The Vang #2: The Military Form

Panic bells, it’s Red Alert, there’s something here from somewhere else. The war machine springs to life, opens up one eager eye, focusing it on the sky. Let’s release some balloons for The Military Form, by Christopher Rowley.

Synopsis:

Eons ago, a war was fought to the death between the parasitic and ferocious Vang and a gifted but doomed race. As a last resort, these gentle beings were forced to use the Starhammer to smash the Vang spacefleets and homeworld, leaving only a handful of survivors. For a billion years a silvery shape drifted through space. More than three thousand years after humanity first went to the stars, an asteroid miner named Seed of Hope was illegally prospecting for radioactives in the Forbidden Areas of the saskatch star system. There it chanced across an alluring silvery object which looked like it would fetch a good price in the market for alien antiques. It was an encounter most of the crew would never remember.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

A thousand years have passed since Jon Iehard used the Starhammer to end the laowon Tyranny and freed humanity to expand and colonize beyond its former bubble. But the Laowan Empire was not the enemy the Starhammer was built to combat; and as human colonists flood new explored worlds, they reawaken that ancient sleeping threat: the self-proclaimed Gods of Axone-Neurone, the Vang.

Structurally, The Military Form is kind of awkward. Half of the early chapters are about the Alien-esque horror movie playing out on the asteroid miner Seed of Hope after it unwittingly picks up a Vang egg containing the titular Military Form. The other half, though, is spent establishing a bunch of characters on the planet Saskatch: there’s a drug smuggler who cuts a deal with the DEA after getting into trouble with the local Korean gangsters, the corrupt police chief profiting from the drug trade, the honest young police officer trying to bring down the chief, the rich corporate executive conspiring to prevent further colonization of the planet so he can keep it as a private nature preserve, the environmentalists who hope to win an award by capturing the first film footage of a native species of flying mollusc… what was this book about, again?

Look, I get the reason for this structure: the Military Form is eventually going to reach the planet, and the book wants us to already be invested in the local characters by then. Having the Military Form take over the ship and land, then stopping the narrative dead to introduce a whole new bunch of characters and get us invested in them to care when the Vang start slaughtering them like the sacrificial redshirts they are, would kill the story’s momentum and pacing. That said, pushing it all to the beginning doesn’t really work, either: I spent the planetside chapters wondering why we were wasting time with these bozos when all the action was out in space and their petty concerns about drug-smuggling and governmental corruption would inevitably be rendered irrelevant by the Vang invasion. I’m honestly not sure how you could execute this setup well; I can only say that this approach doesn’t quite work.

Also kind of awkward: the Higher Form of Vang. On the one hand, it’s kind of darkly ironic that, just as the Vang parasitize all other life, their own upper echelons are like a parasite within the Vang: serving no useful purpose, consuming resources that are desperately needed elsewhere, and just in general being a harmful hindrance to the infrastructure supporting them. At the same time, though, it kind of undermines the menace of the Vang to see that their leaders are so incompetent. The Vang are supposed to be the greatest threat in all the galaxy; and here’s their great and mighty Higher Form acting like an inbred aristocratic fop. There’s a reason we never saw the Zerg Overmind being whiny and stupid and incompetent. Or the Tyranid Hivemind. Or the Flood Gravemind. Or… you get the idea.

So, on the whole, I can’t say this book was as strong as the first installment. Still, there’s one more book left in the trilogy, so the Vang shall have a chance to redeem themselves.

Final Rating: 3/5

The Vang #1: Starhammer

Stop – hammertime. …Starhammer time, that is. Let’s drop the Starhammer, by Christopher Rowley.

Synopsis:

For a thousand years and more, The Worlds of Man had been dominated by the Laowon Imperium. The aliens thought humans made good slaves and better pets, and they were fond of creating new breeds. And the Laowon made sure that their playthings never grew too powerful. Born one day, on the edge of Human Space, Jon Iehard was ordered to hunt Eblis Bey, a terrorist for Old Earth. And that was the beginning of the end for the Laowon. Because Iehard had been a Laowon slave. And Eblis Bey held half the key to a weapon that could destroy the Laowon tyranny and bring freedom once more to Mankind!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

This isn’t the book I planned to review today. I had planned to review The Stone in the Skull, by Elizabeth Bear. However, partway through reading that book, I discovered that, despite the cover proclaiming it to be first in a new series, it is in fact a sequel to other books. This is far from the first time I’ve encountered this situation, and I’ve decided that enough is enough. I put the book down on the spot and vowed not to pick it back up again until I’ve read the series in proper order. I am also introducing a new tag, “secretly a sequel”, for books which I accidentally read out of order because they failed to properly indicate that they were part of a larger series. Look for it to be retroactively added to past problem children The Rise of Io and The First Book of Swords.

