Outside of a Dog

David Hughes reviewed Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

Dead Silence (Hardcover, 2022, Tor Nightfire)

Derivative rubbish

2 stars

A spaceship crew responded to a distress signal with dire results. Now, although her corporate masters don't really believe her story, they need the sole survivor to go back to where it all happened.

Alternatively: a spaceship disappears on its maiden voyage. Many years later it's found, but the investigating team find that it's haunted!

The two paragraphs above more than adequately (IMHO!) describe the plot of the book. Unfortunately, they also describe the plots of the films Aliens and Event Horizon, both of which are far superior to this novel.

Clunky, not greatly written and with a bunch of unsympathetic & underdeveloped characters, it at least has a nice, though not particularly unexpected little twist which does explain some things and provides a second star to the review.

There's also a romantic sub-plot, which does nothing for the story.

Go and watch Aliens and Event Horizon instead - a …

A spaceship crew responded to a distress signal with dire results. Now, although her corporate masters don't really believe her story, they need the sole survivor to go back to where it all happened.

Alternatively: a spaceship disappears on its maiden voyage. Many years later it's found, but the investigating team find that it's haunted!

The two paragraphs above more than adequately (IMHO!) describe the plot of the book. Unfortunately, they also describe the plots of the films Aliens and Event Horizon, both of which are far superior to this novel.

Clunky, not greatly written and with a bunch of unsympathetic & underdeveloped characters, it at least has a nice, though not particularly unexpected little twist which does explain some things and provides a second star to the review.

There's also a romantic sub-plot, which does nothing for the story.

Go and watch Aliens and Event Horizon instead - a more enjoysble use of your time than reading Dead Silence.

David Hughes reviewed The Map by William Ritter

Abigail hopes that her birthday will slip by unnoticed and uncelebrated, but her employer, detective …

Shallow but fun

3 stars

A short short story featuring a Sherlock Holmes of the supernatural and his assistant. It's a treasure hunt. Disengage brain and it's fine. No pretensions or depth and Jackaby and Abigail are pleasant enough protagonists

David Hughes reviewed The Cipher by Kathe Koja

Nicholas, a would-be poet, and Nakota, his feral lover, discover a strange hole in the …

Horror as metaphor

3 stars

Welcome to the funhole! The great thing about writing is that you don't need to explain anything, so there's this 3-d Rorschach test (ok, to the characters, it's a black hole, but to the reader it could mean ...anything) manifest in an apartment block's utility closet, that draws the attention of a group of mostly marginalised, mostly unlikeable characters. Some decent body horror follows, but the characters are so unsympathetic that we don't care (hiya, Nakota!) and while the ambience & atmosphere is well developed, it's still pretty yucky and you might want a shower afterwards. I'll go with the funhole representing late stage capitalism.

David Hughes reviewed Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Light From Uncommon Stars (2021, Tor Books)

Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful …

"You’re a selfish little thing, aren’t you?”

3 stars

Content warning Very poor ending; selling souls to hell does pay!

I accept that I'm probably not the target audience for this, but here we go... I so wanted to like this as I've seen lots of good reviews and the book does have lots of good aspects: it's nice to see Asian-American communities described so ...lovingly, the food and violin bits are well done, one of the protagonists is a trans woman. But... it's not well written (too many POV changes, too much telling and not enough showing), Bad Things Are Done directly or indirectly by main characters without accountability, characters lack agency and do things because of the authors being able to make them do things as opposed to them being sufficiently well-developed so that you think they're making their own decisions (e.g when Astrid catches Katrina at a webcam). The sciency bits are complete gibberish. The two plot strands come together very clumsily at the end (really would have benefited from omitting the intergalactic donut salespeople (and another thing, if sales are dipping, why not replicate ...money instead of donuts?) and concentrating on the violin/souls aspect). It's also heinously missold as "Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet". It's neither and is a long way from either. I think we can all agree that misgendering is pretty shit, but it doesn't need to be a capital offence; a bit of wish fulfilment perhaps? The quote in the title is said by a character to Katrina but applies to Shizuka, who really is quite a problematic character. And the book lacks empathy for others; there's Katrina, Shizuka, the Trans (get it? the TRANS!) and a few others, but many other people in the book don't rise above NPC level and can be treated accordingly. I feel my blood pressure rising, so I'll stop, but before I do, maybe the book needs content warnings for sexual assault, transphobia, racism and homophobia among others.

David Hughes reviewed The Just City by Jo Walton

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a …

"But why justice, not happiness, or liberty or any other excellence?"

5 stars

Apart from the time-travelling, the possibly sentient robots and gods and goddesses, not much sci-fi or fantasy here, but plenty of philosophy, melodrama and a little sexual violence. Jo Walton continues to pursue excellence in writing in this thought experiment of realising the Just City of Plato. To be honest, the ideals of the Just City are a bit shit and demonstrate once again why we shouldn't slavishly follows ideas from the Bronze and Iron Ages. Perhaps Walton subtly alludes to this with the demographic and centuries of origin of the Masters. Nevertheless, this is a thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking read, and you may ask yourself the question enunciated by Simmea that appears as the title of this review. Why indeed, eh? I look forward to reading the next book in the series and I hope we see more of the workers.

David Hughes reviewed Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

Matterhorn (Hardcover, 2010, Atlantic Monthly)

Intense, powerful, and compelling, Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman …

Perhaps the best Vietnam War novel

5 stars

Well, the best I've read anyway. Excellently conveys the tedium and the terror of war. Characters are very well drawn, and like their comrades we mourn their deaths when they inevitably occur. Not for the faint-hearted but a wonderful read

David Hughes reviewed Stargazing by Peter Hill

Stargazing (Paperback, 2004, Canongate Books Ltd)

An elegy to a vanished profession

5 stars

In 1973, Peter Hill takes a summer away from art school in Dundee to be a trainee lighthouse keeper. This book pressed so many buttons for me. I lived in Dundee, in the same streets, albeit a decade later. I remember the Television Peter and his companions watched. And I fancied being a lighthouse keeper before automation eliminated that job.