The one where Karolina is apparently engaged to someone from way out of town, Cloak and Dagger are back and need help (field trip!), and we get a few moments of some of the Big Names in Marvel.
It’s a cute story, well contained with a bit leading up to what’s coming I’m looking forward to… but Karolina just vanishing into space was… kind of weird. I like her. Hope she’s back soon.
Onward!
The one with the time travel, yo.
Bit more traditional super hero flare, but still with a Runaways twist.
There’s a big bad in the future and our intrepid heroes(ish) have to find him as a teenager and … deal with him. Because that worked out so well the last two times.
Plus all sorts of b-tier / c-tier hero cameos… I have no idea which of these were made up for this story and which have decades long comics ruins of their own. And some rather higher level villains about. Now that was a surprise.
A fun ride.
Onward!
This is a fascinating sort of book, especially having read The Murderbot Diaries first. It’s not entirely the same thing at all–fantasy rather than science fiction, with a world full of floating eyes and many different sapient races rather than aliens and murderbots–but there are some bones that aren’t too dissimilar.
In a nutshell, you have Moon. He’s a Raksura, a being capable of transforming between a more or less human form (although I don’t get the feeling there are any real ‘humans’ in this book) and a much larger stronger winged form. He’s all on his own, not even sure what he is–or where he fits in.
Which of course goes badly when the people he’s staying with think he’s Fell (winged ’evil’ creatures; I’ll come back to that). And much better when another Raksura finds him and brings him back. And worse again when it turns out they don’t want him either. And better again when, of course, he saves the day.
“Like the Saint says, if you don’t have anything to say, you might scare your flightleader into thinking you’re dead.”
The one with Jerkface and the Kitsen.
Like all of the Starsight novellas, we have a focus on what else has been going on while Spena has been doing her Cytonic things. This time–as you might guess–with Jerkface.
It’s actually really great to see his point of view and especially to see just how much he’s grown throughout the books. He was always a leader, but he’s really coming into it now–and really realizing that sometimes, just maybe, the books might be wrong.
I do also love seeing more of the Kitsen. They’re really building up a regular anti-Superiority alliance there.
I think the biggest bummer now is having to wait for Defiant to come out this November… Onward!
Finally getting some answers!
We have:
Who (and why) the Pride are.
And what they mean when they say it’s all for the children…
And so the team grows.
They’re so amusingly teenager. Angst and boy / girl issues contrasting against their parents trying to find / capture / kill then. Good times.
It’s fun watching them try to grow up fast. I have no idea how they end up getting out of this mess… or what their parents are really up to.
Which is the best part!
Onward!
But the truth was, I didn’t feel accepted. I didn’t feel acknowledged for my service in raising the next generation, for my active role in the community, or even for being human sometimes. I felt utterly ignored. I felt invisible or, worse, frowned upon. Most of the time, when I looked in the mirror, I saw only my flaws. I saw all the things that advertisements and social media said was wrong with me. I wanted to focus on what was right about this version of myself, like the way I’d learned to take life a little slower and enjoy each moment. Like my appreciation for people’s differences, and for beauty found in unlikely places. For my friendships, new and old. I wanted it to be okay that I wasn’t worried about beauty anymore, or worried about looking young. I just wanted to look like me, however me looked in any given year.
Take your normal urban fantasy fair: our world, but with a few twists–gargoyles for one, this time. Add in your ’normal’ point of view about to get their world rocked. This time around make them a 40 year old woman recently gone through a divorce. Make sure that none of this really gets moving until the last third or so of the book (better if you’re going to read the whole series I suppose).
Magical Midlife Madness.
It’s fine and I expect there’s a lot more to like about the rest of the series, but to me the entire thing just sort of existed. Not that much happened, there was entirely too much wish fulfillment, and too much focus on ‘it’s okay to be 40’ (which it totally is, don’t get me wrong, just not chapters and chapters worth).
It’s not a bad book. It’s not the kind of book for me. I won’t be reading the rest of the series. Onward!
Eratos wasn’t the only dying world, just the one dying fastest—the tiny colony on Samos had been gone for a decade, and after Eratos would be Hypatia and then Gan-De, and maybe the Inner Ring would finally come to care when it was their turn to freeze to death as the sun collapsed.
A leisurely extinction. One that allowed everyone to push any inconvenience to another place or another generation.
The Vela is part of a fascinating sort of new/old model: serialized fiction. In this case Realm.fm (formerly Serial Box) is putting out piles of audio fiction by a number of well known authors chapter by chapter. And yet… somehow I read the ebook version from the library. I really should check out the audio versions.
In any case, The worldbuilding (as in the above quote) in the Vela is fascinating. A nearish-future tech sci-fi universe where humanity has managed to extract enough resources from the local star to freeze out the outer planets, wrecking all manner of havoc among the people that live out there. There’s all manner of classism, racism, and other racisms to digest…
Set against the backdrop of a missing starship (the Vela) and the two unlikely companions (Asala and Niko) who are sent to go find it. I’m glad to see Becky Chambers as one of the authors here, I really love how she does ‘people stories’. I haven’t yet read the other three authors, but they’re all on my to-read shelf already and higher up now. 😄
The relationship between Asala (hard bitten mercenary/sniper) and Nike (child of the president; hacker) throughout the stories is really the shining jewel of the series. It’s interesting to see the slight (IMO) variations between how the different authors see and write them, but it’s still well worth reading.
Well well worth a read. Or a listen. And Season 2 is on Realm? Onward!
People spoke about the death of planets as if the rock itself would shatter, but the truth was never so dramatic. The entire sphere wasn’t in danger of ceasing to exist. All that mattered was the inner goings-on of that tiny strip of gauze, that onion skin of atmosphere clinging to the rocky surface like morning dew. The narrowest of margins on which everything depended.
Reading volume 1, issue 1:
Oh that’s fun.
Oh that’s even better.
That’s a very promising start to a fascinating story. The kids are fun and I like seeing the mix of teenage dynamics with mysterious new powers and problems.
No idea what their parents are really up to, but that’s the point, no?
Onward!
The last of the 1602 stories, so far as I know.
A truly odd story of two women hunting. I … don’t actually know so they are in the original continuity. So I’m not sure what changes here.
Various panels making our clear that the characters are aware of our time and that they aren’t in it… is an odd choice. Related to the above perhaps?
The art changes style from part to part and some of it absolutely gorgeous in a haunting sort of way, other parts oddly surreal.
Overall, I enjoyed it, if perhaps the least of this run.
Onward!