Up for Review: Sea Change

I love the promise of adventure and heartwarming friendship in this story about a girl and her kraken.

Sea Change by S.M. Wheeler (Tor Books)

NetGalley Blurb:

The unhappy child of two powerful parents who despise each other, young Lilly turns to the ocean to find solace, which she finds in the form of the eloquent and intelligent sea monster Octavius, a kraken. In Octavius’s many arms, Lilly learns of friendship, loyalty, and family. When Octavius, forbidden by Lilly to harm humans, is captured by seafaring traders and sold to a circus, Lilly becomes his only hope for salvation. Desperate to find him, she strikes a bargain with a witch that carries a shocking price.

Her journey to win Octavius’s freedom is difficult. The circus master wants a Coat of Illusions; the Coat tailor wants her undead husband back from a witch; the witch wants her skin back from two bandits; the bandits just want some company, but they might kill her first. Lilly’s quest tests her resolve, tries her patience, and leaves her transformed in every way.

A powerfully written debut from a young fantasy author, Sea Change is an exhilarating tale of adventure, resilience, and selflessness in the name of friendship.

Sea Change will be published on 18 June 2013 by Tor Books.

Links:
Goodreads
Read an excerpt
Macmillan Publishers
Tor Books: Website | Facebook

About the Author
Can’t find much on Wheeler, except this from her Twitter profile: “I specialize in obsessive writing and reclusive behavior.” Which explains it.
Website (more like a writing journal)
Twitter: @SMWWrites

 

Review of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

Title: A Natural History of Dragons
Author: Marie Brennan
Published: 5 February 2013
Publisher: Tor
Genre: fantasy, YA, adventure, mystery
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 6/10

The plot of A Natural History of Dragons is a fairly simple one – Lady Isabella Trent, the famous old dragon naturalist, is writing a series of memoirs about her great adventures studying dragons. This is the first. The novel recounts Isabella’s experiences as a precocious, scientifically minded child, which include reading her father’s scientific books in secret, dissecting a dove with her brother’s pen knife, and dressing up as a boy to go on a dragon hunt. Later, as an ambitious, newly married 19-year-old, she slyly manoeuvres her husband Jacob into joining an expedition to study dragons, then fights to get permission to join the expedition as an artist, despite how very, very improper it is for a woman to do such a thing, or for a man to indulge his wife in this way. The expedition takes them to the foreign land of Vystrana, but it turns out to be even more dangerous than they expected, not because of the dragons, but because of the people.

I need not say very much about the worldbuilding either – Isabella is from Scirland, which is Victorian England, with all its stuffy restrictions regarding class, gender and propriety. Vystrana is essentially Eastern Europe.

So, it’s the world we know + dragons in a YA-ish adventure with a good dash of mystery. It’s a nice story, and I know many readers have loved the setting, but I was hoping for a bit more fantasy in my fantasy, and not just because I value its inventiveness. The Victorian culture got on my nerves. Admittedly, this is partly because the worldbuilding is quite well done. Brennan/Isabella never misses an opportunity to tell  us how men and women are expected to behave, what women are not allowed to do and what society thinks of them if they do it anyway, and what the upper class expects from their servants. Lady Trent, writing as an old lady about her younger self, has a very prim and proper tone that alone will never allow you to forget what period you’re in (or rather, what fictional version of an actual period you’re in). It’s as Victorian as a Charles Dickens novel, and far, far easier to read.

But, but, but… This is fantasy, so why does it need to cling so tightly to reality? More importantly, why does it have to reproduce the unappealing sexism and classism that defines the society it’s modelled on? I’ll tackle the class issue first. Isabella and Jacob are from the upper class, and the expedition’s leader, Lord Hilford, is an aristocrat. For all their bravery in chasing after dragons, I don’t think they would get anywhere if they didn’t have servants to carry their bags and cook their meals. Isabella came across as quite a brat when dealing with her personal servant, Dagmira:

she was supposed to be my lady’s maid. I had been afraid of that. She would need to be educated in her duties, starting with the purchase of a bell I could use to summon her when I awoke. I laid that aside for the moment, however, and held up my hand to silence her.

