Adult Review: The Rememberers

Based on a promotional eBook received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.



The Rememberers by C. Edward Baldwin

Overall Rating: 2/5
Plot: 2/5
Characters: 2/5
Writing: 2/5

After about a quarter of the book, I finally had to put it down. The character were uninspired, the story was taking forever to get anywhere and I really didn't care where it seemed to be going. I feel bad that I didn't finish it, but I really wasn't enjoying it and didn't see the point to torturing myself any further.

I can see this book as being enjoyable for people who enjoyed Dan Brown's Davinci Code, but it really wasn't something I personally enjoyed.

Adult Review: The Best of Adam Sharp

The Best of Adam Sharp
Graeme Simsion

Overall Rating: 4/5
Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Writing: 5/5

The Best of Adam Sharp introduces the character of Adam Sharp, a musician who has a day job in information technology. While Adam is a very talented pianist, he limits himself to noodling around with the piano at his favorite pub. Adam has been content in his life, living with his partner, Clare, and knocking 'em dead in music trivia at the pub quiz challenge. Re-enter Angelina Brown, a TV actress with whom Adam had a brief affair in his twenties. It starts with something simple, a single word email that mushrooms into a wild romp across several countries and many different states of mind.

I loved this book, honestly. I picked it up on the recommendation of a patron who knows my tastes and she was dead on, as usual. This book also found me in a strange point in my life, so some of the off-kilter nature of Adam's mid-life crisis was familiar to me, even though he is 15 years my senior. The book is peppered with musical references, both to pop music of the 60s and 70s and to obscure musicians and how all of this can weave together to make a sound track of your life. To continue this theme, the publishers also made a Spotify playlist called "Music to Read By" which contains all of the music referenced in the story (that's available on Spotify), in the order it's mentioned in the story. Listening to this playlist while reading the book really added to my experience of immersion in the world and was an inspired touch.

The plot moves slowly in places, but in a way that feels like it's supposed to feel slow, as if the world has shifted perspective and everything is seen in the disjointed flashes of stop-motion or a strobe light in a dark club. Likewise, the characters are not always likable, though I feel like I could sit down with Adam and have a pint easily. Likability aside, they are excellently developed and you can see Adam's progression from his twenties to his late forties, how life and experience shapes him and renders things from the past nostalgic if vague. Simsion's writing carries a voice that I could almost hear, a rhythmic, musical language that made me very attached to Adam by the end of the story.

A warning to those who have read the Rosie books: This is not the Rosie Project. While I haven't read his other work, I have been told by those that have that The Best of Adam Sharp is a widely different experience, harsher in places and with an ending that seems sad to some, but felt logical and satisfying to me. I encourage everyone to read it, but just be aware that it's a very different story that showcases the author's flexibility. In particular, I would recommend this to adults in their late thirties through late forties who may remember the music without needing the playlist. Men and women will take different things away from the story and I feel it would be interesting to both.

Adult Review: Static

Static
Written by K.A. Witt

Overall Rating: 5/5
Plot: 5
Characters: 5
Writing: 4.5

Static is set in a near future alternative universe in which shapeshifters exist. The twist on the theme is that shapeshifters switch between male and female gender-forms rather than between human and non-human forms. In this universe, a shifter named Alex is forced to receive an implant that locks him into his male form. This happens to come as a surprise to his boyfriend, Damon, who has only ever known Alex as a woman. The story follows the emotional upheaval this causes in their lives and relationship as Alex tries to decide what course to follow, medically and legally while Damon struggles with his feelings for female-Alex and what it means to be in love with a whole person, regardless of gender.

I want to write an objective, non-biased review of this book. I really do. But the material is so close to my heart that I just can't.

I love this book. I want everyone I know to read this book. I want to live inside this book. I want to see this book in the catalog of every LGBT-friendly library in America. Preferably multiple copies.

The book progresses excellently between both points of view, telling one chapter from Alex's first-person perspective and the next from Damon's. It includes other shifter characters, static trans characters, static gay folks, static straight folks. It's a world that still doesn't fully accept gay and trans people, but it's even more uncomfortable with shifters. The world isn't perfect and I appreciate the reality of that world, where characters have their own unique struggles in addition to the more mundane struggles we would experience here.

All the characters, even the minor ones, are fleshed out and give a vivid life that makes you want to follow them into their own stories. The plot moves quickly without rushing and I felt a familiar bubble of tension and joy throughout the story as it moved towards its ultimate ending. I've read better, tighter writing, but not much of it and the story overcame any fault I could possibly imagine finding with the writing.

I want to write fanfiction in this world. I love Static and I hope you'll read it and love it, too.

Adult Review: Peripheral People

Based on a promotional eBook received from NetGalley in exchange for a review.



Peripheral People, a Ylendrian Universe novel
Written by Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore

Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Plot: 4.5/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing: 3/5

This title is the most recent volume in a series of interconnected stand-alone science fiction books. Having this information negated most of my original protests about the plot development, which seemed forced and rushed with assumptions of knowledge about the world which the reader had no access to. Perhaps if I had read the previous books, I wouldn't have had this initial hurdle to overcome, so a simple word of warning: series, not the first book.

