Tag: cat rambo

#REVIEW: The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters; Anthony Francis & Liz Olmstead, eds.

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

And now the third review in a row of a book I got sent as a free ARC, thus discharging all of my current review obligations. I feel kind of bad about how long it took me to get to this; I didn’t get a release date when they sent me the book, and I put it on a sort of mental “find out when this is coming out” list, only to discover it had already been released when they sent it to me. So this is not timely; my apologies.

This is a hell of a concept for an anthology, really; the back cover describes it as “a hopeful, empowering science fiction anthology filled with own-voices stories from neurodivergent creators”– in other words, stories about neurodivergent people encountering aliens, written by people who are themselves neurodivergent but presumably have not encountered aliens. I find the word “neurodiversiverse” immensely fun to say, and while anthologies aren’t always my thing, there are certainly some gems to be found in here. Cat Rambo’s Scary Monsters, Super Creeps is about a young woman with an anxiety disorder who discovers it gives her superpowers, and Ada Hoffman’s Music, Not Words is about an autistic girl who is the first contact for an alien race.

Most of the authors in the collection are people I’m not familiar with, though; I sort of jumped around rather than reading the collection straight through (how do people usually read anthologies? Is that weird?) and Lauren D. Fulter’s The Cow Test is probably the standout of the rest of the anthology, for me at least. It involves cows. It’s a short story, I’m not spoiling the details. 🙂 There are art pieces and poetry as well. Some of the aspects of neurodivergence that get explored here are really interesting; Jody Lynn Nye’s A Hint of Color is about synesthesia, for example, and Keiko O’Leary’s Close Encounter In the Public Bathroom is the only poem I’ve ever read that combines being about OCD and aliens.

No, seriously, this anthology made me recommend a poem. That’s worth picking up, right?

#REVIEW: Rumor Has It, by Cat Rambo

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

It’s possible that my review of this book is going to be slightly unfair. Rumor Has It is the third volume of Cat Rambo’s excellent Disco Space Opera series, which started with You Sexy Thing and continued with Devil’s Gun. It’s also the third volume that their publisher has been nice enough to send me an ARC of. Cat actually lives in South Bend, and they did a reading at my local Barnes and Noble last weekend, and unfortunately I didn’t find out about it until about an hour beforehand. I reviewed both of the first two books, and I’m a big fan of the series.

… which I thought was a trilogy, and I read the first 2/3 of Rumor Has It under that assumption, and only when I realized that there were not remotely enough pages left to wrap up the storyline did I Google around a bit and discover that nobody was calling it a trilogy. I currently have no idea how many books are planned in the series, as I can’t find that information anywhere; it’s possible that it’s meant to be open-ended. Ordinarily the idea that there was going to be more of something I liked is good news, but reading it with an ending in mind kinda screwed up my perception of the story. Also, while “the secret ingredient is intrigue” is a perfectly cromulent tagline for a book about a group of mercenaries turned interstellar restauranteurs, the secret ingredient is not intrigue. The secret ingredient is phone:

Every time and I mean every time I picked up the book, I heard Krieger’s voice in my head.

So here’s the thing: this book still has all of the strengths I talked about in my reviews of You Sexy Thing and Devil’s Gun. Rambo’s writing is punchy and funny, the characters are absolutely unforgettable, and the basic premise, elevator-pitched as Farscape meets The Great British Baking Show, is absolutely packed with flavor potential.

Unfortunately, it also has the weakness of the second book, which I referred to as “one of the most second-booky second books I’ve ever read.” The good bits are still good, but the overall story really isn’t advanced at all in Rumor Has It, and the book suffers from both being (remaining?) incomprehensible if you haven’t read the first two and it’s also quite wheel-spinny in a way that Devil’s Gun wasn’t. The characters spend the entire book at a single space station trying to drum up some money, and while that space station is cool, if you could have replaced the whole book with the ultra-rich owner of the intelligent bioship they’re riding around in simply cutting them a check, you have a bit of a problem. Some character arcs get advanced a bit, but what felt like the most important character storyline of the book ends up literally being nothing worth worrying about at the end. The big villain has now spent two entire books entirely offstage. I genuinely don’t even remember why they’re mad at him at this point.

(Okay, he sort of shows up. But not really, and going into further detail would be a spoiler, so I won’t do that.)

Anyway, what this leads to is that for the second book in a row I’m writing the phrase “It’s not a bad book, but …” about something I wanted to like more. Again, the strengths of the series are still here, and even if I don’t get sent an ARC I’m spending money on the fourth book. I’m invested, there’s no doubt about that, and it’s possible that had I realized that the series wasn’t coming to an end with this novel I’d have more positive feelings about it. But right now the entire book kind of feels like a subplot that went on for too long, and I’m really hoping the fourth book slaps the status quo around a little bit more. You Sexy Thing still retains my full-throated support, and you should pick this up if you’re into the series already, but know what you’re getting into before you start reading.

#REVIEW: DEVIL’S GUN, by Cat Rambo

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

I don’t know how to talk about this book.

Okay, that’s not true. I really liked it and all of you should read it. I really liked it and … most of you should read it. Some of you should read it! All of you who have read You Sexy Thing, the original book in this series, should read it, and those of you who have not read You Sexy Thing should go read that and then read this in its proper context in the second book of what is going to be at least a trilogy. I have no idea what Cat Rambo’s contract for this series is; all I know is that as long as they keep writing these books I’m going to keep reading them.

