Cat SparksResenhas

I really enjoyed the book right up until the end, which just didn't seem to come up to the standard of the rest of the book. After a really enthralling adventure it really felt like the ending was rushed to its conclusion - hence only 4 stars.

It's not too far fetched to imagine a future like the one depicted within this book, or the causes for it. The more we begin to rely on drones and augmented soldiers to fight wars, slowly but surely handing over more and more control to computer intelligence, the closer we get to the characters in the book and ultimately entities like 'Lotus Blue'.

I'm hoping the ending in this book isn't the end and that there'll be more books in this dystopian future.

Fantastic, interesting use of nano-technology.
A post-apocalyptic tale that is a bit different.

DNF. Interesting premise and excellent world building hence the three stars. Otherwise, this book annoyed me and I gave up at p.105. I felt like I had to force myself to get through a chapter. Not worth it.

A strong Australian anthology with a climate change message. The stories are mostly post-change and how communities have reacted. I'd actually like to read more of some of the stories; some appear to be linked. Recommended.

I didn't enter this book with specific expectations, but it just didn't get there for me. There are a TON of characters, a number of whom aren't clearly introduced or described, which made for some very confusing moments where I had to stop and backtrack. The story itself wasn't particularly compelling for me either. I think there is an audience for this book; I just wasn't part of it.

[This review is based on an advanced review copy received from the publisher via Edelweiss.]

Lotus Blue by Australian author, Cat Sparks is a post-apocalyptic story that tells the story of Star, a seventeen year old girl who, with her older sister, medic Nene are part of a group of nomads, travellers that journey along the Sand Road, crossing dangerous desert that is populated by rogue machinery and other strange monsters, remnants from a past time and long forgotten war. While her sister appears to guard a secret about their past, Star longs to break free, to experience a different life and is making plans to run away when their wagon caravan sees an Angel satellite crash to Earth, this, in turn, sets off a series of events that sends Star in a new direction. Meanwhile, an old and powerful entity called a Lotus Blue has awoken in the desert. This was the deadliest of all war machines and appears to have it’s own agenda.

I struggled with this story as I found the many characters, the detailed world building and references to so much technology quite confusing. Rather like a puzzle, each nugget of information needed to be evaluated and placed in a way that would move the story forward. Eventually I was disappointed that the main character, Star, really wasn’t all that important to the story as she seemed to be there more to react to rather than control the events. The author did a stellar job in bringing this futuristic land vividly to life, but unfortunately I simply had to work too hard to make sense of the story.

Collection of short stories. Nearly didn't finish it after the first 2, both of which were ... odd. Sparks does weave a mean word rug though and the stories set in her post-climate apocalypse world are quite good. She does have a tenency towards ambiguous, abrupt endings.

This is a collection of the author's postapocalyptic short stories. She has neat ideas and an eye for culture. Also, her characters are often middle-aged or elderly women, who typically don't get the spotlight in other tales. But she rarely ends her stories properly, preferring to just leave an impression or even a postscript explaining her intended message. The occasional non-ending can be cool, but most stories shouldn't leave the reader asking "that's it?"

Below are my thoughts on each story.

1. Hot Rods: I like the Elvis-impersonating preacher who, if you pay him enough, will fly a crop duster and persuade God to make it rain. But Ms. Sparks describes the action too haphazardly. Her sentences often lack clear subjects and are overloaded with strained analogies. It's hard to follow what's going on. One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, sometimes writes like this. But he always puts something grounded in every sentence, something I can latch onto even when things seem alien. With Mr. Gibson, I always have the gist of what's going on. Not so with Sparks.

2. Cassini Falling: An assassin on a cruise ship looks forward to retirement after this one last job. Has a good ending, but the same unclear writing problem as the first story.

3. Hacking Santorini: An 88-minute war fragmented the world's electronic records, making all written records, even postcards, ultra-valuable. That's a cool lore detail for an otherwise flabbergasting story.

4. Dragon Girl: the first story that I could understand, and which has strong characters. But this tale about a girl who falls in with a desert-wandering tribe doesn't have an ending. It turns out to be a side story for the author's novel, Lotus Blue. I might actually check that out someday.

5. You Will Remember Who You Were: I really liked the main character: an elderly self-centered art snob who lives in an arcology and is obsessed with finding out whether the graffiti attack that ruined her performance was a posthumous prank by Bansky. She's preciously annoying and ignorant, but also curious about the artistic implications of everything around her. No ending except for the author's explanation that it's a message about climate change.

