Magic Bleeds / Ilona Andrews

4 out of 5 stars

Atlanta would be a nice place to live, if it weren't for the magic. When the magic is up, rogue mages cast their spells and monsters appear, while guns refuse to fire and cars fail to start. But then technology returns, and the magic recedes as unpredictably as it arose.

Kate Daniels works for the Order of Knights of Merciful Aid, officially as a liaison with the mercenary guild. Unofficially, she cleans up the paranormal problems no one else wants to handle - especially if they involve Atlanta's shapeshifting community. When she's called in to investigate a fight at the Steel Horse, a bar on the border between the territories of the shapeshifters and the necromancers, Kate quickly discovers that there's a new player in town. One who's been around for thousands of years - and who rode to war at the side of Kate's father. This foe may be too much even for Kate and Curran, the Beast Lord, to handle. Because this time Kate will be taking on family.


 I just can’t leave the urban fantasy genre alone, especially Kate Daniels—as my friend Carol says, it’s like eating some addictive junk food, but without feeling guilty and gross afterward. I would also liken it to watching your favourite evening TV drama that has a soap-opera feel to it (without the extremes of the real daytime TV dramas). It reminds me of my old favourite, Dark Shadows.

It seems that the fourth book of a series is *the* time to bring a couple together. It has occurred now in this series and in Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series. The challenge from here on will be to maintain the dramatic tension without the “will they or won’t they” relationship questions. For Kate & Curran, butting heads over who will do what and when will probably still drive things forward for a couple of books.

Obviously, I’m addicted—I’ve actually started to acquire these volumes as I find them at my favourite used book store. *happy sigh*

Cry Wolf / Patricia Briggs

3 out of 5 stars

Anna never knew werewolves existed, until the night she survived a violent attack... and became one herself. After three years at the bottom of the pack, she'd learned to keep her head down and never, ever trust dominant males. Then Charles Cornick, the enforcer—and son—of the leader of the North American werewolves, came into her life.

Charles insists that not only is Anna his mate, but she is also a rare and valued Omega wolf. And it is Anna's inner strength and calming presence that will prove invaluable as she and Charles go on the hunt in search of a rogue werewolf—a creature bound in magic so dark that it could threaten all of the pack.


 Let me first state up front that I’ve become a fan of the Mercy Thompson series, which this book (and series) are firmly attached to. But it took me a couple of books to decide that, yes, I really did enjoy the Mercy-verse.

I have no doubt that I’ll get to that point with this series too. But first I’ll have to get past the fact that there was necessary information missing from this first book, namely how Charles and Anna met. There are a lot of assumptions made about the reader’s knowledge—basically that you have read the short story that apparently gives the pertinent info. This seems to me like cheating. Surely the first book of a series should provide all the information needed to enjoy it? Not, I guess, that it was too difficult to sort things out, but when I’m reading for brainless fun I don’t want to wonder what the heck the main characters are talking about.

A related rant: the cover art of these books just disappoints me. Briggs actually thanks the cover artist in this volume for a cover which I find amateurish and unattractive. I don’t recall any women with humongous breasts running around in tube-tops anywhere in the novel, so where does this chick on the cover come from? Is she meant to be Anna? Because if so, once again my inner vision and that of the cover artist are thousands of miles apart.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that I really didn’t like the book, so why did I give it 3 stars indicating that I did like it? Well, that would be because I really did enjoy the story and I’m sure that I will read future volumes. I’ll just read them at home where no one can see these embarrassingly cheesy covers.

The Real Planet of the Apes / David R. Begun

3 out of 5 stars

Was Darwin wrong when he traced our origins to Africa? "The Real Planet of the Apes" makes the explosive claim that it was in Europe, not Africa, where apes evolved the most important hallmarks of our human lineage--such as dexterous hands and larger brains. In this compelling and accessible book, David Begun, one of the world's leading paleoanthropologists, transports readers to an epoch in the remote past when the Earth was home to many migratory populations of ape species.

Drawing on the latest astonishing discoveries in the fossil record as well as his own experiences conducting field expeditions across Europe and Asia, Begun provides a sweeping evolutionary history of great apes and humans. He tells the story of how one of the earliest members of our evolutionary group--a new kind of primate called "Proconsul"--evolved from lemur-like monkeys in the primeval forests of Africa. Begun vividly describes how, over the next 10 million years, these hominoids expanded into Europe and Asia and evolved climbing and hanging adaptations, longer maturation times, and larger brains, setting the stage for the emergence of humans. As the climate deteriorated in Europe around 10 million years ago, these apes either died out or migrated south, reinvading the African continent and giving rise to the lineages of the gorilla, chimpanzee, and, ultimately, the human.


