REBECCA LANGHAM
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review: rise of the resistance by jackie d

25/1/2019

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REVIEWED BY REBECCA

GENRE: Dystopian (light on the scifi)

PAIRING: F/F

HEAT LEVEL: Explicit (one scene)

WARNINGS: Lots. Racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, anti-refugee sentiments, murder, suggestions of rape etc. This is all presented all abhorrent, and most of it isn't detailed or explicit, but those confronting themes are there and some readers may wish to be aware of this going in.

REVIEW

Rise of the Resistance by Jackie D is, overall, a solid dystopian fiction that finds itself caught somewhere between being a thought-provoking and didactic political thriller, and a fairly typical lesbian romance with a generic futuristic backdrop. As a fan of the former who is somewhat tired of the latter, this was a difficult book for which to write a review.

Kaelyn Trapp, otherwise known as Phoenix One, is cryogenically frozen — one of a chosen four— sleeping away seventy years until the time is right to stage a coup and overthrow a morally bankrupt government. Arrow, Kaelyn’s guardian, a true believer in what this (potentially ignorant) Australian reader can only best describe as ‘the American Dream’, an idealistic woman of integrity, has worked her whole life to prepare for the war to come. What isn’t to love about this plot?

Exploring a future in which men like Donald Trump have not only been allowed to rule, but have been elevated to the cult-like status representative of many of history’s authoritarian dictatorships, this novel has plenty to offer. The ‘President’ and his heir, both MacLeod, make for fascinating reading. Jackie D explores how racist, homophobic, xenophobic leaders manage to seize, manipulate, and maintain power.

“First, he paid off a major media organisation. Its sole purpose was to discredit the others until people who were loyal to him only tuned in to that outlet…Next, he started to discredit our FBI…It didn’t matter how many of his statements were proven as lies, or how horrible his remarks about women and minorities…”

And I have no doubt that this novel has been inspired by a deep-rooted societal concern about Trump:

“Nora sat on the couch. She ran her hands down her form-fitting red dress. She was perfect. Hell, if she hadn’t been his own daughter, he probably would’ve tried to sleep with her by now.”

Nora, MacLeod’s daughter, is the character I found the most fascinating in this story. She’s deplorable in many ways, but also far more intelligent than her father, and the only member of the cast to do something that I found genuinely surprising. Nora is a political mastermind working within a patriarchal, sexist framework in which the inequalities of today have been exacerbated and even legalised. If Nora appears in the next book in some significant capacity, I’ll be reading it.

Kaelyn and Arrow are likeable, but also unremarkable. Kaelyn is said to be the absolute best person to restore democracy and freedom, but some aspects of her personality and supposed expertise struck me incongruent with this claim. She is good at giving speeches filled with a lot of platitudes and patriotism, but many of the finer aspects of leadership are left to the reader to assume. There were also some instances where her lack of knowledge (probably more for the reader’s benefit so that Arrow or her mother could then deliver an explanation) didn’t make sense to me. That said, I suspect she is meant to personify the traits of American culture that are most admirable, an ideological foundation of fairness and compassion. Which is just kinda nice, really.

Arrow is almost nauseatingly ‘good’, the proverbial knight-in-shining-armour, where even her faults are positive. I didn’t mind either of the two leading ladies, but I also didn’t feel particularly connected to the pair because they were presented as practically perfect. When someone in the novel pointed out the fact that these two were in their positions of power and influence because they’d been born to the ‘right’ families, I cheered a little. It had been frustrating me that two people, both born to presidents and living a fairly protected life, were apparently the only ones who could save America (and this is very much a book steeped in all things American). Arrow is a warrior who has a few action scenes that many readers will enjoy. I was pleased to see that Arrow didn’t resort to fatal gunshots as her first method of defence (or attack). 

The romance between Kaelyn and Arrow is, I imagine, what many readers will come to see. Given that the relationship frustrated me because it kept detracting from the dystopian elements I was enjoying so much as well as what I perceived as deep repetition of the “we shouldn’t go there because we have a duty to others” trope, lots of people will love it. But this is what I meant earlier when I said this book was, I thought, caught between wanting to be a standard romance ‘lesfic’, with the meet-desire-angst-denial-more angst-give in-deny again-HEA plot line many know and love, and a speculative fiction with a heck of a lot of meat on its bones. 

Readers like me will want less focus on the internal dialogue attached to the relationship and more exploration of the dystopian setting and its deep-rooted psychological conflicts. Romance-lovers will possibly want to see the reverse. You can see why this review got so long, right? I mean, I love parts of this book, but I also wanted to skip sections.