I tell that story because it indirectly relates to how I ended up reading Starhammer. See, at a used book sale, I picked up a bunch of old and heavily-worn sci-fi novels, one of which was titled The Vang: The Warrior Form. The book looked interesting, and was available for a price too low for me to pass up. However, while the title didn’t include a number, the colon gave me a me a pretty strong indication that it was part of a larger series. Thus, before I actually began reading it, I looked up the Vang series and found out what the proper book order was. Sure, it ended up taking me a while to actually get my hands on a copy of Starhammer, and so The Warrior Form was forced to sit on my shelf unread for a while – but the time for me to read has at last come round, and my subsequent review will not be receiving a “secretly a sequel” tag. My eventual review of The Stone in the Skull, will. So there.

And now, finally, onto the subject of Starhammer itself. It’s your pretty standard eighties pulp sci-fi action-adventure novel. Humanity is being oppressed by the cruel and mighty Laowon Imperium, who consider themselves biologically and culturally superior to primitive human savages. The main character, Jon Iehard, is a former slave who escaped his laowan masters and fled to the small sphere of space where humans retain, for the time being, the right of self-governance of their worlds. Naturally, he is discovered to have latent psychic powers and undergoes extensive training to become a commando operative for the elite Mass Murder Squad. Hey, that’s just how eighties protagonists roll.

There were some aspects to the story that struck me as kind of awkwardly contrived. For instance, two of the members of the Elchite group Jon ends up with, Chacks and M’Nee, are actually traitors working for the Superior Buro. Both of them are immediately hostile towards Jon, to the point that even other characters question why they aren’t reigning in their feelings for the good of the mission. The book tries to prevent the twist that they’re traitors from being too extremely obvious by giving a plausible alternate reason for hating Jon so much that their grudge could escalate to the level were it would imperil the mission: when Jon first tried to join the Elchites, a misunderstanding led to a small fight breaking out; and during that incident, he non-lethally but painfully shot both of them. And, while that does explain why other Elchites could write off Chacks and M’Nee’s behavior as vengeance directed as Jon alone rather than seeing it as a way of sabotaging the entire mission, it also comes off as just a tiny bit contrived: just by pure chance, Jon happened to shoot only the two Elchites who were secretly traitors, which he had no way of knowing at the time? That’s an eighties protagonist for you, alright: even when he shoots his allies, the story will eventually make sure that it turns out he was justified in doing so.

Occasional awkwardness aside, I found Starhammer a good read. Next up: collect dust on my bookshelf no more, The Military Form; your time has come around at last.

Final Rating: 3/5

Boundary #5: Castaway Odyssey

I wanna be a castaway, and leave the world behind. Take a tropic holiday, say goodbye to keeping time. Let’s embark on Castaway Odyssey, by Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor.

Synopsis:

Worst-Case Scenario:

Sergeant Samuel Morgan Campbell had been in plenty of tight spots before, but nothing like this. It had happened in a few terrifying seconds: the starship he and his crew travelled on, the Outward Initiative, shattered to pieces before their eyes and disappeared, leaving them stranded in the endless night of deep space on Lifeboat LS-88—all systems dead, light-years from any known colony.

Somehow, Sergeant Campbell and his crew of half-trained children—ranging from freshly graduated Xander Bird down to eight-year-old Francisco—have to repair systems with no tools, navigate with no computers, and—if they could find a planet they could live on—land a shuttle whose controls were more than half-destroyed.

And if they manage all of that, then the real challenge begins; the only planet in range has secrets that even Sergeant Campbell cannot imagine!

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

We’re back with the sequel to Castaway Planet, but this book doesn’t pick up precisely where the previous one left off. For it turns out the Kimei family weren’t the only ones to survive the disaster in a damaged lifeboat and make their way to the Emerald system, and the first half covers their travails over the same time period as the previous story. Unfortunately, this makes it the weaker half of the book, simply because so much of it is devoted to the characters discovering things that we the audience already know. We already read about the Kimei family puzzling out the strange geology, ecology, and biology of this world, so there’s not much interest to be had in watching our new group of protagonists work out the same answers to the same questions. Really, the most interesting thing about this part of the book is comparing the experiences of the two different teams, given how they have much different equipment available to them and take much different approaches to exploring the world.

