growth, regardless, is our instigator for violence. It is Petra who sets off a bomb in the underground shelter to try to free her people, and in doing so kills a guard (the enemy), but also an Outsider child. Petra is, of course, mortified at the death she caused, but is also rightfully frustrated that her people are so passive and are not willing to fight for what they want (instead hoping humans will eventually see the good in them, and release them back to the outside world).

Throughout the book, Petra is berated for her actions and use of violence against her oppressors. At one point Lydia tries to rationalize Petra’s actions through thinking of Petra as a wild, caged animal. I was very uncomfortable with the constant barrage of ‘violence never solves anything’ in the narrative and the insinuation that Petra’s actions were wrong. There were too many parallels, for me, in terms of the Outsider’s internment and Jewish people being placed into ghettos, to reconcile the idea that just doing what your ‘benevolent’ overlords tell you to do will eventually get them to realize the error of their ways. Their are numerous instances in earth history where failure to act gets you killed.

After some discussion with the author about this topic, she brought some traits about the Outsiders to light which either weren’t well highlighted in the narrative, or I missed (the latter is more likely). The Outsiders are genetically passive–incapable of violence, and Petra is the first in their history to have a mutation that allows for her to engage in violence. Having this piece of information makes the reactions of the other Outsiders to Petra much more understandable, and Lydia’s response (also a why would you do something like this?! response) is also understandable from her Unlikable Protagonist position of privilege. Langham told me that the characters do come around to understanding the need for violence under certain situations in book two, and that is very helpful for me, as a reader, to see that the greater world isn’t being presented in black and white.

The Ending

The end of the book brought in that sci fi twist so reminiscent of dime store novels, and I absolutely loved it. In fact, the problematic tropes listed above were all but wiped away with the ending chapters, and the this really saved the book for me. The moral grayness that comes out here is fantastic, and I loved this discussion of science and corporations. Lydia’s White Savior narrative, and  White Savior Complex, are completely undermined, and Petra’s actions are vindicated.

This was a hard book to read due to how some problematic tropes were employed (but never realized), but in the end, the problems were couched in the failings of the characters, and provided excellent social commentary. Beneath the Surface will be triggering for some US readers, especially those from certain marginalized backgrounds, so please keep the warnings presented in the front of the book in mind, as well as the discussion presented above. The book is worth reading, but isn’t without some bumps along the way.

 

You can buy Beneath the Surface in print here and ebook here.

Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Genre: portal fantasy

Pairings: none

Queer Representation: trans, ace

Warnings: potential tooth decay

Rating: four stars

 

Review

This is the third book in the Wayward Children series, which started with Every Heart a Doorway, which won, in no particular order, the 2017 Hugo, the 2017 Alex Award, the 2016 Nebula Award, and was nominated for the 2017 World Fantasy Award, the 2017 British Fantasy Award, and was on the 2016 Tiptree Honor List.

I still need to write reviews for the first two, so when they’re done, you’ll find the review for Every Heart a Doorway here and Down Among the Sticks and Bones here.

In this third installation is told mostly from the perspective of new student Cora, former resident of the Trenches and former mermaid. Cora happens upon Rini, daughter of the deceased Sumi (remember, Sumi is from a nonsense world, so having a kid after you’re dead is totes legit). Rini has just found out her mother is dead, and so Rini is starting to disappear. A handful of students set out between realms to bring Sumi back to life, save Rini, and maybe, just maybe, find their own doors again in the process. In doing so they must journey through the Halls of the Dead to find Nancy, and eventually head to Sumi and Rini’s land of sugar and confection to defeat the Queen of Cakes.

Plot

This book lacked a lot of the magical whimsy of Every Heart a Doorway (EHaD), and had a lot less darkness than either EHaD or Down Among the Sticks and Bones (DAtSB). It’s possible that since it primarily dealt with a land of sweets that the author was trying for a lighter feel, but the story came off, well, sugary instead of heavy. More cotton candy than meat pie, which was how I felt after EHaD. Full. Content. This left me with that sort of high fructose corn syrup aftertaste. It wasn’t bad at all. It just wasn’t incredible, which is what I’ve come to expect from this series.

Still, the plot was well paced and the characters rounded. This was the first book in the series I didn’t wish was longer. This one was exactly the right length for the story that needed to be told. The plot, that Sumi needed to be brought back to life so she could create her daughter Rini (who is part of this Scooby Gang), was completely appropriate for both Sumi’s character, and the description of her nonsense world. It was great, too, to get to see Sumi again. Out of everyone who got offed in EHaD, Sumi was the one I was most attached to. It was great to get to see her not only alive again, but to know that she would one day find her door.