I read speculative fiction, so I am well used to devouring books in trilogies if not longer series than that. And a trilogy in particular has a certain rhythm to it, and what that means is that the second book in a trilogy can be really hard to write in such a way that it doesn’t feel like moving pieces around on a board in preparation for book three, which will actually solve things. And the biggest weakness of Devil’s Gun is that it’s one of the most second-booky second books I’ve ever read.

What’s that mean? Well, most of the characters– the strong point of the series, about a ship’s crew that moonlights as the staff of an elite sci-fi restaurant, or maybe about the staff of an elite sci-fi restaurant that moonlights as a ship’s crew, it’s hard to say– are dealing with various and sundry traumas and/or life changes from Book One. Very few of these traumas are resolved in any meaningful way, although a couple of them definitely see very serious evolution over the course of this book. The titular “Devil’s Gun” is a MacGuffin that the crew is looking for so that they can eliminate the big villain of the first book, who is after them again. The big villain who never once appears on page in the entirety of Devil’s Gun. Not a single scene. They never see him. The whole book is relying on your memory of Tubal Last being terrifying in the first book.

Well, okay, and also on this one thing he did that was really bad, and which reverberates through the entirety of Gun, but he does that thing in You Sexy Thing.

In a way, all of this isn’t really a problem, because no one is going to pick up Devil’s Gun on its own, or at least if they do they’ll recognize that they screwed up. And to a certain extent it feels really ridiculous for me of all people to be criticizing book-two-of-a-trilogy for being, well, book two of a trilogy. But this one doesn’t stand up on its own at all, to the point where it’s notable. I mean, important stuff happens, it’s not like, oh, Book 2 of The Wheel of Time, which could be reduced to a single-page prologue of Book 3 without eliminating anything significant. It’s not filler. It’s just not a complete story on its own. And your ability to enjoy it will depend entirely on your ability to ignore that fact.

Beyond that, though, I genuinely do love this series– it was originally described as “Farscape meets The Great British Baking Show,” and bam, the second I heard that, I spent money. And I should probably have said this in the first paragraph, but I got this for free again, meaning that I’ve gotten both books in this series mailed to me early and then went out and bought both of them anyway. There’s still a sexy bird-creature and one character who is a sentient blob and another who’s an ape and the first mate/head chef is seven feet tall and has four arms and this was probably unfair of me but I spent most of the book picturing one of the characters as Lion-O. I can read about these people forever; they’re awesome. You should read about them too; just make absolutely sure you do it in order.

#REVIEW:  You Sexy Thing, by Cat Rambo

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews1 Comment

A couple of disclaimers, provisos, quid pro quos, etcetera before I begin this piece: First, I was sent this as an ARC by the publisher in return for a good honest review, although now that I’ve read it I’m going to spend my own actual money and buy a copy. Second, although there is literally no chance that either of us remembers it, Cat Rambo and I have probably met! You see, Cat used to work at The Griffon, a gaming shop in downtown South Bend (the second oldest such place in America, as it turns out) and I have been a semiregular customer there for roughly thirty-five years. I’m not sure what years Cat worked there or how often they worked when that was their job, but it’s hard to imagine either being especially long-term without us crossing paths at least once or twice, and The Griffon being the store it is, that probably means we’ve had an actual conversation or two. This isn’t going to affect my review, of course– you’re about to find out that this book has “Luther will like this” baked into the premise, pun fully intended– but it’s interesting.

The premise of this book has been described as “Farscape meets The Great British Baking Show,” and for many of you– certainly for me– that description may be salient enough to immediately attract attention. I can’t see a sci-fi book compared to my favorite TV show (seriously) and not immediately be interested in reading it. And the comparison isn’t unreasonable, either; while the majority of the characters used to be part of the same military unit, they are all retired and run a restaurant at the beginning of the book, and they have found themselves in a position where they may be eligible to earn the restaurant something called a Nikkelin Orb, which had me giggling from the moment I first saw the phrase. (If the joke escapes you, Google “Michelin Star,” or you could just click the link, I guess.)

Anyway, all hell breaks loose, and their restaurant gets blown up, and they sort of steal an expensive, intelligent bioship which immediately decides it’s been for-real stolen and starts to fly them off to a prison planet so that it can turn them in for stealing it, and then they discover that the Empress appears to have frozen one of her heirs and mailed her to them, and then things get even weirder, if you can believe that. The crew includes a chimp with a taste for explosives who only communicates via sign language, a hypersexual, polyamorous squid-thing, their four-armed, eight-foot master chef, a pastry chef who as near as I can tell is a more selfish & predatory version of Big Bird, and two twin were-lions.

So the characters are great, and the way they interact is great, and the hints at wider worldbuilding from what parts of this world we get to see are fantastic (I want more books in this series, and I want them now,) and my only real gripe is actually that the book could have been maybe 50-75 pages longer, as some story points get kind of glossed over quickly, to the point where occasionally I had to stop and reread a page to make sure that what I thought had just happened had actually happened in, like, a sentence and not an entire chapter. Rambo manages to deftly balance a light, Douglas-Adamsesque comedic tone for decent chunks of the book with a villain who ends up pretty genuinely terrifying and some moments of real sadness and pathos. I just wanted more of it, and at 285 or so pages this is a pretty quick read. I feel like it wouldn’t have outstayed its welcome at 350-400 pages, but I’ll trade a shorter book for future sequels if I absolutely have to.

One way or another, this is definitely something I’m going to recommend, and I can easily imagine myself mentioning it again in a week and a half or so when I put my best-of list together for this year. Go check it out.