The second half of the book is where things get more interesting, as the two groups finally contact each other and begin the odyssey to meet up and pool their resources. Naturally, events conspire to ensure they don’t have an easy time of it. One cannot help but see the malicious hand of the author in the conveniently-timed disaster which disables the second lifeboat the very moment the possibility of using it to simply fly over to the Kimei family’s camp is suggested.

Author-induced obstacles aside, the book concludes with the parties successfully uniting. The ending thus isn’t a cliffhanger the way Castaway Planet was; but even so, the many remaining unanswered questions leave me hungry for more: Did anyone aboard Outward Initiative survive and make it to Orado Colony? Will a rescue mission be launched? What is the mysterious thing blocking line-of-sight between Sol and Emerald (as this previously-unnamed system ended up being dubbed)? Does it have anything to do with the Outward Initiative suffering a calamitous failure of their Trapdoor Drive when passing through the Emerald system?

Inquiring minds want to know. Unfortunately, there’s no telling how long that wait might be; I’ve caught up to the series’s most recently published book, and there’s no news yet as to when the next in the series might be coming out. Here’s hoping that, when it does, it proves a satisfactory conclusion to events.

Final Rating: 3/5

Boundary #4: Castaway Planet

So, I was going to use the lyrics to the opening song of Uninhabited Planet Survive for this introduction, but I wasn’t able to find an English translation. Figures. Let’s just forget about that and set sail for Castaway Planet, by Eric Flint & Ryk E. Spoor.

Synopsis:

Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien “Bemmie” nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they had one chance to find a habitable world. But even then, they would find that their apparent salvation was a world of a thousand secrets.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Welcome back to the Boundary universe, albeit a couple centuries after where we last left it. With this installment, the books officially transition from near-future sci-fi, featuring extrapolations of current technology, to full-on space exploration sci-fi, with FTL, aliens, and extrasolar colonies. Don’t get too attached to any of this new super-technology, though; the book begins with the protagonists’ ship suffering a disaster, causing them to be stranded in a low-tech survival situation on an uncharted world.

What follows is your basic wilderness survival scenario, with the protagonists having to forage for food and construct shelter on this unknown planet inhabited by strange and dangerous creatures. True to the Boundary series’s style, the details of the world’s environment, ecology, and evolutionary biology are all discussed at length. There are encounters with hostile wildlife which you might term “action scenes”, sure, but they are exceeded in length and frequency by contemplative scenes theorizing about the planet’s flora, fauna, and geology..

A Boundary book where the main conflict is survival in harsh conditions rather than facing an active antagonist is nothing new; two of the previous three books followed that format. In those instances, however, the protagonists inevitably ended up discovering ancient Bemmie ruins; by contrast, the planet in this book seems devoid of native sapient life – certainly, there are no relics of civilization. Unfortunately, I have to say that the excitement and suspense of exploring a primitive uninhabited jungle doesn’t quite measure up to the excitement of exploring the remains of a powerful super-advanced alien culture.

The “hook” which this book offers in place of alien ruins is the fact that one of the stranded protagonists is a Bemmie from Europa. Whips provides an interesting element to the cast composition in that his strengths and limitations are considerably different from the human characters’. Psychologically, though, he doesn’t really stand out from the other characters; even in the POV sections focused on him, there is nothing markedly strange and alien about his worldview. It comes up a little short if compared to, just to cite the first example that came to my mind, Breq from Ancillary Justice; a character whose narration conveyed a subtle but distinct sense of her inhumanity.

The final result is a story that’s about on par with most of the other Boundary novels; Threshold continues to remain the stand-out best. If you enjoyed the first three Boundary books, odds are you’ll be satisfied by this one as well.

Final Rating: 3/5

Secrets of Majestic Hills #1: That Witch!

You call me a witch like it’s a bad thing, you call me a freak like that means something. Can’t get your way, so you’re sulking. I think you hate me because you want me; you call me a witch like it’s a bad thing. Let’s get some things off our chests with That Witch!, by Zoe Lynne.

