Review of The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb

You're here for one of two reasons:

1. By accident. If true, be informed as such.
2. You want to know whether Robin Hobb's The Mad Ship (1999) is as good as Ship of Magic? Yes. Go—no, Run! to your favorite bookshop—and buy it.

Want to know a little more, read on.

The Mad Ship picks up precisely where Ship of Magic ended. It doesn't miss a beat. All of the characters readers are familiar with, at least those who survived Ship of Magic, return. Hobb adds one or two more to round things off, notably a courtesan within the satrap's inner court to give the reader a glimpse of the happenings there, as well as more light on the life of a woodworker whose skills come in particularly handy for one major plot thread. These two become particularly important as The Mad Ship ratchets up political tension; where Ship of Magic effectively used the Vestrid family affairs as its launch pad for antagonism, The Mad Ship puts more spice in the stew with a kingdom in crisis.

The Mad Ship really does feel like the next wall of scenes in the tableaux room, such is the seamless nature which it picks up and carries forward the Liveship series. There was one particular character about-face that felt a bit rushed, a bit Hallmark. But it's after such a traumatic event that I have to shove it to the gray area of: Maybe? Everything else is as organic as Ship of Magic. Things are constantly zigging when they should be zagging, but always in accordance with the foundation stones of story Hobb has already laid. Legend-level story crafting.

Review of The Perseids and Other Stories by Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson's novels are a mixed bag. They run the gamut of cliche to existentialist. The Chronoliths is about as good a look at human nature in the face of otherness as science fiction has produced, whereas Darwinia is genre fluff if ever there were goose dander. One might assume Wilson's one and only short story collection, The Perseids and Other Stories (2000), runs in parallel. Such is not the case.

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.

Criticism: Human Slop: A Deeper Look into “The Binding” by John Gwynne

AI slop is a term bandied about these days early days of artificial intelligence. It describes content that is unpolished, untidy, not 100% ready but thrown to the public for consumption, anyway. It's uncle Bob's attempt at fixing the water pump with tape and wire. It works for a few days, but depend on the fix for much longer and it starts dripping, again. Guitars gain extra strings and are played upside down. Human anatomy is displayed in inhuman form. And buzzwords are buzzzzzzing. While reading “The Binding: A Banished Lands Tale” by John Gwynne my brain was screaming “AI slop”. But I know a human wrote the short story. What is going on?

“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.

Review of Extremophile by Ian Green

The names of a few counter-culture/beat writers from the 60s still echo—Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Ken Kesey among them. But the novel which captures the espirit of the era the best is perhaps Jack Kerouac's On the Road. More rhythm and melody than plotted story with waypoints, it tells of a young man who sets aside his day job to live the moment—sex, drugs, and jazz concerts. It's been thirty years since I read the novel, but I don't remember much political ideology. It's thus interesting that Kerouac's novel kept springing to mind reading Ian Green's (wildly different) Extremophile (2024).

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.

Review of A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories by Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem has somehow been writing fiction for more than three decades. I say 'somehow' as his recent novels remain relevant, fresh, and off-center of typical mainstream genre fluff. Those decades also include almost one-hundred short stories, some of which have been collected, some which have not. A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories (2025) brings together almost a third of said output, but rather than a 'best of' or 'greatest hits', Lethem himself seems to have chosen what made the cut—'author's picks' the better descriptor.

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.

Review of A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett

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.

Review of A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky

That thimbleful of Speculiction's readers are aware this blog has no love for fantasy which elicits a vibe of anything is possible therefore nothing is interesting. The kitchen sink is a mess, not art. Reading back cover copy for Daniel Polansky's A City Dreaming (2016) is not promising in this regard. I paraphrase: An immortal, charmed man visits the surreal side of New York City, a place full of monsters, pirates, shifting cafes, witches, aliens, zombies, Mister T, and much more. But it's Polansky, a writer who is one or two novels away from taking a place on Speculiction's (unenviable, unpublished) Top 10 Underrated writers' list. Let's dive in to the milieu...

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?

Cardboard Corner: Review of Sorcery: Contested Realm

I held off for two years. I had the game in the basket on more than one occasion, only to delete it. We already have enough TCGs... I would just be giving in to FOMO... Ignore the algorithm!!! But voices I trust, voices that have steered me away from simple, speculator-friendly TCGs and toward rich, unique card game experiences, slowly mounted to a chorus. I gave in. I loaded the cart, again, but this time clicked Buy on Sorcery: Contested Realm (2022). Mama was right; it's important to choose good friends in life.

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.

Review of Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb's debut trilogy, The Farseer, is one of the most mixed bags I've ever encountered in a fantasy series. It starts good, gets better, then kills the momentum in a streeeeeeetched 700+ page conclusion. Good intentions, but incongruous execution. It didn't put me off Hobb, however. Something else did (more to come). But when the stars aligned, and I finally read Hobb's next offering, it had me asking: has a new arc of quality begun? Lets' look at Ship of Magic (1998).

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.

Review of The Men in the Jungle by Norman Spinrad

By the time the late 60s rolled around, America had had enough of the Vietnam War (or what the Vietnamese call the American War). Unable to shit or get off the pot (same situation Russia currently finds itself in Ukraine), the US kept sending troops and armament to 'fight the war on communism' (Russians are 'fighting the war on Nazis') but never committed enough firepower to actually win the war. And the North Vietnamese, using their own brutal, ruthless methods, fought back, hard. From a certain viewpoint, it was animals fighting animals, killing for the sake of killing, ideology a far cry. Commenting on, or at least seeming to want to comment on the war, is Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle (1967), a science fiction tale/allegory of dubious execution.

Ousted asteroid dictator, Bart Fraden, sets his sights for power on a new destination, the planet Sangre. He invites along his mistress, the power-loving Sophia O'Hara, as well as General William Vanderling, a strategist Fraden hopes will easily knock over the military dictatorship on Sangre. The trio's plan is to peddle pleasure narcotics among the elite and sow discord among the rural villages, then wait for the right moment to engage with uber-weapons. The drugs work among the Brotherhood of Pain, leaders of Sangre, but rousing the villagers runs into a little trouble, one of an atavistic nature.