Worldbuilding

If you read this book for no other reason, read it for the worldbuilding. The descriptions of Sumi’s world are amazing. I’m not a big sweets fan but I appreciate the artistry that goes into things like gingerbread houses, and the descriptions in this book were like mind crack. I would kill to visit this world, if only for a few minutes, to see the gingerbread castles and candy corn fields, and soda pop oceans. What kid hasn’t dreamed of something like this? What child who has seen Willy Wonka (the trip 1970s version) hasn’t been obsessed with a world made entirely of sweets?

Characters

Cora makes a find addition to the crew and adds a dimension on body positivity to the otherwise very diverse and eclectic school kids. Kade gets a bit more backstory as well (nothing new, just some more intricate rehashing). Seeing Nancy happy in her home is worth the price of admission, and the real emotional punch comes at the end, as one of our students gets their long awaited door home.

Overall, this was a worthy addition to the Wayward Children series, just not perhaps it’s strongest entry.

You can buy Beneath the Sugar Sky in paper here and ebook here.

 

Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Genre: sci fi (space opera)

Pairings: f/f, m/AI (implied female), m/f, m/m (in-world, but not POV character)

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, trans, pansexual, gay, gender fluid, nonbinary

Notable other representations: implied autism representation

Warnings: none

 

 

Review

An eclectic crew aboard the galaxy’s ugliest ship (trope checkbox: ugly/dilapidated ship!) are given an extended mission to create a new ‘punch’ through space to an outlying world. Along the way we explore most every crew member in detail, people boink and find themselves, and only one person manages to die. Cultures are explored. Science is scienced. HEAs for almost everyone. Feels all around.

I have lost count of the number of people who recommended I read this book. Every Tweet request I put out for f/f space opera came back with this title, every FB post, every word-of-mouth query. So I feel pretty confident in say that people like this book. And I get it…sort of. I have mixed feelings.

Characters

To say this was a character-driven space opera would be an understatement. Characters were the plot LWtaSAP (forever after abbreviated as LW). Ninety percent of the tension in this book came from character self reflection and character interaction, not from external forces or plot driving. That was at once both refreshing and irritating, and in places this book read more like a cozy fan fiction than a novel, but on the other hand why don’t we have more books that are allowed to just exist like this? Why does space opera have to be explosions and death and war? Like, it’s opera, as in, soap opera. So really, when you think about it, LW is the quintessential soap opera in space, hence, space opera.

Plot

Not really. You sort of get the hint of one about halfway through, when the captain takes the long punch job to connect the mainly habited sections of space to a new outlier planet. The tension never really builds in this direction though, although we are treated to one pirate attack (with good tension) and one political upheaval (great tension), both of which are sadly quite short. The plot is the characters and the characters are the plot, and in this case, that means digging down into everyone’s past, exploring their secrets, and helping them find emotional resonance in whatever that means for them.

Of interest to me, of course, was the f/f pairing, which I thought was very well done. No explicit scenes at all, but enough tension that I was breathlessly flipping pages. I usually have a hard time getting into human/alien pairings, mostly because I’m (unabashedly) into breasts, but both female characters were so beautifully written and developed that the pairing seemed natural and obvious from the start. So too did the romance between Jenks and Lovey (the ship sentient AI). In no world did I ever think someone cuddling naked against a warm metal core would be erotic, but this book definitely proved me wrong (and I think we have THE SHIP WHO SANG to partially blame, for prepping me for this sexy moment decades in advance).

Science

Holy science, batman! Solid, solid science, from the tech to the ‘how do we explain space travel so that morons understand,’ to the little everyday household items, the science in this book was beautiful and well explained. Lovers of hard scifi will be at home, as will those who couldn’t care less about the hows and whys. The writing in this book is exemplary from start to finish, and makes even the most sciencey of technobabble understandable.

Quibbles

This is probably just personal taste, but the book, IMO, just wandered. I don’t mind a little wander, and I love a good drawn-out courtship, but I felt like the first hundred pages of this book were functionally unnecessary and seemed to just be filler. The book lacked in sort of standard structure, or a try-fail cycle, or even a strong narrative arc (an overall arc. Characters had great arcs). It just…didn’t seem to go anywhere, and we didn’t even get a through-line until halfway through the book. The story seemed more vouyeristic, like an episode of The Truman Show, Space Cadet Edition. We’re just…watching everyone’s everyday. We get to see all the little mechanics of the ship, and personal interactions, and minor stakes. We get extended meal times and shopping times and hugging times and it just… it dragged. But it didn’t drag in bad way, if that makes sense. Like, I wanted it to have more plot but I also didn’t mind what I was reading. This isn’t a book I’ll keep on my shelf, or that I’ll read again, but I don’t regret the experience, if that makes sense.