6. Fate Morgana: an elderly woman rides the desert in a talking mech. I found it fascinating that sufficiently sophisticated AIs would learn to be just as passive-aggressive as humans. It's an alright story, though I'm puzzled and dissatisfied by the ending. And I don't like being asked to believe that a mech twice the height of a human can transform into something the size and shape of a human.

7. Before Dominica: finally, a story with a reasonable ending. A decent, if not memorable, tale about an impoverished middle-aged waitress who pines for her friend who had disappeared while trying to move up in the oppressive new government.

8. The Seventh Relic: I had to re-read the first part as the writing style had the same problem as the first three stories. But one re-read made the premise clear, and it's a good one despite being horror instead of postapocalyptic. A Buddhist monk has, for 1,300 years, kept the soul of her lover alive by feeding spiritual energy to a monster. But she sees a chance to break the curse when a vapid white American girl visits the monastery. Unfortunately, the story ends just when things are getting really good.

9. And the Ship Sails On: the longest and best story, full of adventure and terror. A luxury cruise ship has roamed the plastic-filled seas for years in search of habitable land. The rich people on board try to maintain their privilege and exclusivity, even though a good part of the ship is so overgrown with weeds that you can have a legitimate safari in it. The author includes some interesting details on how the ship can stay in operation for so long and what society is like on board. The ending, though ... I guess it's meant to be allegorical instead of literal. Like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Speaking of movies, I'd like to see the Fellini film that inspired the title.

10. Jericho Blush: scavengers loot a hastily abandoned town and get more than they bargained for. A decent story with a proper ending.

11. No Fat Chicks: fat-shaming douchebros cope in a world where a viral infection has made most women obese. Good dialogue, introspective look into the stunted psychology of many men. Ends abruptly and ambiguously when things are getting good.

12. Veterans Day: street urchin finds out firsthand the truth about the city's virgin sacrifice ritual. Too brief and insubstantial.

13. Dark Harvest: mercenaries try to evacuate a planet they plundered, contending with the mysterious natives. Pretty cool revelation at the end.

14. Prayers to Broken Stone: a series of loosely connected stories about tradecraft. I like the first and last ones.½

Odd. Not quite my sort of thing, but nearly. A themed collection of the author's short stories, featuring pieces written for other anthologies, fragments that didn't fit anywhere else, and backstory from the novels. Although all the settings are quite different the general feeling is very similar: the world's gone to shit and the rich will try to save themselves from the desperate struggling of the rabble. Sometimes your empathy is directed more one way than the other, but there's always support for the underdog, the military get especially short shrift. More than one story features arcs - persevered habitats be they ageing cruise liners or space ships, but even these break down in time.

All of the stories lacked the punch and twist that I particularly enjoy in the format, but the worldbuilding and characters were always interesting if not always nice. Too few authors manage to create short stories that aren't just cut down novels. But there is sufficient promise that I may be tempted by the novels if I come across them.½

Story collection of an Australian author new to me. Many of them are eco-doom science fiction, but not all. Interesting, well written, often sad, but usually a bit trippy. I liked most of them, "Before Dominica" most of all. A few have endings too ambiguous for me, but YMMV.

Many years ago, wars decimated the planet, unleashing bio-engineered weaponized plants and mecha supersoldiers–half human, half machine–on the world. Now, the only ones who truly remember what the world once was are the few still functional Templars, their bodies sustained by the tech inside left over from the wars. Meanwhile, vast sections of the remaining population hole up in underground cities, waiting for the world to recover. And on the sand roads above, a determined few face the fading world and strive for survival, the tech of the past incomprehensibly altered to the stuff of myths. But the world is changing–Angels fall from the sky, travelers arrive from the hidden underground cities, and somewhere beyond the Obsidian Sea an ancient consciousness awakes.