I have my fingers crossed that subsequent novels in the series will explore characters ‘on the ground’ so to speak, looking at History From Below. I think this will really draw out those complex social and political concepts that are there, but not quite developed. I’d be really interested to hear from anyone else who has read this one. What did you think?! 

PURCHASE from AMAZON, BOOK DEPOSITORY, or BOLD STROKE BOOKS.


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review: waking the dreamer by k. aten

7/12/2018

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PURCHASE LINK

REVIEWED BY REBECCA

Genre: SciFi
Pairing: F/F
Orientation: Lesbian
Sexual Content: (Fairly) Graphic
Content warnings: Abduction, Child Abuse/Psychological Torture, Scientific experimentation on humans, murder scenes
RATING: Four stars

BLURB:

By the end of the 21st century, the world had become a harsh place. After decades of natural and man-made catastrophes, nations fell, populations shifted, and seventy percent of the continents became uninhabitable without protective suits. Technological advancement strode forward faster than ever and it was the only thing that kept human society steady through it all. No one could have predicted the discovery of the Dream Walkers. They were people born with the ability to leave their bodies at will, unseen by the waking world. Having the potential to become ultimate spies meant the remaining government regimes wanted to study and control them. The North American government, under the leadership of General Rennet, demanded that all Dream Walkers join the military program. For any that refused to comply, they were hunted down and either brainwashed or killed.

The very first Dream Walker discovered was a five year old girl named Julia. And when the soldiers came for her at the age of twenty, she was already hidden away. A decade later found Julia living a new life under the government’s radar. As a secure tech courier in the capital city of Chicago, she does her job and the rest of her time avoids other people as much as she is able. The moment she agrees to help another fugitive Walker is when everything changes. Now the government wants them both and they’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.


REVIEW

I purchased this book as soon as I read that blurb. Dystopian future? Impact of climate change? Cool astral projecting dream walker types? Lesbians? Well, sign me up!

As someone who isn't especially enamoured with action scenes, my favourite part of this novel was the opening third. The descriptions of a plausible future were provocative, posing many of the classic questions that make sci-fi such a great genre, and answering those questions with a keen and discernible eye. I loved this line:

And humanity was left to harvest the fields we seeded with our own ignorance.

And then there's this:

The world was actually on the cusp of great change until one political leader tipped it all back into the dark-age. Figuratively, of course. It took just one powerful man to back out of climate initiatives, to roll back renewable energy programs, to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, and increase funding and subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. It was a far reaching ideological shift and the world paid for it. Being the “greatest country on Earth” meant that we led the other nations by example, poor though it was.

What's not to love? When the romance took over the book, I became a little less interested (just because it meant less attention was being paid to the futuristic world itself), but I know that's probably the part a lot of people will turn up for with this story -- I think this book is romance first and sci-fi second, despite the rich dystopian tones of the opening chapters. That's definitely not a bad thing, but I point this out because there are a handful of readers out there who prefer the situation in the reverse (a small handful, indeed, but I know we exist!).

Overall, the book is well-written and the relationships are developed quite nicely. There's a complex relationship between the individual and society, a theme I love to see explored in any book, but especially one like this with a flawed, (occasionally) morally reprehensible female lead who refuses to play by the rules set down by the Corporation. I mean, how great is this?...

He helped me find a new identity before agents came around to collect everyone with a serial number that had become more important than their name.

That one sentence says a lot, and reflects all of my favourite things in Waking the Dreamer. Power. Authority. Control. Censorship. Repression. Rebellion. Resilience. Great stuff, really! 

Now for the main thing that held me back from five stars (though, to be fair, four stars is the highest rating I've given for a while! It's pretty darn good). There are a few minor editing errors ('typos') but what book doesn't have those, right? I swear, you can read a manuscript fifty times and they still slip through, so that didn't really influence the rating very much. I may be in the minority here, but I didn't particularly enjoy the final chapter. I appreciate it was a twist, and many readers may find this sudden shift of the narrative arc to be exhilarating, shocking, and therefore fascinating, but for me, it detracted from the entire story and I wished I'd stopped reading at the end of the second-last chapter because that was a comfortable place to end. A place that didn't leave me confused enough to have to re-read passages and try to work out what had just happened. I love complexity in stories, and it may be the lack of sleep talking (thanks to my toddler who seems to have regressed to a screaming newborn recently), but I was more lost than anything.

