Bug Jack Barron is the host of a political talk show—similar to Hasan Piker but with more audience interaction and without the political connections. Day in and out, he receives a barrage of calls describing injustice and discrimination, and when possible, uses said connections to right wrongs. His influence so great, in fact, the California governor calls Barron to suggest he run for President. If it weren't for all of the humanitarian action he is involved in, maybe he would have time?
Not explicitly framed, The Perseids nevertheless has a through line: the lives of ordinary people in Toronto around the turn of the millennia, 20th to 21st. The story which kicks things off, “The Fields of Abraham”, could be seen as that setting's prequel. It tells of a Jewish boy getting by on almost nothing in early 20th century Toronto. His sister has dementia and is unable to help. So when not teaching immigrants English, he heads to a local shop to escape. But a student makes an offer that could help the boy financially, only it would mean selling his familial soul. Over a game of chess he asks the shopkeeper for advice, which doesn't go as planned. It's a simply written story, but Wilson wrings emotion from the boy's plight, setting the tone for the bittersweet stories which follow.
“The Binding” is grimdark fantasy about a clan of giants who are attacked by an army of humans. Like a homework assignment scratched out last minute, the style Gwynne deploys can be described as spilling, loose, slapdash. For the first few days of tape and wire, the plot has an arc, there are primary characters, conflict occurs, and dialogue and exposition link the pieces together. But once that fix starts to give out, it noticeably fails semantically.
Extremophile is cyberpunk through and through. Body augmentation, cyberspace, corporate dystopia, dark streets, hackers, loads of neon, evil CEOs, etc., etc. You're familiar with it. Charlie, punk rock bass player by night, gene artist by later night, sleeps during the day. She and her band mates enjoy carousing with fellow musicians, just as much as they enjoy mucking with the system—ecoterrorism, DNA hacking to help their friends avoid corporate watchdogs, and generally sticking their middle-finger up at the man as much as possible. When an opportunity to hit a particularly vile corporate suit comes along, the band are all over it. Trouble is, the suit has his own private security.
A Different Kind of Tension is organized chronologically 1990 - 2024, starting with the earliest published work. Tone-setter more than story, “Walking the Moons” is a very short piece about a man in a virtual reality simulator walking a treadmill on a moon of Jupiter. Human nature ensues until mother nature comes knocking to highlight the absurdity of his attempts at experiencing reality in a sim. Unfortunately prognostic. “Program's Progress” is a Rudy Rucker or Paul Di Filippo-esque (bizarro) tale of an uploaded man (thing? consciousness?) who abuses his position for pleasure drugs and gets demoted back to stationary (immobile) life. He has "adventures" in clever, subversive fashion.
When a writer hits a groove, it's tough not to hope they can stick it for a while. Robert Jackson Bennett put the needle in with The Tainted Cup, first book in the Shadow of the Leviathan series, then settled in, letting the turntable sing with A Drop of Corruption. Just a year later, the third book in the series, A Trade of Blood (2026), is hitting shelves. Still spinning?
A Trade of Blood drops the unlikely detective duo, Dinius Kol and Ana Dolabra, into the middle of Sapirdad, a frontier agricultural land where two families, the Armentas and the Buravs, are engaged in a clan war. The Armentas raise cattle while the Buravs harvest the crops needed to feed the cattle. They feud despite this symbiosis. Din and Dolabra are called to the scene when the eldest daughter of the Armentas is found disemboweled on a hotel room floor, the scion of the Buravs, her ostensible lover, covered in blood in the forest. What they uncover turns the clans on their heads, leaving the land in tatters.
Indeed, A City Dreaming is the story of a modern mage in an urban world—at least some of the time. His name is M, and at the outset of the story he leaves Paris for NYC to stay with a friend. In the course of his daily life—going to cafes, walking the sidewalks, and trying to pick up girls and/or narcotics—he finds himself slipping in and out of alternate realities. But the chump lifestyle has its price. Maybe those occasional rewards are worth it?
On the surface, Sorcery is like the other TCGs out there. You build a resource engine to play cards, permanent and temporary, in order to knock your opponent's life total to zero. And there are further similarities to Magic: one land per round, minions and spells, summoning sickness, twenty-health start, Dungeons & Dragons motif, etc., etc. So much richer and more thematic is Sorcery, however, that it is actually Magic3.
Ship of Magic takes readers to a new location in Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings setting: the Pirate Isles. First book in a trilogy, it shifts away from kings, queens, wizards, dragons, and pseudo-Medieval villages, and moves toward pirates, treasure, slavery, sea serpents, plunder, trade, and port city ribaldry. It also anthropomorphizes calling ships “she”--making bowspirits of bowsprits. And it's a massive success. But I get ahead of myself.
