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Series Review: Planetfall by Emma Newman

Planetfall is a science fiction series comprised of three novels: Planetfall, After Atlas, and Before Mars, with a fourth, Atlas Alone, to be published in April of next year.

While all the books are linked and have a theme of isolation, they each have a different protagonist and follow different events.

The first book, Planetfall, is about the first human colony on a new planet, built by a group who set out into space to find God, led by a person called the Pathfinder. Twenty years on, it follows Renata, a woman part of the original mission who now works as an engineer for the 3-D printers. The novel explores how the colony deals with a newcomer arriving suddenly, and the secrets that lie in the heart of the colony’s foundation.

Ren is an interesting character, as she’s clearly hiding things and I was never sure how much I could trust her, and yet I found her social anxiety deeply relatable.

While Planetfall is set on an alien world, After Atlas is set on Earth forty years after the Pathfinder left Earth. It follows Carlos Moreno, a detective for the Noropean Ministry of Justice, who begins investigation into the death of a cult leader – a leader who Moreno has a personal history with.

I love books that blur between genres, and I loved seeing how a crime scene could operate in a high-tech future. And the world-building here is fantastic; After Atlas is much more dystopian than Planetfall – for instance, Moreno is one of the many people working as forced indentured servitude in endless contracts.

However, the ending is rather weak in my opinion. Much like Planetfall, the last few chapters are a radical departure from the rest of the book, and felt rushed. There was also a lot of ‘he or she’ and ‘his or her’ throughout that made sentences clunky – ‘they’ would have flowed much better.

[tw: while there’s no rape in After Atlas, some parts, particularly towards the end, could be triggering to those sensitive to that topic. there is also a depiction of an abusive relationship.]

Before Mars is set on Mars, and follows geologist and artist Anna Kubrin as she arrives at the small science station. Her job is to paint landscapes for a corporation back on Earth. But right away there’s strange things happening; she finds a note in her handwriting warning her not to trust the station’s phycologist, she finds footprints on a part of Mars where nobody else has been, and things from her luggage, including her wedding ring, are missing.

On top of that, Anna is feeling a disconnect from her family and especially her baby daughter, who she was already struggling to connect with. This book is as much about her emotional journey as it is about the unfolding mysteries around her, and is my favourite so far in the series.

[tw for post-natal depression, an abusive relationship, and gaslighting.]

Newman is very good at building mystery and suspense; she strikes the fine balance between giving enough information to keep you interested and on your toes, but not so little that it’s frustrating, and there are lots of details that make a second read-through enjoyable. This is especially evident in Before Mars, which, for me, has the best mystery.

Each novel also has amazing world-building that explores both the political changes and how they affect people on a personal day-to-day basis, and the new technologies that is woven in very believably.

I also love the casual representation; Ren is openly attracted to women, and there’s a non-binary character in Before Mars. (There’s also one in After Atlas, but they’re a minor character and not the best in my view.)

However, I think it’s important to talk about Stephen Gabor, who I feel falls into the territory of the predatory as he is extremely controlling and abusive towards his husband. I really hope Atlas Alone is better in regards to this, because an abuser and his victim shouldn’t be the only representation for gay men.

Overall this series reminds me of the Wayfarer books by Becky Chambers; both are a very personal kind of sci-fi, with a heavy focus on interpersonal relationships, and I would love to see more books like this.

#planetfall #after atlas #before mars #emma newman #book review #booklr

Game Review: OneShot

OneShot is adventure/puzzle game created by Little Cat Feet originally released in 2014, with an extended version released on Steam in 2016.

The game opens with Niko, a young cat-like person, waking in an unfamiliar room in a dark and dying world. The player is the god of this world, and your job is to guide Niko through the world to restore the sun, and return them home.

The catch? You only get one playthrough of the game. You only get one shot.

This is a game whose fourth wall is broken so often it might as well not be there; characters know you exist and address you by name, and Niko frequently talks to you and asks you for advice. I think this was an effective way to build a relationship between the player and Niko, as they frequently tell you about their life back home with their mother. It’s hard not to get attached to them, at lest for me.