Peripheral People is set in a world of science fiction against a hard sci-fi backdrop of Imperial governance over a series of affiliated planets. Mostly, this rule appears to be accepted by the people of the various planets and the citizens of the Empire welcome the IEC agents who are the central focus of this particular book. Most of the characters appear to be human or at the very least humanoid, though details in this area are scant: I was startled to discover late in the book that the captain's race has triple-jointed digits, making him/her far more alien than the ability to switch between genders.

The main plot line centers around a pair of IEC inspectors, Corwin Menivie and Nika Santivan, and their psi-trained Agents, Westley Tavera and Gavin Hale. Corwin has a reputation for loathing psi agents and Westley is by nature and design an effusive and irritating personality. While they don't get along well on their small ship at first, a grudging respect and attraction grows between them against the backdrop of Nika and Gavin getting it on like gangbusters.

While the romance between the couples is part of the story, it is hardly the focus. The team is investigating a murder which West came across by accident in pursuit of an unrelated case. As they investigate this dangerous new murder, obviously psi-gifted and unstable, the team have to negotiate their personal lives in addition to addressing the rapidly multiplying bodies. While this story takes a bit to get off the ground, it quickly becomes the utterly consuming focus of both the team and the reader.

This book was slow to start for me. I struggled with shifting perspectives between characters and occasionally inconsistent modes of address: first names are informal, last names are professional, and sometimes they switch suddenly and I kept forgetting who belonged to which last name. As previously mentioned, there were details of setting and description which I felt were missing and made it hard to place what was going on and how things were supposed to progress. I suspect this is largely due to its placement as the most recent installment in a series and am actually really looking forward to locating and reading the rest of the series.

Once the story takes off, I couldn't put this down. Half-way through the book, it was a wild and bumpy ride, both with the characters' relationships and the unfolding mystery. Overall, this book was slightly predictable, but well worth the read, an excellent addition to an LGBT-friendly sci-fi collection.

Adult Review: Secret Sanction

Secret Sanction
by Brian Haig

Overall Rating: 3/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 3/5
Writing: 4/5

Secret Sanction, published in 2001, is the first in Haig's series of military courtroom novels starring Sean Drummond. Told in first person, the story explores Drummond's investigation into a slaughter in Kosovo. During the investigation, more death happens and Drummond is determined to get to the bottom of the story with a strong sense of truth, justice, and American honor.

While I enjoyed Drummond himself, with is snarky, almost Deadpool-esque humor, there were more than a few things about this book that troubled me. The writing is good, smooth and moves the story along very well. It's easy to follow, interesting and entertaining.

But Drummond shows his own disregard for women constantly throughout the book. Women are objects to be looked at and conquered. Sure, they can be spunky and smart, tough and capable, but generally, if she isn't attractive, she's useful. If she's got great legs, she's also super-smart, but he sure as hell doesn't respect her. As a woman, I was very taken aback by the institutional rape culture Drummond feeds into in this book. He approaches a woman he thinks is attractive; she turns him down. He tries again. She turns him down again. He tries again (usually while falling deeper into drunkeness) and she turns him down. Over and over and over again, she turns him down. But she flirts with him and wears sexy clothing, bends low over her drinks and purrs. But she won't have him. And in the end, as the clincher to the whole book (spoiler!) he gets her a job in his unit ultimately because "I don't give up easy."

The misogyny throughout is problematic enough without the additional racist characterizations. One incidental character is actually described as "mulatto-skinned." I read it aloud to my husband, just to get his take and he just stared at me and said, "How did that get published?"

This book and it's author have their audience. But it's going to be a hard sell for anyone in a younger generation or with more socially conscious mindsets. Good series to recommend for fans of Grisham, WEB Griffin, and similar military-minded genres. Steer clear if you're hoping for a strong woman who doesn't wear a plunging neckline or have a face like a hatchet (there is no in between for strong women in Haig, it would seem: gorgeous and flirty or ugly as sin and stubborn).

Adult Review: The Green Kangaroos

Based on a promotional eBook received from NetGalley in exchange for a review.



The Green Kangaroos
Written by Jessica McHugh

Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Plot: 4
Characters: 4
Writing: 3

The Green Kangaroos is set in a speculative near-future in which televisions exist on every corner and broadcast a set material based on where you live. A class system has come more strongly into play in the United States and Baltimore is rife with drugs and degradation. A drug called Atlys has come into the forefront and its use is encouraged by a cultural phenomenon called "potsticking" in which active Atlys users sell bits of their flesh in return for money and drugs to restaurants, which in turn sell them for the consumption of the extremely rich.

Perry Sampson is one of these drug users, fallen from a middle-class family in the wake of his older brother's OD and his parents' perceived neglect. His little sister hopes to rehabilitate him, to regain the relationship with her brother she used to have, but Perry has resisted those attempts for years. When his sister catches wind of a new treatment with advertised 100% success rates, Perry is in for a wild ride beyond even his own reality with not only his own life on the line, but that of his entire family.

I really loved this book, but it was a hard book to read. It was graphically violent, rife with strong language and sexual imagery, and tackled some deeply disturbing cultural taboos. Due to the nature of the book, these elements were necessary and even in keeping with character and world, but it didn't make it any easier to read without wanting to put the book down. It is for these elements that it receives such a low score for me. I would love to recommend it for the story, for the characters, and for the world they live in, but most of my readers would be put off by the graphic and taboo elements. For those that aren't, though, it's a fantastic read with compelling characters (I love Emily in particular) and a twisted ending.