I hugely enjoyed Lotus Blue, right from the start. This may not make sense, since they’re really not particularly alike, but the flavor of this story reminds me a lot of Firefly (a favorite of mine). The author’s descriptions are evocative, and the worldbuilding is sublime. I love the way she looks at modern (and futuristic) tech through the eyes of a people who have long forgotten what it actually is; the combination of advanced technology and primitive culture is quite intriguing. I love how the world slowly blossoms before the reader, displayed through the eyes of a variety of characters, each with different backgrounds, understandings, and motivations. The multiple points of view are fascinating, and the characters are all interesting in their own ways. The story itself weaves multiple individual stories into one big interconnected plot, and does so remarkably well. I honestly had no complaints about this book; it was very enjoyable and is one I would highly recommend–an excellent work of post-apocalyptic speculative fiction.

The author claims inspiration from Dune, and indeed we spend the entirety of the 3x too long journey in blistering dust, but really this is an unrelieved journey to Mordor, though unknown until the end to most of the travelers. And there are more Saurons out there. The writing is good enough to keep going through uninteresting characters, often improbable actions, all the plot bolts and gears clearly outlined, nothing hidden or inscrutable here.½

Centuries ago, wars ruined the earth, destroying cities and wrecking the environment. But humanity remains as people struggle to survive in the harsh world that remains. But an ancient and powerful war machine, Lotus Blue, has awaken in the desert, and what’s left of the world may be at risk.

Lotus Blue has a variety of POV characters, but the protagonist is clearly Star, who has far more sections than anyone else. Star and her sister Nene live and travel with a caravan of traders, heading up and down the Sand Road. But unfolding events have a cataclysmic effect upon the caravan, drawing Star into the quest to stop Lotus Blue.

Here’s the biggest problem with Lotus Blue: Star had absolutely no impact on the outcome of the book. She could have died in the very beginning and the ending would have been the same. I noticed about half way through that Star was a passive protagonist who lacked agency – she tends to react rather than be proactive. But I’d assumed that in the end she would make some plot relevant action. I assumed wrong.

When I said there were a lot of POV characters, I meant it. First off, there’s Star. Then there’s Kian, a boy trying to find Lotus Blue for his one glory. His cousin also gets sections. Same goes for a wealthy merchant’s daughter, an aging female super solider, a battle scared male super solider, Lotus Blue itself, a random girl in a watchtower, and a scrappy stowaway. Here’s the thing… all but two or three of them could have disappeared from the book and the end result regarding Lotus Blue wouldn’t be much different.

Having such a mass of characters negatively impacted characterization. I never really connected with any of them. At one point a side character died, and it was being treated like an emotional moment. Only I actively didn’t care because he had no characterization or personality.

One other disappointment was that I picked up Lotus Blue because I saw it on a list of SFF about sisters. It’s not really a book about sisters. Nene disappears halfway through and never returns.

On the bright side, I did enjoy the setting. The world Cat Sparks imagines is one of an ever growing desert, with mad mechas blazing through the sand and reckless humans hunting them for parts. There’s a certain Mad Max feel to it, helped by the post-apocalyptic Australian setting. The world really came alive, and I loved the details such as the sand ships, towers, and immortal super soldiers.

If there’s a there’s a sequel to Lotus Blue (and based on the ending, I think there will be), I am not going to read it. While I liked the world building, it was not enough to make up for the problems in structure and characterization.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

Standard issue military SF

The Bride Price by Cat Sparks is a collection of longish short stories and one novella. If you've only ever seen the cover as a thumbnail, I highly recommend zooming in on the image to the right and taking a closer look. I did not fully appreciate the cover until I opened the ebook and saw it in its detailed glory.

Before I get to talking about the stories, I should note that I didn’t quite read these stories in order. I read “Scarp” first (because it was on the Ditmar shortlist), and then through the rest of the collection from start to finish. Except for "The Sleeping and the Dead", the very last story/novella, which I had read before.

The Bride Price contained a lot of depressing endings. People looking for hopeful, life-affirming stories would be better off looking elsewhere. Here, rather than ending with a flash of hope (as is customary, one could say), a lot of these stories end in what I would loosely term "doom". But not all of them. Above all, these stories are nothing if unconventional. This collection is full of unique ideas and uncharted settings. In new and different ways, Sparks explores what it means to be human and what it means to be a woman.

The introduction, by Sean Williams, captures the spirit of the collection wonderfully. Williams writes:

Cat deftly weaves you through known and unknown, familiar and unfamiliar. Her characters are trapped and desperate. They’re literally dying to escape, even if escape means finding themselves somewhere much worse than where they started. You’ll understand their yearning even if we don’t always sympathise with it. In aiming for the unattainable, or attaining something they didn’t realise they were aiming for, Cat’s characters reveal themselves in the very best and the very worst possible lights.

