Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Title: Chain-Gang All-Stars

Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Publisher: Pantheon 2023

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 367

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Cover Lover - A weapon

Where I Got It: Library

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are com­peting for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
 
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thur­war and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE’s corporate own­ers will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.
 
Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alli­ance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review)..

Not going to sugar coat this one, this book was a rough experience. The story opens with extreme violence and does not let up until the end. We get a very important, serious look at racial justice, the prison system, and our attitudes toward punishment. The book has the potential to open some eyes to the path that we are on. And yes, the violence is an important aspect of that. I think that I read this book at the wrong time. I’m in the midst of a depression spiral triggered by life and the state of the world around me. I just found it so difficult to pick this book up on any day. Had to force myself to read it, which is not the attitude I am trying to cultivate with my reading right now. Should be an interesting book club discussion in a few months…

Next up on the TBR pile:

Obsidio by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Title: Gemina (The Illuminae Files #3)

Author: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Publisher: Knopf Books 2018

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 618

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; In Case You Missed It - 2018

Kady, Ezra, Hanna, and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza--but who knows what they'll find seven months after the invasion? Meanwhile, Kady's cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza's ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys--an old flame from Asha's past--reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heros will fall, and hearts will be broken.

And we come to the end of The Illuminae Files! After a slight dip in book two, I’m back to another 5 star rating for this volume. I loved seeing all three of our main couples come together to repel the BeiTech fleet on Kerenza and get the truth out there. I probably didn’t really need the added “twist” about Frobisher (seriously, who didn’t see that coming?), but loved all the other turns of the plot. We get a big massive science fiction action adventure story with some great lively characters. I loved seeing Kady and Hanna really take charge and lead the entire crew. I loved seeing Ezra, Nik, and everyone else support them. We get happy endings, while also acknowledging all of the losses. This entire series felt like the best of the Battlestar Galactica television series. No “plan” from the beings here. Just action and survival. I will miss this series greatly.

The Illuminae Files

• #0.5 Memento

• #1 Illuminae

• #2 Gemina

• #3 Obsidio

Next up on the TBR pile:

Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Title: Gemina (The Illuminae Files #2)

Author: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Publisher: Knopf Books 2016

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 659

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love

Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.
     The sci-fi saga that began with the breakout bestseller Illuminae continues on board the Jump Station Heimdall, where two new characters will confront the next wave of the BeiTech assault.
     Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy's most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
     When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station's wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.
     But relax. They've totally got this. They hope.
     Once again told through a compelling dossier of emails, IMs, classified files, transcripts, and schematics, Gemina raises the stakes of the Illuminae Files, hurling readers into an enthralling new story that will leave them breathless.

I am totally in with this series. Kicking myself for not reading it sooner! For the second book, we switch to Heimdall to meet two new characters and follow them through a harrowing action story. Hanna and Nik are fun characters (arguably Nik is way more fun than Ezra from Illuminae). We get another badass young woman who takes the rescue of the station very personally. We follow Hanna and Nik as they go up against an elite extermination squad and some unwanted newborns. I know that some people will be very grossed out by the aliens, but I loved the horror fun. This is my book series! I cannot wait to see what happens in the third book.

The Illuminae Files

• #0.5 Memento

• #1 Illuminae

• #2 Gemina

• #3 Obsidio

Next up on the TBR pile:

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Title: Annie Bot

Author: Sierra Greer

Publisher: Mariner Books 2024

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 231

Rating: 2/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; 52 Book Club - Plot similar to another book

Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard.

She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s AI makes her seem more like a real woman, so Annie explores human traits such as curiosity, secrecy, and longing. But becoming more human also means becoming less perfect, and as Annie’s relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder: Does Doug really desire what he says he wants? And in such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?

