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scarletrose169's review against another edition
DNF page 30.
The beginning jumps a bit between time frames so it's not fully clear what the continuity is.
The main character has a toddler daughter that she brings into this lab with a creature she positively hates and it just doesn't make sense. I couldn't get into this.
The author does seem VERY well versed in her sci-fi terminology and maybe a bigger sci-fi nerd will appreciate this work more than me. But it's not an easy read for people who may not be fully emerged in sci-fi lingo.
The beginning jumps a bit between time frames so it's not fully clear what the continuity is.
The main character has a toddler daughter that she brings into this lab with a creature she positively hates and it just doesn't make sense. I couldn't get into this.
The author does seem VERY well versed in her sci-fi terminology and maybe a bigger sci-fi nerd will appreciate this work more than me. But it's not an easy read for people who may not be fully emerged in sci-fi lingo.
erikars's review against another edition
3.0
This book had an intriguing plot and interesting characters, especially the main characters, but it also had a number of first-time-novelist rough edges. In particular, without giving spoilers, the plot arc was fairly dependent on the main character refusing to listen to a piece of information that was dangled in front of her the whole time. To balance that, there were many things I enjoyed, including having a main character who was a mother (although reading about memories of giving birth near the time I should have been birthing my lost little girl was more than I could really handle, especially while sitting in an airport). The book opened more plot doors than it had time to close, but that's something I am willing to forgive in the first of a series.
I saw strong resemblances between this and [book:The Dispossessed|13651]. Not direct borrowing, but more a general sense that Reed wanted to explore some of the same ideas Le Guin explored in that book in a different setting.
All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic for the release of the second novel.
I saw strong resemblances between this and [book:The Dispossessed|13651]. Not direct borrowing, but more a general sense that Reed wanted to explore some of the same ideas Le Guin explored in that book in a different setting.
All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic for the release of the second novel.
lisa_mc's review against another edition
3.0
A ruined Earth; a new hope for a home on another planet. That’s not a new idea for science fiction, but it has nearly endless possibilities, of which the story of “Archangel” is one.
The story, set a few hundred years in the future, is told from the viewpoint of Vashti Loren, a colonist and xenobiologist on Ubastis, an edenic planet that appears to be a possible new home for displaced Earthlings. But because her advance research team needs supplies and funding, Vashti also leads “safaris” for off-worlders to hunt alien fauna. The conflict between her search for knowledge of the new world’s creatures and her enabling of violence against them doesn’t help Vashti’s psyche; neither does the fact that she witnessed the murder of her scientist husband and was left to raise their young daughter alone.
The plan behind the potential colonization was for a century of research to determine whether the planet’s ecosystem could support a new species -- humans. But a century is a long time, and powerful interests are working to speed up the process. Add to the mix a rogue “Beast” -- a bio-enhanced soldier, one of which killed Vashti’s husband -- on Ubastis, and there’s no lack of action.
Reed does a fine job of world-building in “Archangel,” not dumping too much information at once, but giving readers a clear big-picture sense of what’s going on while slipping in smaller details. Her lively writing gets a little over-the-top at times, but the book’s pacing is fast, the plot raises thought-provoking questions about ecology and humanity, and Vashti is a complex, interesting character -- who will be back in two more books.
The story, set a few hundred years in the future, is told from the viewpoint of Vashti Loren, a colonist and xenobiologist on Ubastis, an edenic planet that appears to be a possible new home for displaced Earthlings. But because her advance research team needs supplies and funding, Vashti also leads “safaris” for off-worlders to hunt alien fauna. The conflict between her search for knowledge of the new world’s creatures and her enabling of violence against them doesn’t help Vashti’s psyche; neither does the fact that she witnessed the murder of her scientist husband and was left to raise their young daughter alone.
The plan behind the potential colonization was for a century of research to determine whether the planet’s ecosystem could support a new species -- humans. But a century is a long time, and powerful interests are working to speed up the process. Add to the mix a rogue “Beast” -- a bio-enhanced soldier, one of which killed Vashti’s husband -- on Ubastis, and there’s no lack of action.
Reed does a fine job of world-building in “Archangel,” not dumping too much information at once, but giving readers a clear big-picture sense of what’s going on while slipping in smaller details. Her lively writing gets a little over-the-top at times, but the book’s pacing is fast, the plot raises thought-provoking questions about ecology and humanity, and Vashti is a complex, interesting character -- who will be back in two more books.
mjfmjfmjf's review against another edition
3.0
Complicated and slow. With odd pacing and choices of details. There's a lot in this one. And it's definitely a story started in the middle. And takes a long long time building. And then kind of misfires. Definitely a different take on many things from colonization to human genetic manipulation. And even the nature of good and evil. And one of the better portrayed little kids I've seen in print as a side but motivational character. Challenging but perplexing. 3.5 of 5.
novella42's review
5.0
Review from 2015: Be prepared for badass rifle-toting scientists, alien dinosaurs, genetically modified walking weapons, a healthy dose of subtle yet unmistakable feminism, and some excellent storytelling. Oh and some sexiness. And violence. And cussing. Did I mention exciting badassery?