There are three main areas in the game you explore: the Barrens, the Glen, and the Refuge, with the Tower where you place the sun at the end. In each area, you solve a series of puzzles in order to progress. These mostly consist of either combining the various items you find or fetch quests. But then there are the computers.

Throughout the game are computers that you interact with, which again serve to break the fourth wall as well as providing some of the more interesting puzzles. These range from looking for new files created by the game, to having your wallpaper background temporarily changed, to moving the game window about. I loved these puzzles, it’s one of the things that sets OneShot out from other adventure games.

The ending is something a lot of players will guess beforehand – I did, and I’m sure savvy players will figure it out faster than I did – but I don’t think the game loses any of its emotional impact for it. For me, there was a slow sense of dread as I entered the final area, praying that I was wrong, and the fact that you only have one chance at the game only adds to this – once you’ve finished, the game won’t let you restart. (And if you mess with the game file to play again, the game will know that you’ve done this.)

If you can’t tell already, I loved this game. I love the slow exploration of the world, I love the characters you meet, I love Niko as a protagonist, I adore the art and the soundtrack, which are both gorgeous, and I think the mechanic of involving the player’s computer in puzzles is something that should be utilised in more games.

#game review #oneshot #little cat feet

the-knights-who-say-book

Review: Peter Darling

Rating: ★★★★★

Blurb: Ten years ago, Peter Pan left Neverland to grow up, resigning himself to life as Wendy Darling. Growing up, however, has only made him realize how inescapable his identity as a man is. But when he returns to Neverland, everything has changed: the Lost Boys have become men, and the war games they once played are now real and deadly. Even more shocking is the attraction Peter never knew he could feel for his old rival, Captain Hook—and the realization that he no longer knows which of them is the real villain.

Ahh, I love this book. It’s a beautifully-written and unique take on Peter Pan with a meltingly-cute romance, what else could you want? Oh, trans and mlm characters? Well it has those too, so now you have no excuse.

I love that Peter is such a compelling but flawed character, and I love Tink’s snarkiness, and I love the unexpected relationships throughout the book. But most of all I am absolutely in love with Peter and Hook together. Like, I knew I was going to like this, but I had no idea how much! How the beautiful writing and the plot that gets them from enemies to reluctant allies to flirty!enemies to [spoilers] makes it such a satisfying ship.

I love the angst to wholesome comfort arc, and the whole vibe of Neverland; the nebulousness of it, the truth of how it works, the role of the fairies. There’s a theme of who’s in control of the narrative throughout the book that is really great and part of the quote I like to share with people from this book:

“It used to be my story, you know, when I was a boy and I had Neverland to myself. But then you came along, and you were so ruthless and insistent, before I knew it you’d snatched the narrative away from me. You claimed — you insisted — that it was you who cut off my hand, when it was perfectly clear that I had not had the hand well before you arrived. You then told me you had fed the hand to a crocodile who would follow me to the ends of the earth, and lo and behold, such a crocodile appeared and hunted me until its death. The very world here bends for the sake of your stories, Pan. I see no reason why I, a mere man, should not.”

Anyway it’s great and you should read it.

#other people's reviews

salmiakkivodka

Viggo’s $1 Book Reviews

Back on my bullshit again

Planetfall by Emma Newman

Are you ready for your mind to be fucking blown? This book will do that. The back cover summary of this book makes it look like your typical secrets get revealed sort of drama in a cool sci-fi setting, but it is so much more than that.

First of all, tumblr, your main character is a queer woman of color and the novel has an incredibly diverse cast. So that’s bonus points.

I’m not sure how to talk about the plot of this book without giving away all of the little secrets and hints that Newman does such an incredible job weaving into the narrative. The setting is a human colony set up on a far distant planet at the base of what the colonists call “God’s City”, some sort of enormous alien structure or plant-like organism. It becomes clear at the start of the novel that the main character, Ren, and the colony’s de-facto leader (referred to rather ominously as the Ringmaster), are hiding something from the rest of the colonists. Something that has to do with God’s City and their initial discovery of it.

