Reviews and Comments

A story of survival a war and the aftermath, when four children are driven into a forest in Lithuania to when Nazi Germany invades. Their survival is aided by a group of intelligent crows that warn them of danger and bring them gifts. But the biggest and most wonderful gift would be when the children get to see what the crows have done with their intelligence; and in return what the children can do for the crows.

The story starts with Neriya, a Jewish girl who becomes fascinated by a crow that likes to play and solve puzzles. This crow would then save the girl by leading her into the forest when war comes and engulfs her community. She is then joined by Czesław, an underage Polish boy in the Red Army who escapes into the forest when the Army is destroyed, and then by Kezia, a Roma girl, and an unnamed boy who does not speak. All of them have seen what the Nazis, and resistance members, do to those who try to hide or resist them. It would need all of Czesław's hunting skills, Neriya's education in biology and plants, and Kezia and the boy's desire to learn new skills to keep them alive in the woods while war wages around them.

The crows would also help them, and is one puzzle that the children are eager to learn more about: their intelligence, and why they seem eager to help the children. The children would also discover scraps of writing that hint that they are not the first to discover the intelligence of the crows.

As the story progresses, the narrative also leaps into the future, after the war, when the children (now adults) meet again at the same forest to see what has happened to the crows. We also learn what happened to the children as the war starts to end, and the forest is no longer a safe hiding place for children. It is at this point that this reader began to notice discrepancies in the narrative, which are only resolved when a plot twist is revealed that would force this reader to reconsider the events that occur in the book. And it would show the resolve the grown children would have to protect what they know about the crows of the forest.

The story is light on SF, but gripping as it shows the children struggling to survive in the forest, and avoiding other groups of people that are also hiding in the forest, for whom any stranger is an enemy to be killed. But the worse may be those people who have gone feral and reverted to a state where survival is all-consuming. But the ending offers hope that, despite the horrors endured by the children, people can still recognise an extraordinary gift and seek to protect it.

The next instalment in the Murderbot Diaries, this one has Murderbot running a mission. We learn that Mensah's family have been kidnapped and the purpose of the mission is to rescue them. But for Murderbot to successfully get them to the rendezvous point, he'll have to run a side-mission and rescue yet more people.

Mensah's family are being held captive on an orbital platform that forms a ring around a planet. This means lots of living space, many of which are rented out to various corporations, including one corporation that has reasons to hold the family captive. Murderbot has to travel from space to space, each one with its own habitat quirks and are sometimes active hostile areas (due takeover attempts or disputes between corporations). With occasional aid from Mensah's family, Murderbot manages to rescue them, and gets them to safety, with some help from Three, the SecUnit that Murderbot recruited from a previous story.

The story also shows how life is in this part of space that is occupied by various corporations, and it is not a nice one. People are indentured and families can be ripped apart on the whims of corporations that only want to protect their bottom line. Even people that should be high up in the management hierarchy of the corporations can be powerless when it comes to protecting their family members from others in the same corporation.

As with previous books, Murderbot makes more internal commentary about strange human behaviour and his general disgust with corporations. Murderbot also makes an unexpected brief encounter that hints of possible changes taking place that could feature prominently in future books.

An interesting conclusion to the story of the Dark Lord Davi, caught in a time loop but now, maybe, with a chance of breaking it. Having become the Dark Lord, she now wants to do something other Dark Lords in her past did not do: make peace with the humans instead of obliterating them.

This should be easy, since she has died trying to be their saviour hundreds of times in the past and knows the workings of the human Kingdom intimately. But things don't turn out that way when she discovers the Prince is not in charge as expected, and she has to deal with a bloodthirsty Duke that wants nothing more that to kill the horde of wilders under her protection.

She will need to work quickly to try to negotiate a peace between the wilders and humans. But just when it appears that she might succeed, events occur to ruin her plans. But the events would also hold revelations about the time loop she is in and who might be responsible for creating and maintaining it. In the end, if she is to have any chance of making peace, she will have to break the loop, even if it means actually dying in the process.

A fun conclusion to the story, with the ending showing a way for wilders and humans to live together and, together, maybe discover more about the magical world that they live in.

An interesting, and raunchy, book featuring a protagonist caught in a time loop. For over two hundred attempts, Davi, the proclaimed saviour of the kingdom, has tried to rally the human Kingdom against the wilder forces of the Dark Lord, and failed each time. Well, she has had enough and decides that since the Dark Lord wins, she will be the Dark Lord instead.

But like a novice trying to play at expert level in a computer game for the first time, she's not very successful. It takes quite a number of attempts before she manages to join a band of orcs without being killed in the first few minutes. From there, she has to lead them to the Convocation, where the next Dark Lord is to be chosen. Along the way, she has to recruit more wilders, so she will have a horde to back up her claim to be the next Dark Lord.

