Black Gate

What if a genius decided to combine a fantastical feminist romp with a classic whodunnit of the mackintosh-wearing era… and tossed in some madcap Dickensian adventure?

You’d have yourself The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss, a 400-page extravaganza featuring five women you have dreamed of in your heart of hearts but have never seen on paper. Better yet, they’re the daughters of legendary characters from classic fantasy and science fiction.

When Mary Jekyll’s mother dies, the young inheritor of her meager estate discovers her father — Henry Jekyll himself — associated with a troubling league of gentlemen endowed with brilliant scientific ambition. With the help of Diana Hyde, a feral and headstrong spitfire (and daughter of Mr. Hyde), and a miraculous and unwilling scientific marvel named Beatrice, whom her revered father has tainted with poison from noxious plants, Mary embarks on a quest to discover just what her father’s band of brothers sought to accomplish.

Along the way, they enlist the help of an exemplary detective named Sherlock Holmes, his cherished assistant, Watson, and Catherine Moreau, daughter of the most barbaric and daring scientist of them all. Unless you factor Doctor Victor Frankenstein into the equation… whom, now that we mention him, happens to be the father of the last partner in crime, a kindhearted giantess named Justine who harbors a tale potent enough to warrant a novel of its own.

I appreciate Goss’s innumerable acts of kindness toward readers who have not yet read the classic works of literature to which she has paid tribute. (I confess, I am guilty as charged. Dear friends have told me in the past that I need to read Frankenstein, and I agree. It must happen). By doing so, Goss has eschewed the How Much Do You Know About This Facet of Nerddom? quiz routinely thrust upon so many innocent fans, allowing her readers to bask in the wisdom and whimsy of her characters instead.

Additionally, Goss honors the infamous gentlemen who have carried their stories through the years with the fierce compassion of an author reckoning with the staggering contradictions of the human species. And these men have to contend with their fair share of reckoning. That is, the ones who survive.

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The action starts right away in New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray’s latest novel, Defy the Stars. Teenage fighter pilot Noemi Vidal only has twenty days to live, since she has volunteered for a suicide mission to protect her world. But time runs out when evil mechs – robot warriors from Earth – burst through the intergalactic Gate and start shooting at Noemi’s squadron while they’re still training.

One of the deadly machines attacks her best friend, Esther, who was never supposed to see combat. Noemi rushes to defend her and successfully beats off the mech. Still, Esther will die if Noemi doesn’t get her medical care fast. The only prospect of first aid is an enemy starship drifting nearby, abandoned during a previous assault.

What Noemi doesn’t know is that Earth’s most advanced mech, Abel, has been trapped in that mothballed hulk, all alone, for thirty years. Docking her fighter in the ship from Earth, Noemi reactivates its systems and frees Abel, whose first priority is to kill her.

A Young Adult novel, Defy the Stars will please both young and old science fiction fans with an original, engaging, and unpredictable interstellar romp. In the universe Gray has created, Earth has degenerated into a dystopian, post-apocalyptic husk, and its citizens are desperate to immigrate to Noemi’s lush colony world, Genesis. Fearing that humanity will only repeat its past mistakes and ruin Genesis’s environment just like Earth’s, the authorities on Genesis have long sent warriors like Noemi to prevent such an influx. Accordingly, when Noemi learns it’s possible to destroy the Gate between the two star systems, she seizes the chance to do so. Acquiring the necessary tools, however, requires her not just to partner with Abel, but also to become the first Genesis citizen in generations to pass through the Gate and visit other star systems, where she witnesses the plight of others.

In addition to Noemi’s mission to destroy the Genesis Gate, her relationship with Abel drives the book forward. Love stories often take two people who are supposed to hate each other, throw them together, and turn the screws until love blooms. Gray’s version goes beyond this, taking two sworn enemies in an interstellar war and adding an even more unlikely twist: What if the protagonist’s love interest isn’t recognized as a person? What if he’s only supposed to be a machine?

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Revenger
Alastair Reynolds
Orbit (544 pages, $15.99 paperback, $9.99 eBook, September 2016)

Alastair Reynolds is one of the few authors I’ve read who manages to draw me into a standalone novel, immerse me with compelling characters and a complex world, and leave me begging for a sequel by the time I read the last page. He accomplished it with Terminal World. Then he did it again with House of Suns. And with my latest Reynolds read, Revenger, I sat back again and demanded out loud, “But wait – what happens next?!”

No one should be surprised when I say that Reynolds is a masterful storyteller. If you’re a fan of science fiction, you’ve probably at least heard his name – and if you haven’t, go pick up one of his books right now. Probably the best part about his writing is that it’s very much hard science fiction, but isn’t overly detailed or cumbersome the way I find a lot of hard SF writers to be (I lean way more toward soft SF and fantasy).

Reynolds’ work is always fast-paced and interesting, weaving the detailed science with just enough of the fantastic to add that sense of wonder and a perfect balance of action and character work. Revenger, for example, has the pacing of Firefly or Star Wars, so that even as he’s explaining the steampunkiness (is that a word?) of the starships and personal technology in the novel, you’re never mired in an info-dump or bored by too much scientific description, just to understand how everything works.

Revenger is particularly good because it’s a very human story: it focuses on two sisters who want to escape their homeworld and sign on with a starship crew not for pure escapism like Luke Skywalker, but specifically to earn money to help their father’s struggling business. What begins as a story of adventure and wild-eyed wonder as these sisters get to know their very first crew becomes a dark and harrowing tale almost immediately, as Reynolds takes his protagonists through multiple twists and unexpected locales.

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