Exactly what this secret (or secrets) is Newman reveals very slowly over the course of the book, giving more and more hints through dialogue and flashbacks, as bits and pieces of it become relevant to the story. And when everything finally comes to a head the truth is both horrifying and astounding. It’s definitely a book that will make you think.

Conclusion: Please go read this book. I am in fact making the library I work at buy a copy because it’s so damn good.

#other people's reviews

i think i have a new favourite author in Emma Newman

#booklr

Book review: The Fallen Children by David Owen

The Fallen Children is a science fiction YA novel centered around the mystical pregnancy trope.

One night, everyone inside Midwich tower block falls unconscious at the same time. In the days that follow this ‘nightout’, one young woman and three teenagers find themselves pregnant. The pregnancies progress incredibly quickly, and the girls soon find themselves giving birth to rapidly growing children.

There are very few things I actually enjoyed about this book, and all of them come with a ‘but’. The writing was okay, but there are times when the pacing is off, and I thought the ending was rushed. The book actually acknowledges the mystical pregnancy as rape, and explores the physical and mental stress they cause, but this is soon dropped, and the pregnancies are frequently hailed as a ‘miracle’ by two of the characters. Normally I would be happy about diversity in books, but given that this one has a black teenager and a Muslim teenager having their bodies violated, I really don’t think it’s great on that point.

One of my main problems with it is the character of Siobhan, one of the teenagers who gets impregnated. She induces a miscarriage through drinking, and is punished by it by both the other characters, who shun her, and by the narrative, which drops her perspective. There’s no compassion for her, no sympathy, no focus on her recovery. Instead, she’s repeatedly called a killer for wanting autonomy over her body, and at one point another character actively roots for her death, saying that she ‘deserves it’.

There are other issues, such as the fatshaming, the flat characters, the sexual assault from a teacher which is never dealt with, the too-frequent switches in point of view, and that the bullying from the other tower residents became, in my opinion, highly unrealistic at the end, but the treatment of Siobhan is by far the biggest.

I can kind of see what the author was trying to go for in places, as there’s discussions of being an outsider and struggling to imagine a future for yourself as a teenager, but I think those themes could have been explored better without the sci-fi elements. And when you’re writing a book about rape, there’s a level of sensitivity you need in order to do it well, and that sensitivity was completely lacking here.

#book review #the fallen children #david owen

2018 Rec List: Part One

With the year halfway over, I wanted to share some of the books I’ve really enjoyed so far this year. I’ll have another list in about six months when 2018 is over. Feel free to check out my goodreads to see what else I’m reading.

I’ve read a lot of non-fiction books this year, with many having a focus on health. This wasn’t something I planned, it’s more that one book seemed to lead into the next through recommendations from both goodreads and the online catalogue of my local library.

Anyway, I hope you find something interesting here, and please share what you’ve been reading this year!

#booklr #book list

Wlw, mlm, trans, intersex, ownvoices, authorsofcolour Fiction Under the Lights - Dahlia Adler_ YA, romance Simon and the Homo Sapien Agenda - Becky Albertalli_ YA, romance Stargazer/Trailblazer - Reece Alcobendas_ fantasy, romance Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin___ One Man Guy - Michael Barakiv...

With June coming to a close, I want to share this googledoc I made about a year ago. It has fifteen pages worth of LGBT books.

I haven’t read all of them so I can’t guarantee they’re all good. I’ve put the trigger warnings that I’m aware of, but if you see a book that needs one, please feel free to add it.

This is not a complete or definitive list by any means, but I hope it’s a good place to find something.

#LGBT books #pride #booklr

Book Review: Blue is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

Blue is the Warmest Color is a lesbian graphic novel originally published in French, and is a story about Clementine, a teenager questioning her sexuality and experiencing first love, told using the snippets from Clem’s diary. The novel focuses mainly on Clementine’s relationship with Emma, an older girl with blue hair who is Clementine’s sexual awakening.

