Song Of The Really Expensive Crystal

Grabbed this book literally on my way out the door for my trip last week.  I had a bunch of new books I was very excited about reading, but grabbed this one just because.  I'm glad I did 'cause as I was chilling at the airport awaiting my flight, eating a big girl lunch I had the urge to read this exact book!  Thanks to the literary fates, I had it with me YAY!  The book is Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey the first of the Crystal series.  Was this the perfect book for the moment?  Find out, but first as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Killashandra Ree has just found out that she will never realize her dream of becoming a star concert singer on her home world of Fuerte.  She has spent the last ten years training, only to be told that she has an unbearable burr in a specific range that pretty much will never be fixed.  Understandably upset Killashandra takes off to find adventure when she runs into a man who takes her on a whirlwind tour of her own planet, flashing credit (this books version of money) and status where ever he goes.  Turns out that he is a Crystal Singer, a rare individual with perfect pitch and total recall.  After an accident render's her companion essentially a vegetable, Killashandra decides to become a Crystal Singer herself.  Despite (or maybe because of) numerous warnings against it, Killashandra travels to Ballybran, the headquarters of the Heptite Guild, for which the Crystal Singers are trained and work.  During her research Killashandra finds the planet is under an isolation edict, with no one being allowed to set foot on the planet until full disclosure has happened.  Still undeterred Killa and several others start the process.  We follow the potential recruits as we learn about the Crystal industry.  We learn that as humans expand into the universe, communication has become an issue, as the distances create a time lag.  The discovery of the unique crystal of Ballybran has solved that problem and provided many other uses as well.  This has led the Heptite Guild and it's members to be able to become quite well off and also amass prestige.  Of course with all good things there is a downside and that is why the planet is isolated.  It is revealed that any human who lands on the planet is instantly exposed to a spore.  If a person fully adjusts to the spore, they are rewarded with sharper senses and a long life...sounds great right?  Well there are two HUGE downsides, the first is even if you make a full adaption, a person has to constantly return to Ballybran to recharge the spore, apx every 400 days at a maximum, this means you can never go more then 200 days away from the planet.  If a person fails to return, the ageing process proceeds very rapidly and you can age hundreds of years in seconds.  The other danger is that you will not make a full adaption and will never be able to leave the planet again.  There is no real way to determine 100% who will  make the adaption and who will only partially adapt so there is a real risk.   After this has all been revealed, Killa and her fellow hopefuls go ahead and land on the planet.  While they wait for the spore to adapt they learn all about Crystal, the cutting, the tools, the value, the types, all kinds of stuff.  They also learn about the devastating storms called mach storms that can seriously hurt or kill a Singer.  Killa makes a full transition and turns out to have an affinity for the super rare, super valuable black crystal.  She also catches the eye of Lanzecki, the Guild Master in both a professional and personal capacity.  Killa finishes her training and gets out on the ranges, finding and Singing black crystal on her first trip out.  To get her off planet during the devastating Passover storms, she is sent to install her crystals, finding herself desperate to get back to Ballybran, Killa completes her full cycle as a Crystal Singer.

This book was perfect for when I was reading it, it had a lot of travel, a lot of discovery and a lot of awesome, and reading it at O'Hare Airport with it's big open windows and gray skies was the perfect setting for it.  I have to say, I am sometimes hard pressed to explain why I reread this book so often as it really does not have a plot.  It has a beginning, middle and end, but it is much more about a world and industry then it is anything else.  Ms. McCaffrey in case you have forgotten is one of my absolute favorite authors and this book highlights one of her strengths and that is world building.  This book has top notch world building and gives you a glimpse of an almost unlimited universe, all while detailing what amounts to mining and industry.  This book should not be as interesting as it is, as it is full of technical details and procedures...but I don't know...I still find it fascinating.  As much as this book is about world building, there are some very strong characters in here as well.  This author is great at giving everybody, even minor characters a believable and distinct personality, and she does it by showing, not telling so that you don't feel bogged down by descriptions of people.  Killashandra is of course the most fully developed and I identify with her very closely.  She comes from a theatre arts background and see's things in those terms, which with my background works perfectly.  She also likes to know things, and be the best at what she does.  She get's frustrated when people keep things from her, and she gets fed up with theory very quickly...yet she is a personal research fiend, all things I relate to.  Killa herself acknowledges her tendency to get conceited and tries to make a conscious effort to reign it in, but quickly gets frustrated with petty people.  I love a lot of the support characters who teach Killa and her fellow recruits their jobs, they all are long lived and have their own little quirks and talents.  I did find the relationship between Lanzecki and Killa a bit forced and convenient, since Killa is so good at everything she does, this relationship just made her journey a tad to easy for my taste.  Near the end when Killa heads out to install the black crystal there is a bunch of political type references made that kind of come out of no where and to me just muddy it a bit, but I think she was trying to set up the whole universe so eh, I know that Ms. McCaffrey use some of her own experiences as a singer and theatre person to inspire this book, and I feel that really comes through.  Killashandra and her story feel very personal and I really enjoyed that.  Overall I would recommend this book for any McCaffrey fans, science fiction fan, or world building fan.  I give it 7 out of 10 dodecahedrons.

