Sections
Dune Messiah is a fascinating sequel that perfectly evolves the thematic discussion of the first book, framing its protagonist as a complicated tyrant, whose conflicting characteristics make him both terrifying and tragic. It’s a novel that falters only in its very brief length, with a climax that comes too soon, leaving some of the important characters underdeveloped.
The epigraph that opens the book is fascinating. It asks us to see the main character, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, as a human being, disregarding his special powers and abilities. It’s urging us to strip him of whatever makes him supernatural, a character belonging to the realm of fantasy, and ground him in [...]
Driving the Deep is a successful sequel to Suzanne Palmer’s Finder, offering a similar adventure, where the protagonist meets strange people and visits memorable places, full of all kinds of danger. The standout here is the setting, an underwater facility that is both isolated and heavily guarded.
After saving a space station and surviving meeting with a race of inscrutable aliens in Finder, Fergus Ferguson finds himself with a much more difficult task to perform at the beginning of Driving the Deep: dealing with past mistakes and apologizing to his cousin. Ferguson is a fearless man when it comes to shootouts and fighting thugs in space, but when it’s time to face his family, [...]
The first installment in The Machineries of Empire trilogy, Ninefox Gambit is a curious sci-fi novel: despite its complex and almost inscrutable lore, which revolves around calendars affecting technology, and the scope of its plot, which revolves around a siege of a space fortress, Ninefox Gambit offers a tightly focused narrative about just two characters. Its main mistake, therefore, is its reluctance to evolve their relationship beyond its initial stages, content in just laying the groundwork for the books to come.
The protagonist is Kel Cheris, a disgraced captain of the Kel army, who is called upon to lead a siege at the Fortress of Scattered Needles. She must fight [...]
The Water Knife, a sci-fi thriller written by Paolo Bacigalupi, presents a dystopian world that is disturbing in its verisimilitude. The novel, however, is ultimately dragged down by shallow main characters, having to resort to shock value to hold our attention.
The story is built around three main points of view: there’s the journalist Lucy, who needs to find out the story behind the murder of a dear friend; there’s a young woman, Maria, who wants to leave the militia-controlled area where she lives in; and the water knife, Angel, a mercenary hired by private companies to “cut” and divert water from certain regions.
The world of The Water Knife is set in a [...]
The Wrong Stars is a fast-paced space opera structured around the dangerous allure of mysteries. The main characters are perfectly aware that some things are better left alone, untouched, but they can’t help it. Human beings are drawn to the unknown like moths to light: the characters must uncover the many secrets the universe holds even if that means facing massive golden spiders.
The story follows the crew of the White Raven, a small ship captained by Callie Machedo, which is employed by a big space corporation to hunt down pirates and scavengers. One fateful day, they come across an ancient exploration vessel, sent 500 years ago to discover habitable planets, floating in [...]
Altered Carbon is little concerned with the philosophical implications of its incredible premise, preferring to put all its focus on the political aspects of its fantastic world. Written by Richard Morgan, this cyberpunk novel is not interested in how the characters deal with issues of memory and identity, but in how they manage to resist the constant oppression of a capitalist society that never stops discovering new ways to abuse those elements.
The story opens with the protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, being killed by the police. When he wakes up, his conscience is already installed in another body, and his only chance of freedom is tied to a single condition: he is hired by [...]