 I love the title of this volume, a text on paleoanthropology referencing the pop culture series, Planet of the Apes. Rather than looking forward to an apocalyptic future, Begun looks backward into the Miocene, when monkeys & apes were numerous and widespread.

Judging from several of his comments, he & I were undergrads at approximately the same time. I remember the state of fossil study from a couple of introductory anthropology courses that I took back in the early 80s and I’m somewhat jealous of his ability to continue on in this field. It was fascinating to study and I’m glad to get caught up on some of the more recent research.

I’m glad to see that more attention is being paid to fossils that are not thought to be in the direct line to humans, as well as the acknowledgement that there is a complicated path to human-ness that may be less direct than we could wish for. Just because species of apes are few in number today, we can’t assume that they have always been sparse.

Also interesting is the number of fossils being discovered in Europe and the Near East. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to be looking for apes in France, Spain, or Italy, and yet there they are! Begun introduces an interesting theory that some of the evolution towards humanity may have taken place in European environments and then been reintroduced to the African continent. Climate changes may indeed have moved populations back and forth between the two continents, making a more complicated evolutionary picture than we are used to.

It will be most interesting to see how future fossil discoveries fit into the jigsaw of human evolution.

Bone Crossed / Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson #4)

4 stars out of 5

Marsilia, the local vampire queen, has learned that Mercy crossed her by slaying a member of her clan. Now, she's out for blood. But since Mercy is protected from direct reprisal by the werewolf pack-and her relationship with its sexy Alpha-it's not Mercy's blood Marsilia is after...

 Finally, Stefan is back on the scene, still mysterious in motive, but protective to our heroine, Mercy. And that is despite his treatment by the local vampire seethe. (Isn’t that a great collective noun for vampires?)

This is also the book that sees Mercy make her choice between werewolves Adam and Samuel. I’m somewhat disappointed that she had to choose, rather than remaining independent. So often, once a choice is made, the sexual tension drains out of a series and it becomes less interesting. I will be interested to see how Briggs maintains the forward momentum.

Also of interest, Mercy continues to discover the special powers of a skinwalker that make her anathema to the mainstream vamps. She is extremely fortunate to have Stefan as a friend & protector and I hope this means that he will continue to appear in future volumes.

I still maintain that Mercy needs some women friends, and not like her friend Amber who shows up in this installment. She needs some strong, good women in her life to help her sort out all the demanding men in her world.

Once again, the cover art makes me shake my head. Who in the world are they trying to appeal to? Take my word for it, Mercy looks nothing like the covers.

When Gravity Fails / George Alec Effinger

3 out of 5 stars

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marîd Audran has kept his independence and his identity the hard way. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he is available...for a price.

For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the decadent Arabic ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marîd Audran has been made an offer he can't refuse.

The 200 year old "godfather" of crime in the Budayeen has enlisted Marîd as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marîd must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to stop a killer with the powers of every psychopath since the beginning of time...

Wry, savage and unforgettable, When Gravity Fails is a major new work of dark genius by one of the most celebrated talents in science fiction today - a cutting-edge, heart-stopping tour-de-force detective story about an insane future world not so far removed from our own.


 A strange mixture of elements that I’ve seen in earlier science fiction--When Gravity Fails reminded me A LOT of Spider Robinson’s Mindkiller. Want to speak fluent German? Clip a German module into the jack in your head, and there it is in your brain, waiting for you to use it. Want to be someone cooler that you regularly are? There are personality modules available; just pop one in and you too can be James Bond (or a psychopathic serial killer). Want to go without sleep, hunger, or thirst? This too can be arranged, though you’ll pay for it later.

Marid Audran, the main character, is also a charismatic criminal, harking back to the days of the Gray Mouser (Lieber) or Slippery Jim diGriz (Harrison). But he has the drug habits that you’ll find in Philip K. Dick’s fiction. Plus, he’s a non-observant Muslim, making observations on his society reminiscent of Frank Herbert’s Dune series, but in a world that blends Dune and Neuromancer.

Surprisingly, there are an awful lot of transgender people in WGF. Lots of women who used to be men (although why they would make that change in a society where it seems that women can only hustle in bars or be prostitutes, I’m not sure). Even those who maintain their genetic gender go in for body modifications, changing their appearances drastically.

