Book Review – The Man in the Tree by Sage Walker

Goodreads Synopsis:

Humanity s last hope of survival lies in space but will a random death doom the venture?

Our planet is dying and the world s remaining nations have pooled their resources to build a seed ship that will carry colonists on a multi-generational journey to a distant planet.

Everything is set for a bright adventure and then someone is found hanging dead just weeks before the launch. Fear and paranoia spread as the death begins to look more and more like a murder. The authorities want the case settled quickly and quietly so as not to cause panic and to prevent a murderer from sabotaging the entire mission.

With The Man in the Tree, Locus Award-winning author Sage Walker has given us a thrilling hard science fiction mystery that explores the intersection of law, justice, and human nature.

Review:

I received this as an ARC as I’m a big fan of generation ship stories and just had to read it. When I saw that this was one right before it launched, I was incredibly interested as most stories in this theme are either building it or way after the launch when a lot of information has been forgotten.

This book starts not long before the ship is due to depart, however a man has just been found dead and one hour of security camera footage is missing around the time that he died. What follows is a fantastic murder mystery in a sci-fi setting.

As it’s a murder mystery, I’m going to avoid discussing the plot at all because well half the fun of the novel was trying to figure out what was happening along with the main character, Helt, and so I don’t want to give away any spoilers either intentionally or unintentionally.

The worldbuilding of this novel is fantastic, as Helt moves around the ship interviewing potential suspects and those that knew the deceased, we learn more about the ship itself and what caused it to be built. Most of this is just mentioned as background information but it really helps flesh out the novel. The ship itself, Kybele, is also described brilliantly and I loved reading about how it was built and all the planning that has gone into it.

Helt is a great character, he’s been tasked with investigating the case and he’s on a strict deadline as the ship will be departing soon and so they want to find the murderer in time to send him off the ship on the final shuttle.

I would highly recommend this novel, it was a thrilling adventure and I highly enjoyed the mystery which kept me engrossed right up until the end. It’s great for both sci-fi fans and for those that are fans of murder mysteries.

Book Review – The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli

Goodreads Review:

In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be dark—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death bringer. 

These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up hearing in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari—a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.

Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her.

Review:

First I’d like to give a huge thanks to HarperCollinns for giving me an ARC of this book. I adore dragons and so any book about them will automatically jump to the top of my TBR list. I’m always hesitant of course because I’ve read some very bad books featuring dragons and so I always worry about how well they’ll be represented. Thankfully, this book represented them excellent and I loved the portrayal of the dragons in them.

In this world, Asha is an extremely skilled dragon hunter as dragons are evil and need to be destroyed. However, is that really the case? Are they really a threat or is something more sinister going on? As the novel progresses, we learn more about the dragons who used to be on friendly terms with humans until recently. Asha slowly goes on a journey as she learns more about herself and her history while discovering the truth about Dragons.

As already mentioned, the portrayal of dragons in this book is fantastic. One particular piece of worldbuilding I loved was the fact that telling the ancient stories was forbidden as it drew dragons and I just really enjoy the concept of dragons being big fans of storytelling. It conjures up an image of a cosy hearth with a large dragon reading to a bunch of tiny baby dragons and if I was able to draw, I could definitely see myself doing a lot of fan art for this novel.

The characters are excellent and I love the interactions between them. In particular, I really enjoyed the portrayal of Asha’s father and their relationship and seeing how it developed throughout the novel.

I read this book in one sitting as I just could not put it down and upon finishing it, my main thought was “Oh no, because I got this as an ARC I have to wait even longer than most people until the second one!”. My review for this is a bit late as I didn’t want to publish it too early (and so ended up being too late) but I’ve got it out now! I highly highly recommend this book and I can see it earning a place amongst my favourite books of the year if I end up making a list.

Book Review – HWJN by Ibraheem Abbas

Goodreads Synopsis:

HWJN is the #1 selling Arabic book in Saudi, it is a mix between fantasy, SciFi and romance. While most people get excited about legends of spirits and genies (Jinn) and pass it on as they listen to it with awe and horror (after adding their own spices to it); here comes Hawjan. The young Jinni who is in his early nineties to redefine our understanding of the Jinn world that resembles ours in so many ways, still it is a parallel dimension to ours. He shares his tale so that we can live it through a “human” perspective regardless of the differences between our two worlds.
As human populations expand Hawjan found himself surrounded by humans who had built a housing complex in the area surrounding his village forcing him, his mother and grandfather to live in one of these villas that is now haunted by humans. Hawjan’s efforts to avoid interacting with the human family had failed, finding himself madly in love with Sawsan the human, Sawsan was a medical student, gentle and brilliant, barely a quarter of his age. Hawjan was unable to let her know about his feelings until he learned how to communicate with Sawsan through the Ouija board. He found out about her brain cancer that she had hidden from everyone including her family. As Sawsan’s suffering increased and her health deteriorated her father was easy prey for a sorcerer who tricked him into believing that Sawsan’s illness was a result of the devils who had haunted their new home, and so a deadly battle between Hawjan and the devils and sorcerer who had tried extort money from Sawsan’s father. With the help of Eyad (Sawsan’s colleague) who had agreed to Hawjan possessing him so that they would both risk their lives to save Sawsan and her father.

Review:

So, I found out about this book when writing my post about Muslim Sci-Fi to check out and I recently got a comment from the co-author, Yasser Bahjatt, saying he would be honoured to read my reviews of his books and so I just had to get it along with Yaqteenya which I’ll be reading and reviewing soon. I chose to read this one first because I really enjoy stories with Jinn in them and because it’s also a perfect fit for Saudi Arabia for my Read Around the World challenge.

