As usual, Neil Clark does a great job collecting the best Sci Fi of the year. There are twenty-nine offerings this time that move from the near future to galaxies far, far away. Some I loved; some I didn’t like so much. My three favorites were Nine Last Days on Planet Earth by Daryl Gregory, a tale of the alien seeding of the Earth, Hard Mary by Sofia Samatar about a robot, and Meat and Salt and Sparks by Rich Larson, starring an intelligence enhanced primate. There were stories by old favorites, Ken Liu, Elizabeth Bear, Ian McDonald and authors new to me that I liked very much, like Samantha Murray, Nick Wolven and Madeine Ashby. There seems to be something for everyone.
eGalley review Publication date 7.2.19
Connie Goodwin has far too much on her plate, and Sam just doesn’t understand. When he is at work, he is at work, when he is at home he is not at work. It isn’t that way with Connie, a young tenure-track professor in Boston. She is an expert in the history of magic in Colonial America, mainly women’s home remedies. She is always at work, thinking about her writing, her students, deadlines, always deadlines. And now she has a personal issue she needs to address. She needs to find a “recipe” from one of her ancestors, a recipe that might protect her beloved Sam. The scene moves between Connie’s life in 2000 and the lives of women in the early Colonial era. I enjoyed the book and found the history of witchcraft in America very interesting. The characters are well defined, locales beautifully described. The plot moves slowly, but that’s ok. I’m not sure how to classify this book. It’s historical, but contemporary. There is some mystery and a bit of supernatural. This is a sequel to Howe’s earlier book The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. I did not read that book, but there was enough back story to keep me informed.
Maximillian Fly is a roach of sorts, with human characteristics and quite tall at over six feet. He’s actually much kinder than the humans. Thoughtful, keeps to himself. Until he witnesses two children, Kaitlin and Jonno, desperately running in the night. He decides to open his door and hide them. There is evil suppression in the city of Hope and the children have been targeted. Maximillian is drawn into their predicament at first rather reluctantly. Kaitlin is the strong, determined type, not willing to sit by and have their lives destroyed.
Eve hates getting letters. They are always from her mother and are always unpleasant. But this one is different, addressed to Mrs. Eve Forrester, the letterhead is printed: PEARSON & WILKES SOLICITORS. It requests her presence at the firm’s offices in London, where Eve learns she has an inheritance from a stranger. And it requires that she travel to the French Riviera to settle the estate. London in 1948 is still suffering the effects of the war…shortages of food, clothing, and just about everything else. Eve’s life is bland and boring, so a trip to the Riviera sounds quite exciting. Over her husband’s objections she boards the overnight train to Cannes and begins an adventure among the rich and famous, an adventure that could become deadly. Rachel Rhys has done it again. This is an absolutely wonderful book, capturing the feel of time and place, with a mystery that is slowly revealed. The characters are complex. I both loved and hated some of them. The book can’t be put down, so it is a very quick read. I think I have found my new favorite mystery author. I highly recommend this book.
From the publisher, “Piracy, blackmail, and meddling gods meet in this thrilling first novel in a commercial, fast-paced new YA fantasy series by Danielle L. Jensen
Berlin in 1938 is not a place for Jews. Amanda’s husband is a noted cardiologist, and he has refused to leave, saying his patients need him. He stayed too long and was arrested, leaving Amanda to care for their two small daughters, Vera and Lina, trying to find a way to save them. The answer came unexpectedly from the father of a patient. He arrived at the door with the news that her husband had died and with an envelope containing tickets for a ship to Cuba, where Amanda’s brother lived. But he had only been able to get two landing permits, and her husband wanted her to send the two little girls to Cuba alone. Amanda planned to do has her husband had wanted, but at the last minute she couldn’t lose both girls. As the ship was boarding, she asked an older couple to care for Vera and she kept Lina with her. Then Amanda and Lina made their way to the small French village of Haute-Vienne, where a friend had agreed to take them in. They would be fine. She was sure of that. After all, she and Lina did not look Jewish. This book is based on true incidents and is full of the horrors of Nazi occupied France. Mainly it is the story of little Lina and the identities she had to take up, her struggle to remember who she really was. At the beginning, this was a gripping narrative, but it became rather slow and plodding toward the end.
The wilderness northwest of the Ohio River was ready to be settled and Manasseh Cutler was determined to have his conditions included in the Northwest Ordinance: free universal education, freedom of religion and prohibition of slavery. He was not sure that he could succeed in his mission. He was just a small-town minister, what did he know about talking to Congress. But he headed off alone in his one-horse shay and covered 302 miles in twelve days to arrive in New York and deliver his petition to Congress. After many days and much arm twisting, the ordinance passed. The first pioneers left New England for the Northwest Territory in 1788 to settle in a town they named Marietta. I always enjoy the way David McCullough brings history to life. The people and places become real, not just names in a book. This story is told through the diaries and letters of five characters: Cutler and his son Ephraim, General Rufus Putnam, Dr. Samuel Hildreth, and Joseph Barker, a self-taught architect. It spans more than sixty years, and takes the traffic on the river from barges to the steamboat. This was a very good book and I highly recommend it.
