Caliban's Way (Corey)

Caliban's Way by James S. A. Corey (2011)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

As previously noted: I watched the first season of The Expanse when it first aired on Syfy. I have to admit, I was somewhat lost and couldn't follow a lot of lost was going on. I couldn't even understand some of what was being said. Had I thought about it, I might've deleted the timer I had set for the series. However, I forgot to, so it taped the second season, which I watched and enjoyed more. I think a third season aired on Syfy before it moved to Amazon.

Comparing the book to the show: the first season of the show did not cover the entire first book. However, it did include characters from the second book, in particular, every character on Earth. The first half of the second season, which I recently rewatched, introduces a couple of Book Two characters in the first episode, setting them up for later, or repurposing them. The person whom I would call the "main" new character of Book Two, Prax, doesn't appear until halfway through the season when Ganymede is attacked (or about to be).

In Book Two, Prax is more the driving force, in my opinion, than Martian Gunnery Sergeant Draper, who is an important character, but more supporting the action than driving it. Having the Russian reverend be a former colleague of the UN Secretary General helped the narrative and allowed the character to be added early and given sufficient backstory for when she's needed in Book Three (which, thanks to the time off from this blog, I have already read).

In Book Two, the crew of the Rocinante is running missions for Fred Johnson for a year or so after the events of Book One. Miller, the dead detective, starts appearing to Holden whenever he's alone, warning about "door and corners" and clearing the room instead of blundering in. Meanwhile, on Ganymede, the largest food plant/greenhouses beyond the Belt, a child is kidnapped by her doctor and a strange woman posing as her mother. Her father Prax is an engineer. There's an attack on Ganymede by an protomolecule engineered soldier. Earth and Mars fight. Satellite mirrors crash. The greenhouse is destroyed. The ecosystem is spiraling into chaos and won't be salvageable.

The Roci crew is trying to bring aid. Prax hires them to find his daughter, who he discovers was kidnapped from the daycare center. His daughter has a genetic condition because of the astronomy of the situation (radiation, etc.), which makes her one of the better candidates to receive the protomolecule, which is still being researched. Meanwhile, stuff is happening on Venus, and the two sets of alien tech are talking to each other.

Cutting to the chase, it was a satisfying read, using some of the threads left from the first book, and adding more that may show up again later. It was worth the wait to get it from the library, but the size of the book put me off pace to finish my book club selection!

When You Had Power (Quinn)

When You Had Power
(Nothing Is Promised #1)
by Susan Kaye Quinn (2020)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I write. I don't sell a lot of stories but I write as many as I can. When I look at the markets open to me, a couple of trends show. First, lots of people like horror. Unfortunately, I'm not really one of them. Second, there are emerging genres out there that don't havea lot of content in them. The ones that piqued my interest (or at least got my attention) are solarpunk, hopepunk and lunarpunk. I'm not exactly sure what these are, or how the first two differ from the other. I get that "solarpunk" is supposed to be the antithesis of the popular "grimdark" future stories. The idea is that the world can have a bright future, if we work together and work with the Earth instead of against it. There's a streak of environmentalism (and climate change) built in. Side-note: "lunarpunk" doesn't take place on the Moon -- it's similar to solarpunk, only the setting is usually nighttime, and the asthetic should match (neon colors, etc.).

Since it's something relatively new, there's not a lot of stories and writers out there for it. That presents a little window of oppourtunity for writers wanting to jump in. But you have to know (that is, I have to know) something about the genre before I can write in it. And there isn't a lot out there to read. Certianly nothing that I could get from the library. So I did the next best thing, what I usually do, I went looking for freebies.

Susan Kaye Quinn has at least two series, which each one having the first book for free on Amazon (at least they were at the time I was looking). This "Nothing is Promised" series is supposed to be four connected novellas, but the first one is a bit open-ended. Too much was left for the next installment.

The title When You Had Power seems to be an effective play on words, refering to people in power and actually no longer having power in a world affected by climate change. A lot of changes happen in the next few decades. You hardly recognize the place (Earth, that is).

It's been a while, and the details can be found elsewhere on the web, but the main character starts the book being accepted/adopted into a group/family/home. She's working at a power plant on an island nearby. She discovers a problem and is suspended for a day while the problem is cleared up. (Why just a day? They didn't give themselves a lot of time.) She comes back and tries to prove that things have been tampered with, and someone tries to kill her by tampering with her diving suit. She survives, and lives to fight another day, along with her group family.

I wish I'd written soemthing when I read it. I could call this a benchmark story that I could measure others by. I won't judge a genre based on one book. However, I don't feel compelled to bu th enext one, and even though I have the first book in her other series, I might want to read a different author's take. I won't get a feel for the genre and its conventions otherwise.

If you're interested in solarpunk -- or is this hopepunk? -- give it a try. I believe I gave it 3 stars on Good Reads. It was definitely better written than anything I give 2 stars to, but not up there with the 4 star books either.

Updates Coming

This blog got away from me toward the end of the summer. I was reading quite a few things, trying to get through all of them, and not making headway anywhere.

That's not entirely true. Those Exapnse books are huge and take some time. I've finished 3 of them now.

I've also taken a couple other books from the library, one nonfiction and one an anthology, and I keep going back to them and then putting them aside after a while. However, I intend to finish both of them.

Likewise, I've started other things that were on my phone mostly because they were there. Since I plan to finish these and not abandon them, there won't be entries until I'm done.

That is all for now, except that I hope to start making entries in the next couple days.