To start off, as this book was originally written in Arabic I am naturally reading a translation. The English translation is very well done and was a pleasure to read. I noticed a lot of reviews on GR in Arabic that complained about the language used however because I am not reading the Arabic version, this was never an issue to me so if those lower reviews put you off, run a few through Google Translate first as the majority of the issues were purely with the language.

I’m a big fan of Jinn in stories and so I was thrilled that this book was written from the perspective of a Jinn named Hawjan. Hawjan’s family home has recently become “haunted” by humans moving in to the area and so although his mother and grandfather move to the roof to escape them, Hawjan lingers in the room that used to be his which now belongs to Sawsan, a young medical student. Hawjan begins to grow close to Sawsan and when one of her friends brings an Ouija Board, he is excited to have the chance to communicate with her. The novel follows the story of their growing friendship and the challenges Hawjan faces in order to protect her from the much more dangerous Jinn.

The worldbuilding in this was excellent. I am unaware how much of it was based on myths and how much was the authors own imagination but the world that was described was brilliant and I loved the differences between the Jinn world and our own. One aspect in particular I liked was the fact that it mentioned that Jinn could be all sorts of different religions. Hawjan himself is a Muslim Jinn and descended from a Jinn that met the Prophet. This plays an important role in the story and it was very interesting to see supernatural characters be represented as also religious in a very natural fashion.

If you are looking to try reading some Fantasy/Sci-Fi in translation then this is an excellent place to start. It’s brilliant for #muslimshelfspace and if you’re looking to expand your horizons and read books from other countries then it’s a great pick. Even then, if you’re simply looking for a nice enjoyable story then I highly recommend this. I could barely put it down and managed to finish it very quickly as I enjoyed it so much.

Book Review – This Savage Song by V.E Schwab

Goodreads Synopsis:

Kate Harker and August Flynn’s families rule opposite ends of Verity, a grisly metropolis where violent acts summon real monsters: bloodsucking Malchai; clawing Corsai; and soul-stealing Sunai. The truce that keeps the families at peace is crumbling, and August is sent to spy on Kate. But when Harker’s men try to kill her and pin it on the Flynns, August and Kate find themselves running from both sides, in a city where monsters are real…

Review:

A lot of people I follow are huge fans of V.E. Schwab and so she’s been on my to-read list for ages. I finally picked up this book during a sale on Amazon as I mistakenly thought it was a stand-alone novel and thought it would be a great introduction. Alas, I was wrong about it not being part of a series but it certainly was a great choice for a good introduction as I ended up loving it.

I’m a sucker for worldbuilding and this dystopian city split in half and stalked by monsters was something that fascinated me. The idea of actions actually having consequences and creating monsters is a fantastic idea and V.E. Schwab develops it really well in this novel. Indeed, I was rather disappointed actually that we didn’t get to spend more time learning about the world as it was brilliant although hopefully there will be more of that in the next book!

The characters though, the characters are where it really shines. You have your classic guy and girl from opposing sides meet and sparks fly, but in this case it seems purely a platonic friendship which I really enjoyed reading about. I’m really hoping that their relationship remains platonic in the next book as the lack of an awkward romantic subplot is what appealed to me most about the book. The rest of the characters are all excellent too and again I’m hoping we get to see more of them in the second book.

I’m not going to say much about the plot because I went into this book completely blind knowing nothing about the plot and adored it, and so I would like people reading this review to be able to have that same experience.

I definitely recommend this book, although I doubt I really need to do that given how many people I know who adore V.E. Schwab. Fun fact – she almost lived with my boyfriend quite a few years ago but they ended up choosing somebody else instead as their flatmate!

Book Review – Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Goodreads Synopsis:

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is the first anthology to broadly collect solarpunk short fiction, artwork, and poetry. A new genre for the 21st Century, solarpunk is a revolution against despair. Focusing on solutions to environmental disasters, solarpunk envisions a future of green, sustainable energy used by societies that value inclusiveness, cooperation, and personal freedom. 

Edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, Sunvault focuses on the stories of those inhabiting the crucial moments when great change can be made by people with the right tools; stories of people living during tipping points, and the spaces before and after them; and stories of those who fight to effect change and seek solutions to ecological disruption.

Review:

I’m a huge fan of Solarpunk, I really enjoy the aesthetics of it and so when I saw this anthology I knew I just had to get it. I consider myself very lucky to have received a copy of the ARC and it’s a book that took me a while to get through as I wanted to savour each story.Firstly,

Firstly, this is not just a collection of short stories. Poems and art also feature in this collection and so for that reason I would recommend a physical edition if possible. My Kindle is rather old and in black and white and so I was not able to fully appreciate the artwork although hopefully it’ll look better on newer Kindles. I’m also not a fan of reading poetry on Kindles as I feel the layout of the page is very important and I just prefer having it in physical form.

As this is a collection, I don’t want to discuss any of the pieces in too much detail as I feel that as with any collection, everybody will have different likes and dislikes and so if I focus on what I enjoyed, it might put some people off due to having different tastes. I will say that the stories covered a wide range of scenarios and I adored seeing all the futures that the authors had imagined. One in particular, involved living in shuttles in different layers of the atmosphere, was a setting I particularly enjoyed.

Indeed, I feel that the only complaint I can have about this book is that it has left me with a huge hunger for more Solarpunk stories which I know is going to be difficult to fill. If you know any, I would be more than happy to receive recommendations from you!

Anyway, this is a collection that I highly, highly recommend to anybody who enjoys Sci-Fi or is interested in Solarpunk. If you don’t know what Solarpunk is, then I highly recommend reading up on it because it’s by far one of my favourite genres and leads to some incredibly beautiful artwork.