Booklog 53/2025: Kameron Hurley: The Stars are Legion – Audiobook

Audiobook narrated by Nicole Pool and Teri Schnaubelt

Organic worldships, peopled by women, are part of the Legion, but ships/worlds are slowly dying.

Zan awakes on Katazyrna with no memory after trying to enter a world-ship called the Mokshi - again. She has survived the raid, barely, but hasn't succeeded in gaining either entry or knowledge. Her sister, Jayd is the daughter of Anat, leader of the Katazyrna, a clan that lives by raiding other worlds. They have their sights set on the Mokshi, but so does the Bhavaja clan, their sworn enemies. Zan and Jayd have a plan, unfortunately Zan can't remember it, but Jayd forges ahead - sent to the Bhavajas by her unfeeling mother to marry Rasida, the murderous Bhavaja leader. This is to seal a truce, but the Bhavaja's break the truce immediately. Katazyrna is compromised and Zan is recycled to the dark and dangerous lower levels, findng new companions and reclaiming threads of memory (most of them not very useful).

I'm sorry if this description sounds garbled. The story is complex. People are either not who they thought they were or are unreliable narrators. The world concept is strange. There's a lot of slime and gore, a high body-count, grand-scale lies and betrayal. The worldbuilding is, in part, brilliant, but let down by lack of clarity. Sure, you can just go with it, but the worldships are never explained, we have no idea of their size or shape, or how they work. Yes everyone is a lesbian - hard not to be in a world of women, and what does it matter anyway? Women get pregnant spontaneously, and give birth to things that the worldships require, not necessarily to children - in fact children are very rare and seem to be prized, however adults are largely canon-fodder, their lives discarded willy-nilly.

Yes, I know this book won a Hugo, but there were times when I almost gave up on it, however, credit where it's due, the narrators did an excellent job and I gritted my teeth an made it to the end - just.

Booklog 54/2025: Jim C Hines: Slayers of Old

What happens to slayers or Chosen Ones, when they start to age and want to retire? In this case, a former Hunter of Artemis (Jenny), a very elderly wizard (Temple), and a half-succubus former PI (Annette) settle down together to run Second Life Books in Salem, MA, in a sentient house. Annette's grandkids come to visit and all is cosy in this peaceful town until some of the locals start to summon things better left in the demon realms. Our three retired heroes have to try to save the world one more time, and while doing do save some misguided kids who've been turned to the demon side. Expect a haunted van, a cat with tentacles and a looming apocalypse.

The story is told in rotating chapters from all three main character viewpoints. It's quirky and fun despite being horror-adjacent. Jim C Hines can always be relied on to entertain.

Booklog 55/2025: Julian Simpson and others: Temporal – Audiobook

Narrated by Nicola Walker and a full cast. An Audible Original presented as a radio play. In the near future a crew of scientists launch from Earth on a Mars mission. By the time they get there, all humans on Earth have simply vanished. Against all odds they survive, start a colony and thrive for a thousand years. But when resources are running out and the Mars colony is threatened with extinction, they decide to send two time-travelling teams to Earth for find out a) why humans vanished and b) whether the Martian humans can re-colonise the homeworld. This story flips between the stories of the two teams, which eventually come together. Expect some timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly stuff. Quite engaging, though, to be honest, I’d rather have a straight narration rather than a full-cast audio play.

Booklog 56/2025: Robert A Heinlein: Farnham’s Freehold - Audiobook

Audiobook narrated by Tom Weiner

I read this post-apocalyptic novel years and years ago, in a different century, though it might well have been a different planet. Published in 1964 (but written before the USA's Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965) this deals with pressing issues of the day - the threat of nuclear war with the USSR, and the issue of race in what was still a partially segregated country.

Under the threat of war, Hugh Farnham builds a nuclear bunker, just in time. When the big one hits, the Farnhams (Hugh, his wife Grace, adult son, Duke, daughter Karen, and black employee, Joseph, together with Karen’s  friend, Barbara) are catapulted into a different time, where there are no signs of any other human beings. Initially Heinlein turns sections of this book into a survival manual. Farnham is a prepper, but still has to work out how to build a (small) aqueduct, and we're right there with him for a blow-by-blow account. There's a bit of Swiss Family Robinson in here - to start with, at least. And then everything changes when they discover that they've been catapulted 2000 years into the future where the African and Asian peoples who were not wiped out in the mutually destructive US-Russian war, are now a technically advanced civilisation which runs on slavery.

This has not aged well in the 65 years since publication, and was probably problematic, even then, with its racism and sexism. It has to be judged as a piece of history, possibly one that we would prefer to forget. I can see that Heinlein was trying to write something approaching satire, but in doing do, created blatant stereotypes. Bear in mind that he was writing this as Martin Luther King was making his ‘I have a dream’ speech. His reversal of racial roles is clumsy and (good grief!) the dark-skinned people have a penchant for cannibalism. (Yes, really!) All the characters are unlovable. Grace is permanently drunk, drugged insensible, or high, and is Klansman-level racist. The son, Duke, is not much better, racist-wise. Hugh prides himself on treating Joseph as an equal, which he does, but there's still a certain air of condescension. Karen, the daughter, is a bit of an air head, and Barbara, having fallen for Hugh (goodness knows why) only wants to do what he wants her to do in order to please him. The female characters are weak and dependent.

Also, stylistically it feels a bit stilted with people calling each other by their names in dialogue rather more than modern authors would allow. ("Well, Mr. Farnham, what do you think? "I think we're going to die, Barbara."). Dialogue - especially the women's - is stiff an unrealistic.

This is not an easy book to swallow. Tom Weiner is the narrator, and he reads it like it's written, i.e. somewhat stiff and formal, He does well with male voices, but less well with the female ones. The narration works as the period piece it is.

The book wouldn’t pass muster today.

Booklog 57/2025: John Wiswell: Someone You Can Build a Nest In

This is a love story of a most unusual kind. Shesheshen is a monster. She’s an ill-formed, amorphous swamp-blob who can absorb the body parts of people she eats, using their bones to construct a human-like frame which helps her to shapeshift and pass for human. She doesn’t need company – and anyway she would be just as likely to eat a visitor as chat over tea and sandwiches. And then… she meets poor awkward Homily, the second daughter of the baron, Shesheshen’s enemy, the woman who killed her mother.  Homily is sweet and caring and, what’s more, despised by her toxic family. At first all Shesheshen is thinking is that Homily will make a good mother to her impending egg brood, and kindly provide the sustenance they need when they burst forth from their egg sack inside her and eat her from the inside out. But gradually Shesheshen is falling in love. There's a nice twist towards the end. Horror and whimsy combine to make this a delightful story about love and family with a dollop of dark humour as Shesheshen discovers more about being human and Homily discovers more about being a monster. This is thoroughly enjoyable.