Add to this odd community a killer who is eliminating friends and associates of Marid, and we also have a murder mystery element. There’s a lot going on in this novel and it was engaging to read, but I just didn’t connect with the ending.

Book 220 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.

Club Dead / Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse #3)

3.5 out of 5 stars

Things between cocktail waitress Sookie and her vampire boyfriend Bill seem to be going excellently (apart from the small matter of him being undead) until he leaves town for a while. A long while. Bill's sinister boss Eric has an idea of where to find him, whisking her off to Jackson, Mississippi to mingle with the under-underworld at Club Dead. When she finally catches up with the errant vampire, he is in big trouble and caught in an act of serious betrayal. This raises serious doubts as to whether she should save him or start sharpening a few stakes of her own ..


 The third installment of Sookie, and I feel that she represents many of the best qualities of a Southern woman. Her appearance is important to her, but beneath that obvious outer layer, there is a strong, tough woman lurking, one who can handle a shotgun or a baseball bat. She’s no shrinking violet, more like a steel magnolia.

Sookie is generally content with her lot in life, which is small town life, and this may annoy more ambitious readers. I have some sympathy for her, having grown up in a small community. I knew that I needed to get out, but plenty of others don’t feel that same drive to leave. They are quite happy to repeat their parents’ pattern of working & raising children in a familiar place.

The addition of Bill to Sookie’s life has made it feel closer to complete, but Bill has proven that being a vampire doesn’t mean that he is ideal partner. In some ways, it’s a shame that Sookie has committed herself to the first “man” that she has ever seriously dated. This may also be a side effect of small town life—compatible partners are of limited number and societal pressure to pair up is strong.

Add to that the fact that Bill is busy providing monetary resources for his descendants, the Bellefleurs, and overlooking Sookie’s financial needs. The many “jobs” that the vampires involve her in take her away from her source of income. No one makes riches waiting tables, but one does what one must in a small town environment. Every shift that Sookie misses makes it harder to meet her financial obligations, a realistic aspect of the novel that I can appreciate as a single, working woman. But Sookie abides by Southern standards—she won’t be asking for money, Bill will have to offer.

Can Eric take advantage of this situation? He’s certainly trying to. On to the next book to see what develops!

The Year of Lear / James Shapiro

4 out of 5 stars

Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in England in 1606 affected Shakespeare and shaped the three great tragedies he wrote that year—King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.

In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare’s great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific genius was a thing of the past. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn—King Lear—then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

It was a memorable year in England as well—and a grim one, in the aftermath of a terrorist plot conceived by a small group of Catholic gentry that had been uncovered at the last hour. The foiled Gunpowder Plot would have blown up the king and royal family along with the nation’s political and religious leadership. The aborted plot renewed anti-Catholic sentiment and laid bare divisions in the kingdom.

It was against this background that Shakespeare finished Lear, a play about a divided kingdom, then wrote a tragedy that turned on the murder of a Scottish king, Macbeth. He ended this astonishing year with a third masterpiece no less steeped in current events and concerns: Antony and Cleopatra.

The Year of Lear sheds light on these three great tragedies by placing them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions. For anyone interested in Shakespeare, this is an indispensable book.


 So this year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. I didn’t realize that earlier in the year and it is just fortuitous that this has become my year of binge-watching and binge-reading the Bard. I’m having a grand time doing it too.

I heard about this book on CBC radio and since I think I saw King Lear twice last year (once live & once via film), I was intrigued enough to put a hold on our public library’s copy. I am so glad that I did! I haven’t read a great deal about the Bard himself, but I am going to have to rectify that lapse in coming months.

The Year of Lear is a fascinating look at this eventful year in William Shakespeare’s world. I usually think of him as an Elizabethan playwright, but as the author of this book reminds us, he also wrote during the reign of King James (he of the famous Biblical translation). Politics had changed a lot—witness the fact that 1606 had England dealing with the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot (and they have been celebrating Guy Fawkes Day ever since!) Not to mention the ravages of plague, visits of foreign rulers, and many other events which would have impinged on Shakespeare’s life.

What I had not realized was how prolific 1606 was for the playwright—he wrote King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra that year! If you are interested in how current events shaped all three plays, give this book a try.

Accessible writing, fascinating history, and a timeless playwright. What more could one desire?

