An Echo of Things To Come by James Islington (5 stars)

I'll confess I've lost a lot of context on which book was which in this series, writing the review 7 months later so I'm going to have to give them all 5 stars since that's how I felt about the overall series :)

I was so happy to see this at the start of the novel:

The following is meant only as a quick, high-level refresher of the events in The Shadow of What Was Lost, rather than a thorough synopsis.

YES! RECAP! This series is crazy complicated, tons of characters, multiple POVs, and very complex time travel as a central conceit. I needed that recap.

Some of the large plot reveals were super obvious, e.g. who is Malshash, but there were still plenty of surprising reveals. One thing that I liked a lot is that Islington didn't shy away from tragedy, the good guys can lose, catastrophically, and have to pick up the pieces. And that tragedy isn't experienced in a battle-statistics-reporting kind of way, we live through it with first person POVs.

There's a definitely some strong commentary on religion in the novel:

There is only one reason to be passionate about a lack of faith—and that is fear,” said Caeden quietly. “Fear that you are wrong. An innate need for others to share your opinion, so that you can be less afraid.” He shook his head. “I do not feel the need to argue, to cajole, to threaten or accuse. If others wish to believe differently, that is no business of mine. I simply do not think that there are gods.

Religion is the following of rules and rituals in the hope that they will somehow garner the favor of a higher power.

5 stars.

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington (5 stars)

Really great fantasy, apparently heavily inspired by Sanderson and Jordan, neither of which I've read. I get the sense from reviews that some big WoT fans are annoyed by some similarities and also a little upset at how fast the plot moves because they wanted more detailed descriptions. 

This matches really well with my experience: I don't know or care about any "Jordan did it first" criticisms, but I very much appreciate how quickly the plot moves, in a good way! This whole series feels like taking what would have been a 12-volume fantasy epic and editing out all of the time wasting boring stuff, the books that only cover the boring characters and don't advance the plot, and just nailing it.

It was actually very surprising to read fast-paced fantasy that still operates in a deep well-built world with good characters with a well-defined plot arc. Islington knows exactly where this plot is going and how he's going to tie it all together, he has to because the time travel and its implications are crazy complicated and central to the whole story.

I think part of the criticism about lack of detailed descriptions or backstory confuses what I see as a masterful control of plot reveals with a lack of backstory. Having read the full series I can say the answers are there, for the most part, but he's just not going to let you have them yet. I can't recall another fantasy novel where the intrigue is kept so long for such key concepts. I've come to appreciate that one of the most important thing a novel needs to do is keep me hungry for more, to find out why, and Islington does an impressive job of that through the whole series.

The perfect example here is the term "bleeders": we have no idea why they are called that, despite it being an incredibly commonly term, and used hundreds of times in the first book. We don't find out the backstory until halfway through the second book. That's a wait of over 1000 pages.

5 stars.

Autonomous: A Novel by Annalee Newitz (3.5 stars)

This was in the running for a Hugo but didn't win. Big Pharma is the bad guy in this dystopian sci-fi. The things that are different is that it is a coming-of-age for an AI military robot that begins to confront gender identity and a relationship with a human. I particularly liked the idea of AIs and robots enjoying memory crashes like drugs, and selling them to each other:

The bot’s whole body spasmed, his reflexes made useless by bogus and contradictory commands. A wave of ecstatic nonsense gripped him and the file ended.

There's a lot of sex, I think at the expense of character development. There's also some genuinely creepy moments like when Eliasz climbs onto Paladin's back and becomes aroused by shooting the robot's guns...Somehow Paladin spends a ton of time examining how a relationship with Eliasz could work, but no time examining her motivations for killing tons of people to find pirate Jack. 

It was an entertaining read, but one I quickly forgot about and now don't have too much to say.

3.5 stars