Synopsis:

Cassidy Ryan and Brynn Michaels attend the same high school, but they live in different worlds. Cassidy’s a popular cheerleader, and Brynn’s the social leper. One is all sunshine and rainbows, while the other could’ve been carved from an Edgar Allan Poe book.

Both girls have their problems, though. Cassidy is coming into her birthright—a long line of ancient magic Cassidy isn’t ready to have. Brynn is coming into her sexuality—something that will definitely cause problems with her very conservative family.

When a teacher assigns Cassidy and Brynn to work together on a project, the girls find themselves in a heap of trouble, because what they feel for each other can’t be denied. If they have any hope of changing ignorant and frightened minds, they’ll have to listen to their own hearts first.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

I recently picked up two young adult urban fantasy books with lesbian protagonists: Pretty Peg and That Witch!. Pretty Peg started out promising, but ended up disappointing me with an extremely non-climactic ending where the protagonist was basically just a bystander watching other characters do things. I was disappointed, but knew that I had That Witch! to fall back upon. Perhaps it could succeed where the other had failed? Alas, my disappointment was destined to be doubled, because I found this one to be even worse.

Let’s talk about conflict. Because this book is a fantasy with one of the main characters being a witch, I assumed that there would be some kind of fantastical adversary which would make her magical abilities relevant; something like the Winter Fey of Pretty Peg. Nope. All the conflict in this book comes off as overwrought melodrama: oh no, the teacher has assigned Brynn and Cassidy to work on a school project together but they hate each other, whatever are they doing to do!? You know, maybe it’s my fault for binge-watching Made in Abyss right before reading this book, but that does not strike me as a conflict compelling enough to maintain my interest. Call me back when there’s something more at stake than a grade point average. (And no, neither girl is just a single bad grade away from failing the class, or anything that would give this project actual weight).

Let’s also talk about chemistry. The lead characters, they lack it. Both start off the book hating each other. That in and of itself isn’t a problem: many great and glorious ships have sailed bearing couples who were initially rude, hostile, or antagonistic towards one another: Diana x Akko, Nanoha x Fate, Usagi x Rei…

But for a romance to make sense, there has to be something other than pure disgust: the hostility between them is revealed to be born of envy, or they admire each other despite being on opposite sides of a conflict, or something. Brynn and Cassidy lack that spark of attraction, that sizzling undercurrent of sexual tension beneath their altercations. Part of the problem, I think, might be the nature of the medium. With the book shifting back and forth between both of their POVs, we are given access to both of their internal monologues – and their thoughts about each other seem no less filled with disgust and contempt than their actions. They aren’t just saying mean things to each other, they are shown to be sincerely thinking those things – which kind of cuts any “I actually really admire you and was mean because I was jealous” revelations off at the knees. Instead of their buried true feelings for one another surfacing and being revealed, it’s more like a switch is flipped that causes them to instantly swing from total hate to total love.

Then there’s the matter of the supernatural elements; specifically, how irrelevant they are. The synopsis talks about how Cassidy is secretly a witch with magical powers, and the book is even titled That Witch!, so I was naturally kind of expecting that to play some kind of role in the plot. But no: it is not the cause of any conflict, nor the solution to any conflicts. In fact, you could cut it out of the book entirely and still have basically the same story. Unbelievable. I mean, I had my problems with Pretty Peg’s ending, but at least it went right ahead and introduced the supernatural elements in chapter one. Or, if you look at YU+ME Dream, it takes about half the story for it to become apparent that it actually has a supernatural element; but once that does become relevant, it becomes completely integral to plot – you couldn’t just pull it out and still have the same story. I feel deceived, like this lured me into buying it by teasing a fantasy plot it didn’t actually contain. I sometimes accuse books like Run by Kody Keplinger of queerbaiting, in that they tease me with suggestions that a major character is gay only to give them an opposite-sex love interest at the end and reveal that they were actually straight all along. Well, instead of queerbaiting me, this book fantasybaited me. It promised fantasy and witches and magic, only to present a completely non-fantastical queer love story. Now, I must admit; that is quite an unusual way of disappointing my expectations – but I don’t award bonus points for how bizarre the manner is in which you disappoint me.

