More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Maeve Binchy A Week In Winter – Meet Interesting People

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Maeve Binchy died shortly after finishing A Week In Winter, a series of character vignettes connected by a holiday week in a refurbished house on the west coast of Ireland.  We follow the hotel’s owner, her employees, and the guests who come for her opening week.

Owner Chicky Starr starts the novel.  She is the girl who fell in love foolishly and followed her guy to New York where he eventually dumped her.  Chicky was determined to not crawl home – her family was horrified that she left to live with a man without marriage – and made a life for herself in New York.  In fact Chicky made two lives, one the real situation, a pastry chef and boardinghouse worker, and the other her fantasy life full of love with her husband Walter (the guy who dumped her) and their fun on the town.  Eventually she goes back home to Stoneybridge, buys the Stone House from Miss Sheedy and sets out to make it as a hotelier.

Chicky is determined, interested in people without wanting to pry or volunteer advice, hard working, careful with money.  She is living a lie, having told everyone that “husband Walter” died in a car accident, but it doesn’t seem to bother her.  It’s as though she managed to disconnect herself from the years in America and build something brand new, albeit on a shaky foundation.

Mrs. Binchly does a grand job letting us see the people behind the names.  We read about their friends and backgrounds, the people they loved and those they disappointed.  The guests range from an American movie star to an icy school mistress to a married couple that makes their days bright by winning contests.

The Walls won their week as second prize in contest where first prize was a week in Paris.  They spent the time before the trip and the first day or so lamenting their lost Paris week.  They didn’t feel like enjoying their week until they learned the first prize winners were having a miserable week, with none of the promised Parisian delights and an unpleasant stay in a 3rd rate room in the prize hotel.  Then they decided they won a worthy prize, relaxed and enjoyed Stone House.

The author’s genius was in making the people come to life with a series of small, gentle stories that show them both for good and ill.  Some of the characters have dubious moral backgrounds, but all are shown in a kind, warm-hearted light.  In fact the only character shown with no redeeming qualities is the school mistress, who is so self-closed that we never get beyond her rigor.

Overall I enjoyed this.  A A Week In Winter was easy to pick up late in the evening and read about a person or two, then put down until the next evening.  There wasn’t a lot of plot or action among the characters as the action occurred mostly before or after the week’s holiday.  Each character, except Miss Nell Howe, uses the week to come to peace with a situation or to make a life-turning decision.   The book was peaceful and interesting.

4 Stars

Home World by Bonnie Milani – Science Fiction Review

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I was excited when the publisher approved me for a NetGalley copy of Home World by Bonnie Milani.  The book sounded great.  Earth is in bad shape after centuries of war, the heir apparent to the Earth Protectorship, Jezekiah, negotiated a trade treaty with their former deadly enemies the Lupans and hopes to position his younger sister as the heir by marrying her off to the Lupan warlord prince.   Not to mention the book is set in Hawaii with a cast of interesting characters, all with their own plans and secrets.

The first few pages were boring as Jezekiah leaves a merchant ship incognito to escape his sister’s assassin, then it got a little interesting for a few more pages.  It was as though the author couldn’t make up her mind whether she was telling a story about people, or about a society or about technology or about plots and secrets.  It alternated between pretty good and poor, interesting and boring, plausible and ridiculous, sane and nasty violent.

The author does not explain the backstory and we’re confused for about a third of the book with few clues.  I don’t mind books where the backstory is murky or explained in dribbles throughout the story, but Home World had a complex backstory that was critical to the novel.

Technology or Miracles

I don’t usually care what technology gee-whiz things science fiction authors come up with as usually the people are the interesting part of the book.  However there were two technologies that were the book’s foundation so let’s talk about them.

Genetic Engineering.  Home World envisions multiple planets where the residents are genetically altered for survival on inhospitable worlds.  Other people are altered to a Type, trending to certain skills.  Some are Sprites, meant to be joy toys, sex objects.  Some are Aryans, blond and nasty.  There are a few natural humans even on Earth and none elsewhere.

Lupans were genetically engineered with genes contributed from wolves or tigers, with genes from hawks and eagles for eyesight.  The resulting people look human but have fangs and other special characteristics.  For example the men must Impress upon a female at some point and mate with her or die.  Oddly the women may have 4 husbands while the men have one wife.