It is 1968 in rural Australia. Tom Hope is trying to understand just why his wife left him. Her note didn’t help: I’m leaving. Don’t know what to say, Love Trudy. Tom has never known what to say to people. So he decides that when she comes back (if she comes back) he will think of things to make her happy. And she does come back, pregnant with another man’s child. Trudy never cares much for the boy, Peter, but Tom adores him and Peter adores Tom. So when Trudy leaves again, Tom didn’t care, because she left Peter. Of course, Tom knew Trudy would take Peter away some day, and he was right. Hanna Babel came to town about the time Peter left, and she made quite an impression on the village, outspoken, well dressed, and a Jew! She is there to open a bookshop, and hires Tom to build shelves. One thing leads to another, and when they marry, the townspeople are convinced that it will never last. After Tom and Hannah marry, the chapters alternate between the voices of Tom and Hannah. Hannah is an Auschwitz survivor and lost all of her family, including her small son. She is still trying to cope and Tom is also trying to cope with the loss of a child. This is a beautifully written story. The country, the people, are alive and real, gentle and lovable, (mostly lovable, some are really bad). It is a story about loss and love, which is pretty much what life is all about. I enjoyed it very much and highly recommend it.
From the publisher:
From the publisher,
Mary Norris loves all things Greek, but especially the Greek language. Not modern, Greek, mind you, Ancient Greek. This book recounts her studies learning the language, speaking the language. We go with her on solo trips to Greece (Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, Samos, Chios, and Lesbos), and also learn a bit about how the alphabet originated and about some English word origins. This is a fun book, part memoir, part travelogue, a wee bit tutorial, full of her adventures and misadventures and full of her passion for the land and the people of Greece. It’s a quick read that I enjoyed very much.
Joe Leaphorn is not too happy. Louisa nagged him into seeing her friend, Daisy Pinto. Daisy has something she wants investigated. So here he is at the museum waiting to see her. And waiting and waiting. As it turns out, this is actually something that interests him. An historic traditional dress, recently donated to the museum, has disappeared and Mrs. Pinto wants him to find it. And she wants him to find it quickly. It’s great to have retired Navajo police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn back actively involved in a case. And while he’s busy, Jim Chee is working on some burglaries in Chinle and Bernie Manuelito has found a dead body. So we have three story lines for the price of one. Anne Hillerman has become a very good writer. Her descriptions of the beautiful scenery surround the story. When she talks about food, you can almost taste it. And trying to keep up with the twists of three plots kept me turning pages. I enjoyed this book very much and am looking forward to the next one.
There is an island, Jeju, south of Korea’s mainland where women have been free divers for generations, harvesting seafood to sell, diving without air tanks or wet suits. They are the heads of households, bringing in the income, while the husbands care for the children, cook the meals. Mi-ja and Young-sook , best friends, are two young girls who live on this island. For several years they have worked hard as apprentices. Now the day has finally come when they will truly dive, the day that fills them with joy and with fear. They are only fifteen and will be called baby divers. Their lives will revolve around the sea. It will be a dangerous life, but they love the sea, and they know they will be best friends forever. The story of the women divers is fascinating, and would be a fine book on its own, but this is really a story of friendships, of misunderstandings, of forgiveness. It spans a huge time line, from the 1930s to 2008, and much of that time the Koreans are repressed, first by the Japanese, then by the occupying Americans, suffering unbelievable hardships. While much of the book is hard to read, dark, depressing, it is beautifully written, and it is a story that needs to be told. This is a wonderful book that I will remember for a long, long time.
Oh boy, Cotton has come out of retirement again. He’s working freelance for British intelligence – a simple buy and sell of letters between Churchill and Mussolini which had been lost in 1945. But now his orders are to steal them, things are getting complicated, and he finds himself on Malta involved in more than he’d bargained for. To spice things up, Luke Daniels is also on Malta, sent by Stephanie Nelle to monitor the movements of Cardinal Gallo just before the concave to select the next Pope. This is a good book, full of the history of Malta, the Knights, the Catholic Church, most of which was new to me. I loved every page. What’s not to love: plots, murders, fantastic narrow escapes, all kinds of blood and gore. Typical Cotton Malone. And at the end, Berry separates the fact from the fiction, which is a very good thing. If you enjoy action and adventure mixed with a nice dose of history, don’t miss this.
Commissario Gido Brunetti is having a difficult conversation with his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier. The Count is hoping that Brunetti will agree to look into the affairs of a mutual elderly friend. It seems that the friend is planning on adopting a younger man as his son, which would make the young man heir to a large fortune, and Brunetti’s father-in-law feels that is not a good thing. But Brunetti thinks that it is not his business, that the friend should be allowed to do as he pleases, and he is reluctant to interfere. I sometimes wonder if these books should be classified as mysteries. As is often the case, most of the book is devoted to Brunetti’s family life, the everyday interaction with his wife and children, his associates at work, the books he is currently reading. And this is what I love most. Life in Venice is slower than it is here. Much more civilized. Brunetti even goes home for a long, home cooked lunch with wife and children. The prose is beautiful, describing lovely food, and a lovely Venice. There is, eventually, a murder. And quickly, and neatly the crime is solved. This is the 28h book in the series. It would be possible to enjoy it as a stand alone, but so much back story would be missing.
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