Matthew Hunter

In his Tales of the Otori series, Lian Hearn presents a vision of Japan passed through a lens of subtle distortion. The main character, Tomasu/Takeo, has ties to three factions: the noble clan Otori, whose head rescued him from the destruction of his village; the persecuted religious cult of the Hidden, who believe in a deity that holds all men equal, and who raised him; and the Tribe, a faction of secretive assassins and magicians, from whom his father came.

There’s not much to say about Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga), the third book in Peter David’s series about a young man who joins the space navy and comes of age amongst a series of increasingly improbable coincidences. It’s fast, reasonably fun, and the infinite improbability drive is set to just a notch below winning the lottery without buying a ticket. The author’s complete failure to grasp his readers’ comments about his main character’s plot invincibility in prior books is a charming mirror of his main character’s casual stroll through explosions, firefights and love affairs that never seem to leave a scratch on him.

Many years ago, when I was a young man, or perhaps a boy in the process of becoming a young man, I walked into a bookstore and bought a book that would change my life. I bought the book on the basis of the cover, because the cover was the coolest thing I had ever seen: a man wearing sunglasses drives a car in a futuristic city. You understand, I say he drives the car because that is what one does with a car.

Fans of Robin Hobb’s Assassin series already know that they are in for an emotional roller coaster, but Assassin’s Quest in particular is very difficult to read. All of the supporting characters that Fitz loved and trusted have been wrested away from him by one manner of disaster or another. Those whose lives have included periods of major depression will recognize the symptoms and the self-destructive impulses. This is not a book for the emotionally fragile, but then, if you are still reading the series by this point it should be obvious.

Blindsight is a first contact story that turns out to be more about the humans than the aliens, something that was more than a little disconcerting. The narrator explicitly functions as an “interpreter” between pre-Singularity humans and a variety of post-Singularity humans, the types of which include functional multiple-personalities, cybernetic human-machine interfaces, a vampire, and an AI. None of the post-humans seem particularly incomprehensible in their thoughts and behavior, which makes me question the need for a translator – or perhaps serves to point out how effective he is at translating.

A killer stalks the streets of Toronto. It kills by night; it drains its victims of blood. The papers scream vampire. But Vicki Nelson, ex-cop turned private investigator, doesn’t believe in vampires. At least, not unless someone’s willing to pay her to believe in them – and it can’t hurt to have one more person on the case, even if the killer turns out to be human. Somehow, though, in a fantasy novel it never does…

Brilliance of the Moon is the third book in the Tales of the Otori series. We pick up the story with Kaede and Takeo having married hastily in Terayama and determined to claim their inheritance – an inheritance which, if they can make the claim stick, will grant them control of the vast majority of the Three Kingdoms. They are opposed by the Tribe, whose power is secret but vast; by Lord Arai, who is likely offended by their decision to marry without his consent; and by Fujiwara, who considered Kaede his betrothed.

Etjole Ehomba is just a herder of sheep and cattle among the small tribe of the Naumkib. When strange-looking foreigners wash up mostly dead on the beach near their village, Etjole is suddenly propelled on a journey of unknown (but presumably high) difficulty by the dying charge of one of the light-skinned strangers. Taking up a quest to rescue a woman he has never met from an evil that has already claimed dozens, if not hundreds of lives of those who have already tried, Etjole seems completely outmatched.

Consequences is a Retrieval Artist novel. The series (with two previous books) is set in a universe where humanity interacts on a regular basis with many alien cultures of varying degrees of strangeness. Many of these alien cultures have strange laws or taboos that humans can be subject to horrible penalties for violating – whether they know that they are violating the alien’s laws or not. This conflict of interest has spawned a small, but significant, industry: making people “disappear” for the purposes of evading the consequences of breaking an unjust (by human standards) alien law.

She was a coolhunter with forty different legal identities. Her job: to drive fads; to find the “next cool thing” five to ten times per week. She was one of the best. Entire corporations rose and fell under her influence. But then some really uncool things started to happen… From the description, this sounds like an adaptation of the idea first pioneered by Connie Willis in Bellwether. Although I haven’t read this adaptation, I have read other works by this author, and most of Connie Willis’ work; between the two, Connie Willis is the better author, but even in good hands it makes for little more than an interesting intellectual exercise.