Kameron Hurley

I enjoyed this. I enjoy Hurley’s non-fiction writing much more than her fiction so far. Which is sad, I want to LOVE her fiction writing, but so far it’s just not been up my alley. There were two stand-out essays in this collection, The Horror Novel You’ll Never Have to Live: Surviving Without Health Insurance and We Have Always Fought: Challenging the “Women, Cattle, and Slaves” Narrative. The latter being the reason I discovered Hurley in the first place, and which fuelled my decision to purchase The Geek Feminist Revolution.

The former was even more horrifying than when Hurley wrote it last year, as one of the first acts the “President-elect” Trump intends to do once he takes office, is to repeal the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. It will be truly terrifying to live in the US again.… (more)

Es mas bien un 3,5 rozando el 4. Sinceramente, me ha parecido sobretodo la traca final una maravilla, pero lamentablemente me costó mucho entrar en la historia.

Quizá porque la ambientación es diferente a la que estoy acostumbrado y se me hacia muy dificil visualizar según que en mi mente, sobretodo las distancias y proporciones de ese pequeño pedazo de universo.

Aún así, tiene un ritmo vertiginoso y la capacidad de conectar con la protagonista por como esta narrado es excelente. La exploración que compone gran parte del libro dan forma a un viaje que te sorprende a cada giro.

Con ganas de leer más de Hurley.… (more)

I had been looking forward to this book for some time, based on a personal recommendation from someone whose judgement on these things is usually sound. What I found was some impressive world-building, though I got the feeling that the narrative stalled a bit when the actual plot kicked in - hey, we're on a war-torn alien desert planet settled 800 years ago by mainly Islamic populations but of all things we get a car chase! - but it pulled itself back and I finished it with a better impression that I'd thought I was going to have. Having said that, I'm probably not going to seek out the rest of the series, but I'll happily acquire them if I happen across them.

As I said, we are on a desert planet that has been settled for a good eight hundred years; but this isn't Dune. The world of Umayma wasn't settled because of unique resources, but instead because of religious politics. The settlers were all Muslims; centuries on and they have schismed and fallen into a savage war. Some Islamic traditions have survived; others have mutated - one nation has actually inverted the gender roles and now apply similar attitudes towards men and male roles that more fundamental strands of Islam apply to women in our world. But another holds to views and practices that we would recognise. Hurley identifies these, adding in overt racism and body horror. And a lot of insects. Biotechnology in this world has harnessed insects for a range of tasks, and a class of people - "magicians" - can manipulate these insects through biochemical means. (This is not magic as such but as Arthur Clarke would have said, to all intents and purposes it is indistinguishable from magic, so the coinage fits well enough.)

We are propelled into the life of Nyx, a female war veteran, former assassin (or 'bel dame') and now reduced to various bounty hunting and black courier jobs. Her career takes a number of bad turns, and we follow her and her team into increasingly perilous situations in pursuit of a wayward "alien" (actually a off-world human in pursuit of more bioweapon materials).

As I said, the world-building on show here is impressive. The manipulation of insects is convincingly portrayed; the Muslim faith and practice is painted sympathetically, although Hurley does not flinch from challenging some practices such as polygamy or (in passing) female genital mutilation. At the same time, Islam is shown to have adapted over eight hundred or more years in a range of different ways. And we are also shown a sub-culture of female boxing which is fairly unique in contemporary science fiction.

As I said, the female assassins in the book are referred to as 'bel dames'; I got the reference, but there's no clues anywhere in the text or the world-building itself to point less knowledgeable readers in the right direction. (And I had to stop myself thinking of Michael Flanders gloriously mis-translating it as "the beautiful woman who never says thank you".) (http://www.donaldswann.co.uk/flanders.html)

So: a violent and unsettling tale for a number of different reasons, depending on the reader's own viewpoint. I suspect many might react badly to this, as "a novel or characters I cannot relate to". Well, one reason I read science fiction is to be shown something outside my direct experience; and this book certainly does that.… (more)

In this dystopian SF novel Dietz is freshly recruited infantry soldier joining the fight on side of Earth corporations (Big Six) against aliens from Mars after MArtians manage to disappear entire Earth city.

To be clear aliens are not little grey men nor multi-limb creatures from nightmare. They are basically human colonists who gained independence from Earth Corporations and became the ultimate corpo-horror, socialists! with advanced technology

Due to the distances only way of transporting troops is by beaming them in form of light ray to the battlefield. And as one can imagine deconstructing someone into photons and then constructing them on the other end tends to have its bad-sides, not least of which is failure at re-construction of soldier on the far-away destination (if you remember that scene from Galaxy Quest movie then you know what I mean .... small technical glitch :)).

Very soon Dietz will find herself in very bad situation and if there is something corporate minds dont like is situations that cannot be fed to the masses. After unraveling details about what is going on Dietz will need to make capital decision on how to proceed and this might affect our entire world as we know it.

Story is fast paced and author manages very skillfully to navigate the non-linear story-line. Atmosphere is very palpable and brought to the reader in a very straight-to-the-matter-no-verbose way which is quite an achievement considering that in these situations authors sometimes overdo it and even invent entire new lingo. Corporations monitoring everyone by forcing them to use goggles and/or lenses so privacy is something you cannot have, social classes that are brutally divided in have and have-nots, harsh treating of soldiers and almost laboratory approach to treating their issues after multiple beam-ups, deadly confrontations with artillery and star-ships vaporizing everything in their path, constant lies and propaganda, cyberpunk-like inter-corporation conflicts.... in short this is very strong novel that relates to much of our own world today.

And final twist .... I can only say very sad but also very realistic approach to the problem.

Recommended to all fans of SF in general, military SF in particular.… (more)