Aside from the ethical lapses, the genetic engineering is plausible.  Author Milani hints at the cultural results but sort of sweeps them under the rug with the rest of the back story.

Real Time Communication Over Light Years.  This one was ridiculous.  The Van Buren ruling family met real time via hologram across 60-100 light years.  In fact the connections were so instantaneous that Letticia was able to make Jezekiah’s hologram respond so the other person actually “felt” his touch.

Overall computer/web/sync forms a huge part of the novel, the bedrock for some plot devices, Lettica’s addiction, the reason why some people can sneak through secure gates.  When a technology gizmo is this important to the novel it must make sense or the book falls apart.

Characters

I didn’t like any of the characters.  We’re meant to like Jezekiah; he is fighting the good fight, looking for a way to help Earth, avert a war with Den Lupan, looking for love, looking for a way to slide out of his heir status.  Instead he is 2 dimensional and boring.  Plus he’s a bit whiny and unwilling to commit to either his own wishes or his duty.

Strongarm, the Lupan prince and intended bridegroom didn’t have much personality.  His brother-in-law was the most interesting character of them all.

Keiko, whom both Jezekiah and Strongarm desire, seems to flip flop and float from one allegiance to another, just as she is able to slip in and out of the Van Buren manor, and flit between her father’s home and her grandfather’s.  Realize her father and grandfather are mortal enemies and you see the problem.  She is either incredibly naive or over-confident, accepting Tong star weapons from her grandfather even though they are illegal even to possess and sets up meetings between her grandfather and Strongarm and grandfather and Jezekiah, never thinking those meetings make ideal ambushes.

Letticia is frightened near to death, suspecting everyone of trying to kill her, addicted to Sync, addicted to power games, crude and rude and nasty.  Given an advanced society it’s hard to believe no one would have recognized the problem and gotten Letticia mental health care.

Author Milani would have a better story with more likable or interesting characters.  Given this is her first novel she may develop her character skills.

Plot and Scenes

Book includes a gang rape scene, a description of how Lupan males kill their families when exposed to the vile sex drug Venus Seed, several violent deaths, a seduction (same female, same day as the gang rape), murders, execution threats, annihilation threats, way too many plots and counter plots.

No one has a moral compass.  Strongarm and his brother-in-law casually plan to destroy Earth, render it uninhabitable if they don’t get their treaty sealed with a marriage; Keiko’s father tries to kill her as part of her Samurai trial; Keiko’s gangster grandfather casts her off until she shoots Strongarm.

Then a miracle occurs and Strongarm isn’t dead, Keiko turns out to be an acceptable bride, war is averted, treason accusations rescinded.  I really don’t like “a miracle occurs here” plot devices.

Summary

Home World is a good first start for new author Bonnie Milani but I didn’t enjoy most of it.  Nonetheless I stayed up till midnight yesterday to finish, partly because I wanted to get the book done, write the review and move on to something better but another reason was I wanted to know the ending.

I didn’t like the characters, unexplained backstory, the fact we’re plopped down in the middle of several high stakes situations without a map, the irritating pidgin, ridiculous technology, lack of morals, chimera species, overly convenient endings.

I did like the sense of excitement in about half the book (did I mention it alternates between boring and good?) and the writing style was reasonably good.  I think if the author keeps writing she will become quite good.  But please, skip the rapes, pidgin, miracle endings.

3 Stars

I received an advance copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Foxglove Summer – City Boy Goes to Country – Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch

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Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series gets better and better.  We last left Peter Grant devastated by a massive betrayal in Broken Homes.  Weeks later in Foxglove Summer he’s off to Herefordshire to check a former Folly member, now retired, as a possible suspect in a case of two missing 11 year old girls.  Peter quickly rules the former wizard from suspicion and offers his help to the local police who are overwhelmed.

Peter is pretty sure this will be a straight forward police case and is looking forward to something simple – no wizardry, no Faceless Man, no Tasers, no Mother Thames or her brood.  His happy certainty lasts right until he checks out the girls’ cell phones, found abandoned and non functional.  Peter recognizes the tell-tale pitting of electronics exposed to magic.

This is our first time seeing Peter operate alone and he does a grand job.  He searches all the past witness statements for “oddities” and sure enough, finds that one of the girls had an invisible friend. Sleuthing the modern way, with cheapo cell phones set up to register magic, plus plenty of gumshoe work and listening to what’s not said yields success.