I enjoyed this back when I first got it, but reading it again years later, I see a lot of issues with Clementine and Emma’s relationship. For one, Emma seems a lot older and more mature – they first meet when Clem is sixteen, and while Emma’s age is never stated, she’s a couple of years into college and has her own apartment.

Their relationship also doesn’t seem that healthy, with Emma initially keeping them to secrecy as she’s cheating on her girlfriend with Clem, and Clem frequently hyper-focusing on Emma to the exclusion of the rest of her social life.

There are also a lot of time jumps in the story, frequently skipping by months, and at one point it skips two decades, meaning we miss out on most of their relationship development. The twenty-year jump near the end is particularly frustrating; there’s no indication of what their life has been together, nor any room to foreshadow the causes of Clem’s death.

And yes, this is another book featuring a dead lesbian. As if we didn’t already have enough stories about that.

There are a few things I liked about the novel; Clementine’s slow realisation of her sexuality seemed genuine, and I liked her friendship with Valentin. One thing about the art style I think is pretty neat is the monochrome colour scheme used throughout the flashbacks, with occasional splashes of blue. But looking back at it, it really isn’t a great representation of lesbians, and the story structure and plot are very weak.

#book review #blue is the warmest color #julie maroh #LGBT books #pride

Author Spotlight: Jamie Berrout

Jamie Berrout is a Mexican trans writer whose stories and poetry focus on the lives of trans women of colour, emphasising the overlap of racism and transphobia.

Berrout has a very impressive writing history: as well as translating the work of Venezuelan trans writer Esdras Parra, Berrout has self-published a novel, two short story collections, and several poetry chapbooks. On top of that, Berrout works to uplift the work of other trans women of colour, working as an editor for the Trans Women Writer’s Collective and as a reviewer for Oni magazine.

Her novel, Otros Valles, is six months of the life of a Mexican trans woman living with her family by the Texas/Mexico border. It’s a difficult book to summarise; part slice-of-life, part autobiographical, and part magical realism, with the protagonist struggling with acceptance from her family and anxiety as well as having to navigating a racist and transphobic world. As with all of Berrout’s work, the writing here is beautiful.

Incomplete Short Stories and Essays, which has sadly been discontinued, is Berrout’s first collection of short stories, although that isn’t quite the right term for it. These aren’t completed stories, rather they’re the outlines of them, the possibility of what might have been; as she writes in the introduction, “This is a graveyard of trans stories that will never exist”. They serve to highlight the large gap left in literature and publishing due to transphobia and racism.

The second half is a collection of essays on some of the few pieces of trans lit we have, ranging from Janet Mock to Topside Press, as well as an essay about the anthology Berrout co-edited. These highlight how little publishing opportunity there is for trans women of colour, as well as giving much-needed critical attention and support to work written by trans women of colour.

Berrout’s second story collection, Portland Diary, is a collection of seven stories, many of which are speculative feel, all of which focus around trans women. The speculative stories range from dystopians to magical realism to light sci-fi. My goodreads review of the book goes into some detail about each of the stories, and they’re all fantastic, being a critique of the institutions that uphold racism and transphobia as well as experimenting in tone and style.

Her three poem collections are Postcard Poems, Desire and the Scent of Guava, and Out of a Wilderness of Tangled Cables. I don’t know much about poetry, or how to write about it, but the poetry here is beautiful, and it’s clear of Berrout’s poetry writing influences the rest of her work.

I cannot recommend Jamie Berrout enough, she’s my favourite indie writer, and I look forward to her future works. You can find her books on her Gumroad page, and you can check out her current editing project for the Trans Women’s Writer’s Collective.

#jamie berrout #trans books #LGBT books #authors of color #trans writers #ownvoices #author spotlight #pride

logarithmicpanda

Anyone has standalones fantasy recs?

havelockreviews

T.Kingfisher has some fairytale retellings which are standalones - noteable ones are The Raven and the Reindeer, which is a lesbian retelling of The Snow Queen, and Bryony and Roses, which is Beauty and the Beast.