What aspect of a book is most important to you?  What industry can you read a lot about?  How into random stuff do I get?

SciFi Awesomeness!

Hey guess what?  Two ramblings in a row!!!  How did you get so lucky you ask?  Mostly I have a ton of books to ramble about and I am low on ideas for other blog posts...so ramblings it is.  Today is a ramble about one of my favoritist short story collections.  My baby sis read it, called me and said get it, get it right now, and through the magic of ebooks The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows edited by Jonathan Strahan was purchased, read and loved.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

Ass-Hat Magic Spider by Scott Westerfeld - Besides being by one of my favorite authors, this story is also about the love of a hard copy book.  In the future colonists have a severely limited weight they are allowed to carry on the colony ship.  The main character goes through some extreme measures to make sure he can take at least one intact book with him.  This just goes to show you I am not the only one with a physical attachment to ones books.

Orange by Neil Gaiman - Another one of my favorite authors contributes this quirky, strange awesome story told entirely through answers.  This is the story that made my baby sis call me and I am glad she did.  The story...if you can call it that is some sort of transcript where all you get is the protagonists answers to unknown questions.  It is surprisingly readable and has a great sense of humor.  I love love love it.

Repair Kit by Stephen Baxter - This whole story is a bit of a deus ex machina in a tongue in cheek way.  The whole story hinges on a box that can repair things by pulling them from the past.  The best part is whenever the mechanic is asked to explain the way the box works, he is tells them that it is unexplainable alien technology.

Anda's Game by Cory Doctorow - Our plucky and pudgy heroine of this story shows us that anybody can choose to do the right thing.  Taking MMORPG's to a whole new level this story gives us a whole lot of social commentary (without to much preaching) in the package of an ordinary girl and her ordinary family. This story has heart and that makes this story awesome.

The Dust Assassin by Ian McDonald - The biggest appeal of this one is that it is set in India.  The author does a great job integrating the future with the culture, customs and religions of this fascinating country.  The combination of this perfect setting and a heart wrenching, yet brilliant story make this a unique and wonderful addition to this collection.

Infestation by Garth Nix - Vampires, aliens, supersoldiers, everything a fast paced story needs.  This story takes an old school baddie, vampires and turns them into supersoldiers from another planet.  In the future these supersoldiers have gotten to Earth and the government allows civilians the chance to take them out...or die trying.  A fun twist on the vampire hunter story.

Pinocchio by Walter Jon Williams - The last entry in this collection deals with a society where children are limited because of over crowding and the ability to switch bodies at will.  The story examines what happens when you are young and basically immortal.  It is also a social commentary on our celebrities, child stars, and the flash in the pan fame the Internet can bring.

This collection is varied and wonderful and re readable (which is a huge plus).  It is technically geared towards the YA crowd and I think it fits the bill perfectly.  Many of the stories are a great jumping off point for discussions of various issues that affect people now and potentially in the future.  I recommend this collection to just about everybody and give it 9 out of 10 real books!

What is your favorite short story genre?  Is social commentary in a story good or obnoxious?  What is your vision of the future? How does one write a story in only answers?

