Review by New York Times Review
ANN LECKIE'S LATEST Space romp, PROVENANCE (Orbit, $26), isn't really a space opera in the same way as the awardwinning Imperial Radch trilogy that made her famous. It might be tempting, therefore, to insist that comparisons are unfair. Yet they're also unavoidable - largely because, even though "Provenance" centers on non-Radchaai societies, it is effectively a sequel. Now that a treaty has been established between the empire and the enigmatic, violent, technologically superior Presger, countless planets breathe easier. But the peace will last only so long as the "civilized" races of the universe actually act civilized. This premise makes the book a perfect follow-up to the trilogy, because it is effectively a comedy of manners. The story focuses on Ingray Aughskold, a young woman adopted into a family of some importance on the planet Hwae. Ingray has a scheme to earn favor with her mother by breaking a notorious criminal out of prison - a scheme that, fortunately for her, does not go completely cockeyed. In the trilogy, there was a running subplot surrounding the diplomacy of tea, which served as a symbol of civilization (and colonization). Here, a similar purpose is served by Hwaean "vestiges," essentially fannish collectors' items. But at the end of the day, this is a saga of children struggling to meet the strict obligations of family and adulthood, which makes it a microcosmic mirror of what the Presger have demanded of humanity. It does get convoluted, however. "Provenance" feels clumsier than the Radch novels in many ways, possibly because there are fewer galaxy- or character-transforming moments to pull the reader along. As an example, Hwaean society's gender pronouns (his, hers, eirs and its) don't flow as well as the "universal her" of the earlier stories, though one gets used to them. Ingray and her companions aren't nearly so compelling as Breq and company, either. Still, the novel stands well as a sort of thematic coda to the Radch trilogy, and should please those who like tea with their space opera. The world is at war - unofficially for the moment, but it's only a matter of time before de facto conflicts erupt into full-fledged conflagration. And in the lush, complex realm of Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda's monstress, volume TWO: THE BLOOD (Image Comics, paper, $16.99), the second in a series of graphic novels, that conflagration is increasingly likely to involve magical genocide by godlike eldritch abominations. This series is impossible to classify; genre elements mingle in mythical and gleefully subversive ways. The story's protagonist, Maika Halfwolf, is descended from an ancient immortal called the Queen of Wolves - quite literally an anthropomorphic wolf. Maika has only one arm, though sometimes she wears a magical clockwork prosthetic; hidden in the stump is a squiggly, many-eyed monstrosity that periodically pops out and eats people. Her companions include a talking cat and a child with a fox tail. Yet the obvious parallels with our own world give this wildly imaginative fantasy epic its greatest impact. The central conflict is between "arcanic" people like Maika and humans who have developed a means of extracting magical power from arcanic bodies - brutally, and fatally. This of course evokes the politicized bodies of our own society, more so because so many of the story's characters are visibly people of color. The war's proponents deploy propaganda with all the loathsome rhetoric of the white supremacist altright; the war's atrocities are Mengelean in scope and grotesquerie. That the true monsters here include the hatemongers, and not just the tentacled horrors running about, is never in question. Yet between Liu's lyricism and the utter breathtaking beauty of Takeda's art, it's tempting not to care about the story at all. It's a pleasant bonus, then, that Volume Two provides answers to some of the crucial questions driving this in medias res story, and some welcome character development for both Maika and her resident monster. New mysteries appear as well, so readers can look forward to the continuation of this macabre, masterly series. In a realm of myth, magic and burgeoning science, a set of twins is born to the ruler of the land. To tell their stories, J.Y. Yang has cleverly written a pair of twinned novellas, THE RED THREADS OF FORTUNE and THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN (Tor.com, paper, $15.99 each). This is a tale of prophecy and family. Although their mother the Protector expects little of the twins, Mokoya develops the valuable ability to see - but never alter - the future. After she grows up and finds happiness with a family of her own, tragedy strikes, forcing her to rebuild herself as a scarred, hard-edged naga hunter. Meanwhile Akeha, the unwanted "spare" twin, eventually leaves to find his own fate, but he too is trapped by a prophecy that entangles his interests with those of rebels against the Protectorate. All of this takes place amid a gorgeous, outlandish backdrop : a pan-Asian technomagic world in which matter and energy may be manipulated by the Slack, a kind of invisible field of connective threads that controls gravity, electricity and more. Here part of the world has only half the gravity that it should, just because that's how magical lands work sometimes. Here adults impose their will on children in every way except the physical; when they come of age, children choose a gender identity and are then