Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Review by Bowden P. (Trey)

Rule 34 picks up five years after the events of Halting State. Its a sort of sequel, because Liz, coder and Sue are nowhere to be found (I assume coder & Liz are busy working for the government and Sue has earned a well deserved promotion). Instead our guides to the weird and disturbing world of police and criminals in the 21^st century are:

Liz Kavanaugh, one of our two points of continuity with Halting State. Formerly a high flying star with a lot of potential, but after her involvement in the events of Halting State she’s been on a long term punishment detail heading up the ICIU – Internet Criminal Intelligence Unit – aka the Rule 34 squad. Yes, that Rule 34.

Anwar, a recently paroled computer criminal and poster child for the Dunning Kruger effect. He’s also bisexual, a family man Pakistani-Scottish and nominally Muslim.

The Toymaker, someone who’s true name is never learned and I’d like to avoid meeting ever. He’s a violent criminal, practicing what he calls Gangster 2.0 (criminal enterprise without the inefficient management), talks a good line of self serving patter and is a sociopathic schizophrenic. He’s also a very broken human being.

We also get minor viewpoint characters from a minor criminal (Jaxxie), to a poly- corporate ethics auditor, a professor and Kemal – the cop in black from Europol in Halting State.

So what do we have? A wild tale of of technologically influenced crime and policing. It starts with a two wetsuit fatal accident that summons Liz to the scene. It has Anwar taking advice from a sometime lover leading to a consular job for an odd new country. Then we meet Jaxxie a local crook that’s fairly savvy, but “no likie the learning”and leads to the Toymaker who has to clean up after Jaxxie’s screw up.

As it moves along we get to know them all and learn that there have been a series of unlikely “accidents” affecting spammers and other internet criminals (like the “fatal accident” that brings Liz to the scene. Then things begin to get rolling.

Rule 34 is frequently neat (ICIU, drones sniffing out dog poop, Segways as police drones, widespread 3D printers (and the DRM and crime that goes with them)) and disturbingly widespread to ubiquitous surveillance (and what it takes to avoid the same), ruthless government plans and execution of those plans. Its also pretty liberal for a crime thriller. None of the major viewpoint characters are heteronormative.

I liked this a lot, a lot more than the e-ARC I’d read. The minor characters have more of a role and do more to connect the major characters as well as move the action along. It also brings the panopticon singularity in a big way.

Folks, go out and get this book. Five stars easily. Its fun, disturbing, thought provoking and occasionally (if uncomfortably funny.

Likes: Cop space augmented reality; Life logs and the chain of evidence; The idea of Gangster 2.0; Liz Kavanaugh; 3D printers and what its version of ransom ware and penis enlargement spam is like; the ICIU for all that its a brutal posting; Artificial intelligence vs. artificial identification; The economics and global political maneuvering.

Dislikes: The Toymaker’s aliases – those got a bit heavy handed; The fact that the characters couldn’t do a thing against Athena.

Suggested for: Charles Stross fans; folks who liked Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez and This Is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams. I’d also suggest it those who enjoyed Cory Doctorow’s For The Win, Makers and Little Brother.

Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair

Review by Cynthia (Frazerc)

I love Linnea Sinclair’s books – all of them – but this is one of my very favorites.  It’s one I have to keep getting new copies of because I keep giving mine away to friends, acquaintances, perfect strangers [well, not really PERFECT strangers].  But when you have a book you love you just want to share…

Our heroine is Tasha Sebastian lives in interesting times.  She is currently the captain of a U-Cee huntership and a veteran of the recent war between the United Coalition and the Triad.  But before that she had other names and other lives…

Our hero is Admiral Branden Kel-Paten, brilliant strategist, military leader and a human who has been altered physically, mentally and most of all cybernetically.  He can interface directly with his ship and there are those who say “Tin Soldier” is more ‘cybe than human.  But they’re wrong…

As part of the treaty, ‘mixed’ ships are being established and Kel-Paten has specifically requested Tasha for his first officer.  Thus begin the games of command;  why did he ask for her, what does he want?

Enter a second plot starring the empathic best friend of Tasha, Doctor Eden Fynn, and Jace Serafino, renegade Nasyry priest, telepath, and all round rogue.  Kel-Paten would like to squeeze every drop of information out of Serafino personally.

And then there are the furzels, Tank and Reilly.  They are rather cat-like in nature with some VERY special abilities.  Even more special than their humans, Tasha and Eden, know because they can identify and sometimes the true evil creatures which they simple call ‘Bad Things’.  They know the Bad Things are watching their people and resolve to protect them…

Her world building is consistently outstanding and the world of Games of Command is no exception.  The poignancy of Kel-Paten’s love and the utter wrongness of what was done to him grab your heart. Tight, page-turning plot, great characters [and her aliens are outstanding] and dialog that grabs you – it is a must read.

Unfortunately this is a stand-alone novel.  Sigh.  But I’m still hoping…

LIONHEART by Sharon Kay Penman

Review by Jerelyn (I-F-Letty)

I have read Lionheart twice and have just had the extreme pleasure of listening to it.  Yes finally a Penman novel on audio.  The Narrator Emily Grey does a fine job and one of the things I like most about listening to an audio book is for the pronunciation of languages I am unfamiliar with.

Ms. Penmen’s works are dense and take concentration, the world often fades away as I read or in this case listen to her work, and when I am interrupted it takes time for me to come back to myself.

Lionheart is the 4th book in the Angevin saga that will end up spanning five  books. The 5^th book is also a bridge to her earlier work: Here be Dragons and the accompanying books collectively known as the Welsh trilogy.  But all of Ms. Penman’s books can stand alone.  I am a devotee of Penman’s work and have read and reread all of her books.  She never ceases to amaze me with her skill; her writing is as close to perfection as one could ask.  She is a novelist true but she offers characters so fully rendered, that at times you have to remember to tell yourself that besides the thorough research, the rest is supposition. She gets the psychology of the characters right, and their reactions to situations are so real that it is uncanny.  She knows the history, customs, morals, the religion and the political climate of the time period, I feel very comfortable with her conclusions.

Richard I has been a prisoner of propaganda for so long that it must have been a mammoth undertaking, separating the wheat from the chaff so to speak.  Sharon Penman is one of the only people I can imagine trusting to do this.  She shuns the salacious, and as in the case of Richard’s Queen Berengaria (about which very little is actually know) Sharon give an intelligent hypothesis of what she was like, going on the knowledge of the time period, customs, and practices of noble women in the last years of the 12^th and early 13^th centuries; and leaves us with a fully fleshed out believable character.

So whether you are like me and love to read whatever Ms. Penman writes, or you want a painstakingly researched and thoroughly readable history of the third crusade with a story to accompany the facts, I cannot recommend Lionheart highly enough.  5 stars!