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), this 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.

​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.

IN A WORLD OUT OF TIME, LOVE IS AN ALIEN CONCEPT

It might take the arrival of an alien being to remind an isolated man what it means to be human.

With a stressful job, his boss breathing down his neck for profitable results, and an estranged wife and daughter, scientist Kurt Lomax doesn’t think life can get much harder. Until a nonbinary extraterrestrial with an otherworldly beauty, captivating elegance, and a wicked sense of humor inconveniently shows up at his apartment.

Vardam watched the destruction of their own world, and they don’t want to see the same thing happen on Earth. They are lonely, and feelings soon develop between them and the supposedly straight scientist—feelings Kurt reciprocates, much to his confusion.

The arrival of cheery interpreter Tom Soames—whose Goth appearance belies a gentle heart—is like a ray of sunshine in the somber lab. He acts as matchmaker for man and tentacled extraterrestrial, unwittingly instigating a national crisis when the news breaks out.

But will a misunderstanding ruin Kurt and Vardam’s chances for happiness together—along with the hope for peace between humanity and the Var?

Reviewed by Rebecca

GENRE: Sci-Fi

MAIN PAIRING: M/Enby

RATING: 3.75 stars

REVIEW

Gosh this was a tricky one to try and rate! Books like this make me wish I'd foregone the concept of stars and ratings altogether here on ceLEStial books, because sometimes you can't really reduce your impressions of a story to a simple number. I went with a 'safe' rating at just under 4 stars, because to me, 4 stars means "I loved it!" and 3 means "This is pretty good." And Euphoria lies somewhere in between.

The classical sci-fi lover in me really appreciated several aspects of Lockwood's story. The concept of time travel to prevent a horrific future for humanity is a trope I've loved since I was a child and first watched the film Twelve Monkeys. I felt somewhat lost in the opening chapter set a hundred years ahead of the bulk of the novel's events, though I could follow enough of what was happening to be hooked into seeing how the time travelling alien's story would progress.

The chapters that followed did an excellent job of exploring the life of a man who has achieved much (but not all) of what he has set out to achieve but, as a result, lost many of the things he'd failed to realise were right in front of him. He's so obsessed with his work that he's lost touch with his family and, whether he intended it or not, become something of a recluse who struggles to connect with others. I personally thought some of these passages were the best in the entire book. The characterisation was at its strongest here! That said, I'm one of those few readers who prefers prose over action and inner-monologue over explosions.

The arrival of Vardam was expertly written. Lockwood's descriptions of Kurt's first impressions of this strange, tentacled (ie. truly alien) creature were believable and fascinating. Given Kurt is a man of science, his mixture of awe, curiosity, and even a degree of stoicism during some moments, seemed completely plausible. The communication issues between them added a culturally intriguing layer to these interactions that I quite enjoyed. It reminded me a little of when the main character in Octavia Butler's Dawn first meets her captors. And given how much I love that book, it's promising that such a comparison struck me as I read Euphoria.

Kurt is one of those characters who carries a lot of emotional baggage because of traumatic events in his past. It's a perfectly good plot device, but I must admit that after a very, very long string of books where the main characters personalities are heavily influenced by sad or traumatic events, I'm ready to read something different. That may well have held me back from 4 stars or higher, which isn't necessarily fair on this novel, but that's why stars/ratings are sometimes a fairly crude instrument in a review. I didn't entirely love his romance with Vardam, something about it felt forced, but I don't read very many books with male protagonists so, again, maybe I need to say: it's not you, Euphoria, it's me.

As the novel continued, I moved back and forth between being completely engrossed, somewhat disconnected, and a little perturbed. I know that MPREG is a popular trope, or perhaps you could even consider it a sort of sub-genre, I honestly don't know, but it's not something I was expecting when I started the book and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I've heard some writers and readers discuss MPREG as a potentially offensive narrative device that fetishises minorities, whilst other articles I've read suggest it's quite a liberating concept that many readers, trans, enby, and cis alike, can engage with and enjoy. The science and reasoning behind this aspect of the novel felt fitting within the book's universe but I don't know enough about this kind of plot development to feel I can make a judgement of any kind. So I'll just point out that it happens, and let others who know what they're talking about delve into the merits of such developments.

The writing itself is pretty darn good. Some descriptions and conversations had me nodding at my Kindle, like, Yep -- nice writtin' there, Jayne. As a fan of sci-fi stories built upon the back of corrupt corporations and explorations of gender, Euphoria had lots to offer me, and I'm glad I read it.

As one final note, I have to say that I adore the cover! The tagline is also so perfect I want to cry with jealousy that I can't come up with something that cool for my own books.

​You can buy Euphoria here (publisher) and here (Amazon).