Bit of back story. A group of authors in Northern England and Scotland got sick of all the literary events being in London and decided to organise their own it Leeds. They arranged it with Waterstones and called the event ‘It’s Strange Up North’. 18 authors agreed to attend and the notifications went out.
I happen to be on the British Fantasy Society discord and heard about it, since one of the organisers was in the Yorkshire & Humber channel on the BFS Discord. I bought my ticket ASAP and waited. I had planned to go to Leeds for the entire weekend, but hotels are ridiculously expensive. It is my birthday weekend, or at least it’s the weekend closest to my birthday, so theoretically I could have had a whole weekend away but the cat didn’t agree.
Yesterday, I travelled to Leeds by train, went to Hold Fast Books after a ride on the water taxi, then meandered around the Armouries shop, and bought a dragon, got another water taxi back to the Granary Dock and made my way through the station and up Albion Street, stopping in for a pizza and pavlova at The New Conservatory in Albion Place, before heading just a bit further up Albion Street, to Waterstones.
It was packed! They sold out the event! It was catered. Or more precisely, the organisers had gone out and bought party food and told everyone to eat up because they didn’t want it to go to waste. I struggled, honestly. I wasn’t too fussed by the food, and there were too many people corralled into too small an area until the shop shut at 6.30pm. Once it shut, we spread out and took over all three floors.
I met Laura Lam, author of Dragonfall, Goldilocks, and several other books. I bought the paperback of Dragonfall and Laura signed it for me. We had a chat about random things, like epidermoid cysts, and the publishing industry.
I met Sunyi Dean, and her dog. She signed a paperback copy of The Bookeaters for me.
I met Stephan Aryan and got an early copy of The Blood Dimmed Tide. He signed it for me. Stephan Aryan is very tall. I got the first book in this duology, The Judas Blossom, last year at FantasyCon, and he signed that one there. I’m actually going to read both of them at some point.
I bought a copy of The Bone Ships, by R.J. Barker. He was supposed to be there but couldn’t, so sent signed book plates.
I met Charlotte Bond and got a copy of her debut novella, The Fireborne Blade. She was handing out sweets and bookmarks, so I’m not complaining. I read the book on my way home last night and a review will follow shortly.
I met Sarah Brooks, who signed a copy of The Cautions Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, her debut. It isn’t supposed to be out yet.
I picked up a copy of Ascension from Nicholas Binge. I think it’s the only sci-fi I bought.
And finally, Snowblooded, by Emma Sterner-Radley, a fantasy set in 19th century Sweden.
I have book marks for some of them, and in the goody bag I received an ARC of We Are All Ghosts In The Forest, by Lorraine Wilson and a pin badge for Snowblooded.
There are pictures on my Instagram.
P.S. Did you know the Royal Armouries shop has dragons!?
I bought a Suki brand dragon called Thunder. He is cute and has joined the dragons of my dragon shelf.
The Final Architecture, Book 3 By: Adrian Tchaikovsky Narrated by: Sophie Aldred Series: The Final Architecture, Book 3 Length: 20 hrs and 49 mins Unabridged Audiobook Release date: 27-04-23 Language: English Publisher: Tor
Summary
From Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of Children of Time and winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Lords of Uncreation is the final high-octane instalment in the Final Architecture space opera trilogy.
He’s found a way to end their war, but will humanity survive to see it?
Idris Telemmier has uncovered a secret that changes everything – the Architects’ greatest weakness. A shadowy Cartel scrambles to turn his discovery into a weapon against these alien destroyers of worlds. But between them and victory stands self-interest. The galaxy’s great powers would rather pursue their own agendas than stand together against this shared terror.
Human and inhuman interests wrestle to control Idris’ discovery, as the galaxy erupts into a mutually destructive and self-defeating war. The other great obstacle to striking against their alien threat is Idris himself. He knows that the Architects, despite their power, are merely tools of a higher intelligence.
Deep within unspace, where time moves differently, and reality isn’t quite what it seems, their masters are the true threat. Masters who are just becoming aware of humanity’s daring – and taking steps to exterminate this annoyance forever.