 

I think this book would be of interest, primarily, for those with a love of cozy, HEA fan fiction, true space science junkies, and anyone who has ever dreamed of ‘clean’ space opera without any mass death or military structures. It’s gay as hell, too, so if you just want a good time with some queer beings in space, this is also your book. It won a crazy number of awards, so it sounds like there are plenty of readers who have long awaited a space opera like this one!

You can buy LW in print here and ebook here.

Read the review for the second book in the series, A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT, here.

Review: Daybreak Rising by Kiran Oliver

Genre: fantasy

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: trans, lesbian, nonbinary, gay, pan

Warnings: whitewashing

Rating: one star

 

Review (print version. It’s relevant, trust me)

Celosia Brennan was supposed to be a hero. After a bunch of military (?) commandos put way too much on the shoulders of a teen and she fries a town, Celosia has joined the resistance. She is part of a corp of elemental magic users (GO PLANET!) bent on taking down The Council. I don’t know what The Council is. I don’t know what it’s motivations are. Apparently it either kills elementals or tries to leash them to do its bidding, and so our ragtag band is out to take it down. Among them is a blind woman, at least two lesbians, a trans man, nonbinary people, among others. There is a reasonable smattering of black people, although two have problematic blue eyes. That’s a whole different blog post.

Diverse books hold a special place in my heart.

Diversity is not, however, enough to hold an entire story together.

Books need plot. They need character development. They need a copyeditor and a proofreader and page numbers. This book had…none of those. Typos were abundant (double periods, quotation errors, NO PAGE NUMBERS), the prose was stilted and super telly (constantly telling, then showing, then sometimes telling again, ad nauseum), and the story lacked a discernible arc or plot through line. So let’s break it down, issue by issue.

Typos and redundancy

I realize this book was self-pubbed, but that isn’t an excuse for not having an editor, copyeditor, and/or proofreader. This book also suffered from a heavy amount of word redundancy within paragraphs, which made it read very fanfic and amateurish. Fundamentals were left out as well, such as, and I’m still not over this, a lack of page numbers in the print version.

Writing style

If I hadn’t wanted to leave a thorough review for this book, I’d have DNF after the first fifteen pages or so. No clear plot emerged until about halfway through the book. The backstory of the lead character didn’t come through until about thirty or so pages in. There was no way to get character buy-in, or world placement, for the first half of the book, and that was really frustrating.

There was no multi-act structure for this book. Tension was never built, save for the Big Reveal about three-quarters of the way through (which was the only moment of true interest I had in the book). The book wasn’t even a complete arc, with it ending just before the Final Battle. The primary plot appears to be getting Celosia over her PTSD (admirable, for sure), but her whole situation is confusing. She was used by the rebels, screwed up her job because she was a kid, and now everyone holds her responsible for the screw up. I have no empathy for people who hold a child responsible for failing an adult task which again, made world buy-in next to impossible.

The author mainly told instead of showed, maybe as a way to speed up the slow pace of the book (which was achingly slow). The occasional show was always followed up by a tell, which really treated the reader as a moron. Most readers can pull intent and feelings from context and motions, we don’t need to be beaten over the head with it.

 

The White Gaze

Black people with blue eyes. Just. Don’t.

Don’t.

 

Characters

Too many POV characters for the length and type of book. This was no five hundred page epic fantasy. I don’t actually know how long it was, because it HAD NO PAGE NUMBERS, but there was barely recognizable growth in our lead POV character, Celosia. All the other POVs seemed thrown in for plot relevance, but not enough time was spent with any of them to make them real people. Even three quarters of the way through the book, new POV characters were being introduced, which was very frustrating.

 

Romance

The main romance line felt forced, rushed, and lackluster. The two characters had no chemistry, and Ianthe seemed more like a plot device than a character.

 

Queer representation

This was the one strong point of the story. The trans romance line was handled well, the gender discussions were thorough, and the lesbian romance was…well, there was a lesbian romance, so that counts for something.

 

Final thoughts

I so wanted to like this book, but I felt like it reached up and smacked me every other numberless page. The typos, the lack of tension, the poor character development, the lack of any type of formal act structure, all came together in a book that felt rushed. It felt like I was reading a draft zero of a book that had a lot of potential, but the author didn’t want to go through revisions. I was left disappointed–in the book, the characters, the flailing plot, and the typos I almost drowned in.

If you’re willing to forgive all of that to see some decent queer rep in a fantasy, you can buy Daybreak Rising in ebook here and print here.

