Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 4
boobs: 1
bombs: 3
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 3
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: PASS
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

This collection is exceptionally well curated; I feel like every story fits the theme and every story is strong enough to stand on it's own and provide it's own interpretation of the topic. I really enjoyed the way each story took off in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Perhaps because the topic is so big there's lots of room for wildly different interpretations (and there are!) but the total collection leaves an impression bigger than just the sum of the stories. This is proper Capital "S" Science Capital "F" Fiction that asks the reader to interpret and define their own humanity.

There were two stories in the collection that I didn't finish. Musée de l’Âme Seule by E. Lily Yu isn't bad, it's just written in that dreamy stream of conscious second person POV that I loathe with an irrational passion. You know the kind of writing: every paragraph tries to stand on it's own like a lone tree in a deserted field, and little details weighted with importance glitter throughout every sentence like shards from a broken bottle in an empty alley. I don't doubt that it's fun to write, but I've never seen an example that's compelled me to pretend I'm someone else long enough to read their story.

The other story I didn't finish was Alex Dally MacFarlane's Coastlines of the Stars. It's written in the third person, but it's too lyrical with new chapter headings every two or three paragraphs. This is another device that I'm just not wired to appreciate properly, and while I'm sure it's an accomplished story I just couldn't bear to sit through it.

The real standouts in this collection, for me, are The Sarcophagus by Robert Reed, who takes the standard question "how much of your humanity can you change and still be human" and extrapolates it out to the nth degree in an engaging and thoughtful way. Taking the Ghost by A.C. Wise is another winner; what could have fallen into every post-apocalyptic cliche actually emerged as an example of how to do paranormal sci-fi correctly. E. Catherine Tobler's The Cumulative Effects of Light Over Time is one of those allegorical "the deeper they go into this cave the deeper they go into their self" stories, but it's done very well and kept me interested right up until the predicted end. I'll definitely be looking for more of her work. Seventh Sight by Greg Egan works for me on a number of different levels; I'm not sure it's remarkable in the objective sense but I felt a number of parallels between the protagonist and myself and that counts a lot for me.

Memories and Wire by Mari Ness sort of fell off my radar, but as I went back through the TOC for this review it sparked a rush of affection. IIRC, it's a brilliant concept but needs a bit more development to really come into it's own.

Also notable is The Regular by Ken Liu isn't as allegorical as most short stories, but it's also the longest story in the book and reads like a simple whodunnit. I liked it well enough, but I think I'd like it a lot more if it were fully developed into a novel length story.

This is a great collection of short stories. There is a depth and breadth represented here that makes the collection feel much larger than just the 26 stories it contains, and any fan of scifi should find more than enough worthwhile writing to justify buying this.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
**Intentionally Left Blank**
blood:
boobs:
bombs:
bondage:
blasphemy:
Bechdel Test:
Deggan's Rule:
Gay Bechdel Test:

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

I left my "5Bs" blank because I didn't read enough of the book to make a valid score.

I made it about 12% into this book before I gave up. Not because it was too "extreme" or "graphic", but because it just wasn't written very well. I'm all about the splatterpunk - I don't even blink an eye at Edward Lee - and I took a chance on this at amazon when I saw the 3.6 average review at GR. I'm glad I didn't pay very much for it.

The content wasn't the problem. The problem is the writing. All of the sentences looked the same. All of the dialogue sounded the same. The author didn't show me anything. The author only told me things. The main character was boring. And she was predictable. I knew what was going to happen to her after her first "test".

There's just too many good books that are crafted by wordsmiths rather than written by content producers and lovingly edited by professionals that are advocating on the reader's behalf to spend time on books that are substandard. I do hope this author continues to refine his craft, the world needs more splatterpunk and I'm sure he has important stories to tell, but until he's better at telling them I'm going to spend my scant reading time on books that are produced to a higher caliber.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 3
boobs: 3
bombs: 0
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 4
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

I finished this book a few weeks ago, and to be completely honest I'm having a hard time recalling any details of it. I remember the first book in the series, and I remember reading this book and thinking, "Where did the awesome go?" My recollection of this book is of some ridiculous plot twists and a Mary Sue revenant coming to save the day too often. Where the first book was gloriously dark and dystopic and our intrepid hero was properly cynical and jaded, this book just felt like it was full of whiny characters who were being shuffled from one plot twist to another. I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first.

I hope this is just the "second book slump", and the series continues to a third edition to wrap up the Big Boss Fight that's been lurking on the horizon. I'll definitely buy the next book in the series, but I'll be reading it with a healthy dose of trepidation rather than the unbridled optimism I had when I started this book.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 5
boobs: 2
bombs: 4
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 4
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: PASS
Gay Bechdel Test: PASS

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

I finished the previous book in this series about three years ago. I have the attention span of a goldfish, so that's like 27 years for normal people. When I started The Dark Defiles, I had to be reminded of our protoganists names for example. I spend the first couple of hundred pages just trying to get caught up. I even tried to find a map of the world, but in my editions or online I could only muster a few small diagrams of part of the world.

After I gave up trying to figure out exactly what was going on I began to enjoy the series a lot more, though to be honest the story really didn't start to pick up until about halfway through the book. Once it got in gear, though, it was every bit as spectacular as Mr. Morgans other books. I rushed through the latter part of the book; I honestly had no idea how he was going to end it and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride until I found out.

It's hard to wrap up a saga with characters this powerful, and I think some judicious editing could have saved some space on the front half of the book to make more room in  the latter half for a more involved denouement. The last few pages, in fact, feel like they got phoned in as a postcript. I hope that these tantalizing little shards become the nucleus of at least a couple of novellas if not a second series.

I would have enjoyed this a lot more if my edition included some maps and a few pages of recaps of the story so far. Now that the whole series has been published, readers getting into the series might not need them as much as I did, since they don't have to wait for the books to come out.

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 5
boobs: 0
bombs: 3
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 5
Bechdel Test: FAIL
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

This is a short story tucked into the Sandman Slim series. I read it out of order (I'd already finished Kill City Blues) but that didn't change my enjoyment of the story. As a huge fan of Sandman Slim, my only problem with this book is that it was too short. It had everything we like about this guy - violence, wry self deprecating humor, a wicked (pun intended) sense of sarcasm and tidy little story line that wraps itself up at the end.

The story takes shortly after Sandman takes over hell and revolves around him taking a couple of legions of hellspawn out to the far reaches to take care of some business left over by the last Lucifer. Naturally, chaos, violence, horror, death and destruction ensue.

I'm not sure this would be a good way for people who haven't read the earlier books to dip into the series. It might be a little difficult to follow along; Mr. Kadrey expects the reader to have a firm grasp of the mythology he's created and the history of his major characters. On the other hand, as a quick little horro/action-adventure/romp it's a fun little diversion and for readers don't mind being a little behind on the backstory and motivations, this would be good introduction to the style and tone of the Sandman Slim series.