Peter’s developed his magic skills immensely, witness the fact he could blow out fence gates on the run, something Nightingale said only about half the older generation could do.  He gets tantalizing clues about Nightingale and the debacle at Ettersberg and further insight into magic’s place in the world beyond London.

New Characters

Peter’s been entranced by Beverly Brook, sort-of 20-something daughter of Mama Thames and this time she shows up to help him out.  He helps her too, in several interesting ways.  Beverly is more human when she’s with Peter but she still has her river goddess innate presence.

We meet several new characters:  DCI Windrow and Inspector Edmondson, the leads on the kidnapping case, Dominic Croft, whom Windrow assigns to work with Peter, normally shrewd journalist Sharon Pike who bizarrely accuses the cops of covering up the real culprit, offering as evidence a piece of the plastic backing from a candy bar, the parents, Hugh Oswald the former wizard now bee keeper and Mellissa his granddaughter who may be part bee herself.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Dominic or Sharon knock on the Folly door sometime to learn magic.

Aaronovitch makes these people real to us.  We don’t get a full character dissection on any of them but he shows us enough that we recognize them.  They are types yes, but with enough added humanity that they are people, not cardboard cutouts.

Setting

Peter’s way out of his element in the wilds of  Herefordshire but in true Peter Grant spirit quickly learns his way around and gets familiar enough with the local background to spot anomalies in the reforestation efforts.  He’s a amazing person whom I’d like to meet sometime.

The only map is on the front cover and I’m not familiar with Herefordshire – good thing we have Google maps and Google Earth! – but you don’t need to know the real countryside to follow the idea of wooded hills, pastures, fields, small towns, ridges and creeks.  Aaronovitch gives enough detail to make it interesting without trying to make it too realistic.

Plot

The plot was great.  As with all the Rivers of London novels we have lots of unanswered questions.  Who is the fairy queen and why did she want the girls?  Why did she want Peter and what did she plan to use him for?  Why did the unicorns chase the escaping girls right into the arms of Peter, Beverly and Dominic?  How did the fairy queen make a second, identical girl?

And last, how on earth would Peter et al explain the second daughter? And that they were giving the spare girl, who happened to be the biological human daughter, to Fleet to raise?

Summary

I have loved all the Rivers of London novels, but if I had to pick a favorite it would be a tie among Midnight Riot, Broken Homes and this one, Foxglove Summer.  It’s fun seeing Peter grow personally and as a wizard, London commentaries are hilarious, tension ever increasing, and minor characters are fun and well developed with just a few sentences.

5 Stars

 

Murder in Missoula – Hunting Down a Serial Killer

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Murder in Missoula starts off with a bang.  We are with Charles Durbin, loner, dog groomer, obsessed with Marie-Justine, as he sneaks into her home for erotic fantasies.  He has stalked her for weeks, trying to decide whether he prefers her or her best friend Anne.  Now he has decided.

Meanwhile former DEA agent Joe Nicoletti is in town interviewing for a professorship at the university.  Nicoletti is a widower and lonely.  He meets Marie-Justine at a faculty gathering and the two connect immediately.  Durbin sees them together and decides he must make sure that Marie-Justine is his and kills her.

Of course the police find evidence that Nicoletti murdered her, though he is grief-stricken.  He must clear his name and find the real killer before other women die.

What Works

Murder in Missoula is at its best when we follow Durbin through his fantasy love life, but I felt the last third, where we tag along with Nicoletti as he ties Durbin to other murders in Colorado was weaker.  The novel went from the suspenseful stalker to a more traditional whodunit, where Nicoletti uses his intuition, connections and plain old luck to solve the crime.

The novel remained well written even after we took a left turn from the serial killer to the detective, but it lost some of the suspense.

Author Laurence Giliotti did a fine job showing us the real person inside the evil killer, as Durbin interacts with others in a more-or-less normal fashion while he grooms dogs, chats up the realtor (in order to get to the pass key on Marie-Justine’s new house).  Even serial killers need to eat and need an income, so why not groom dogs while you stalk the ladies?  Giliotti intermixed horror with the normal day-to-day, as when Durbin made sure to keep the realtor from seeing his kitchen that recreated Marie-Justine’s.

The police chief Garland is an interesting character as he moves from Nicoletti’s adversary to his ally, from political to professional.  We didn’t see much of Garland, too bad as he could be an interesting lead character.