That Witch! is, in my mind, undoubtably worse than Pretty Peg. Oh, it isn’t utterly atrocious – there’s no Dead Lesbian Penalty or anything – but it fails to live up to its claims of belonging to the fantasy genre. I’m willing to give the Oaktown Fey series a second chance because my problems were just with the execution of Pretty Peg’s climax; the next book might be better. I will probably not be giving the Secrets of Majestic Hills series a second chance, because I don’t trust it to deliver on its claims. How am I to believe anything it promises when it just delivered a book allegedly about witches which didn’t actually involve any magic!?

Final Rating: 2/5

White Trash Zombie #6: White Trash Zombie Unchained

Change. Ain’t nothing stays the same. Unchained. Yeah, you hit the ground running. Let’s unleash White Trash Zombie Unchained, by Diana Rowland.

Synopsis:

Angel Crawford has finally pulled herself together (literally!) after her disastrous dismemberment on Mardi Gras. She’s putting the pieces of her life back in order and is ready to tackle whatever the future holds.

Too bad the future is a nasty bitch. There’s a new kind of zombie in town: mindless shamblers, infectious and ravenous.

With the threat of a full-blown shambler pandemic looming, and a loved one stricken, Angel and the “real” zombies scramble to find a cure. Yet when Angel uncovers the true reason the plague is spreading so quickly, she adds “no-holds-barred revenge” to her to-do list.

Angel is busting her ass dealing with shambling hordes, zombie gators, government jerks, and way too many mosquitos, but this white trash chick ain’t giving up.

Good thing, since the fate of the world is resting on her undead shoulders.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Louisiana’s zombie problem just keeps getting worse. Now there are zombie alligators crawling out of the bayou, infecting those they bite with a mutant strain of the zombie parasite that causes rapid death followed by reanimation as a mindless shambler. With the FBI and CDC investigating, and Saberton once again looking for a way to find a military use for this new strain, it’s up to Angel to save the day and preserve the Tribe’s secrecy.

I haven’t heard any official news on whether this is intended to be the last book in the series, but it certainly feels like one: just about every ongoing plotline gets brought to a satisfying conclusion. Remaining villains Kristi Charish and Nicole Saber get their rightful comeuppance; Kyle’s storyline comes to a close; the remaining issues with Pietro becoming Pierce are settled; Kang finally gets back on his feet; the FBI investigation into Louisiana zombies is resolved; and Angel’s having some success in the romance department. All in all, not a bad ending.

White Trash Zombie was an often weird and sometimes disgusting series, but the well-developed characters kept me coming back for more. Overall, I found it to be a decently entertaining series, worth a read for anyone interested in this type of thing.

Final Rating: 3/5

Oaktown Fey #1: Pretty Peg

Am I not pretty enough? Am I too outspoken? Do I cry too much? Is my heart too broken? Let’s cut some lumber with Pretty Peg, by Skye Allen.

Synopsis:

High school senior Josy Grant already had plenty on her plate before she found the magic puppet theater her murdered sister left behind. Despite Josy’s grief, the responsibility of taking care of her family falls to her, and being queer doesn’t make dealing with school any easier. Things only get worse when sexy new girl Nicky tells Josy her sister died at the hands of a mysterious figure from the Faerie Realm called the Woodcutter, and if they can’t stop him, Josy and her remaining sister will be next.

They have just days before the Woodcutter strikes again on the autumn equinox, so Josy follows Nicky into the Faerie Realm to hunt him. Along the way, she discovers Fey gifts of her own and answers to the questions that have driven the Grant family apart. Nothing comes for free when dealing with Fey, though, and those gifts and answers might come at a terrible price.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

After Josy’s sister is murdered, Josy discovers that there was a side to her life that Josy never knew. Her sister was a mortal favorite of the Summer Court of the Fae; and her murderer, a champion of the Winter Fae known as the Woodcutter. And Josy needs to figure out the Woodcutter’s identity and find a way to stop him, fast, because he’ll be coming after her next.

It’s an interesting premise, to be sure. But after a while, I had a hard time staying interested; because the identity of the Woodcutter is way, way too obvious. For reference: the supposed big dramatic reveal takes place at the end of chapter eleven; I had it figured out by the end of chapter two. So each time Josy started suspecting another character of being the Woodcutter, I could only groan and roll my eyes and wonder how long it would take her to figure out the obvious. Honestly, the solution was so blatant that I began to wonder if it wasn’t a deliberate red herring, if it might not at the last minute throw a sudden curveball and have it be someone else entirely – but no, it does in fact end up being who I thought.