Release by Patrick Ness, which goes back and forth between the everyday and the fantasy.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire, a short novella about ghosts.

Arcadia by Iain Pears.

stvrmwitch

booklr pride party train 🌈 🎉

If you’re here, queer, and all about them books reblog this post, then scope out the notes and make some new booklr friends!

#bi/non-binary

Book Review: Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Leah on the Offbeat is the companion novel/sequel to Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda. Set a year after Simon vs., Leah on the Offbeat is told from Leah Burke’s perspective as the friendship group starts planning for college and prom.

Albertalli is fantastic at capturing what being an older teenager in high school is like; the friendships, the drama, the intense crushes and romances, are all written so well, and I found them very believable – I remember a lot of similar things happening when I was in high school.

I also really liked how college was such a focus in the book. Most YA novels tend to have younger characters, so I found it a nice change to read about older teenagers who were planning for life outside school – the only other YA book I’ve seen do that is Radio Silence by Alice Oseman. Leah is also a protagonist we don't see often in mainstream literature; she’s bi, plus-sized, and unafraid to speak out about her opinions.

But besides Leah, the other characters are kind of flat and don’t really have much personality other than one or two traits. And despite her college tour being a fairly important part of the book, we don’t actually see any of it or what Leah thinks of it.

Leah doesn’t really change or grow as a character, she’s mostly just reacting to things other people do and getting angry at people without trying to resolve anything. And while this is fairly accurate to how I remember my teenage years, in a novel it tends to get frustrating and repetitive.

The ending was a disappointment. There’s no climax or resolution to any of the subplots, it just… ends. There’s a quick “we’re at college, everything is perfect and everybody’s fine, and all of the conflict is revolved!” to end with, but that’s it, and frankly it’s a really unsatisfying way to end a novel.

#leah on the offbeat #love simom #becky albertalli #lgbt books #pride #book review

Book review: Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs - edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Frasser

Stolen Glances is an anthology of photography and essays focusing on lesbian history. The essays and photography cover a wide range of topics; photo analysis, discussions of frequent themes used, lesbian representation in media, family albums, and discussions of racism and disability.

The book was launched alongside a photographic exhibition in the early nineties, and I wish I could find more information about it, it sounds really interesting, and god knows we need more LGBT-focused art events.

There’s more of an emphasis on essays rather than photography. While there are some chapters dedicated purely to photo series, the chapters consisting of essays are longer and more frequent, with some barely focusing on photography at all. And some of these chapters felt rather dense, assuming a prior knowledge of lesbian history.

The photography here is good, and there’s several photographers, such as Cathy Cade, Jacquai Duckworth, and Deborah Bright, that I’ll definitely be looking into, but I just wish there was more, and that it wasn’t all in black and white.

I also wish there was a wider variety of photographers. While there’s a few photo series focusing on disability and an essay about racism, the majority of the contributors are white, and the heavy focus on history there’s no mention anywhere about trans lesbians.

Still, this is an interesting read, and an important one; a reminder that gay women have always existed and always documented their lives and experiences.

#book review #lgbt books #ownvoices #lesbians #pride

As June is Pride month, tomorrow I’ll be starting a month of LGBT book reviews and author spotlights every Tuesday and Friday, with a focus on #ownvoices books. Hope you guys enjoy that!

#LGBT books #pride

Game Review: The Red Strings Club

The Red Strings Club is a 2018 point and click game by Deconstructeam with a noir, cyberpunk aesthetic.

The game follows three people; Donovan, a bartender and information broker who can manipulate customer’s emotions with his cocktails; his boyfriend Brandeis, a freelance hacker; and Akara 186, an escaped android with extremely high empathic abilities. When Donovan and Brandeis discover that Supercontinent Ltd, a large cybernetic corporation, is planning to push through a clandescent system that would suppress negative emotions for all implant users, they work to gather intel and plan to hack into the company to stop it.