What Didn’t Work So Well

Nicoletti is more of a stock character than is Durbin.  Obviously smart, well-schooled in handling evil men, not looking for but delighted to find possible love.  He seems more in the book to provide a counter to Durbin, there to fill a role.

Setting was a little weak too.  The action took place in Montana with brief trip to Colorado Springs but there wasn’t anything to tie the story to either locale.  It could have happened anywhere.

Summary

Overall this is a fine novel if you enjoy mysteries with a bit of suspense and like to get inside the mind of a killer.  4 Stars

I received a free copy through NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

 

Front Runner by Felix Francis – A Darker Novel in Dick Francis’ Tradition

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Felix Francis helped his father, Dick Francis, research several novels, eventually co-authoring four, and assumed full authorship for four more novels after Dick Francis died.  Front Runner uses the same character and plot formulae his father made successful:  Strong male lead physically and morally brave, lonely and wistful about love; villain willing to kill; British horse racing setting; guy meets attractive lady early in the novel; extreme danger.

The author’s genius is that even though the plot is familiar, we get intrigued and have to keep reading.  Francis adds enough twists and false trails that we can’t be sure we spot the villain.  (In fact, I thought it was someone else.)  We can admire the main character and Francis shows him with enough failings to be realistic, not a flat 2D hero type, and the villains are also well done, complete people with good points and bad.

I enjoyed Front Runner but Felix’s novels are darker, with more nuanced heroes, more moral ambiguity than his father’s were.  I can’t read more than one Felix novel every year or so and don’t care to purchase any, but have his dad’s oeuvre on my shelf downstairs.

For example, Jeff Hinkley, investigator for British horse racing authorities, asks matter-of-factly  why someone hadn’t gotten an abortion.  Later he kills a man in self defense.  His father’s heroes managed to win without killing their adversaries and every one of them had a strong sense of hope.  These differences seem small but are part of an overall darker, less engaging mood and less enjoyable sense of place and character.

4 Stars

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge – Drink Up and Kill Monsters

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Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge starts fast and fun, when new business grad Bailey Chen is attacked as she walks home from her job as a bar back.  Luckily she drank a screwdriver before leaving because her attackers were monsters – tremens – and the screwdriver – when made just exactly perfectly – imparts super strength.

Barkeepers are magicians who keep the world safe from monsters and get their super powers by mixing cocktails exactly right and using pure ingredients.  They are members of the Cupbearers, dedicated to keeping the world safe from tremens and use the Obvlinum to erase memories from us non-barkeepers.  (Presumably they make the drinks slightly wrong when serving to us regular customers.)

New idea, yes!  Great concept, unfortunately the rest of the book fell a bit short.

Once past the opener, Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge read like YA fiction, with Bailey, her high school best friend Zane, and Zane’s girlfriend Mona the mysterious, forming a love triangle. In between they serve drinks and fight monsters and worry about the politics in the bar keeping hierarchy.

I didn’t like the characters.  Bailey got As in high school and college by memorizing and makes flash cards about the company that she’s interviewing for a business job. She doesn’t know what she wants to be, only what she wants to own (apartment in trendy but cheap part of town), and as she herself put it, is a teenager grown old, not an adult.

Zane was on again/off again, inconsistent in loyalty and love, self-centered.  The other characters were equally boring and a politically correct mix of genders and backgrounds.  None seemed to exhibit particularly high moral standards or interest in much beyond food, sex, drinking and killing monsters.

The most interesting parts of Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge were the drink recipes and tidbits culled from the barkeeper’s manual, The Devil’s Water Dictionary.  These snippets had the same fun, tongue in cheek feel as the opening scene.

3 Stars.  The concept is 4 stars, original and could be fun, the teenage angst and modest characterization are distracting enough to warrant the lower rating.

The Martian – People, Science and Constraints

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The Martian is a wonderful combination of realism, science, hard facts and most of all, real people.  The Ares 4 mission had to bug out in a hurry ahead of a sandstorm and thinking crew member Mark Watney was dead, left him behind.  Mark is alive and now stranded – alone – on an inhospitable rock in a habitat meant to last a month, with very little food, no method to contact Earth and facing near certain death since his only chance to catch a ride back home is 4 years away.

Author Andy Weir doesn’t sugar coat the situation: Being on Mars is dangerous and being alone on Mars is very dangerous.  Mark will most likely die, whether from starvation, oxygen depletion, CO2 overload, freezing or pure chance.