The Back End Of Erehwon

I have stacks and stacks of books I have never read before.  I have a massive lists of books I have never read that I want to read.  There are thousands of unread books out there for me to discover...but sometimes a girl just has to go back and reread a book.  To this end I just finished rereading Nimisha's Ship by my beloved Anne McCaffery. With this authors death, no new books from her are forth coming so I have to get my fix by rereads and this one fit the bill this time around.  Let's get to it shall we?  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

This story is set in the world we were introduced to in the novelette The Coelura, though one does not have to read it to understand what is going on as the stories are completley seperate.  The world is set in the future after Earthlings have colonized a good chunk of their quadrent of space.  This future world is a highly stratified world in which the First Families are at the top of the totem pole and secure their place with what are called body-heir's, a child born by contract to inherit the name, line, and most of the assests of the great families.  Lady Nimisha Boynton-Rondymense is one of these body-heir's, scion of one of the top families in the known galaxy.  She also shows a disturbing, non-aristocratic pentient for designing space ships.  Her biological father, who is not only First Family, but owns a most succesful shipyard leaves it to her upon his death.  This inheratance allows Nimisha to design the ultimate ship.  Unfortunalty while testing the ship on her own she is caught by a wormhole and flung across the universe, away from here mother, daughter, friends and civiliazation in general.  She lands on a liviable, if inhospitable planet she names Erehwon, because a) it is in the back of nowhere and b) after a book by the same name by Samuel Butler (the bookworm in me loves this!).  She meets up with survivors from a previous wreck and with the significant resources her ship brings, makes the planet habitable.  The survivors also find a group of aliens called the S'him whom have also survived the wormwhole and work with the humans to found a new society.  Meanwhile back on the other side of the wormhole, Nimisha's daughter, mother, and her former co-workers have built another advanced ship and take it to find Nimisha.  Eventually the survivors are found, but decide to stay, along with some new recruits to colonize the new world.

This book, as with all Anne McCaffery books, has so many layers it is hard to put into words.  It is a science fiction book set in the future with space travel and advanced technology.  It is a social commentary on class, government, military, and survival systems.  It is a romance, a survival tale, an inventors story.  It is all of these and more.  I am always amazed at the coherancy in which the author writes.  What do I mean by this?  I mean she writes her worlds to make sense, she studies and puts in enough scientific detail to make the story seem plausible, all the while making us fall in love or hate or exasperation with the various characters.  This book hits all the sweet spots, world building, character and story. The contrast between the civilized galaxy and the wild primative Erehwon shows both sides in their best and worst lights, highlighting why we need some structure and resources, while at the same time showing the pointlessness of certain types of formality.  I will say, this is one of the few romances in the Anne McCaffery books I am not totaly into, it seemed rushed and progressed from perfect strangers to total love without a whole lot of in between, which is not how she usually writes them, but to be honest it felt a bit shoehorned into the overall story.  I loved seeing the various ways the survivors and the S'him learned to communicate and work together.  I loved the contrast of the two worlds, I loved the various characters, who all had their own personalities, talants and specialties.  I even liked how the overall book was set over about 40+ years, the author making the time skip foward to the important parts.  Ms. McCaffery even put in a plausible longevity treatment to make the extended time line plausible.  Ok this rambling is pretty rambly and incoherant so I'm gonna give it a rest and hope that you all read the book and understand what all this gibberish means.  I recommend this book to anybody who likes a good story, a lighter scifi book, or Anne McCaffery in general.  I give it 7 out of 10 AI Helms.

How technical do you like your scifi?  Do you get sick of me saying the same happy things about Anne McCaffery?  Should I get more then 2 hours of sleep before I start ramblings?