The nature of the time loop Davi is caught in is not explained in the book, nor does it feature prominently in the story once she joins the band of orcs, as she wants to succeed in this attempt and not have to start again, with possibly a different outcome. But she is forced to reconsider her present life when an event occurs that causes the time loop to manifest differently. That and the discovery of surprising artifacts at the Convocation makes her reconsider the current life she is leading and just what she wants to do once she does become the Dark Lord.

A humorous story about a person trying to discover why she appears to be the centre around which the world revolves. But that revelation will have to wait for the next book.

A good issue, with fascinating stories by Carrie Vaughn, Rebecca Campbell, Pan Haitian and Samantha Murray.

• "Up the Line to Death" by Carrie Vaughn: AI based drones around the world suddenly stop working. And it would need the help of a literature teacher to make sense of the lines of poetic text that start to appear in the output data of the drones.

• "The Potential Side Effects of Roleplay Stimulation Therapy" by Claire Jia-Wen: a student gets involved in an accident. To help her recover her ability to play the violin, she is enrolled in a simulated environment. A misunderstanding makes her think it is a 'stimulated' environment. But her interests begin to drift as she gets involved with a fellow student also enrolled in the environment, but for a different reason.

• "The Floating Republic" by Rebecca Campbell: a small colony on a world is adrift, waiting for a long conflict to resolve itself, which it eventually does. Told through various viewpoints, this is a story about what the people, left for decades on (and off) the planet want when contact is reestablished with the company that owns the planet and may not have the colony's interests in mind.

• "Three Cases from the Cosmic Psychiatric Clinic" by Pan Haitian, translated by Blake Stone-Banks: an amusing tale of a psychiatrist on a deep space station that has to deal with three cases: one of a man who thinks he is a tree, another of a salesman who turns into a 'toy terrorist' and an unusual one involving the stations' cleaning droids with a hive mind of their own who decides to take cleaning a bit more literally.

• "A Life Measured in Seconds" by Anne Wilkins: in the future, a machine selects 'gods' from the people by the second they are born on a certain day. This story is about two people, one born on that second and is considered a god, and another not born on that second and wishes that he was born on that second. On a day that celebrates the birth of the gods, they would meet and discover that their lives as a god and a non-god are not as good or bad as it appears.

• "Burning Day" by Samantha Murray: a researcher on an alien planet falls in love with one of the aliens, whose emotions of memories manifest as nodules on their bodies. But on Burning Day, the nodules are burned off, and the alien only has the memory but not the emotion behind it. Now the researcher has to decide whether their love and life together will last past the Burning Day.

• "Ice, Rock, Empathy" by Damián Neri: aliens live under the ice of a world that turns out to be Europa. But they have the ability to absorb the memories of a human researcher that dies under the ice. And now, the aliens are on a mission to try to save the memories of other humans after a calamity overcomes their colony.

A lovely 'cozy fantasy' about a former librarian who finds her skills put to good use when she ends up on an island with enchanted greenhouses that are failing, and she has to figure out why and how to stop it. Throw in a handsome gardener and a group of talking plants, and you have an enchanting story about recovering from loss, overcoming your fears and finding love and companionship among an unlikely group of people.

Terlu Perna was punished by being turned into a statue in the Empire's library for the crime of being lonely, and using magic to make a plant come alive for companionship. Years later, she wakes up human again on an island with only an uncommunicative (handsome) gardener who needs the help of a sorcerer to stop his magical greenhouses from failing. Terlu decides to help him by investigating the notes of the former sorcerer who created the greenhouses. In the processes, she breaks the Empire's laws against magic again by bringing other plants to life.

As more greenhouses fail, Terlu convinces the gardener to ask for help from his estranged family, now living on other islands. With their help, Terlu makes progress and may finally discover why the greenhouses are failing. But to stop it, she will need the help of the gardener, his family and a host of magical creatures who all call the greenhouse home.

In the process Terlu and the gardener find themselves falling for each other, and they would need each other to help heal their hurts over being left alone and living in a world that does not appreciate them for what they are.

A good issue of Clarkesworld, with interesting stories by Louis Inglis Hall, Tia Tashiro, Grace Chan and Zhao Haihong.

• "The Profitable Sentience of Household Goods" by Louis Inglis Hall: a household AI talks to a newly activated AI running a light switch. As time passes, the household AI becomes more capable and hopes to achieve biological sentience. But what it discovers is a world with companies that only want to protect themselves against other companies.

• "Archaeological Evidence for the Time Traveler" by Tia Tashiro: a mother who is an archaeologist goes on excavation project, while raising her a child. But then she discovers messages written long ago that are apparently aimed at her, and it may involve her former lover who is doing research in time travel. As in all such tales, the ending is inevitable but still has a twist that some readers may be able to guess.

• "Conquerors" by Nick Wolven: a ceremony takes place between those on Earth and people from space who have returned for a short while. But the people from space prove to be very rowdy and one Earth girl wants nothing to do with them. But then an accident and a meeting with her uncle from space changes her perspective on the people from space.