Beyond the scope of her worldbuilding skills, Reed has a talent for crystalizing and humanizing the most heartwrenching moments, like how it feels to land on a planet for the first time in your life, setting down in the grey leading edge of dawn, and watching the glory of the new world breaking open around you. She wrote that a character caressed the grass like a lover’s hair. "This was the dreaming gray of dawn," she wrote, "the color of the silence before the beloved speaks, the color of the water-filled glass offered to parch long thirst. Overhead the sky’s clarity seemed to ring of itself."
And that's not even the best part of that scene!
Beyond the scope of her worldbuilding skills, Reed has a talent for crystalizing and humanizing the most heartwrenching moments, like how it feels to land on a planet for the first time in your life, setting down in the grey leading edge of dawn, and watching the glory of the new world breaking open around you. She wrote that a character caressed the grass like a lover’s hair. "This was the dreaming gray of dawn," she wrote, "the color of the silence before the beloved speaks, the color of the water-filled glass offered to parch long thirst. Overhead the sky’s clarity seemed to ring of itself."
And that's not even the best part of that scene!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Gun violence, Animal death, and Gore
djwudi's review against another edition
3.0
Another one that wasn't a bad book - better than many I've read, in fact - it simply didn't engage me. I'm not exactly sure why, but while the universe was interesting, the characters didn't grab me. Not a bad book at all, but likely not my favorite of this year's nominees.
robynldouglas's review
4.0
3.5 that I am rounding up. This was an unusual novel and I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it - Reed grapples with some big ideas and deploys disturbing rhetorical techniques to get you to think about them, which left me unsettled.
morgandhu's review
3.0
Marguerite Reed's debut novel, Archangel (the first in a series), starts slowly, but doesn't take long to heat up. The narrator, Vashti Undset, is a complex character who plays many roles in her society - a relatively high-tech colony situated on a still untamed world with dangers ranging from carnivorous megafauna to as-yet unresearched microflora. She is a scientist, a big game hunter and guide, part of the co-ordinating body, an officer in the paramilitary organisation that provides both policing and search and rescue services, a "Natch" without genetic enhancement in a society where most people are at a minimum genetically modified to reduce aggressive behaviours, mother to a vivacious four-year-old and bereaved widow of the colony's beloved, almost deified, savagely murdered founder.
The colony she lives in is called Ubastis, a nominally Muslim society with strong associations to Egyptian and South Asian cultures, but which is in fact a mosaic of peoples and influences. Ubastis is a closed colony, with very limited immigration and strict population control - a decision made in an attempt to keep the colony's impact on the new world minimal, but one which is by charter revisited every ten years. The colony is under great pressure from the other homes of humanity - overpopulated earlier colonies and ecologically devastated Earth - to throw open its doors and accept the maximum number of settlers from other worlds.
As the novel opens, the time is drawing near for another vote on opening up the colony, and Vashti is about to be drawn into a web of plots and mysteries on both sides of the struggle in a way which will force her to confront her own grief and need for vengeance.
A multi-layered story, with some very interesting elements, and a few things that did not quite gel for me. A key part of Vashti's role in the escalating conflict hinges on her interactions with a Beast - a genetically enhanced clone soldier who has been illegally brought to Ubastis. The clone soldiers, we learn, are designed both to imprint on and produce pheromones which are only effective on Natches. This vastly complicates things for Vashti and the Beast, and is at the same tine extraordinarily convenient for certain later plot developments - and seemed a bit too contrived, all things considered.
Despite this, and a few other minor issues, I did enjoy the novel and am curious about where the next book in the series will take the people of Ubastis.
The colony she lives in is called Ubastis, a nominally Muslim society with strong associations to Egyptian and South Asian cultures, but which is in fact a mosaic of peoples and influences. Ubastis is a closed colony, with very limited immigration and strict population control - a decision made in an attempt to keep the colony's impact on the new world minimal, but one which is by charter revisited every ten years. The colony is under great pressure from the other homes of humanity - overpopulated earlier colonies and ecologically devastated Earth - to throw open its doors and accept the maximum number of settlers from other worlds.
As the novel opens, the time is drawing near for another vote on opening up the colony, and Vashti is about to be drawn into a web of plots and mysteries on both sides of the struggle in a way which will force her to confront her own grief and need for vengeance.
A multi-layered story, with some very interesting elements, and a few things that did not quite gel for me. A key part of Vashti's role in the escalating conflict hinges on her interactions with a Beast - a genetically enhanced clone soldier who has been illegally brought to Ubastis. The clone soldiers, we learn, are designed both to imprint on and produce pheromones which are only effective on Natches. This vastly complicates things for Vashti and the Beast, and is at the same tine extraordinarily convenient for certain later plot developments - and seemed a bit too contrived, all things considered.
Despite this, and a few other minor issues, I did enjoy the novel and am curious about where the next book in the series will take the people of Ubastis.
panxa's review
2.0
The overarching story was interesting, and I want to know what happens to Ubastis and the Beasts. But I had a lot of trouble connecting to the main character's emotions. She didn't make sense to me a lot of the time, possible because she didn't make sense to herself. But it made for a weird, slightly off-putting reading experience.
Warning for brutal m/m rape.
Warning for brutal m/m rape.
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