Moon Wolf

Hello all, sorry about the weird posting schedule lately, but life has been a bit on the crazy side...and it will probably continue to be crazy.  I will still do a daily post, but no guarantee on what time the post will go up.  That being said, all the craziness has actually given me some extra odd moments to read so my TBR pile is finally dwindling.  One of the books on that list was the second book in the Lunar Chronicles.  The book is Scarlet by Marissa Meyer and it continues the story of Cinder, our cyborg lost Lunar princess and introduces us to Scarlet, a young farmer who turns out to have an interesting connection to Cinder.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Scarlet is frustrated, her Grandmere has been missing from their small town outside of Paris, France for several weeks and nobody seems to be taking it seriously.  She is doing her best to keep the farm that she runs with her Grandmere running in her absence while also pursuing leads to what may have happened to her.  On one of her deliveries she meets Wolf, a tortured and conflicted fighter.  He tells Scarlet that he wants out and wonders if she has a job for him on her farm, which she does not.  She heads home to find her estranged father tearing the house apart, looking for something.  When Scarlet confronts him, he claims that he had been captured along with Scarlet's Grandmere and had been tortured to try and get her to reveal something. He also reveals that the captors had a numbered tattoo.  Meanwhile back in New Beijing, Cinder has recruited a rouge American captain/cadet/fellow prisoner named Carswell Thorne to help her escape.  Using her new hand and foot implements that were smuggled to her in her cell, she and her new friend make good their escape.  This of course causes the current Lunar Queen Levana to freak.  She blames the Emperor Kai and tells him if they do not recapture Cinder then there will be war.  Cinder continues to learn to use her new found Lunar power of manipulating bio-electricity to get her and Thorne away.  Back in

France, Scarlet has found Wolf, and noted his tattoo, linking it with her Grandmere's captors.  She receives news that her father had died under mysterious circumstances and is more determined then ever to find her Grandmere.  Wolf decides to go with her and much running and hiding occur.  Wolf tells her that he is part of a pack, that he and his brother were taken at a very young age and trained and molded into these wolf like creatures.  Wolf himself is an alpha or top dog in his pack, while his brother Ran is a lowly Omega.  They run into Ran in the forest and a pretty brutal fight occurs, with Wolf coming out the winner.  He and Scarlet have a moment or five and then he reveals to Scarlet where her Grandmere is.  He begs her not to go on the rescue mission, stating it is too dangerous.  Scarlet is determined and Wolf agrees to go with her.  When they arrive at a bombed out museum/theatre and then the big reveal...Wolf turns out to be a Lunar and has lured Scarlet to the lair on purpose to try and get more information.  Scarlet is understandably hurt, angry and betrayed and now a prisoner.  Back with our cyborg Cinderella, she is trying to get some answers about her past, she stumbles upon some information about Michelle Benoit, who just happens to be Scarlets Grandmere.  They make there way to the farm, which at this point is empty and find a secret chamber.  Cinder then has flashbacks as she looks at all the equipment which kept her alive from the age of 3 to 11, this is why she has no memories of that time.  She was in an induced coma for 8 years while they repaired her burned and broken body.  Scarlet is questioned and imprisoned, while Wolf is praised for his deception and cunning in getting Scarlet to the lair.  Queen Levana decides to use her wolf packs (which we learn are Lunars taken at a young age and mutated into wolf like creatures that are ferocious and bound to a single leader)  that she has positioned all over the world to start a devastating attack on the humans and Wolf is given the honor of leading the Paris attack.  He is feeling remorse and a romantic attachment to Scarlet and slips her a key chip to help her escape.  She finds her Grandmere, who is in pretty bad shape and is with her when she dies.  Scarlet escapes and is saved from an attack by Wolf, who ends up killing his brother Ran.  Chaos ensues and Scarlet and Wolf end up with Cinder and Thorne in their ship and make good their escape just in time to watch Emperor Kai pledge to marry Queen Levana if she promises to stop the attacks on humans.  She agrees and Cinder realizes that she has to quit running and make a stand.  Thus ends book 2.

I am gonna put this out there right now and say I did not like this book near as much as I liked Cinder, the first book in this series.  The first book did a great job putting in every element from the traditional Cinderella story into a futuristic tale that mostly made sense (I am still confused over a lot of the Lunar stuff).  This book was a lot more jumbled with the story of Little Red Riding Hood (kind of) combined with the continuing story of Cinder.  I really enjoyed the parts of the book that dealt with Cinder and also liked the addition of Thorne who added some comic relief.  I was not as into Scarlet and her story, it felt a bit forced, like the author wanted to get another fairy tale into the series at the expense of the story.  Most of the whole Michelle Beniot helping rescue Cinder story could have been done with out Scarlet and Wolf, and Scarlet was a character I wanted to shake on a regular basis. Until the whole backstory of Cinders rescue came out near the end, I could not figure out what Scarlet had to do with anything...even Wolf had more of a direct impact on the Cinder storyline.  Again I felt like Scarlet was needless and the story could have been told with out her.  The book felt like nothing happened for 2/3 of it then all of a sudden EVERYTHING HAPPENED AT ONCE AND IT FELT LIKE I WAS READING THE BOOK IN ALL CAPS.  The "love" story between Wolf and Scarlet felt forced into a super short amount of time, and I could never get a read on Wolf.  Is he a tough, alpha Lunar who is willing to betray Scarlet?  Is he a sad little puppy who misses his mommy and