given medicines that shape their bodies to suit. Mokoya hunts nagas with the aid of a pack of trained velociraptors. She has a color-changing lizard arm. It's joyously wild stuff. These paired stories are being released simultaneously, and are clearly meant to be read together even though each stands alone. Each story follows one of the twins, though covering a different period in their lives; chronologically "Black Tides" precedes "Red Threads." Reading the later book first has no negative impact on the overall tale, however. Highly recommended. In Jeffrey Ford's THE TWILIGHT PARIAH (Tor.com, paper, $14.99), three college-aged friends while away a lazy summer in a small town. Eccentric Maggie gets the bright idea to conduct a pseudo-archeological dig on the outhouse of the Prewitt mansion, which has been abandoned for a century, and she persuades her aimless friends Russell and Henry to help out. Cue beer and lots of excrement jokes. But not long into the dig, they find a mystery: the skeleton of a child with horns on its skull, and ridges on its shoulder blades suggesting demonic wings. After this, things go about as well as can be expected. The three immediately start having "Did you see that?" moments. Mysterious, brutal murders begin to occur, and it quickly becomes clear that something - the Pariah, per local legend - is stalking the people of the town. This is in every way a traditionally shaped horror story of Things Best Left Undisturbed, and perhaps the only real tension lies in wondering if, or how, the three friends will survive. There are genuinely creepy moments, but most of them are predictable. One gets the sense that Ford knows this, however, and that scares aren't really the point. The deeper meaning is in the tale of three young people trapped in crumbling rural Middle America, with nothing but gallows humor and imagination to shape their lives. In quick but powerful brush strokes, Ford sketches Henry (the viewpoint character) as a young man watching his unemployed blue-collar father die slowly of despair. Maggie's restlessness draws in the reader most - she's the real protagonist - as it becomes painfully, horrifically clear that the murderous Pariah may be the only thing lending a sense of meaning to her life. Ford sticks the landing of this short, poignant and punchy book not by resolving the mystery, but by reminding the reader that there's nothing quite so horrific as having no future. N. K. JEMISIN won the Hugo Award for best novel in 2016, and again in 2017, for the first two parts of the Broken Earth trilogy, which concluded last month. Her column on Science fiction and fantasy appears six times a year.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 10, 2017]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Yang returns to the fascinating world of their (Yang's preferred pronoun) debut, The Black Tides of Heaven, with mixed results. Four years after the events of the first book, Mokoya, daughter of the Protector, has fled the capitol and its painful memories of her daughter's death. In her traumatized state, she no longer has access to the prophetic dreams of her youth. Working in tandem with her twin brother's antimagic populist rebellion, she hunts down dangerous creatures that the Protectorate has weaponized to quash dissent. While tracking a giant naga, she encounters and improbably falls instantaneously for Rider, an ungendered outsider who uses magical Slackcraft in unorthodox ways. As Rider trains Mokoya in these new methods, Yang frequently digresses into explaining how the magic system works. Yang efficiently captures the action of the physical battles that Mokoya, her estranged husband, and her brother fight to protect the city. The underdeveloped diplomatic conflicts remain a bit murkier, with a confusing layering of political jurisdictions and fealties. Though not as gripping as its predecessor, the novella authentically depicts trauma and lays promising groundwork for future books in the series. Agent: DongWon Song, Morhaim Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT To satisfy a debt to the Grand Monastery, the Protector has promised to give the abbot one of her children to raise. Unwilling to part with her grown offspring, the Protector magically conceives again late in life and gives birth to twins Mokoya and Akeha. At six years old, they are sent to the monastery. The two are inseparable, until Mokoya develops a prophetic ability that makes her valuable to her mother once again. This ability sets the twins on different paths, placing their relationship at the heart of these two novellas by nonbinary Singaporean writer Yang. The first volume, "The Black Tides of Heaven," focuses on Akeha and how his world is changed once -Mokoya's gifts manifest. The second title, "The Red Threads of Fortune," concentrates on Mokoya and the growing forces resisting the rule of the Protectorate. Yang's world is imbued with magic, yet a burgeoning rebellion eschews that magic for technology. The other striking bit of worldbuilding is that children in this world do not have gender until they choose which sex they wish to be, and the stories are full of fascinating gender explorations. VERDICT While published simultaneously, each volume can be read separately, as each story builds nicely upon the other. Taken together, they make an impressive, fresh debut steeped in Chinese culture. A second pair of novellas are scheduled for 2018.-MM © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