Mirror of Her Dreams / Stephen R. Donaldson

2.5 out of 5 stars

The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life—until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees.

Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead.

Stephen Donaldson is a decent writer—he writes plots that make me want to keep on reading. But he creates characters that I just hate!  I couldn’t stomach any more of Thomas Covenant after reading two books.  Now, I’m confronted with Terisa Morgan, possibly the dullest, most slow witted, whiniest protagonist that I have ever encountered in science fiction and fantasy.  Hand her over to the Castellan, she could benefit from a bit of torture, just to make her realize that life could be a whole helluva lot worse.

The excuse that she is presented with: her parents were abusive narcissists, who mostly ignored her. But when she came to their attention, she was apparently punished by being locked in closets and ignored some more.  Eventually, when she is old enough, she begins work in a city mission, secretary to the clergyman who is assisting the down and out.  In this environment, how do you continue to be so incredibly naïve?  Once you’re free of the restrictive home environment, how do you restrain your curiosity about what the world is really like?  How do you remain so utterly passive?  How did she actually summon the energy to step through the mirror into the world of Mordant?

Despite supposedly being the lynchpin on which the future of Mordant rests, she continues to whine and lollygag around, denying that she could possibly be of any importance and rarely using her brain to think about things. And when she finally does get around to thinking, it’s like she’s moving heavy furniture!  Everything is slow and ponderous.

In short, she drives me nuts. But I want to know who done what, so I will read the second book and thank my lucky stars that there are only two of them, unlike the seemingly endless Thomas Covenant series.

Book 219 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.

Grave Peril / Jim Butcher (Dresden Files #3)

3.5 out of 5 stars

Harry Dresden has faced some pretty terrifying foes during his career. Giant scorpions. Oversexed vampires. Psychotic werewolves. It comes with the territory when you're the only professional wizard in the Chicago-area phone book.

But in all Harry's years of supernatural sleuthing, he's never faced anything like this: The spirit world has gone postal. All over Chicago, ghosts are causing trouble - and not just of the door-slamming, boo-shouting variety. These ghosts are tormented, violent, and deadly. Someone - or something - is purposely stirring them up to wreak unearthly havoc. But why? And why do so many of the victims have ties to Harry? If Harry doesn't figure it out soon, he could wind up a ghost himself....

 For me this is the most enjoyable installment in the Dresden series thus far. I think Butcher has finally solidified Harry’s character to where he feels comfortable with it and he is defining Harry’s Chicago in more detail.

Also appreciated: Harry isn’t going it all alone in this book. He has several partners—Michael, a righteous knight; Murphy, his police contact; and Thomas, a vampiric conspirator.

I was glad to see more women in this book and that they were assigned more substantial roles. Including some awesome evil women, Harry’s godmother & the queen of the Red Vampire court. That makes up for poor old Susan, who as usual is pushed aside while Harry fights ghosties (until she needs rescuing right on cue).

Michael has potential to be a great foil for Harry. He kind of gets dumped into the narrative early in the book and we have to figure him out as we go, but he lends strength & courage to the partnership. Maybe some of Michael’s goodness gets rubbed off on Bob, the skull, as even he seems more supportive of Harry this time out.

I do have to wonder is poor old Harry is going to get the shit beat out of him in absolutely every chapter of every book? Even if he heals quickly, he’s going to be moving like a hundred year old man in no time, if that’s the case. More companions = less physical abuse, Harry. You may wear a western duster, but there’s no reason to go it alone like an outlaw.

Macbeth / William Shakespeare

5 out of 5 stars!

Oh, ambition! Here in North America, we like to see it as the sign of good things in a worker. MacBeth is an excellent reminder that ambition has its dark side.

I am left pondering after seeing this excellent play—would MacBeth have become king if he had just had a little patience? Or were the three witches also predicting that his lack of that virtue would drive him to murder?

The play also reminds me that killing another human being is not a light undertaking. Sure, we see simulated murders regularly on the telly and read about them often in literature, but it isn’t a casual occurrence for the average person. The army has to train and train its soldiers until their muscles react automatically, otherwise their brains and emotions will interfere with their appointed task—to kill the enemy. So MacBeth and his lady are setting themselves up against a difficult taboo and both of them suffer for it, MacBeth with sleeplessness, fear, and hallucinations; his wife with sleepwalking and anxiety. So much for thinking that they were mentally tough enough to murder lightly.

