[Lisa's Take] Seed - Rob Ziegler

I really need to get a review written for Seed before it leaks out of my head, but it’s proving to be a challenging book to write about.

The setting is near-future post-apoc; some unnamed disaster has left huge portions of the country a barren desert, entirely unable to be cultivated. A corporation called Satori reigns supreme, handing out their genetically modified seeds, which are the only plants that can grow in the barren climate. The story follows two sets of characters: poor drifters working their way across the mid-west, trying to survive; and several makers within Satori who are responsible for making the seed, and who are also experimenting on the population.

The best word I can come up with to describe Seed is “stark.” It is a dusty, bleak story with strong characters, surprising betrayals, and a truly weird and original sci-fi-esque streak of living buildings. I can’t say I enjoyed the read… it was a little too depressing and desolate to truly enjoy. I did find the book compelling, however, and filled with extremely interesting concepts. I loved learning more about the world and characters, it just left me a little heart-achy.

I’d definitely recommend Seed, just know that you’re not getting into a shiny happy book. Well written and moving: yes. Idyllic happy ending: less so.

[Lisa’s Take] The Void Trilogy (Peter F. Hamilton)

I kick-started my book list for 2012 by shotgunning all three books in Peter F. Hamilton’s Void Trilogy: The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void. This netted me a whopping 1973 pages in a little over 3 weeks. I’m pretty sure the last time I consumed that many pages from a single series back-to-back-to-back was either when I first got my hands on George R. R. Martin at Christmas 2003, or maybe the Kusheline Trilogy in 2006. Either way, it’s been a damn long time since I was compelled to read so much so quickly.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of literature that can be classified as “massively multi-genre.” Tad Williams and China Mieville are high of my list of favorite authors due to their ability to produce works that break out of the typical genre stereotypes. When I picked up The Dreaming Void, I was expecting good old-fashioned hard sci-fi, softened up with a bit of decent character development – you know, pretty much what I had come to expect when I read Hamilton’s Pandora Star and Judas Unchained.

My expectations were met for about a hundred pages. I was enjoying the story and the characters, and I was tickled pink to see a lot of familiar faces from his previous duology. I was finding the technology a little less accessible that that of Pandora’s Star; the story is sufficiently far in the future that technology has progressed to the point of “sufficiently advanced as to seem like magic.”

Then all of the sudden I started a new chapter and the book went from hard sci-fi to medieval fantasy.

I was… baffled, to say the least, but I greedily enjoyed the change of pace, expecting it to be a one-off occurrence. It wasn’t. With increasing frequency you start to get glimpses into the fantasy-esque world inside the void, and see how that ties in with the sci-fi world outside. I loved the juxtaposition, and honestly felt myself more attached to most of the void characters than anyone outside. At the end of the second book I was literally choking and crying on the plane. I’ve never read a sci-fi classified book that moved me so much.

I can’t recommend these books enough for fans of either sci-fi or fantasy. If you’ve never dabbled in sci-fi as a genre this might be an ambitious start, but anyone who enjoys the genre (or wants to be convinced that the genre can be enjoyable) would be well served by picking up the Void Trilogy. My books for the rest of the year are going to be hard-pressed to live up to such an excellent start.

[Lisa’s Take] Shadows of the Apt Book 1: Empire in Black and Gold (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

It’s a good thing I generally listen to Jeff over at Genre Reader when he says a book is worth reading, because otherwise I would have taken one look at the cover of Empire in Black and Gold, laughed myself silly with the ridiculousness of it, and never picked the book up. I know I shouldn’t judge content based on cover art… but EiBaG’s cover is just SO awful and SO trite and SOOO video-game-over-the-top that I couldn’t take it seriously.

Luckily, I bought the book on a glowing review, sight-unseen, so I never had an opportunity to be put off. I was rewarded with a novel containing a rich world, fun and relatively complex characters, and really exciting blend of fantasy genres. There were pure fantasy elements, certainly, but also a healthy dose of steampunk and a bit of sci-fi. The three genres blended together very nicely and made for a very unique experience. I’ve seen a couple of reviewers complain about there being too much focus on battle sequences, but I didn’t find that to be the case; rather I thought the balance between intrigue, characters, and fighting was pretty well done. Additionally, the author has a Sanderson-esque ability to depict fights between several people extremely clearly and with a high level of bad-ass-ness.

On the characterization-front, I admired Tchaikovsky’s ability to build a cast that mostly bucked character- and fantasy-stereotypes without going so far as to fall off the other edge and end up back at “ridiculous.” This has been a big gripe of mine with a lot of modern fantasy authors (with Joe Abercrombie perhaps being the worst) so it’s nice to see someone who strikes a balance. His characters were well rounded and complex, often grappling with real issues. I particularly liked the character of Thalric, and Tchaikovsky’s investigation of good and evil and loyalty. Of the other main characters, the only one I didn’t feel particularly sympathetic towards was Totho, but that was likely because he got so much less “screen time.”

I will admit Tchaikovsky did toe the line a bit with his character relationships; sometimes his characters attitudes were refreshing and insightful, but other times they edged towards just a little trite. I called almost all of the major character developments, but not to an extent where I found myself saying “of COURSE that’s where this is going, get ON with it already.” Overall, it was not a flaw that reduced my enjoyment of the book.

Definitely give Empire in Black and Gold a read. It is refreshing and solid and did a great job shaking up the standard fantasy world and character tropes.