My Review
I’ve read or listened to quite a few of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books in the last few years. I’m reading one currently, and I’ve just finished listening to this book. I’ve met Adrian a couple of times at FantasyCon; he’s from Lincolnshire and got his honorary Doctorate in January 2019, at the same ceremony I received my Masters at Lincoln. He’s a bit of a weirdo, but not a bad one. His son is autistic (some people I know who grew up with Mr Tchaikovsky have speculated that he’s ADHD but I don’t know), and he tries to include neurodivergent characters in his more recent books. I particularly enjoyed the crows in Children of Memory, who are ADHD and Autistic. I’m considering getting paperback copies to add to the Little Neurodivergent Library at work.
In the The Final Architecture books, the ‘ints’ are neurodivergent – most have deliberately damaged brains that allows them to process the world in a way entirely differently to the majority of the population. Some are naturals – like the first ‘int’, Saint Zavienne, and some of the Partheni new class who have the ‘right’ genetics for sensitivity to unspace travel, but most have an acquire brain injury that makes the neurodivergent. They are significantly disabled by their brains, and Idris is one of the most disabled. He’s also the oldest, one of the original class, almost a hundred years old; never aging, never sleeping, always anxious, always highly stimulated. His obsession with finding the Masters, the ones driving the Architects to destroy sentient life in the universe, pushes him close to death, multiple times. Usually he only survives because of some piece of tech or emergency procedures taken by his friends and occasionally his enemies.
I found Idris to be a bit of a wet blanket, but he admits to being a weak, ‘little’, man. He’s small and physically weak from his early years of deprivation, his long life of hard labour fighting the Architects and travelling in the unreal. He has a strong spirit and his frustration with people who won’t listen and who won’t consider the implications of their actions resonates. He is opposed to genocide, which is a perfectly reasonable position to hold, and he seeks the first cause. I can agree with that position. I don’t think we’ll find an intergalactic species desperate to recreate the conditions of their original universe at the centre of our problems however.
Idris is the driver of the mission, but the driver of the plot is Olli, who along with Kitt the Hanni are the remaining crew of the Vulture God, while everyone else is on the Eye buggering about in unspace. Olli, being a suspicious bint, doesn’t trust anyone, particularly the ‘parthos’ – the women of the Partheny. And she’s right to be suspicious, as she uncovers a breakaway group plotting a coup, and helping the arc-ship building cabal. A pointless war breaks out between Hu and the Partheny. Olli and Kitt take the ship, and an Ogdru (an aquatic species that can navigate unspace) called Junior out of it and try to save everyone.
Eventually, they end up saving the universe. Olli gains various items from the Hegemony, after she becomes heir to ‘The Razor and The Scythe’, as Unspeakable, head of a crime syndicate, and by the end of the novel, head of her own nation. Olli is my favourite character, and I really want a novel about her adventures as Unspeakable. Her attitude of ‘fuck it’, her willingness to try whatever she needs to do to survive and to help her friends survive, and her magic legs from the Hegemony, make her an engaging, fun character.
The story is complicated and has several parts. First the mission on the Eye, then the war, then the rescue, and finally back to the mission. The narrative uses multiple voices to tell the story – a limited 3rd person omniscience – and there is some overlap between the chapters as the same events are told by different characters and then taken forward. Since events happen across hundreds of thousands of kilometres of space, this is quite helpful. I enjoyed seeing events from multiple perspectives.
The narrator, Sophie Aldred, is very good. She gives each character their own personality. She has really good pacing and inflection, although some of her pronunciations are wrong. I enjoyed listening to this audiobook. I found myself looking forward to getting back to it while also finding ways to stretch it out because I didn’t want the story to end.
If you’ve enjoyed Adrian Tchaikovsky’s other books, you’ll probably enjoy this one. The man publishes two or three books a year, so you’ll probably always have something to read/listen to. He’s really good at space opera with relatable human (and nom-human) characters.
Format: 245 pages, Hardcover Published: November 14, 2023 by Tor Publishing Group/Tordotcom ISBN:9781250826978 (ISBN10: 1250826977)
Description
Am I making it worse? I think I’m making it worse.
Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back.
Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.
But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.
Paperback, 351 pages Published October 3rd 2017 by Akashic Books
Blurb
Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.
Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human.
When the autopsy of Matilda‘s sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother’s suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother’s footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she’s willing to fight for it.
My Review
I’ve reviewed this book on my podcast Everything Is Better With Dragons, episode 2 which will be available soon, but I’m sharing a written review for those who don’t listen to podcasts.