As to the performance that I attended, it was magnificent! Haysam Kadri, who played MacBeth, was absolutely spectacular. I never even noticed that he was speaking in iambic pentameter or Elizabethan English. He made it his own in the way that truly talented actors do. (I’ve also seen him inhabit Sherlock Holmes, which he does pretty much perfectly). It was an abridged version, but the cast managed to hit all the high spots and all the iconic lines were performed. The witches were suitably spooky, and refreshingly not all female. There was one tall, male spectre, one obviously female witch, plus one androgynous actor (does wearing trousers making this one male?).

When well-acted, this is a spectacular piece of theatre which still has things to tell the twenty first century audience.

Texts from Jane Eyre / Mallory Ortberg

4 out of 5 stars

Hilariously imagined text conversations—the passive aggressive, the clever, and the strange—from classic and modern literary figures, from Scarlett O’Hara to Jessica Wakefield.

Mallory Ortberg, the co-creator of the cult-favorite website The Toast, presents this whimsical collection of hysterical text conversations from your favorite literary characters. Everyone knows that if Scarlett O’Hara had an unlimited text-and-data plan, she’d constantly try to tempt Ashley away from Melanie with suggestive messages. If Mr. Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ardent missives would obviously be in all-caps. And Daisy Buchanan would not only text while driving, she’d text you to pick her up after she totaled her car. Based on the popular web-feature, Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, irreverent mashup that brings the characters from your favorite books into the twenty-first century.

Cute. Smart. Very literate.

Unfortunately for me, I think I had already read the funniest section (the Jane Eyre section IMO) online. It still made me smile (because of course Rochester would text in all caps). I also really enjoyed the Wuthering Heights exchange between Cathy and Heathcliff.

It helps if you are familiar with the literature that Ortberg is parodying. The sections on Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club meant little to me, as I’ve never read any of the books or even read about them. However, I’m tempted to re-read a Nancy Drew book, just to see if poor old Ned really did get as thoroughly ignored by Nancy as Ortberg’s texts would suggest.

I also really enjoyed the mythology bits.

Good, light-hearted fun for well-read people.

F*ck Feelings / Michael & Sarah Bennett

3 out of 5 stars

The only self-help book you’ll ever need, from a psychiatrist and his comedy writer daughter, who will help you put aside your unrealistic wishes, stop trying to change things you can’t change, and do the best with what you can control—the first steps to managing all of life’s impossible problems.

In this brilliantly sensible and funny book, a Harvard-educated shrink and his comedy-writing daughter reveal that the real f-words in life are “feelings” and “fairness.” While most self-help books are about your feelings and fulfilling your wildest dreams, F*ck Feelings will show you how to find a new kind of freedom by getting your head out of your ass and yourself onto the right path toward realistic goals and feasible results. F*ck Feelings is the last self-help book you will ever need!


Life sucks and then you die.

But what you do about it in between those two events will make a difference to how you feel about that statement. Are you ready for straightforward advice about what you can change and what you can’t? If so, pick up F*ck Feelings and start figuring it out.

I expected to enjoy this book far more than I did. It is written by a psychiatrist father and his stand-up comedian daughter and while it definitely has its moments, I found myself skipping large portions of each chapter. Apparently the regular readers of self-help books require generous doses of repetition to drive home even the simplest point. I soon found myself by-passing their examples, the “quick diagnosis” sections, and the suggested scripts to make your intentions clear.
By and large, I found the advice dispensed to be highly sensible. Common sense really, which as several of my friends like to remind me, is not all that common. I do find myself thinking about the warning that if brain wiring or brain chemistry are working against you, all the struggle in the world may not get you anywhere. In situations like these, it may be best to just find a way to cope with the way you are wired and move along.

Also sensible: you can only be responsible for your own behaviour. Trying to control other people is an exercise in futility. Decide if the person you are trying to change is someone that you can live with just the way they are or whether you are best off backing away from the relationship. If you decide to disengage, back away slowly and quietly, not making a big deal about it. In other words, just fade out.

Plus, don’t ask questions that you don’t want the answer to. Bugging a quiet person for more input is likely to produce information that you didn’t want to know. Sometimes, silence really is golden.

And yes, Assholes exist in the world. Just about everybody knows at least one. You can’t change them either. Do the fade out if possible, but if they are a permanent fixture in your life (i.e. a co-worker) then you are wise to not engage them in any sort of warfare. Ignore them to the best of your ability and do your own work. Drama accomplishes nothing.