Final chapter aside (and hey, you might LOVE the way it ends, my friends), t
his is an engaging book with much to say, though sometimes the love story overshadows the political and social guts of the tale. WAKING THE DREAMER is perfect for someone after balance between what might be considered traditional "lesfic", with the romantic and sexual elements, and the gritty, meaningful exploration of society that only comes with speculative fiction.
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REVIEW: The fox, the dog, and the king by matt doyle

13/10/2018

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New Hopeland City may have been built to be the centerpiece of the technological age, but some remnants of the old world still linger. The tools of the trade have changed, but the corruption remains the same, even in the criminal underworld …

When PI Cassie Tam and her girlfriend Lori try to make up for their recent busy schedules with a night out at the theatre to watch the Tech Shift performer Kitsune, the last thing they expected was for Cassie to get a job offer. But some people are never off the clock, and by the end of the evening, Cassie has been drawn into a mundane but highly paid missing pet case. Unfortunately, in New Hopeland City, even something as simple as little lost dog can lead you down some dark paths.
​

Until now, Cassie wasn’t aware that there even was a rabbit hole, let alone how far down it goes.
​Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Word Count: 58000
Sex Content: N/A
Orientation: Lesbian
Identity: Cisgender
Warnings: Depictions of graphic violence and mention of dogfights

​Reviewed by Rebecca

​Having read the first in this series, I was eager to get my hands on the second. The combination of noir and a not-too-distant-future setting remains intriguing. I'm also always happy to see women at the forefront of genre fiction, an area where there's still a lot of ground to cover in terms of diversity.

One of the strongest elements of the Cassie Tam Files is the development of Cassie's environment in both tangible and intangible terms. Doyle continues to expand New Hopeland, a city that grows and unfolds as a character in its own right. 

The city is caught between its industrial roots and a corporation-driven, technological future. As a past-meets-present hybrid (much like Cassie herself, who shares a sympathetic and symbiotic relationship with the city), New Hopeland is the perfect breeding ground for a complex criminal underworld; an underworld writhing with corruption and decay. But much like weeds that break through the foundations of an ancient building, that decay and destruction has become necessary to maintain the integrity of New Hopeland. The challenge for Cassie? To know which criminals hold New Hopeland together, and which threaten to tear the place apart. 

There's a sense of the anachronistic in The Fox, the Dog, and the King which, to me, works very well. Like today, there's a gap between what is possible with technology, and what people feel comfortable doing with it. Cassie seems a little behind-with-the-times, so to speak, but I would say most of today's population is, too. I own an iPhone, but I doubt I explore more than 10% of its capabilities. This aspect of her characterisation helps keep her grounded, likeable, and believable.

This book had, I believe, a better balance between movement and stagnation. I am not usually a reader of crime fiction, so in any detective story, I find it a challenge to follow extensive passages that explore the sleuth's inner thoughts and/or solo investigations into data and documents. This isn't a criticism of either of Doyle's books, but rather a comment on my own reading tastes and less-than-fantastic ability to follow technical or super-specific, complex descriptions. It's the same problem I have when I read 'hard' scifi. For readers who, like me, aren't always patient with crime fiction, you'll find this book more easy-going than Book 1 in the series. 

The F/F relationship between Cassie and Lori continues to unfurl itself in soft increments. Lori features quite a lot in the early chapters of the book but, as the case heats up, becomes a background character -- though she's never far from Cassie's thoughts. In terms of the other characters, I quite enjoyed Hanson and I hope we get to see more of her in the books to come. 

On the whole, this is another effectively constructed futuristic noir crime fiction from Matt Doyle. I love stories with a living, evolving setting and on that count, TFTFATK certainly delivers.

​You can purchase an EPUB or MOBI from the publisher's website, here. There are some brilliant discount codes available through the NineStar Press newsletter, too. If you prefer Amazon, click here.
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    ABOUT C.B.

    CURRENTLY ON HIATUS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDY AND WORK. 

    Book reviews, Author Q&As and more as shared by an Australian lesbian. My core interests lie in genre fiction: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror etc.
    ​
    My aim is to help provide more exposure to those books that  may not fit neatly into the usual "lesfic" boxes (EG: pansexual women who engage with different aspects of their sexuality, non-binary characters, books with very little romance etc.) or books that don't conform to the most popular tropes that tend to dominate the LGBTIQ+ publishing world.

    That said, I'll put up pretty much any review that I'd like to share. Most will have some sort of rainbow content, but not all. I am a reader who likes to talk about books -- that's really what this little corner of the web is for, to talk about books.

    ​Email: celestialbooks [AT] rebeccalangham.com.au


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