adult

Fillius Glint – Ditrie Marie Bowie

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Fillius Glint CoverFirst Published: 31st January, 2017
Genre: Science Fantasy / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

A universe is attacked by hackers who want to destroy it. Meanwhile in the universe, three people find some magical colouring pencils.

There are four viewpoint characters and a frame story. The frame is a family where the children are growing universes. When hackers attack the home network, Nancy loses most of her universes. The one that remains is where most of the story takes place.

Fillius has quite a bit of viewpoint time, showing the lead up to the main story events. He was raised in the gender-neutral religion of Zorda. Everyone uses Spivak pronouns, which is briefly explained at the start of the book. People with breasts bind them. The aim is to be as genderless as possible, in honour of the deity. I had issues believing all this, because the Zords are very binary for a gender-neutral cultural group. When they do gendered things, it is based on where they would be assigned in a binary society. So if they would be assigned female at birth, they might wear a dress or makeup. They also have names to indicate that, just with a letter cut off the end, rather than using truly gender-neutral naming conventions (Clar/Clara, Nor/Nora, Belind/Belinda).

On my first read, it gave the impression that being non-binary was a sham and that no one was really non-binary. On a second read, I can see it might be intended to show Fillius’s issues. He decides he’s a man based on his genitals. He starts misgendering other Zords. Everything he sees is filtered through this perspective. It’s also possible the names are due to more recent converts altering their names. However, this is the first introduction to anyone non-binary in the book, and the only time the Zords are shown living in a community, so I remained uncomfortable with it even after seeing it in the context of the full story.

Fortunately, the other viewpoint characters are more interesting and don’t fall into this as much. Their story happens in the present in the universe, as each of them picks up a magic crayon.

Luiz is recovering from breaking up with his girlfriend by taking a lot of drugs. He’s also in trouble with a business associate. I liked that his story deals with issues facing people of ethnic minorities in a majority culture.

Calliya is a shaman who lives alone in the forest and has control over elements. This introduces another religion and culture. I also liked how it highlights the ridiculousness of some of the worldbuilding, such as the trees with tacos growing on them. I could imagine a child growing a universe like this.

Nor is a Zord living outside of a Zord community. Unlike the Zords in Fillius’s sections, it’s clear Nor really is non-binary. Ey faces issues like gendered changing rooms. Ey competes in a sport that splits people by weight class, rather than gender, to avoid some of those issues. Nor is very honest and open, to the point that when things get weird, ey just tells eir coach plainly what’s going on, magic crayons and all. There is some misgendering of Nor by the others initially, particularly from Luiz, but this is something that self-corrects. It’s rare to have characters get it wrong, realise they were wrong, and start getting it right, without being told to do that.

Once I got past Fillius’s initial sections, I did enjoy the book overall. The setup and plot are unique. The protagonists contrasted well with each other. It presents a world that’s fanciful, yet also complicated in a realistic way, with different cultures and how they interact. The main weakness was the Zords, because outside of Nor, it didn’t hold together for me as a gender-neutral society.

[A copy of this book was received from the author for review purposes]

The Foxfire Lights – Elizabeth O’Connell

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Foxfire Lights CoverSeries: Hal Bishop Mysteries, #2
First Published: 26th August, 2016
Genre: Historical Fantasy / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Jem and his brother Hal are called to break another curse. Lord Ransom’s youngest child is sick under strange circumstances.

The setup for this book is very similar to the first in the series. A child is cursed due to events in the family’s past. Jem and Hal have to uncover those events to understand the curse. It’s based on making deals with spirits, which is resolved in a similar way. It also repeats a fair bit of character development, as Hal goes back to not wanting to share his thoughts with Jem. This means there isn’t really any progress on the overall series story of figuring out what happened to Jem and Hal’s father.

There are some areas of improvement. In the first book, only magical disabilities were shown. In this, there is some sickness due to magic, but there’s also a disabled supporting character. Matthew, one of the sons of Lord Ransom, was born with a back injury and is non-neurotypical. There’s the suggestion that he doesn’t feel empathy (rather than just not showing empathy). It’s made very clear this isn’t magical, and a positive future is suggested for him.