Basically, stuff that I can’t believe that people need a psychiatrist to tell them. I did appreciate that Dr. Bennett did say that therapy is only recommended if you have a specific issue that you want to deal with and only for as long as it takes to deal with it. Don’t waste your money on messy, nonspecific therapy where you just muck about in the past “seeking insights.” That kind of muddy groping about for that “je ne sais quois” can actually make you less happy, more confused, and can even cause harm.

If there is someone in your life who still hasn’t figured out the basics of life, this book might be helpful for them (unless they’re an Asshole, but you know that). Not entertaining enough for the rest of us. Give it a pass if you’re basically happy with your life and aren’t really into the self-help genre.

Ethan of Athos / Lois McMaster Bujold

4 out of 5 stars

The familiar old SF "planet of women" chestnut is reversed in the planet of Athos — an all-male planet made possible by the invention of the uterine replicator. Ethan, drawn out of his beloved Athos by a quest, finds himself an alien in more mainstream human society, and cannot help but find women disturbing aliens as well, especially the ultra-competent, ultra-beautiful Elli.

Ethan of Athos is Lois McMaster Bujold's third novel. It departs from the concerns of the Vorkosigan family to explore the ramifications of advanced biotechnology, turning many a cliché on its head along the way.

Men like writing about all-female planets, so why shouldn’t a woman write about an all-male planet, Athos? Although we don’t see too much of Athos in this novel—quite quickly it becomes apparent that Dr. Ethan Urquhart will have to leave the womb of his planet and deal with out-worlders, a scary proposition for someone who has been raised to believe that women are dangerous.

Ethan is a talented doctor, in charge of conceiving test-tube babies and establishing them in the uterine replicators that Bujold introduced earlier in her Vorkosigan saga. But the ovarian cultures that have been providing eggs for fertilization for centuries are aging and becoming unreliable. When a long awaited replacement shipment is filled with garbage, the high council on Athos is both enraged and chagrined. Someone must go to sort things out and obtain the necessary new ovarian cultures. Ethan, for a variety of reasons, draws the short straw.

For those who are seeking more adventures of Miles Vorkosigan, you may safely skip this volume. He is present only as a distant commanding officer to Elli Quinn, the first woman that Ethan meets and who helps him achieve his goals despite himself. An interesting look into the operations of prejudice and the results of sheltering away in restricted communities to avoid the people that you are prejudiced against. I personally would be very interested to see more of Athos and explore its society further. I’m sorry that Bujold didn’t produce more volumes about Ethan or his brotherhood.

Book 218 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy reading project.

Replay / Ken Grimwood

4 out of 5 stars

Jeff Winston was 43 and trapped in a tepid marriage and a dead-end job, waiting for that time when he could be truly happy, when he died.

And when he woke and he was 18 again, with all his memories of the next 25 years intact. He could live his life again, avoiding the mistakes, making money from his knowledge of the future, seeking happiness.

Until he dies at 43 and wakes up back in college again...

This book doesn’t have a catchy title or an alluring cover, but I certainly enjoyed it once I convinced myself to get started on it. The premise of the novel, that the main character is reliving a chunk of his life over and over again, isn’t a new idea but Replay  extends it further that previous versions that I had read.

It reminded me strongly of an H. Beam Piper short story (I thought) and I went in search of that story in my Piper collection. Turns out I was conflating TWO of Piper’s stories, namely Time and Time Again and Hunter Patrol.  In the first, a man is badly wounded fighting in World War III and when he awakes he is somehow back in his 13 year old self, trying to decide what to do.  In the second story, a man in a life-threatening situation on a battlefield is snatched by people from the future who want him to perform an assassination for them, and at story’s end there is some suggestion that he is now caught in a loop.  Interesting ideas, but not fleshed out very much.

That is where Replay shines, in its examination of exactly how shocking this “rebirth” would be to the person experiencing it, how intimidating it would be to try to change history, and how difficult it would be to get other people to believe the whole situation. In Piper’s fiction, the boy’s father is rather easily converted, but in Grimwood’s version there is a lot of derision and/or incarceration involved for those who try to make themselves known, more realistic to my way of thinking.

Interesting ideas are pursued in the resilience of history (the protagonist tries to stop JFK’s assassination in one “replay” for example and fails) and the notion of branching universes being produced with each version. The notion of the “replay” reflects the burgeoning videogame culture starting to make itself felt in the 1980s.  I wonder if the makers of the film Groundhog Day were familiar with Replay?

No. 217 of my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.