It annoys Isabella that Dagmira, who is a peasant from a small rural village in Vystrana, doesn’t understand the needs and expectations of a well-bred lady from Scirland. She learns the local language mostly so that it’ll be easier to give Dagmira orders. She had expected that there would be a shortage of servants, but is a little shocked to find that there is a shortage of furniture and she doesn’t even a wardrobe to hang her dresses in, so she’ll have to live out of her luggage (the horror!). Again, the characterisation here is excellent, and I do like that Isabella isn’t perfect – she has a lot to learn about travelling, and has yet to have her mind broadened by it. She frustrates me, but then again, imperfect characters are bound to do that. So I’m not a fan of the classism here, but I accept it as part of the story.

I am less forgiving of the sexism, which has more consequences for the story and the reading experience. I can understand that it does a lot to enhance Isabella’s character. As far as her achievements are concerned, it makes her more heroic to know that she overcame all the gender obstacles that stood in her way. However, we’re told at the very beginning that studying dragons is not for the faint-hearted and that little was known about them when Isabella went on her first expedition, so isn’t it enough for her to be a pioneer in this field? That alone makes her courageous, dedicated, and highly intelligent. Why must she battle society as well? Does it make a better story? I’m not sure it does.

I’ll admit that I say this not because I feel sorry for Isabella as a character, but because of how it affects me as a reader. Brennan pushes this feminist agenda very hard for the entire book, and the constant sexism gets tiring. As a product of her society, Isabella irritated me too. She might be the exceptional woman, but Brennan is mindful of where and how she grew up, so Isabella is very aware of propriety and diligently observes it at times, often sounding a bit like a textbook on good behaviour even when she’s being ‘bad’. The plot is also slowed down by this social issue – before Isabella goes anywhere, she submits to her mother’s wishes and spends some time looking for a husband. She marries the first man to catch her eye (which speeds things along, but is a tad convenient), and luckily he’s the kind of person who shares her interests and lets her read what she wants. This is supposed to be heart-warming, but it makes me cringe. Jacob wins the reader’s favour simply because he (usually) treats his wife like an adult instead of a child. It’s wonderful of him in this context, but I can’t shake the knowledge that he gets praised for doing the bare minimum.

I’m also a bit tired of this kind of story, where a smart, brave woman is held up as a marvel because, oh my god, she’s a woman but not a doormat. I wasn’t inspired, only annoyed. Of course, we’re hardly past all of this in real life, where many people still hold very traditional ideas about gender, but speculative fiction gives us the opportunity to imagine a better, more interesting society. I think Marie Brennan wasted that opportunity.

On the positive side, she did a great job depicting Isabella as a person who aspires to be everything that society says she should not be, and dedicates herself to that goal. In fact, I have to admit that the novel as a whole is well executed, regardless of my criticisms about Brennan’s creative choices. Isabella’s stuffy style could have been difficult to read, but in fact it flowed very quickly and easily. It’s also worth noting how well her character is written as someone with a very scientific mind, who tends to have crazy ideas (well, crazy in her society anyway) that she acts on in a very practical manner. The main plot involves not only studying dragons, but unraveling a mystery involving a missing man, a group of smugglers, and strangely aggressive behaviour from the dragons. The science is light but engaging, and of course there’s the beautiful artwork by Todd Lockwood to pull you deeper into the story. Personally, I’m not intrigued enough to read the inevitable sequels, but I don’t doubt that most readers will be charmed.

Review of The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher

Title: The Six-Gun Tarot
Author: R.S. Belcher
Published: 22 January 2013
Pubisher: Tor Books
Genre: fantasy, horror, western
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 5/10

Please note: this review contains mild spoilers. I’ve avoided specific plot details, but I have discussed the nature of the ending.