The best two parts of the novel were the people back on Earth and Mark’s resilience and creative methods to win through.  In the end, the book is about people.  The science is realistic and it adds to the interest; the constraints are deadly and keep us turning the pages, but it is the people that make it memorable.

5 Stars

Marry the Queen, Get the Kingdom: The King of Attolia

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Megan Whalen Turner delivers another solid novel in her The Queen’s Thief fantasy series.  The King of Attolia picks up a few months after The Queen of Attolia with Eugenides married to Attolia, but reluctant to assume the king’s power or take authority from his wife.  Unfortunately, just because Gen is reluctant does not mean others are squeamish about usurping power; all it does is make him look weak.

We see the action through Costis, a member of the Queen’s guard. The King of Attolia opens with Costis sitting in his room contemplating execution and disgrace after hitting King Eugenides in the face.   Gen comes into see him and decides to make Costis his bodyguard instead of hanging him.

Costis then witnesses Gen’s approach:  Gen lets his gentlemen/courtiers run over him; he never is seen seeking his wife’s bed; he seems bored and flighty during court; he does nothing when a noble composes a witty song about what (supposedly) didn’t happen on his wedding night.  Despite Gen’s past escapades as the Thief of Eddis, the nobility and court believe him lightweight.

Over time Costis sees that Gen is in fact aware of every slight and we watch along with Costis as Gen is wounded fighting off an assassin team.  One of my favorite episodes is when Gen tracks down a finance minister for a crash course on types of wheat, then hustles one of the wheat-growing nobles out of bed to confront him with tax evasion for reporting the wrong type of wheat.  Of course no one believes that it was Gen who did the legwork; even the cheating noble thinks someone must have betrayed him.

Slowly, very slowly, Gen believes his wife when she asks him to take on his authority, and slowly he digs himself out of the hole he let the court push him into.  Eventually Gen assumes his proper place as the King of Attolia.

Summary

I enjoyed all three books in The Queen’s Thief series.  Turner gets the cultural and geographic settings just right and captures the feeling of menace and danger hanging over Gen.  The court scenes are delightful as are the confrontations with various villainous wanna-bes.  She built Gen into a real person and in this novel, also brings Costis to life.  He’s a foil for Gen, but takes on a more solid character through the novel.

The King of Attolia is fantasy because everything takes place in Attolia, an imaginary country based on ancient Greece and because the gods are active now and then.  There is no magic, no quest, no talisman to seek or to destroy.  Using a fantasy setting without the heroic trimings lets author Turner spend her time on making the people and the setting and conflicts interesting and believable.

Libraries classify The King of Attolia as YA along with the previous two books, The Thief and The Queen of Attolia.  The Thief is a bit lighthearted and has younger characters, fun for older teens.  The Queen of Attolia is more sober, with more serious conflicts and character development, suitable for teens and adults.  Likewise adults will enjoy The King of Attolia as will teens.

5 Stars

 

How to Be Happy – The Choice Wine: 7 Steps to a Superabundant Marriage

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The Choice Wine by Steve Bollman is a how-to book with practical steps for anyone who wants to be happy, aimed particularly at married couples.  The same advice works for single people and engaged couples; it is basic.

Bollman father-in-law gave him simple advice for having a happy marriage:

Eat dinner with your family every night
Go to church with your family every week.

Bollman builds these two simple ideas into his 7 step guide and adds in statistics and scientific research to demonstrate that these steps do indeed correlate with happiness and happy marriages.  At one point he notes that the step may not cause happiness, but that the people who act this way already have habits and attitudes that bring happiness.  He uses Christian scripture to anchor the advice.