CW: Sexual assault

My Nerdy Bookish Friends pick for the month and I am thoroughly disappointed. This slim book attempts to take on the question, are sentient robots human? But it fails to actually examine the question too deeply. Annie was a difficult character to root for, but I really wanted to. I wanted to see a story more like Bicentennial Man or AI or even Alex + Ada. I wanted to get in any of the threads in this book, from Doug’s responsibilities to Irving’s job. But we stay in a very slim space and just constantly repeat how much Annie tries to please Doug. I usually don’t get too upset over trigger warnings and such, but this book has so many sexual assault scenes that I couldn’t really enjoy it. I’m going to miss the book discussion due to travel, but that’s okay. I don’t really want to pick apart why I dislike this book. Overall, I felt very icky reading Annie’s story.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

Title: Book of M

Author: Peng Shepherd

Publisher: William Morrow 2018

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 489

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; 52 Book Club - Told in Non-chronological Order

Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

After reading Shepherd’s later book, The Cartographers, I wasn’t sure that I would like this one. But a ton of people thought I might, and they were right. This is a very thought provoking and moody tale. It reminds me of The Road and The Walking Dead but without the absolute bleakness of those stories. The story starts out pretty straight forward, but becomes weirder and weirder as we go along. At some point, the reader just has to accept the weirdness and keep moving forward. Many aspects of the shadowless are not explained, but that’s not really the point here. The point is an examination of how memories make us, how memories create our identities and allow us to live in the world. I found myself wondering about all the things that make up me. A much more thought provoking book than her later works.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Title: Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1

Author: Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Publisher: Knopf Books 2025

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 608

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; 52 Books - Secret in Title (totally fudging this one)

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do. This afternoon, her planet was invaded.
      The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than a speck at the edge of the universe. Now with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to evacuate with a hostile warship in hot pursuit.
     But their problems are just getting started. A plague has broken out and is mutating with terrifying results; the fleet’s AI may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a web of data to find the truth, it’s clear the only person who can help her is the ex-boyfriend she swore she’d never speak to again.

I remember when this book came out and I was very intrigued, but so busy with other things that I forgot about it. Years later, I picked it up at a used book store and finally started reading it. And I read it in 2 1/2 days. Yep! 600 pages in 2 1/2/ days. I could not put this one down. I had to see what was going to happen. I had to see if Kady and Ezra ever got back together in person. I had to see if the AIDAN just decided to kill everyone. I had to know the outcome of the story. More than anything, this is a space action adventure story. We are dumped right into the action and it never really lets up. Even at the end, we hare hurtling toward the unknown. I loved the mixed media/document style of the book. My favorite parts were the sections of AIDAN’s internal logs. Those were fascinating. This fast paced adventure was exactly what I needed this week to get me out of a bad head space.

The Illuminae Files

• #0.5 Memento

• #1 Illuminae

• #2 Gemina

• #3 Obsidio

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Morningside by Téa Obreht

Title: The Morningside

Author: Téa Obreht

Publisher: Random House 2024

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 304

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf

There’s the world you can see. And then there’s the one you can’t. Welcome to the Morningside.

After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-so-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia’s aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family’s past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia’s lonely and impoverished reality.

Enchanted by Ena’s stories, Silvia begins seeing the world with magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside. Bezi Duras is an enigma to everyone in the building: She has her own elevator entrance and leaves only to go out at night and walk her three massive hounds, often not returning until the early morning. Silvia’s mission to unravel the truth about this woman’s life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything.

This was my other pick for the retreat book club discussion. I was very intrigued by the summary but feel like this one left me a little flat. I couldn’t quite decide what this book was really about. On the surface, we shoved into a world ravaged by climate change. We follow a family of refugees as they try to find a place on the new island. We touch on the effects of climate change, social upheaval, and economic downturn. At times, the author really hammers home the realities of a breakdown in society. All of that was very interesting and kept me reading. But the characters were so hard to root for! The entire time, Silvia’s mother keeps everything so close that we never really get to know her. I struggled to connect with any of the main characters. They seemed to lack depth and substance. And finally we throw in a dash of magical realism. I was not a fan of that portion of the book. It seemed out of place and not well-fleshed out a theme. I wanted more from this book. Looking forward to discussing at the retreat this weekend.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Title: Beautyland