Golgotha is a quaint little town of horrors. Surviving out on the edge of the Nevada desert in the 1800s, it’s seen a surprising amount of supernatural activity, but it’s still home and haven to its odd assortment of residents. The novel opens on Jim Negrey, a 15-year-old boy on the run from a murder charge. Jim and his faithful horse are about to die out in the desert when they’re saved by Mutt and Clay and taken to the safety of Golgotha. Clay is a medical man with a disturbing amount of interest in dead bodies. Mutt is the town’s deputy sheriff, a Native American Indian with a coyote trickster for a father. The town’s sheriff, Jon Highfather, is rumoured to be either undead or immortal. The mayor, Harry, is a Mormon Elder guarding the magical artefacts of his faith, but he’s struggling to reconcile his religion with his homosexuality. Maude Stapleton, the wife of a wealthy banker, is secretly a warrior assassin for a cult of Lilith.

It seems that these people have all been drawn to Golgotha for a reason. The town sprang up at the foot of the now-abandoned silver mine in Argent Mountain, but what the residents don’t know is that all their paranormal troubles are caused by the colossal monster slumbering in chains beneath the mountain. It’s the Greate Olde Wurm (yeah, I laughed) a monster older than God or death, and if it ever got loose it would destroy the universe.

That threat, of course, is at the heart of the plot – the mine is reopened and the Wurm’s chains are weakened. It begins to wake, infecting the residents of Golgotha with murderous darkness. It’s up to the residents to fight back with the talents and tools at their disposal, not just to save themselves and their town, but to save all of Creation.

But be patient, reader: the novel takes its sweet time building up to the apocalyptic battle of its main plot. There is much to learn first, including the mythological backstory of the Wurm’s imprisonment, and the personal lives of Golgotha’s residents. I’ll address the latter first. Maude is deeply ashamed to have married and turned into a demur, submissive wife; it completely contradicts the teachings of the feminist warrior faith. She forms an unlikely bond with Mutt, who is shunned by the town because of his race, and by his own people because of his coyote heritage. Jim is carrying around his dead father’s glass eye, which happens to be an ancient Chinese artefact with strange powers. He hopes to be able to learn more about it from the Chinese immigrants who live in a self-contained area that goes by the derogatory name of Johnny Town (and is rife with racial clichés), but is initially thwarted because otherwise the story would be a lot shorter. Harry, the Mayor, is having an affair with the man who plays piano at the Johnny Town brothel, while his wife Holly drinks herself into oblivion because her husband let her believe she made him gay. Auggie Schultz, a German storekeeper, is torn between his growing feelings for his good friend Gillian Proctor and his devotion to his (un)dead wife.

The narrative jumps frequently between these characters’ stories and more. It’s a hell of a lot to keep track of, but luckily it’s very easy to do so. Since this is a story of pending apocalypse, it also makes sense to have a lot of characters so that you have some idea of the lives at stake.

But unfortunately having so many POVs is one of the novel’s biggest problems. Many of the characters are interesting, but you can’t spend much time with them before the narrative focuses on someone else. The result is that some characters, like Maude, Jim and pretty much all the Chinese, feel badly neglected. Initially, each chapter or section is written from the perspective of one character, but after a while the POV tends to jump haphazardly between characters or to an omniscient narrator.

The romance between Auggie and Gillian takes up a sizeable portion of the novel but is totally unnecessary, as they have no role to play in fighting against the Wurm. I suspect that they’re there to provide a heartwarming aspect to the plot and to address a religious issue – finding a new partner after the death of a spouse. Other religious issues arise as well. Why, Harry wonders, has God allowed a sodomite to guard his treasures and guide his people? There are many different religions, but which one is true? And of course there’s the age-old conundrum: why does a supposedly loving and omnipotent God allows evil to exist in the world?  Religion, or rather, faith, is one of the main themes of the novel, although not in an entirely mainstream way.

Belcher has rewritten Christian mythology to explain the Wurm’s presence on Earth: when God created light, he found monsters living in the darkness. Heaven went to war with the monsters the end of this war, the Wurm was not killed but bound with holy chains and imprisoned on Earth, which was still under construction at the time.