I couldn't say it better myself.

My favourite story was the first in the collection, "A Lady of Adestan". It was poignant and gut-wrenchingly awful, increasingly so as we learnt more about the setting. "The Bride Price" was also a favourite. Perhaps, now I think about it, I liked these stories best because they did not end as bleakly as most of the others. But on the other hand, I also quite liked "Street of the Dead" and "Seventeen" and I'm not sure I'd call those endings happy. As usual, there is a story-by-story breakdown at the end of this review.

The Bride Price was a varied collection and one I would definitely recommend to anyone wanting to familiarise themselves with Cat Spark's work. There were some stories I really loved in it and some I didn't feel as strongly about, but I think that means there will be some stories for all types of readers to enjoy. There were a slew of post-technological stories, near-future stories and secondary world stories. anyone looking for a variety of settings would do well to look here.

~

A Lady of Adestan — This is my favourite Cat Sparks story that I’ve read so far. It’s horrifying and poignant and brutal. The main character is visiting her youngest sister, who married a nobleman in the nearby city of Adestan. The customs of the city are very different from those of the plains, where the sisters are from, and noblewomen have even less freedom than usual:

“Dena understood that grand ladies of Adestan were not supposed to speak. When Nadira had accepted master Etan’s offer of marriage, an elegant lady from the Adestan court had presented herself at the family home accompanied by two handsome bodyguards. She had taught Nadira handsign, the language exclusive to high-ranking women in the city of noble stone.”

What starts off seeming like a strange custom, oppressive and inconvenient — a noble lady can’t eat and sign at the same time — gets progressively more atrocious as the story progresses. It was an excellent read about a terrible place.



Beyond the Farthest Stone — A post-technological world with remnants of old technology lying about the place. Most notably, some sort of... Ship? Vehicle? Hybrid? ...called a whale featured, which scavengers for its internal organs/mechanisms, despite the dangers of retrieving them. Not a bad story, but I didn't feel strongly about it.



The Bride Price — A story written in the New Ceres world (which I haven’t read, but I recognised the name). A rich youth negotiates the purchase of a bride and then encounters war-torn refugees who lead him to realise that life is harsh for most people and to question the direction his life is taking. Another enjoyable read.



Street of the Dead — UFOs have descended on the planet and rural Australian families have been told to locate from their homes to new, supposedly safer, towns. Not quite the ending I was expecting. A quick read that I rather liked.



Sammarynda Deep — A fascinating world with a fascinating culture. A tourist searching for someone in a city of rich heritage and customs. Surely writing other, made-up cultures is a particular strength of Sparks's. I really enjoyed this story, but I'm not sure how to say more about it without spoiling the experience.



Seventeen — A future world where old ladies who remember the blitz (so near future?) and live in safe compounds hire grandchildren to come visit them. But when the pretend grandkids turn seventeen, their contracts end. A good story, but a more depressing ending than I had hoped for.



All the Love in the World — In a war-torn post-apocalyptic Australia, a woman ventures out of their protected compound out in search of medicine. A little bleak, but less than expected. Not a bad read.



Dead Low — scavengers in space face danger and unexpected spoils. And there's more to their leader than meets the eye. Not a cheerful book, but not a bad read. Good unexpected ending.



Arctica — A unique world where people periodically fall through a rift in the sky (above the North Pole?) and are then hunted down and killed. Another story (like "The Bride Price") which deals with refugees as both characters and constructs. And another story that does not have — could not have had — a happy ending. I liked it, for all its bleakness.



The Alabaster Child — Set in the same world as "Sammarynda Deep”, but I would not have guessed if it weren't for the place names. A woman travels to a new place, meeting different, troubled (in the sense that no one has an easy life) people along the way. It struck me more as an atmospheric piece than an especially plot-driven one.



Hollywood Roadkill — A bleak story that I found particularly devoid of hope for the characters. Homeless kids living just outside Hollywood in a not-too-distant future. Their lives suck and then suck some more.



Scarp — A post-technological society and teenagers pushing the boundaries. The isolated society was oppressive (although, I suppose not systematically so per se) and very isolated. The ending, the pushing of the ultimate boundary, was not what I expected.



The Sleeping and the Dead — Already read as part of the Ishtar anthology, did not reread.

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog.½