Review: The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley

Genre: epic fantasy

Pairings: f/f, f/m, m/m, poly, references made to various enby pairings as well

Queer Representation: lesbian, gay, gender fluid, transgender, bisexual, intersex (sort of)

Warnings: rape, cannibalism, a ridiculous amount of death

Rating: 3.75 stars. Is that a thing? It should be a thing

 

Review

On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past.

There’s more to the back blurb, but the above is the A plot line, and the one with the most depth, IMO. As with most modern epic fantasy, we are exposed to a staggering number of POVs. While I delighted in every moment of the worldbuilding in this book, especially in the queer representation, the volume of characters and their (general) lack of significant growth had this book feeling more like the wanderings of George R.R. Martin than the dynamic head hopping of the Mistborn books (well the first three, anyway).

So let’s start with what I loved.

Queer Representation

I had no idea how to even process the start of this book. Queer characters are everywhere. In fact, I’m not certain anyone is straight in this book. Lilia, our orphan girl from the blurb, has two romantic arcs with women. Roh, a minor POV character, has relations with men. There’s an assassin, another minor POV character, who is an interesting variety of intersex in which his sex actually changes by season. Some countries have five genders (assertive male, passive male, assertive female, passive female, other, although these aren’t the titles they’re given), and people are allowed to pick which fits them best. Some people are flat out gender fluid, some have ambiguous genitalia (I think? There’s some vagueness here). Queer relationships are onscreen everywhere, and no one thinks its weird at all.

How refreshing.

 

Worldbuilding

The concept of the mirrors and alternate dimensions is pretty standard across portal fantasy, but this takes the genre into high fantasy and wow, does it do it well. The viciousness of the landscape, the colors of the sky, the hopelessness of some of the people, the rage of others, it all blends perfectly into a world you could drown in.

I was engaged as well by how smoothly the author transformed standard fantasy tropes on their head. The saturation of females over males in the narrative, especially in the backdrop characters, the casual in-world rapes and power struggles, the sort of casualness of it all, the this is just how it is, served as a poignant reminder of how ridiculous epic fantasy often is. By turning the gender ratios around, Hurley manages to make an effective example why gender ratios matter, especially with background characters. Where were all the men in these worlds? Don’t know, don’t care, this isn’t their story. Don’t like it? Maybe you should look at why that is.

With all that praise out of the way, let’s get to issues.

Character development

At it’s most basic level, the characters developed. They grew up, they learned, they met new people and engaged in battles and magic and whatnot. At a more interpersonal level, we never spent enough time with any one character, never got enough real internal monologue or motivation from any one character, to really see substantive growth. The only character I ever got emotionally attached to was a minor POV character–Zezili’s husband–and his entire purpose in the narrative appeared to be titilation and social commentary. He was the only character with real emotions though. Even Lilia, our primary protagonist, failed to really engage throughout the book. Her early chapters are a reasonable hook, but the middle of the book has so much, so much POV shift that not only is it hard to keep track of who is who, but it’s hard to stay connected to any character long enough for a POV chapter of them to come back around.

Names, Places, Things

Reading this book reminded me of the first time I picked up an Anne McCaffery Pern book. I didn’t know where to start so I just grabbed one and started reading. There were so many words I didn’t know, like klah, and I thought I’d never sort everything out. I did though, by about halfway through the book. Mirror Empire has to be, what, five times as long as that first McCaffery novel I read, and by the end of it there were still words I didn’t know the meaning of, and character names I had to go…wait, who is this again? There’s a glossary at the back, which includes a dramatis personae, but I hated going back to it every fourth word. There was just too much in terms of names for me to keep straight. I’d probably have been fine if I took notes, but I hate taking notes.

 

In general, this book really scratched my ‘epic fantasy’ itch for the year, and I’ve got no complaints as far as queer rep goes. I wish I could have connected with one of the primary protagonists more. Of the main three–orphan girl Lilia, ruthless killer and domestic rapist Zezili, and Ahkio, the dead kai’s brother–Lilia was the most interesting. Her later chapters moved her into the same sort of hard emotion of Zezili though, and I lost interest. Zezili herself seemed human only when thinking of her husband (which is all sort of messed up, since she kept him basically as a sex slave), and Ahkio I never cared for.

Lovers of large cast epic fantasy, dark epic fantasy, and anything even remotely similar to Game of Thrones, will enjoy Mirror Empire. The book is a lot darker than the epic fantasy written by Sanderson, however, so those wanting cleaner, lighter epic fantasy should probably pass.

You can buy THE MIRROR EMPIRE in paperback here and ebook here.

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