Arkessian

Review copy provided by the author, who is a close friend of decades standing.

This is the first book in a sweeping space opera series (Vega Victrix), but many readers will be relieved (may even throw parades or dance in the streets) to discover that this volume has an ending rather than merely stopping for a minute until the next one. Also, the second one will be out at the same time! More on that in a few days.

Corin Oshima is afraid of her past catching up with her--literally. After her horrible mission on Rossem, she traveled away at more than the speed of light. So when Rossem's history was altered, so was Corin's, and it's only a matter of time (again, literally) until the information wave traveling at the speed of light reaches her and obliterates her past, providing her with a new one--or, if she is too untethered to the current world, taking her out with it.

But she's not just sitting around waiting for time to make fools of us all. As all of us conscientious souls know, there's always work to do--and unfortunately there are always exploiters trying to spend their time treating people and lands as profit sources instead. Further complicating Corin's life are aliens who are rational but very much not human in their priorities, political complications among the human "Houses"...and the person she least wants to see in the universe right now. Even a well-educated and interestingly modified future human like Corin has her hands full!

I have read this entire series to date in draft and am thrilled to see that it's going to be available to the rest of the world so you all can talk to me about it. Highly recommended. 

Review copy provided by the author, who's a convention/online buddy.

Sometime in your life, you've probably met a smartass who always has a joke for every occasion--and then gradually realized that this person was genuinely kind. That they were not punching down, and mostly they weren't punching at all, instead focusing their jokes on wry incongruity or situation rather than mocking individual people. That there was a core of tenderness behind the wisecracking. If you know the kind of person I mean (let's be real: several of you are the kind of person I mean), you will understand Sol, the narrator of Hornytown Chutzpah pretty much right away. He's not just called Solomon the Wise Guy for a wry historical reference. He's definitely a wiseacre--but not as dumb as he might joke that he is. He's coping using a very specific kind humor--in this case, the instantiation of it that shows up in a lot of American Jewish culture.

And boy, does Sol have a lot to cope with. I knew I was hooked all the way when the guy who is enough of a smartass to earn the nickname Solomon the Wise Guy can be brought to action with a reference to tikun olam. Look, friends, I'm not Jewish, but I know that one. A call to repair the world? those are lyrics everyone can enjoy. And having it be a touchstone, a point that rings our hero like a bell? I'm in, I'm all in.

The Hornytown of the title is an incursion of Hell into the Washington, DC, area, complete with hellfire around it and sin-eating demons within (and sometimes without). It's run by a figure that will look unfortunately familiar, but rest assured that our hero is all-in against him. I was frankly worried by the title, because my interest in "city of people who would like to have a lot of sex" is pretty minimal, but it's not that kind of Hornytown at all. Whew. Is there chutzpah, though? There is chutzpah to spare. Which is a good thing, because the literally hellish nature of the problems Sol faces will require it.