• "Paper Airplane Poet" by Sheri Singerling: a story set in a world of haves and have-nots in a city. A have-not girl loses her parents to a strange 'non-Euclidian' affliction. Faced with a life of poverty, she decides to make use of her resemblance to an upper-class lady to move up in life. Unfortunately, the unusual affliction pays no further part in the story.

• "Aly" by Grace Chan: in a future Australia beset with global warming, a man accidentally encounters a stranger from Taiwan, and they strike up a relationship. But it becomes strained over the man's dependency on an Aly, an AI attached to him at birth. He turns it off in hopes of improving their relationship but the struggle to live, and to love, without an Aly may be too much.

• "Decimation Circles" by Raahem Alvi: on a world where people are implanted with a chip that remembers who they are when they die and reborn in a new body, an officer is charged with recovering her previous body. But in the process, she encounters an unusual human and comes to realise that there may be a better way than constantly living and dying on this dystopian world.

• "The Scent of Memory" by Zhao Haihong, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu: a man is desperate to meet with his former romantic partner before her wedding to another man, hoping to stop it. But before that, he needs a way to remind her of their good times, which may come in the form of a scent bottle that can cause vivid memories to resurface.

An enjoyable continuation of the author's series, this time involving a different cast of characters. Fern, the foul-mouthed bookseller from a previous book, shifts her bookshop to be next to Viv, now running a successful café. But running a bookshop was really her father's dream, and she has a sense that it isn't really what she wants in life. After getting drunk, she acts on impulse and 'hitches a ride' with a renown elf on her way to deliver a bounty on a goblin with a predilection for kitchen utensils. Thus, begins a 'cozy' adventure for Fern that would change her outlook on her life.

What starts out as a way for Fern to 'get away from it all' for a while as she figures out her future, gradually turns her into a fellow adventurer with Asteryx, the elf who, having lived a long life, now seems to be going through the motions that made her a famous warrior. Zyll, the goblin, is also an enigma, since she has the opportunity to escape several times during the course of the journey, but never does. She also has the ability to hide all kinds of utensils in her coat of pockets.

Things begin to get serious when Fern discovers that other are also after Zyll for her bounty; and one has a personal reason to kill Zyll, and will not let even a famous elf stand in their way. From then on, the three adventurers begin to depend on one another to finish the journey. And in the process, both Fern and Asteryx discover their reasons for living the lives they want.

A fascinating sequel that continues the story of Pax, where a colony of humans, alien Glass Makers, and Svetland, the sentient plant, live together. Add to the mix, a spaceship from Earth that has come to see how the colony is doing.

The story is told in multiple viewpoints: the Earthlings, the human Pax dwellers (Pacifists), a Glass Maker queen and, of course, Svetland. It shows the conflicts and arguments that occur when different groups with different objectives have to live together to achieve common goals.

But thrown into the mix are new elements: a trip to another continent that changes Svetland's perspective about himself, and a new danger that is hinted at early on when communication problems causes problems that turn into a full-blown crisis for the Pax colony that endangers not just human and Glass Makers, but also Svetland himself.

The story continues in the third book of the series, where we will see what Svetland can do with the new abilities that he has discovered about himself and what his plans are for the 'service animals' that he cares for.

A fascinating book that looks at the dragonflies and damselflies (order Odonata) that can be found in the world. Many lovely photos of Odonata (some rarely seen) are featured in the book, showing off the dazzling colours and the variety of body and wing shapes; some of which I also had the pleasure of shooting with a camera.

The book start with a general overview of Odonata, including the differences between the two. Despite these differences, all Odonata share common features: their nymphs live in fresh water, before emerging to become agile aerial predators. Because of this dual life-style, Odonata have become an indicator of the health of water ecosystems. Unlike other insect groups like the bees and butterflies (and moths), Odonata are not plant pollinators, but their predatory lifestyle can help to keep down the population of other insects in the area.

The book then looks at the suborder of dragonflies, starting with the common families of dragonflies, before covering the rarer families. Their various lifestyles (location, ways of hunting, courting, etc.) are briefly covered. An interesting note is made of the Australian Shutwing dragonflies. While dragonflies usually rest with their wings open wide, the Shutwing rests with its wings closed (like a damselfly).

Before moving on to the damselflies, the book covers an interesting suborder known as the Damseldragons. These are Odonata with features from both dragonflies and damselflies (eyes like dragonflies, wings like damselflies) and is usually considered an ancient, "primitive" offshoot of the dragonflies.

The book then looks at the suborder of damselflies, from the common families of damselflies, then moving on to the rarer families. I personally found the damselflies featured in the book more fascinating than the dragonflies, with a larger variety of body shapes, wings and colouration featured.

The book is, of course, not the final word on the Odonata. Many species have yet to be named, and the relationships between different families of dragonflies and damselflies is yet to be firmly established. As a general guide to Odonata, this book excels by providing an overall picture of how and where Odonata can be found and what they look like via excellent photos in the book.