Even so, the book might have managed to redeem itself in my eyes if it’d been able to stick the landing with the end. The big question I had going into the climax was how Josy was going to end up defeating the Woodcutter. I mean, the book was clearly building to this big final confrontation between them, but Josy hadn’t demonstrated even the slightest hint of combat ability, either physical or magical. It was well past the point where any hidden talent in that regard would have had to be introduced to avoid coming off as a deus ex machina. But then, when she was taken prisoner by the Winter Fae, the corn goat that Josy had caught spying earlier secretly slipped her a vial of poison. Aha! I thought. This is how it’s going down: the old Gollum gambit, where a small act of kindness or mercy towards a seemingly insignificant and pitiful villain ends up being karmically repaid when they help you complete your mission in the end. When the Woodcutter comes to cut out Josey’s heart, she’ll splash the poison into his face somehow and kill him.

…But that’s not what actually ends up happening, oh no. What actually happens is that, out of nowhere, the Woodcutter gets taken down by Blossom, a third-tier ancillary character. Josy’s contribution to defeating the Woodcutter: zippo, zilch, nil, nada, nothing. Now, personally, I feel that the point of a protagonist, is to protag. You know, to be proactive and actually fight the villain in some way, to try and at least slightly matter in this book in which she is supposed to be the main character. As it is… why exactly are we following Josy, again? What do she actually do, except get in trouble and need to be rescued by other characters?

What a disappointment; a book that dodges the Dead Lesbian Penalty that was hanging over it like the Sword of Damocles, only for me to end up giving it a low score anyway for severe but unrelated problems. With this, I can’t say that Oaktown Fae has made a very good first impression on me; but I try to give series second chances in case they manage to move past their shaky starts and manage to improve for the second entry.

Final Rating: 2/5

The Girl in the Picture

So, normally I start these reviews with some song lyrics; but since this is a nonfiction book about an actual living person, that kind of feels inappropriate in this instance. I mean, the first song that came to my mind was “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys, and just the thought of writing those lyrics made me cringe. So, um, let’s just very respectfully read The Girl in the Picture, by Denise Chong.

Synopsis:

On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from her blazing village in South Vietnam and into the eye of history. Her photograph – one of the most unforgettable images of the twentieth century – was seen around the world and helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.

This book is the story of how that photograph came to be – and the story of what happened to that girl after the camera shutter closed. Award-winning biographer Denise Chong’s portrait of Kim Phuc – who eventually defected to Canada and is now a UNESCO spokesperson – is a rare look at the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese point-of-view and one of the only books to describe everyday life in the wake of this war and to probe its lingering effects on all its participants.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

So, I’ve recently been watching The Vietnam War, the recent Ken Burns documentary. It got me interested in reading more about the Vietnam War, and indirectly ended up leading me to this book (through a long and convoluted chain of Wikipedia links). Somewhat ironically, while the book is kind of centered on Nick Ut’s Pultizer Prize-winning photograph of Kim Phuc, the copy of the book I read didn’t actually feature the photo. I got it from the local library, you see, and they had removed the dust jacket; apparently deeming it inappropriate for general viewing.

The book follows the life of Kim Phuc: from growing up during the Vietnam War, to the photograph of her being inured by friendly fire in a bombing that would forever immortalize her as “Napalm Girl”, to her long and painful recovery afterwards, to life in reunified Vietnam and being used as a propaganda tool by the Communist government, and finally to her college years in Cuba and ending with her defection to Canada. While the book make brief asides to explain important facts about Vietnam’s history and culture, it is at its core a personal narrative about the experience of Kim Phuc and her family.

If I could be said to have any problems with the book, I would point at the subtitle. Not the first subtitle, “The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War”, which appears on the first title page; but the second subtitle, “The Story of Kim Phuc, Whose Image Altered the Course of the Vietnam War”, which appears on the second title page. No, I don’t know why the book has two different title pages with two different subtitles; but the second one is pretty misleading. The photo was taken quite late in the war, when America had already begun to withdraw; and the book focuses on the consequences the photo had for Kim herself, rather than the impact it made in the Western world.

That small gripe aside, the book was both informative and emotionally compelling; a powerful read.

Final Rating: 4/5

Elfhome #4.5: Project Elfhome

O, Elbereth! Gilthoniel! We still remember, we who dwell in this far land beneath the trees, thy starlight on the Western Seas. Let’s initiate Project Elfhome, by Wen Spencer.