daddy, but puts on a good front?  Is he a depraved killer with a poets soul?  Over all he seemed a bit whimpery to me. I had to go back and read a quick synopsis of Cinder to remember what was going on, and I still don't have a great grasp on the whole Lunar thing...if they can manipulate everybody, and the Queen is especially strong, then why don't they just take over Earth in like, 5 seconds?  Why have a whole bloody war when Queen Levana could just ask nicely for the world and it would be handed to her? Are Lunars aliens or mutated humans? You definitely need to have read the first book to read this one as it is a direct continuation of the story and doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its own. I still love the combination of traditional fairytales and the future, I love the world that has been built and the technology makes sense, which is awesome.  Overall I am still into Cinders story and hope the next book focuses more on the over all story and less on forced characters.  I give it 5 out of 10 red hoodies.
How do you feel about sequels that veer away from the main story line?  Why do I feel the need to edit every book I read?  Do I sound like I hate everything all the time?

Games Old And New

Just finished Future Games, a short story collection edited by Paula Guran.  I picked this one up because it had a cool premise of games of the future, and I was hankering for some good SciF, also I recognized a lot of my favorite authors names on the front cover.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I wanted more...new games, or altered games, or space games. While I did get a few of these, the vast majority of the stories were about traditional games, played in a fairly traditional manner with a couple minor tweaks, mostly the fact that they were played against aliens as a first contact.

Baseball was the dominating sport in this story with three of the stories being directly about baseball and another one it playing a decent roll.  There was also football and hockey played pretty straight across the board as well.  As I am not a baseball fan, and except for in Distance by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, the story was about the actual game, it got a little boring for me.  I guess with a title like Future Games I was expecting something a little more futuristic.  That is not to say there were not some great stories in here.

Will the Chill by John Shirley-The first story in this book was just like I expected.  A super athlete who hurls uninhabited planets against another competitor doing the same thing.  This definitely futuristic sport was cool enough to be a story in it's own right, but going inside this superstars head and learning about the results of his obsession with winning just put into the awesome category.

Man-Mountain Gentian by Howard Waldrop and Listen by Joel Richards-Both of these stories did a great job in taking something traditional (sumo and martial arts respectively)  and totally placing them in a different environment, one where the brain and mind were what won the matches for you vs the traditional brute strength.

Kip, Running by Genevieve Williams-This story was one of the few that really showed you a potential future Earth.  The story was fun, pacing was great and the fact that it was set in future Seattle didn't hurt at all.  I also liked the amount of character development the author managed to get into such a short amount of pages.

Name That Planet by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough-This one just cracked my up. An intergalactic game show complete with gooey aliens, a shiny toothed host and an intergalactic conspiracy.  I loved how familiar and alien this story felt all at the same time.  This is most definitely a future game :-)

Ladies and Gentleman This is Your Crisis by Kate Wilhelm and The Survivor by Walter F. Moudy-Both of these stories feature The Hunger Games like settings, long before that book existed.  In both of these stories the prominence of television, the callousness of the audience, and the government sanctioned murder/death all serve as chilling harbingers of a world not as far off as we would like.

Overall I found about every other story in this collection pretty great, which to me makes it totally worth it, but I have been known to buy collections for just one fantastic story.  I think that this book also shows that even if you are labeled (by yourself or others) as a SciFi Geek, Nerd, Dork or whatever that your interests can be wide and varied, that even that bespectacled Star Trek collector can be just as much of a beer swilling baseball fan as the next person. Overall I would recommend this book to SciFi fans, sports fans, or just people who like a glimpse of aliens playing baseball.