The 7 steps are:

  1.  Honor your wedding vows.  This means fidelity and chastity, including mental chastity.  Bollman points out that adultery devastates marriages – which most of us know – and adds the insight that indulging in pornography also hurts the marriage.
  2. Use money for others.  Be charitable with time and money.  Bollman talks here about spending time with people (eat dinner with your family) and with giving your worldly goods to your spouse and to others.
  3. Give God some of your time.  This one may be hard for some to swallow but here too we have study upon study that shows the link between going to church/regular prayer and happiness and strong families. This step links to his father-in-law’s advice to go to church weekly.
  4. Set your mind on things above.  This one is common sense but we all too often neglect it.  If you think about good things and not bad, it is easier to be good, to think better of others, to not hold grudges, to not be irritable.  Our retired bishop gave a homily last year where he asked us to not say one negative thing about another person all week.  It was hard but it worked!
  5. Find God in yourself.  This is not the New Age “the god within” but the real deal.  This is applying church and prayer to yourself, to view yourself as important to God, to have high personal integrity and a moral code.
  6. Find God in other people.  Just once I saw my husband as God sees him.  It was glorious.  If we could see each other the way God sees us it would set us free.
  7. Make it easy to be good and hard to be bad.  Common sense.

Writing Style

My only complaint with the book was with Bollman using his in laws Riley and Rose Mary as imaginary discussion partners.  It quickly got tedious.

Overall Thoughts

Based on my personal experience and from observing my and Dave’s parents, the advice and the steps are sound.  Yes, there are people who do all seven steps and get divorced or are miserable and there are people who never go to church who have been happily married for years.

These steps are not magic.  They are meant as practical tips, steps that will greatly improve your chances to be happy and your ability to have a happy and mutually fulfilling marriage.

Likely there are some who will pooh-pooh the advice, especially that based on faith and love of God.  If that is you, then why not take a chance, try going to church and looking for God in yourself and others.  Just maybe you will find happiness.

I received a complimentary copy in exchange for a review through NetGalley.  4 Stars.  The advice is 5 stars.

 

Bludgeoned by the Galactic Legend of Life and Death

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NetGalley is a great way to find new authors and books, most of which I never see in our library.  The premise is simple exchange:  I get access to advance electronic copies of books and promise to review each one.  Since I got my tablet with Kindle application it’s easy to access and read the books (easier than with my Nook) and I’ve been able to meet my commitment.

This is a two-sided bargain.  I must actually read and finish the book to review it.  And books from NetGalley are just like ones from the library; some are excellent, most are OK and a few are stinkers.

Galactic Legend of Life and Death uses a huge backstory, the very nature of life and death, and the long term survival of the human race.  The world building premise was grand:  Humans are invited to join the Alliance of Intelligent Clusters, but there is a catch  We have only so long to prove we are intelligent and the proof must come from a demonstrable contribution to the overall universe knowledge. You can see this could be an exciting idea for a novel!

Unfortunately authors Boian and Dora Alexandrov added in multitudes of ideas: Black holes that survive from one Big Bang to another, the endless search for immortality or the cessation of life altogether, the fight for survival on a strange world, a galactic lab where every species has its own planet and access to develop ideas and gain its intelligence license, beings comprised of pure energy, beings that live in stars, a nearly omnipresent intelligence/artificer called Cor, Wandering Dowgens who are reborn after each Big Bang and seek out intelligence, instantaneous travel, ability to ask to Cor to make any food, build any structure, alter the world, to…  You get the idea.  It is overwhelming.  I felt bludgeoned.

I would like to reread this novel after a seriously empowered editor honed it to one story, or even a novel with three or four stories.  This book has so many excellent ideas it’s as if the authors couldn’t decide which to use, so threw the all into the pot and we ended up with a book that zooms from idea to idea, plot to plot, strange planet to far galaxy to different universes and in the process forgot about people.

Boian and Dora Alexandrov did not develop the characters well.  I believe they could have done a better job on the people, made the settings even better had they selected just one main plot with a (small) subplot or two.  As it was we had so many words and ideas and quests and desires that it was a giant stew.

I read this on the Kindle app which had about 800 screen/pages and each page was around 400 words.  That’s 320,000, far too many.  Until Fanagor got to the lab and found out about the license imperative, I thought a good editor would cross out every other sentence, then cut out two thirds of the adjectives and we’d have a good story. But a better idea would be to slim the novel down to a manageable number of ideas and make each one live.

The Alliance of Intelligent Clusters, the Lab, the three Cluster types, the need for an intelligence license are great ideas that could make a wonderful science fiction novel.  Save the Tillda black hole, Tillda’s “children”, the book containing the Galactic Legend of Life and Death and the Wandering Dowgens for other novels.

Overall, had I not gotten this through NetGalley and owed a read and review, I’d have stopped about page 20.  At that point the sheer number of words and absence of any use for those words felt exhausting.  The novel got much better and more interesting further on but I cannot give it more than 3 stars.