I liked this book.
Aster is clearly Autistic, like Rivers Solomon, and later in the book we learn Aster is probably non-binary too. A bit of intersectional representation! Aster also comes from the lower decks of the arc ship she’s travelling in. The society of the HSS Matilda is highly stratified by skin colour, the darker you are the lower down the ship you live and the worse your living conditions are. Aster, unlike many of her deck mates, has a lot of mobility between decks due to her position as assistant to the Surgeon General, Theo. Aster has a complex relationship with Theo, neither really know what they are to each other beyond their professional relationship, and both struggle to express what they feel for each other.
Complex relationships are a theme in this novel.
Theo has a complex relationship with his uncle, Lieutenant, who eventually becomes Sovereign. Theo is frightened of his uncle and aware that his uncle is highly conflicted about his feelings for Theo.
Lieutenant has a complex relationship with morality. He is attracted to his feminine nephew, appalled by his attraction and also by the ‘pollution’ of the family bloodline represented by Theo’s skin colour. He’s also jealous of Theo’s relationship with Aster. He assumes it’s sexual, although it doesn’t get that far. He can’t punish Theo directly, because they are equals as Commander of the Guard and Surgeon General, but he can hurt Aster. After his ascension to Sovereign, he takes his sadistic hate out on everyone on Q deck, where Aster lives. He claims that his authority comes from a deity, and that as a ‘pure’ human he is better than lower deck residents.
The society in the book is heavily based on the Antebellum South of the U.S., so incredibly unequal, racist and screwed up. Aster and her friend Giselle are irritants in the society they are forced to tolerate. Aster because she is able to code switch in both gender and language, doesn’t get the point of a lot of the social conventions and has the ability to move about. Giselle because she’s bat shit crazy and is happy to cause mayhem and be a Devil. It is her ability to withstand abuse and trauma, and react in unexpected ways that prevent the Guards or any authority from keeping her down.
Another complex relationship, that between Aster and Giselle, defines and triggers major events in the novel. They love and hate each other, but they also need each other. Aster couldn’t interpret her mother’s notes without Giselle, who sees the world from an entirely different angle, possibly upside down and inside out. Giselle is paranoid, and has delusions of persecution; she is convinced someone is trying to poison her for much of the book. She gets into all sorts of places because she wants to hide from her persecutors.
Aster has complex relationships with maternal figures in her life, firstly her absent mother and secondly Q-deck leader, Aint Melusine. Lune, Aster’s mother, left a riddle for her child to unravel, which becomes Aster’s driving interest, along with botany, astronomy and chemistry. It is Aster’s need to answer the question of Lune and where she went that gives Aster the resilience to survive persecution by Lieutenant and to save HSS Matilda from pointless wandering.
Ainy Melusine replaced the mother Aster never knew. She is not particularly maternal despite being a Nanny on the upper decks, and teacher to the children of Q deck, but she does her best for Aster who she recognises as an unusual child from an early age and helps her to gain an education beyond that normal for a low deck child. Melusine is also Theo’s mother, which complicates her relationship with both Theo and Aster, as she can’t tell either of them. Theo’s father was a previous Sovereign, and the relationship between him and Melusine was clandestine and considered immoral on the upper decks.
These complicated relationships and characters travel through space on a large arc ship that has been travelling at near light speed for 350 years, although on Earth a thousand years has passed. They are powered by Baby, a miniature star, who provides power for the drive and provides light for the crops on a complicated layering system of fields. The ship is clearly and vividly described as is the society that has evolved in different decks and over the ship as a whole. The contrast between the metal and decay of the lower decks with the lush extravagance of the upper decks provides a visual narrative about the people of the Matilda. Despite the harshness of their lives, the lower deckers are inventive, loving and preserve their own food, languages and storytelling cultures against all odds.
The narrative is broken up with stories that Melusine has told Aster in the past. These stories are colourful and clearly draw on Black American and African stories. Melusine or Aster reflect on the stories and what they mean to them, which brings them seamlessly into the narrative.
The narrative is mostly told from Aster’s perspective but occasionally Theo, Melusine and Giselle have chapters. I found this a really interesting structure and have used a similar structure in my novels. I enjoyed the direct plotline with past events being pulled in as memories that fit into the story seamlessly. There’s no skipping between past and future. It’s a lot less confusing that way, at least for me.