As player, you control each character in different sections, each with their own gameplay mechanics. The game also keeps track of all the choices you make, and while these choices don’t affect the game’s ending, they affect how you get to the end. Ultimately I would say the choices are about how you interact with the characters you meet and how you use the information you gain.

As Donovan, you talk to customers and gather information through dialogue trees, mixing them drinks in order to set the mood. The drinks mechanic can be pretty awkward at first; although you’re told what each drink does through a notebook, the bottles themselves aren’t labelled, so there’s a lot of trial and error to begin with. As you gain more drinks and equipment, the work area becomes pretty crowded. It does get easier as you get used to it, but I thought more space and clearer labels would have helped.

The dialogue trees were really good; you get different answers depending on what mood you give the person via drinks. Each conversation has a variation – for instance, for one person you only can only ask three questions out of a selection of six; for another customer you have to change the mood after each question. It’s a cool way to stop things from getting too repetitive.

Akara’s section, which takes place near the beginning, is the shortest. You control them through a flashback scene as they work for Supercontinent, building implants on a pottery wheel for clients; you read what problem the person has and make whatever implant you think will help. I thought it was a neat mechanic and found it really relaxing, but mostly this part is there to kickstart the plot.

Brandies’ section is the last part of the game, and involves hacking into Supercontinent using voice-impersonation tech. The gameplay here is focused mainly around a phone; you use the voices of various Supercontinent employees in order to gain information, gaining the voices of other employees along the way. This was probably my favourite part, since it was fun figuring out how the best way to proceed. It was also cool seeing how the information you gained (or didn’t gain) helped Brandies.

There’s also an in-game hint system in this part, in the form of talking to Donovan to help you focus, which I thought was great. More puzzle games should have in-game hints available.

I really liked the music and pixel graphics, which are what give the game its noir atmosphere. It’s also nice to have a game that casually has diverse characters; as well as being two men in a relationship, Donovan and Brandies are both disabled – Brandies has a prosthetic arm and Donovan has chronic knee pain. There’s also a trans character, although I think the devs could have done better with her – you find out she’s trans while you’re impersonating her, and part of the game involves searching out her deadname.

Personally, I found the ending disappointed, as there’s no build-up to the final twist. I’m also uncomfortable with Brandeis’s death, given the way he’s killed as well as the fact that he’s both the only black character in the game and the only character whose death is a foregone conclusion.

I also found it strange that Donovan objects to Supercontinent manipulating people’s emotions without their consent considering that’s exactly what he does with his drinks; given the game’s attempts to invoke discussions of grey morality, I think this could have been a great in-game conversation.

Overall I think it’s a really cool game that’s definitely worth checking out, but it didn’t quite stick the landing.

#game review #the red strings club #deconstructeam

Book Review: Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody by Mike Dawson

Freddie and Me is a graphic memoir about Mike Dawson’s lifelong love of the band Queen, and of Freddie Mercury in particular.

I was a huge Queen fan as a teenager. I still love listening their music, but I was near-obsessed with them from about thirteen to nineteen. So this would seem like a perfect book for me. And I could definitely relate to a lot of the author’s experiences regarding his love of the band, and how music can have a big impact on your life.

But overall, I found the book rather dull. Which feels like a cruel thing to say about a person’s memoir, but ultimately Dawson’s life here is pretty average; he loves Queen, his family moves to America when he’s a child, he still loves Queen, he has a few romances that don’t go anywhere, he talks about Queen some more, he’s an angsty teen who wants to run away, he gets elitist about music, he still loves Queen… you get the picture. It’s an ordinally life blandly told, and there’s really not enough in my opinion to warrant a memoir, and certainly not one that’s over 300 pages.

There are some interesting musings on memory I liked and that I wish were explored more, and Dawson is certainly a talented artist, but the best I can say about this is that it makes for a quick read.

#book review #freddie and me #mike dawson #queen

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