Isabella, Lord Ransom’s wife, is from Argentina. She’s not particularly fleshed out as a character. I’d have liked more of her story, even if it wasn’t directly related to the local events.

A character is blinded in one eye towards the end, though it’s late enough that there’s not a lot to say about it in this book.

It isn’t a bad book and will appeal to people who enjoyed the first book. A lot of the things that stood out in the first are apparent here. The world is one where industrial magic is common. The curse breaking provides opportunities for interesting investigations. There’s folklore woven into the narrative. It just feels like it repeats too much from the first book, rather than building on that foundation.

[A copy of this book was received from the author for review purposes]

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver

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Series: Chameleon Moon, #1
First Published: 1st October, 2014
Genre: Superhero / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Smashwords

People with superpowers are kept in quarantine in the city of Parole. When an assassination goes wrong, Regan is left with amnesia, and it might have something to do with the larger issues of the city.

It’s debatable in an ensemble cast whether anyone is a main character. I’m loosely saying they’re Regan and Evelyn, as a lot of the plot and scenes revolve around their stories, even if they’re from someone else’s perspective. But other characters also have large roles, so it’s open to interpretation. This is the second edition of the book.

Regan ends up with amnesia early in the story. It’s a good handling of amnesia in general, such as Regan processing how he feels about not remembering anything, and the way the memories trickle back. If he did have his memories, the plot wouldn’t be solved in five seconds, so it’s not used in that way. The personal impact of not remembering things like his family is the primary focus.

What I wasn’t fond of was the reason for the amnesia, because it’s caused by Hans. I disliked the scenes he was in and hoped they’d be over quickly, which unfortunately, they never were. One issue is that Hans has mind powers which mean he can give people amnesia, control their minds, and is generally unstoppable. Which makes it hard for other characters to stand up to him. Hence when he’s in a scene, it’s all about him, and it’s not going to end quickly.

Part of Regan’s struggle to remember his past reveals he may be asexual, as he realises he doesn’t find others sexually attractive. He’s also a lizard person with PTSD and anxiety.

Evelyn is a superhero with singing powers. She’s a trans woman and is in a poly relationship with two other women. I’m assuming she’s non-white as her skin is described as brown. One of the things she has to face is her past. She left her birth family behind, but ends up having to return. Evelyn is misgendered by one of her family, though these scenes are brief.

There’s a lot of diversity in the cast, including a non-binary person with they pronouns, someone with a double leg amputation, and multiple non-white people (though I was uncertain of exact races). PTSD is common, along with anxiety and depression. There are some references to suicide as part of this. It’s not clear whether the characters in relationships view themselves as gay, lesbian, bi, pan and so forth. Regan’s sexuality is the only one explicitly discussed. However, the relationships tend towards same gender or binary gender with non-binary.

Some of the books I’ve had recommended to me as lighter queer reads have turned out to have a constant threat of sexual violence. This one was noted to be somewhat darker, but it managed to avoid that particular issue. It has general violence, but that violence doesn’t focus around sexual violence.

On the issue of darkness, the characters may be living in a disaster zone, but the end tends towards the hopeful rather than the tragic. Named characters have a very good chance of survival. Unnamed characters may not be so lucky.

I enjoyed a lot of things about the book. Parole is an interesting setting and it was good to find out more about the mysteries surrounding it. There’s a lot of character time, as the characters talk and figure things out. I did feel it got confusing towards the end, in terms of exactly what was happening, and everyone’s locations. I also really didn’t like Hans, particularly because his powers made it hard for anyone to resist him. But my criticisms are minor, and for the most part, I’d be interested in seeing where it goes next.

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

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Series: Wayward Children, #1
First Published: 5th April, 2016
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Novella
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Nancy has spent the last few years in the Halls of the Dead, an underworld where stillness is valued. When she returns, she ends up at a boarding school for other teenagers like her, who are longing to return to their worlds.