The novel considers the issue of faith of both humans and angels in relation to this version of God who is questionable at best. We know that God is almost certainly a liar. He has not always been in existence as he led humanity and the angels to believe – the Wurm is older than him. He is not omniscient, because he only discovered the Wurm when he created light. It also seems that he is unable to kill it, which would mean that he isn’t omnipotent either. Of course, God doesn’t actually appear on the page; the information about his nature comes from the angels, particularly Lucifer and an angel named Biqa. Overall, God is portrayed as a cruel and arrogant dictator who is not as powerful as he purports to be. Biqa’s theory is that God banished the darkness because he feared it, then went genocidal on the Voidlings because they did not fit into his plan. He suggests that god created the angels and plans “to create an entire universe of doppelgangers to worship Him” because he is afraid of being alone.

So what do the characters, angel and human, think of God in light of the novel’s events? The answer lands, inexplicably, on the side of faith. The general conclusion seems to be that the whole thing was a test and some even wonder, with a ridiculously jovial attitude, what the good Lord will come up with next. However, no one has the slightest shred of evidence to support such a favourable interpretation. Why put all of Creation at stake to test a handful of people living in a small American town at the ass-end of nowhere?

There’s absolutely nothing to dispel Biqa’s earlier impression of God as cowardly and manipulative, and when Lucifer offers his equally unflattering opinions it makes perfect sense within the confines of the narrative. But then again, this isn’t about reason, it’s about reassurance. The residents of Golgotha have “learned long ago to quickly grab hold of any explanation in the daylight that makes it easier to live in the dark”, which in my opinion, explains both the optimism at the end of the novel and the entire phenomenon of religion itself. It’s terrifying to imagine that God cannot kill the Wurm; a more comforting explanation is that He was saving him as a kind of exam paper. Which means that there is a plan, and it seems to be running smoothly, so relax and enjoy the happy ending.

I was just happy to have reached the ending. The novel started out well, I cared for the characters, and I loved the unexplained hints at the weird things that have happened in Golgotha, but Belcher doesn’t really have a handle on this story. For the entire second half I felt like the novel was tossing me all over the place, leaping across POVs, going from a slow pace to dire action, and eventually bringing all its threads together in a way that was chaotic rather than conclusive.

We are told that all religions are true, because it’s belief that gives them their power, rather than deities. In fact, we’re told that gods need people and cannot exist without them. The novel ignores the immense contradictions here. Its own backstory shows that God existed before humanity so although he wants them, he certainly doesn’t need them. And of course there are fundamental contradictions between religions, but there’s less of a need to address this problem because the novel only makes a half-hearted attempt to include non-Christian beliefs. There is a Chinese creation myth told amidst endless Oriental clichés, but after hearing Biqa’s story earlier in the novel, this sounds like a distortion of the more Christian truth. Another creation myth is narrated by a coyote, but all in terms of “the white man’s god”. There is a cult of Lilith that Maude’s grandmother picked up from “the Bantu witch-women” of Africa (there’s that good old blanket term again), but even though this rages against the misogyny of the bible, it still subscribes to the basic mythology. I think the novel could have been a lot stronger if it made a decent attempt to incorporate different belief systems, but it remains unwaveringly Christian at its core.

But hey, it left with enough to discuss for a fairly long review. It was average at best, but most books like this leave me with little to say, so I appreciate those that give me something to think about. Less fussy readers probably won’t be too bothered with the consistency issues I’ve discussed here, and may find this fantasy-horror-western to be a lot of fun. I haven’t really said anything about all the action and horror in the plot, but it suffices to say that there’s plenty of it, although it can get a tad ridiculous. If you’re ok with that sort of thing, then go for it.

Up for Review: A Natural History of Dragons (with book art!)

I’ve got a particularly good Up for Review post this fine Monday afternoon. Tor is releasing a beautiful new novel called A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, and they’ve sent me some of the gorgeous book art by Todd Lockwood, including a high-res picture of the cover (which alone should entice fantasy fans):

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan (Tor Books)

You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon’s presence, even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one’s life—is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten. . . .

All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. She is the remarkable woman who brought the study of dragons out of the misty shadows of myth and misunderstanding into the clear light of modern science. But before she became the illustrious figure we know today, there was a bookish young woman whose passion for learning, natural history, and, yes, dragons defied the stifling conventions of her day.

Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation, her prospects, and her fragile flesh and bone to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of Vystrana, where she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever.

Marie Brennan introduces an enchanting new world in A Natural History of Dragons.

A Natural History of Dragons is published by Tor Books, and will be released on 5 February 2013.

Links
Goodreads
Buy a copy Indiebound I Amazon I Barnes & Noble I BooksAMillion I Book Depository I Powells I Walmart I Overstock I
On the publisher’s website

About the Author

Marie Brennan is a former academic with a background in archaeology, anthropology, and folklore, which she now puts to rather cockeyed use in writing fantasy. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to many short stories and novellas, she is also the author of A Star Shall Fall and With Fate Conspire (both from Tor Books), as well as Warrior, Witch, Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, and Lies and Prophecy. You can find her online at SwanTower.com.

Website
Twitter
Goodreads

 

And now, for Todd Lockwood‘s awesome art

Wolf Drake

 

Desert Drake

Dead Dragon

Graveyard Cave

Jacob

Laboratory

Ruins

Sparkling

Village

Zhagirt Mat

 

If you want desktop wallpapers featuring the cover, you can find them in a range of sizes on Tor’s website.  I’ve also got some excerpts to share with you too, so keep an eye out!

Review of Existence by David Brin

Title: Existence
Author: David Brin
Published: 19 June 2012
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: science fiction
Source: eARC from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 8/10

It’s not often that you come across a novel of such immense scope as this one. In fact I’m not sure I ever have. Existence makes The Lord of the Rings look like a short story. Not in terms of length, of course. At 560 pages, it’s long but hardly epic-fantasy long. But in those 560 pages, David Brin has given us a detailed and realistic future world, a large cast of characters, a decades-long story, articles on topics such as the apocalypse, first contact and artificial intelligence, and a discourse on humanity, the universe and the very nature of existence. Reading it was something like the literary equivalent of boarding a spaceship and, after a long journey, finding myself floating before the star-dusted canvas of space. Not that I know what that’s really like, but you get my point – it’s requires some effort, but it’s really impressive.

Existence begins in the late 2040s or 2050s. Gerald Livingston is an astronaut garbage collector whose job it is to clean up the trash orbiting the Earth. One day he finds an alien artefact and humanity finally realises that long-pondered possibility of alien contact. The world is awestruck, and debates immediately begin to rage across the globe. What do the aliens want? Do they want to invade our planet, colonise us, enslave us? Or are they friendly, looking only for company and the chance to share knowledge? Are they supreme beings or monsters or both? What should we do about it?

The story is told from the perspectives of multiple narrators. Gerald Livingston is one of them, of course, since his discovery is the very basis of the novel. There’s Peng Xiang Bin, a Chinese peasant who makes a meagre living scavenging junk on a drowned coastline and makes an equally epic discovery. On the other side of the wealth spectrum is trillionaire altruist Lacey Hacker-Sander and her adventure seeking son Hacker. Tor Povlov is a young rising star in online journalism in a world where journalists can have their thoughts recorded and instantly uploaded during events. Hamish Brookman is a novelist whose works always warned against technological and scientific hubris. He acts as a spokesperson from a movement that believes humanity should halt technological progress and revert to a simpler life in order to avert inevitable disaster.

There are more narrators, some with only small parts. With this multitude of perspectives, Brin not only shows you different views of the main story, but also builds a complex, realistic world and offers diverse thoughts on existence, intelligence, and what it is to be human. For example, one of the narrators is autistic and speaks in a manner that is difficult for the average person to understand. His perspective is part of a larger debate about “auties” – is autism a disability or is it another (higher?) form of intelligence? This comes after an event or epidemic known as the Autism Plague.

There’s also a good deal of fictional non-fiction in the form of short essays/articles on related topics – ways in which the apocalypse might come about, debates about artificial intelligence, immortality, and, obviously, the aliens. Basically the kinds of articles you might expect to read in Brin’s vision of the future. It gives his world incredible depth, and offers some delectable food for thought for idea fetishists and philosophically minded sf readers. Existence even quotes and comments on science fiction and other literature from our time, as that would naturally become part of the discussion.