Synopsis:

Pittsburgh: a sprawling modern Earth city stranded in the heart of a virgin forest on Elfhome. Sixty thousand humans, twenty thousand black-winged tengu, ten thousand elves, an unknown number of invading oni, four unborn siblings of an elf princess, three dragons, and a pair of nine-year olds geniuses.

For every story written, there’s a thousand others not told. Lives interweave. Fates intersect. People change one another, often without realizing the impact they’ve made on others. They come together like a mosaic, little pieces creating a greater picture.

Project Elfhome tells the stories of those impacted by Tinker and Windwolf as they struggle to make Pittsburgh a safe haven. Some of the characters are familiar: Stormsong, Pony, Blue Sky, and Lain. Others are new to readers.

Law forages for wild plants and fish to sell to elf enclaves. A social misfit, she drives a hundred year old Dodge, has a pet porcupine, and saves damsels in distress in her spare time. A mysterious phone call sets her on a collision course with danger as she races to save a young female elf.

Jane Kryskill is the producer for the popular TV series Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden. She spends her days keeping her host, Hal Rogers, from getting himself killed as he takes on man eating plants. She’s not happy when the network drops famed naturalist Nigel Reid and his cameraman in her lap to film Chased by Monsters.

Olivia is sixteen, a runaway wife of a religious cultist, illegal immigrant, and soon to be mother. As Pittsburgh plunges into war, she makes a desperate bargain with the mad elf lord, Forest Moss.

As the war between the elves and the oni builds to a head, these three women struggle with their own problems, supported by a circle of unique friends, yet entangled with each other.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

While we wait for the next Elfhome novel to come out, let’s take a side trip into a collection of a large number of short stories set in the Elfhome universe. It is a wide and varied lot of tales which are collected in this tome: stories set in the distant past, stories set contemporaneous to previous novels in the series, and even stories which advance the plot from where Elfhome left off. There are also a few non-canon stories, short hypotheticals that aren’t actually in continuity. Since this collection is quite large but most of the stories are fairly short, I’ll just focus on reviewing the ones I thought were most significant.

“All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men” covers a critical event which has often been referenced but never before seen: Startup, when the interdimensional gate first sent Pittsburgh to Elfhome. Though the story is brief – I would be happy with a full book about a first contact situation like this – it succeeds at what it is: a much-needed look at those first chaotic days through the eyes of Lain.

“Bare Snow Falling on Fairywood” and “Threads That Bind and Break” introduce my favorite new characters of the collection, Law and Bare Snow. I found their stories to be the most exciting, most thrilling, and just generally the best of the collection. I really hope to see more of them in one way or another.

“Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden” and “Chased by Monsters” probably form the biggest solid chunk of continuous story in the collection, and are significant for carrying on a dangling plot thread from Wood Sprites about Nigel traveling to Elfhome to film a new show. These stories were probably second-best in the collection, after the Law and Bare Snow ones; I can’t quite put them on the same level because one of the characters – Hal – kind of started annoying me after a while with the way he kept acting like a jackass when everyone was facing life-threatening danger.

Finally, there was “Peace Offering” and “Price of Peace”, which reveal what’s going on with the insane elf Forest Moss on Stone following his breakdown in Elfhome. Though it wasn’t as action-heavy as the other two-part stories, it was interesting in its own way: in Elfhome, everyone treated Forest Moss’s plan to take a human domi as just another sign of his obvious insanity; but I’d thought that, given the very publicized success of Tinker’s marriage to Windwolf and her resultant rise in power and status, it was not unreasonable to expect that there would be women wiling to take his offer. Actually, since this story ends with some issues still unresolved, I wonder if it’s going to end up being continued, either in further short stories or in the forthcoming next novel (what with Forest Moss still potentially being a significant player in the main storyline).

So, those were the stories I liked; the ones I thought made the collection a worthwhile read. The rest, while I wouldn’t quite call them bad, were for the most part mediocre: too short to actually tell a worthwhile story, focused on characters I didn’t find interesting, irrelevant due to being non-canon, or other problems along those lines. Still, the ones I liked were good enough to make me glad I picked this one up.

Final Rating: 3/5

Magic the Gathering #1: The Thran

He feeds on fear, he feeds on pain, he rules again… Let’s dive into the origins of one of Magic’s most iconic villains, that deceiver of hearts, deceiver of fools Yawgmoth. Time to sell our souls to the grave with The Thran, by J. Robert King.