Contrary to the book’s official description, it’s not about children who are spat out by their portal worlds when their potential is used up. Some can return to their worlds if they find another door. Some will go back and forth many times. Which is a pity, because I liked the idea of draining children of their miracle powers like some sort of portal world vampire, but there you go.

There’s obviously a deeper system going on here, with the worlds mapped out in directions like Nonsense and Logic, but this never really gets developed. Most of the interesting setup is dropped once the murder mystery begins. Speculative murder mysteries are my thing, but this one really didn’t work for me. I figured they’d go around finding out about everyone’s worlds, in the hopes of finding clues to the killer. What actually happens is they don’t do a lot of investigating, ignore the very obvious clues, then have the answer fall into their laps at the end. Note that this is a darker mystery, so the deaths are gory and the bodies are described in detail.

Nancy is a romantic asexual person. The book attempts to explain asexuality in basic terms, but in a way that is impersonal to Nancy. It’s like a definition for someone who hasn’t heard of asexuality. Which makes it a problem when asexuality is being defined as not having a desire for sex, rather than not feeling sexual attraction. This is true for Nancy, but not for all asexual people, so it would have been better if she’d made the description personal.

The discussion of romance is rather more confused. She makes it clear she did enjoy dating when she was young enough that there wasn’t pressure for sex. She directly states she’s not aromantic. Then she goes on to describe people as being like paintings, so she doesn’t want to date because she wouldn’t date a painting. In other words, she doesn’t get into romantic relationships with people she’s not sexually attracted to, which is no one, so therefore she doesn’t date. I’m not really sure what all that was about. Maybe Nancy was confused. Maybe the author was confused. I couldn’t tell which.

However, my biggest issue with her asexuality is that it’s portrayed as a bigger problem than having returned from the Halls of the Dead. Her parents push her to date and she thinks it’s inevitable in relationships that she’ll be pressured into sex. Nancy was put into sexually awkward situations just to show her being uncomfortable, like her roommate wanting to know if Nancy wanted sex with someone, and if she could masturbate whilst Nancy was in the room. The overall feel is that it would be impossible for Nancy to exist in society as an asexual person, and so she turns her back on society.

There’s an attempt to distance Nancy’s death and stillness from asexuality, by saying a lot of people in the Halls of the Dead were sexual. Which would work better if being asexual wasn’t a reason for her to want to return there and retreat from society forever.

Nancy states she doesn’t have an eating disorder, but that’s not how it looks. She’s attempting to survive on the food that sustained her in the Halls of the Dead. That means mostly fruit juice. It’s a fantastical eating disorder for an unusual reason, but she’s still restricting her portion sizes, and this is still going to kill her. However, as it isn’t addressed as an eating disorder, there aren’t any downsides. It’s shown as rather ethereal and mysterious, which was getting a little too close to glamourising eating disorders for my liking.

One of Nancy’s new friends is Kade, who is a trans boy. He was kicked out of his world when they realised he wasn’t a girl, his parents rejected him for it, and he also faces bigoted comments at the school. The anti-trans themes weren’t unrealistic, but were rather a downer, especially considering he’s the only one who couldn’t have the happily-ever-after of going back to his perfect world.

Jack and Jill are identical twins. It avoids some tropes (they’re not telepathic linked or treated as being identical people), but does fall into others (when one twin is good the other must be bad).

There are a few non-white characters. Sumi is Japanese. Christopher is Latino. The former doesn’t get much development time, it grated that she constantly called people stupid, and I didn’t like how her story ended. The latter has some development, though I noted his world was rather Day of the Dead, linking the world to his roots in a way that doesn’t happen for the white characters. These characters exist, but it’s the white characters who are centred.

There’s an attempt to make the school mostly being girls sound less binary by blaming it on imposed gender roles, but this didn’t work for me. Nothing about “boys will be boys” would stop them disappearing through a door in an instant. It’s possible this was intended to sound ridiculous, and Kade’s experiences would suggest the portal worlds prefer girls because they’re bigots rather than there being a real gender difference. But no character challenges this at all.