The writing and the language used is particularly effective for showing the different cultures and social structure with its minute gradations based on minor differences in skin tone. The language has impact, especially during traumatic events. Some things are heavily implied and some are outright stated, depending on the needs of the narrative. I have the audiobook as well as the paperback and listening to the story had a strong impact on me.
I really enjoyed this novel. I read the last 100 pages in an afternoon, so engrossed by the action and events, I had to know what happened next, and I’d love to see a sequel.
Jay Posey returns with the much-anticipated second installment of the critically acclaimed Ascendance series following a powerful woman who can destroy planets with a single word but who is suddenly faced with an adversary that threatens the entire universe.
Far in the future, human beings have seeded themselves amongst the stars. Since decoding the language of the universe 8,000 years ago, they have reached the very edges of their known galaxy and built a near-utopia across thousands of worlds, united and ruled by a powerful organization known as the Ascendance. The peaceful stability of their society relies solely on their use of this Deep Language of the cosmos.
Elyth—a former agent of the religious arm of the Ascendance, The First House—is on the run after the events of Every Sky a Grave, when she and the fugitive Varen Fedic exposed the darker side of Ascendance hegemony on a planet called Qel. Though she just wishes to put the past (and Varen) behind her, she is soon tracked and cornered by the Ascendance agents. Surprisingly, they aren’t there for punishment. Instead, they offer her a deal in exchange for her help in exploring a new planet that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. If she agrees, her sins against the Ascendance and the First House will be forgiven.
Elyth reluctantly agrees to join the team of elite agents (including some former allies-turned-enemies) but almost as soon as they touch down on the planet’s surface, things start to go awry. Strange sounds are heard in the wilderness, horrifying creatures are seen stalking the forests, and even the landscape itself seems to change during the night.
But as expedition members start dying, two things become clear: the planet is conscious, and it’s trying to kill them.
If you’re reading this: HELP! I’ve been kidnapped.
Me and my big sister stayed together after our parents died. We weren’t bothering anybody. But some mean government agents came anyway, and split us up.
Now I’m a prisoner on this space ship. The agents won’t even say where we’re going.
I hate them.
And things have started to get a bit weird. Nullspace is supposed to be empty, but when I look out of the skywindows I can see … something. Out there. And I think it wants to get in here. With us.
My name is Clarissa. I am ten years old.
And they will all be sorry when my big sister comes to rescue me.
Audible Audio, Unabridged, 17 pages Published May 4th 2021 by Audible Studios
Hardcover, 478 pages Published May 4th 2021 by Del Rey ISBN:1529100615 (ISBN13: 9781529100617)
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission–and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that’s been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it’s up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian–while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.
Hardcover, 523 pages Published October 1st 2020 by Head Of Zeus (first published July 7th 2020) ISBN:1800243200 (ISBN13: 9781800243200)
GENDER-SWAPPED ALEXANDER THE GREAT ON AN INTERSTELLAR SCALE
Princess Sun has finally come of age.
Growing up in the shadow of her mother, Eirene, has been no easy task. The legendary queen-marshal did what everyone thought impossible: expel the invaders and build Chaonia into a magnificent republic, one to be respected—and feared.
But the cutthroat ambassador corps and conniving noble houses have never ceased to scheme—and they have plans that need Sun to be removed as heir, or better yet, dead.
To survive, the princess must rely on her wits and companions: her biggest rival, her secret lover, and a dangerous prisoner of war.
Take the brilliance and cunning courage of Princess Leia—add in a dazzling futuristic setting where pop culture and propaganda are one and the same—and hold on tight:
Dr Helene Vermalle is shaping the conscience of a goddess-level AI.
As a leading civilian expert in Emergent AI Socialisation, she has been invited to assist in a secret military project.
Her role? Helping ViraUHX, the most advanced AI in the universe, to pass through four theoretical development stages. But it’s not easy training a mind that surpasses her in raw intellect. And the developing AI is capable of killing her with a single tantrum.
On top of this, she must prove her loyalty to the oppressive government hovering over her shoulder. They want a weapon. She wants to instil an overriding sense of morality.
Can she teach the AI right and wrong without being categorised as disloyal?
Lost Tales of Solace are short side-stories set in the Lost Solace universe.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 