Synopsis:

Before the Brothers’ War. Before the five colors of magic.
Before history itself, the plane of Dominaira was ruled by the Thran. They built machines and artifacts, the likes of which have never since been seen. But amid this civilization, a shadow took root, one that would stretch its arms across space and time.
The hideous evil of Phyrexia was born.

Source: Goodreads

SPOILERS BELOW

Finally, after ten pre-revision novels, we come to the Magic canon proper. The Thran is essentially a prequel, taking place several thousand years before any of the other main stories. It is not closely tied to a corresponding card set, and none of the named characters actually have cards of their own – the closest any can claim is Gix’s Vanguard card. Nonetheless, this story is an essential part of Magic’s lore, as it is the origin story of one of the game’s most powerful and iconic villains: Yawgmoth. Though he will later become the Ineffable god of Phyrexia, we are presented here with his mortal origin as a lowly outcast from the mighty Thran Empire.

The Thran are perfect exemplars of the civilization grown proud. They’ve created a vast, world-spanning society which relies on powerstones they don’t truly understand in order to function, and in their ignorance think themselves wise for harnessing such mighty forces. They call their capital city Halcyon the pinnacle of beauty and justice, ignoring the fact that it exists over the blighted warren of criminals and dissidents called the Caves of the Damned. They claim spirituality and enlightenment, but hold ugly racist views towards other species: the Thran are the pinnacle of evolution, and all other sentient beings are primitive sub-humans with no right to be treated as equals by the Thran. Grown dizzy with hubris, the Thran are poised for a fall. And in this moment of weakness, comes Yawgmoth: the devil to whisper in their ears, to promise to cure all that ails them and grant them all their desires… and all he asks in return is that he be their god.

At the end of the book, Yawgmoth will merge himself with Phyrexia’s core, spend millennia inundating himself with Black mana and transforming himself into something terrible beyond comprehension; when, we see him next, he will have become the Ineffable, whose lightest touch brings terrible death and grotesque resurrection, the merest whisper of whose name poisons minds with madness. For now, however, we see Yawgmoth as he was when he was but a man. He initially comes off as charismatic and intelligent, possessing a dark, snarky sense of humor. Soon enough, however, it becomes apparent that his charm is only superficial, masking arrogance and contempt. Yawgmoth believes himself superior to all others, and therefore entitled to everything he desires. Anything that he cannot possess, he will destroy out of spite. He is cruel and petty, a sociopath who sees all other people as merely things to be used to advance his ends or else to be discarded; and yet he possesses enough charisma to blind the Thran to his obvious evil, to make them cheer for the man who intends to make slaves of them.

Later books make Yawgmoth terrifyingly alien; here, he is terrifyingly human. There is a reason the book’s dedication reads “In Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich, who survived a real-life Yawgmoth”. How often have we seen this happen in our own world? A country is suffering from turmoil or strife. A charismatic man promises a solution to the problem, quickly winning massive popular support; and then ascending, whether by vote or coup or revolution, to a position of unchecked power. And then come the purges; the concentration camps or re-education camps or interment centers or whatever the current euphemism happens to be. Yawgmoth drops his charming facade and shows his true face.

In fact, if I have a complaint about the story structure, it’s that the prologue to chapter one gives the game away too soon by flash-forwarding to Yawgmoth in full-on evil overlord mode at the Battle of Megheddon Defile. I think a much slower and more natural progression to build up to the revelation of Yawgmoth as the utter monster he truly is would have been preferable: let us first see the mask, like his charming demeanor when he flirts with Rebecc or his dutiful administration to Glacian’s medical needs; then let the mask begin to slip, as we see him subtly work to create a rift between Rebbec and Glacian, or callously inflict pain on Gix to prove a point while treating him; and then finally reveal the true Yawgmoth, as emissaries from the rest of the world arrive to testify the horrors he has wrought with his study of plagues and eugenics during his years of exile.

Finally, let me say that I will from now on be making note of continuity errors in the Magic lore within my reviews. I went easy on the pre-revision stuff, because the canon didn’t have a clear direction yet and a lot of stuff hadn’t been fully fleshed out; but no longer. This being the first book of the Magic series proper, it doesn’t have any other continuity to contradict yet; so I will simply close by noting that I find it amusing how one of the Thran cities is called Nyoron.

Final Rating: 5/5