Author: Marie-Helene Bertino

Publisher: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2024

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 336

Rating: 2/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Such a bait and switch book! I was very intrigued by the science fiction aspect in the summary. I wanted to read an interesting story about an alien being who “lives” as a human and attempts to teach the other aliens about us. I was hoping for The Mountain in the Sea vibes with discussions about humanity and nature of life. Instead we get a very standard coming of age story. Even worse, we are meant to think that Adina is an alien when she’s heavily coded at autistic. Portraying an autistic person as an alien really left an icky taste in my mouth. Beyond that, the story just goes nowhere. I was at times enraged but mostly bored.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Magician by Rebecca Serle

Title: The Magician

Author: Rebecca Serle

Publisher: Amazon 2023

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 25

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 52 Book Club.- Magical Realism

A mother-to-be is awed by her own mother’s chaotic and unknowable approach to life and its natural mysteries in a smart, witty, and whimsical story by the New York Times bestselling author of One Italian Summer.

Growing up with an eccentric but loving mother who levitates for a living, Charlie always wondered, How does she do it? Defying gravity is no easy trick. Neither is motherhood. Now that her mother is leaving New York for bigger skies in New Mexico, it’s a new stage in life for both of them in an ever-evolving relationship that reveals the true magic of being a mother.

I was not a fan of the previous Serle book that I had read, but was intrigued by the summary of this one. Should have listened to my gut reaction and left this one unborrowed. Despite the magical realism, this is really a story of a mother and daughter going their separate ways. I didn’t love the ending and the (in my opinion) shoe-horned in magic. It just didn’t do it for me.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Signal Moon by Kate Quinn

Title: Signal Moon

Author: Kate Quinn

Publisher: Amazon 2022

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 57

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: COYER

Yorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption.

One night, she picks up a transmission that isn’t code at all—it’s a cry for help.

An American ship is taking heavy fire in the North Atlantic—but no one else has reported an attack, and the information relayed by the young US officer, Matt Jackson, seems all wrong. The contact that Lily has made on the other end of the radio channel says it’s…2023.

Across an eighty-year gap, Lily and Matt must find a way to help each other: Matt to convince her that the war she’s fighting can still be won, and Lily to help him stave off the war to come. As their connection grows stronger, they both know there’s no telling when time will run out on their inexplicable link.

Do not let the short length fool you. Kate Quinn packs this short story with so much plot and characterization that you would swear that it had to be longer. But at the same time, the prose does not lag. I zipped through this story and then wished that I could turn around and read it again for the first time. With a very quick but concise setup, we are thrown into the mystery of the transmission as Lily tries to understand what she just heard. From there, we switch to Matt and piece the two storylines together. I was absolutely tearing up by end of the story. There’s a reason that Quinn is one my favorite writers.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Title: Sea of Tranquility

Author: Emily St. John Mandel

Publisher: Knopf 2022

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 255

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; Unread Shelf RC - June (About a journey)

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

I picked this one for book club on the strengths of Mandel’s earlier work, Station Eleven. I really disliked her work The Glass Hotel, but hoped that the new one was return to the type pf story I love. And it definitely delivered. We get a speculative fiction story that’s ultimately about the human experience. As we piece together the larger narrative story, we get to connect to different people and time periods only to realize that each story shares many element of life. We get to see how people struggle with identity and family. We see characters wrestle with the concept of mortality. And we see characters embrace joy. This book isn’t very long, but it packs a punch. I’ll be thinking about scenes and quotes in this book for months to come. I would’t be surprised if it makes it to my Top 10 of 2022.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Title: The Handmaid's Tale

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: 1985

Genre: Speculative Fiction

Pages: 325

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Popsguar - Classic from 20th Century; What's in a Name - Profession; Women Authors

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....

A reread for this month's book club. I first read The Handmaid's Tale way back in college for one of my women's studies classes. I was blown away by the parallels to our current society. I love Atwood's presentation of this tale that may or not be true. Offred is an intriguing character full of contradictions. I love that she is a flawed character. She could be anyone. We join her on a journey through the treacherous world of Gilead. I can't wait to have a great book club discussion.