The articles and the discussions about the aliens were my favourite parts of the book. At first, no one is entirely sure what the aliens’ motives are, and people make whatever guesses they can. There are the familiar scenarios that we’ve come across in books and movies – that the aliens want to invade; that the aliens are practically deities and in comparison humans are barbarians who could never understand such sophisticated beings.

However, these ideas are basically just given an honourable mention amidst much more complex, carefully considered theories that are constantly modified as people learn more about the alien artefact. Why should they fall into such simple categories as monsters or gods? What if, unlike most alien contact scenarios, we proved perfectly capable of interacting with aliens in a peaceful, intelligent and productive manner? The aliens invite humanity to “join us”, and people around the world are inspired by the thought of joining an interstellar community, but what if “join us” means join our religion, or join our army? What if the aliens charge a price for any technology they might have? How might their technology affect our own industries and economies? What will happen to human culture if it comes into contact with an alien one? And what kinds of being are the aliens themselves? Why do they behave the way they do?

The theories evolve as people learn more, and there’s always a plurality of possibilities. As the novel progresses, humanity changes, and ideas of existence acquire new facets and depths. What if, what if, what if? The novel never stops asking this, really flexing the speculative abilities of the sf genre. It’s as much a thought experiment as a story, and that’s the beauty of it. It gave me far more than I anticipated.

The downside is that it can be tedious at times. Some parts are bound to be less interesting to you than others. Given the scope of Brin’s project, it’s probably unavoidable. Deciding on my rating required a bit of personal debate – how does ease of reading and enjoyment weigh up against the novel’s scope and ideas? I considered giving the novel a 7 (or a 6, during some boring bits) simply because it was often so damn hard to read. With nothing even resembling a scientific background, plus having a relationship with sf that’s less than a decade old, I struggle with hard sf (and I consider this to be hard sf, although it incorporates many of the things I love about soft sf too). The technical details often go right over my head, and Existence has good deal of those. If I knew more about information technology or space travel, I might have had an easier time.

Admittedly, these are my shortcomings rather than the novel’s but to add to that, you’re also dropped into the depths of a future world without the benefit of info dumps. Brin’s worldbuilding is excellent and has the sense of realism that comes from treating his future as the norm, in the same way that an author writing a contemporary novel wouldn’t explain things like Facebook and Twitter to his readers. Which is great in some ways, but also means that you’ll probably struggle to get a grasp on the technological, ecological, and social changes that distinguish this world from our current version. Naturally, there’s a lot of sophisticated technology, most of which is used to immerse humans in the digital world. There are plenty of neologisms. For example, AI is known as ai, and the two letters are placed in words that denote the use of such technology, eg. aissistant, aintity. Characters also frequently make reference to fictional events or concepts such as Awfulday or the Basque Chimera, but without offering any explanation to the reader. Even when there are detailed explanations or demonstrations of tech, they may only come much later in the book.

Add to this a multitude of characters and several series of speculative essays, and you can begin to understand what I mean when I say this isn’t an easy read. At times it isn’t even a particularly enjoyable one so (to get back to the rating issue) I couldn’t give it a 9 or 10, at least not on a first read. But 7 felt too low, for two reasons. Firstly, it’s so ambitious, and I have to admire what Brin has achieved. Secondly it has a spectacularly satisfying ending that achieves a stunning balance of optimism, gravity, and excitement. At times I wondered if I was ever going to finish this, but at the end I just thought “WOW. That’s brilliant. That’s better than I’d ever expected. I have to read this again one day.”

 

Buy a copy of Existence at The Book Depository

Up for Review: Existence by David Brin

I’m reading this one now. It requires a lot of focus, being the kind of sci fi novel that really exploits the genre’s fetish for ideas and speculation.

Existence by David Brin (Tor Books)

Marketing copy from NetGalley:

Bestselling, award-winning futurist David Brin returns to globe-spanning, high concept SF with Existence.

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.”

Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

Existence will be published on 19 June by Tor Books.