Also, I never did like the trope that adults are so vastly different from children, except for old people who are just like children. This is used to justify why adults (except for old adults) can’t cope with nonsense.

I liked the concept for this a lot more than the actual story. It’s a great idea. There’s some lovely writing in places and some of the worlds were very imaginative. But it doesn’t really come together as a whole. The inclusion reads too much like it’s there to explain terms for people who don’t know them, and has some implications I don’t like very much. This is tied up in a murder mystery that isn’t very mysterious.

Super Sikh #1 – Eileen Kaur Alden, Supreet Singh Manchanda, Amit Tayal

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Super Sikh CoverFull Title: Super Sikh #1 Takeoff and Landing
First Published: 26th April, 2017
Genre: Spy / Comic
Contributors: Eileen Kaur Alden (creator, adaptation); Supreet Singh Manchanda (creator); Amit Tayal (artist), Pradeep Sherawat (colourist), Adrian Reynolds (adaptation)
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Deep Singh is a U.N. Special Agent, but all the work is tiring him out, so he tries to take a holiday.

The first issue is an introduction to the character and central plot, where Deep goes on holiday to the USA and it doesn’t entirely work out. I saw this discussed as a superhero title, but it has more of an action spy vibe. Deep doesn’t have superhuman abilities and I didn’t get a feel that anyone else did either. He does have exceptional combat skills and some of the gadgets are more speculative.

My favourite thing about it was the family relationships. His family arrange for him to go away, and their concerns for him are clear. He has a cousin, Preeti, who works for the U.N. in research. When it comes to showing Sikhs, there’s a clear understanding of people approaching things in different ways. Deep’s older relatives wear traditional clothing. Deep’s clothing is more modern, but he has a turban and kara. Preeti has uncovered hair and no kara, outside of wearing one for a demonstration. I liked the attention to detail in how different characters expressed themselves and their faith.

Deep rarely has thoughts written out and he mainly speaks to tell jokes. This makes it difficult to really know who he is and what he thinks about what’s going on. There’s a lot of James Bond inspiration in the story, and it’d be fair to say that doesn’t focus on character much either, but that was something I didn’t like much in James Bond. I do like to get to know characters, and I don’t feel I knew much more about Deep than I did when I started reading.

The art is generally solid. It’s a realistic comic style and Deep’s facial expressions are good. I did feel some of the background characters weren’t as well rendered, particularly the black ones. I guess the artist has less experience of drawing people of some races, which may explain why there are so few background black characters. There are also some disability issues, as the art fell into using facial scarring and an eyepatch to denote someone as being evil.

There are issues when it comes to characters who aren’t Sikhs. Muslims are either terrorists or victims to be saved (when they’re women or girls). Mexicans are terrorists. Fat people are jokes. People who do bad things are crazy. There’s an attempt to subvert stereotypes when it comes to the Sikh characters, but stereotypes of anyone else are treated as the truth.

I can understand how it might have ended up here, as anyone who covers their hair or is non-white can be mistaken for being a Muslim. This means getting targeted by anti-Islamic discrimination. I get stopped by customs for a lot of random searches because they assume I’m Middle Eastern (and therefore, that I must be a Muslim). But it’s important to realise the primary issue isn’t that I’m being mistaken for a Muslim. It’s that there is prejudice against Muslims, and by extension, anyone assumed to be one. Stating that I can’t be a terrorist because I’m not a Muslim is suggesting the prejudice is grounded in fact, and that it would have been fair if they hadn’t been wrong about my identity. Like I say, I can understand why people have this reaction, but that doesn’t make it a good response. It shifts around who gets hurt rather than acknowledging the core problem. The comic very much has this type of reaction. It doesn’t tackle the assumptions that certain groups of people are terrorists and criminals. It simply distances Deep from being part of those groups.

Some of my comments could be worked out as the series continues, such as getting to know Deep a bit more. I’m rather more hesitant on the other stuff. It looks like crazy Islamic terrorist is going to be the flavour of main villain and I don’t think that’s going to be handled in a subversive way.

[A copy of this book was received from the publisher for review purposes]