Who Steals Falcons
Dec. 27th, 2012 03:54 pmNnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
I read Okorafor's Zahra the Windseeker a few months ago and thought it was a deeply original and imaginative YA / middle-grade novel, with a plot that didn't hold up at all. Who Fears Death is her first adult book. It maintains the originality and tones down the imagination a bit, and has a plot that hangs together pretty well too. It's that peculiar breed of fantasy that's set on what might be a future Earth, with magic and advanced tech coexisting more or less peacefully.
It's also about rape, and race, and rage, and growing up and learning who you are. I am really not sure what else to say about this: it's like nothing else I've read. Recommended. (It's also got a callback to Zahra the Windseeker, for good measure.)
Nancy Kress, Steal Across the Sky
Near-future SF. In the first half aliens arrive and tell us that ten thousand years ago they picked up some number of humans and dropped them on other planets as an experiment. Now they want to atone for experimenting on us, so they take a handful of human visitors to the other planets and drop them there to figure out what it is the aliens are atoning for. This is kind of a bombshell revelation, and the second half of the book is humanity dealing with that revelation.
Solid characters; fascinating alien cultures; questionable science; shaky post-revelation plot. Interesting, but more interesting than good.
Emma Bull, Falcon
Falcon reads like two short books that happen to have been published under the same cover.
The first book follows Dominic 'Niki' Glyndwyr-Jones, wastrel youngest son of the ruling dynasty on a colony founded by the Welsh, as his planet's economy collapses and turns into a police state. Niki develops a social conscience, starts sneaking out at night to help the resistance, uncovers a far-reaching plot to destabilise his planet's government, and barely escapes offworld with his life.
The second book picks up some years later. It's a sequel to the first so far as it has some of the same characters and explains a few of the mysteries left behind in the wake of Niki's flight. Niki Falcon is now an experimental pilot, the last of his program. He takes on a contract to a planet that's in some jeopardy, and political hijinks ensue. Ultimately he unravels the plot and does a bit of growing up.
The trouble with these books is that they're both so thin. There's just enough worldbuilding and secondary character development to carry the story, but not (quite) enough for the emotional payoff. I wanted more: more of Niki's relations with his family, more of what the resistance is doing, maybe more of the other gestalt pilots (though, maybe not). There are bits that I remember as being deeply affecting: Spin's ship, Laura's last hurrah. Most of that effect is from memory, and from how it resonates for the rest of the book. It deserves more impact in the moment.
Which is not to say that Falcon is a bad book: far from it. I think I read it because I didn't want to reread Growing Up Weightless yet again, and it served well enough. But I wanted it to be so much more.
I read Okorafor's Zahra the Windseeker a few months ago and thought it was a deeply original and imaginative YA / middle-grade novel, with a plot that didn't hold up at all. Who Fears Death is her first adult book. It maintains the originality and tones down the imagination a bit, and has a plot that hangs together pretty well too. It's that peculiar breed of fantasy that's set on what might be a future Earth, with magic and advanced tech coexisting more or less peacefully.
It's also about rape, and race, and rage, and growing up and learning who you are. I am really not sure what else to say about this: it's like nothing else I've read. Recommended. (It's also got a callback to Zahra the Windseeker, for good measure.)
Nancy Kress, Steal Across the Sky
Near-future SF. In the first half aliens arrive and tell us that ten thousand years ago they picked up some number of humans and dropped them on other planets as an experiment. Now they want to atone for experimenting on us, so they take a handful of human visitors to the other planets and drop them there to figure out what it is the aliens are atoning for. This is kind of a bombshell revelation, and the second half of the book is humanity dealing with that revelation.
Solid characters; fascinating alien cultures; questionable science; shaky post-revelation plot. Interesting, but more interesting than good.
Emma Bull, Falcon
Falcon reads like two short books that happen to have been published under the same cover.
The first book follows Dominic 'Niki' Glyndwyr-Jones, wastrel youngest son of the ruling dynasty on a colony founded by the Welsh, as his planet's economy collapses and turns into a police state. Niki develops a social conscience, starts sneaking out at night to help the resistance, uncovers a far-reaching plot to destabilise his planet's government, and barely escapes offworld with his life.
The second book picks up some years later. It's a sequel to the first so far as it has some of the same characters and explains a few of the mysteries left behind in the wake of Niki's flight. Niki Falcon is now an experimental pilot, the last of his program. He takes on a contract to a planet that's in some jeopardy, and political hijinks ensue. Ultimately he unravels the plot and does a bit of growing up.
The trouble with these books is that they're both so thin. There's just enough worldbuilding and secondary character development to carry the story, but not (quite) enough for the emotional payoff. I wanted more: more of Niki's relations with his family, more of what the resistance is doing, maybe more of the other gestalt pilots (though, maybe not). There are bits that I remember as being deeply affecting: Spin's ship, Laura's last hurrah. Most of that effect is from memory, and from how it resonates for the rest of the book. It deserves more impact in the moment.
Which is not to say that Falcon is a bad book: far from it. I think I read it because I didn't want to reread Growing Up Weightless yet again, and it served well enough. But I wanted it to be so much more.