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tregina's review
3.0
The main novella—I Can Transform You—felt half realized and didn't do a whole lot for me. Pimp My Airship, however, was all kinds of awesome and should be read by everyone.
mxsallybend's review
3.0
Although it's not as innovative nor as immediately impressive as Plow the Bones, the first book in the Apex Voices line, there is a lot to like about I Can Transform You. Maurice Broaddus has written a solid police procedural here with significant science fiction accents. Personally, I was hoping for more of the reverse - a solid science fiction story with police procedural accents - but I've tried not to let my expectations unduly influence my review.
The basic premise, along with the setting, really had me intrigued. I mean, a futuristic dystopia with alien towers rising above the clouds, has a very Blade Runner sort of appeal to it. Throw in a little synthetic drug addiction and an epidemic of suicides, and you've got a solid foundation on which to build a tale. Unfortunately, if there's one aspect where I found the story lacking, it's in the way it never fully exploits that setting. In fact, if you were to remove a few world-building scenes, the story itself wouldn't suffer in any way. It's a shame, because there seemed to be such potential there, but spectacle clearly wasn't Broaddus's intent here.
As a sci-fi tinged police procedural, the story does work very well, even if many of the elements are too familiar. Mac is a down-on-his-luck private investigator, an ex-cop who left the force after his conscience came into conflict with his career. Ade, on the other hand, is a perfectly good cop, but something of an outcast and a loner due to being part machine. When the love of Mac's life falls victim to one of those mysterious suicides, he tags along with Ade on the investigation, adding something of the buddy cop genre to the private eye noir.
Where the story really excels is in its ability to set (and sustain) a mood of dark hopelessness. It's a grim sort of tale, populated by men and women who have few aspirations beyond survival. The odds seem stacked against Mac and Ade from the start, but the two persevere as much to spite one another as anything else. Theirs is a relationship that reminds me a lot of the first Lethal Weapon movie, where a little dark humor and shared agony served to fill the void of suicidal dread and weary resignation that lay at the core of those reluctant partners.
The story is told very well, maintaining that noir-ish feel throughout. While I would have liked to see more in terms of world building, the glimpses of future technology (and the problems it creates) are varied and creative enough to keep you grounded in the griminess of tomorrow. Both main characters are well-developed, with great back stories, and the dialogue is extremely effective in conveying some valuable context to what's happening. Finally, the story itself takes a few interesting turns, leading to a resolution that actually managed to surprise me.
Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins
The basic premise, along with the setting, really had me intrigued. I mean, a futuristic dystopia with alien towers rising above the clouds, has a very Blade Runner sort of appeal to it. Throw in a little synthetic drug addiction and an epidemic of suicides, and you've got a solid foundation on which to build a tale. Unfortunately, if there's one aspect where I found the story lacking, it's in the way it never fully exploits that setting. In fact, if you were to remove a few world-building scenes, the story itself wouldn't suffer in any way. It's a shame, because there seemed to be such potential there, but spectacle clearly wasn't Broaddus's intent here.
As a sci-fi tinged police procedural, the story does work very well, even if many of the elements are too familiar. Mac is a down-on-his-luck private investigator, an ex-cop who left the force after his conscience came into conflict with his career. Ade, on the other hand, is a perfectly good cop, but something of an outcast and a loner due to being part machine. When the love of Mac's life falls victim to one of those mysterious suicides, he tags along with Ade on the investigation, adding something of the buddy cop genre to the private eye noir.
Where the story really excels is in its ability to set (and sustain) a mood of dark hopelessness. It's a grim sort of tale, populated by men and women who have few aspirations beyond survival. The odds seem stacked against Mac and Ade from the start, but the two persevere as much to spite one another as anything else. Theirs is a relationship that reminds me a lot of the first Lethal Weapon movie, where a little dark humor and shared agony served to fill the void of suicidal dread and weary resignation that lay at the core of those reluctant partners.
The story is told very well, maintaining that noir-ish feel throughout. While I would have liked to see more in terms of world building, the glimpses of future technology (and the problems it creates) are varied and creative enough to keep you grounded in the griminess of tomorrow. Both main characters are well-developed, with great back stories, and the dialogue is extremely effective in conveying some valuable context to what's happening. Finally, the story itself takes a few interesting turns, leading to a resolution that actually managed to surprise me.
Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins
zoe_e_w's review
4.0
I Can Transform You is made up of two stories, with the first bearing the same name as the book. I Can Transform You starts out very much like a long familiar trope of a loose cannon PI brought in to consult on a case involving the murder of his former partner. The trappings of a dystopian sci-fi world do little to change this formula during the journey through a well worn path. A suspect is found with an orgy of evidence to implicate them, and the brass are happy to close the case there. But of course there's something else going on, with people in the upper echelons of society pulling the strings to frame a two-bit felon and offer up a neat tidy package for the evening news.
In maybe 75% of the story, you could find the same idea present in any hard-boiled detective story, and the future setting with its trappings of bioengineering and cybernetic officers might be seen as superfluous. But it's in the final quarter that all those little crumb-clues begin adding up to a bigger conspiracy and lead to an explanation for the changes in the world. Then the pieces of world-building become more important in explaining the stakes of this one seemingly open and closed case.
Mac Peterson's washed out PI is balanced by the tight-laced and cybernetically enhanced Ade Walters, and both play a verbal tug of war teasing out bits of character development from each other. Mac's a rebel without a cause who's too afraid of himself to ever let anyone get close to him. He numbs his insecurities with drugs, alcohol or sex; whatever's available to take the edge off. On the other hand, Ade is a man well aware of his past and his pains associated with it, and he chooses work as his addiction. The law is his refuge from a dysfunctional family, but his loyalties are put to the test by this case in particular.
So we have trappings of a buddy cop movie mixed with a strong dose of dystopia, plus one other trope I can't reveal without spoiling the conclusion. It's hard to sell me on dystopias, but this one works by focusing on the struggles of the main characters to the point where the world building is just window dressing to the real point of the story. There's no definite ending to the story, only the implied ideal of a longer battle in which justice must throw off the strangle-grip hold of bureaucratic laws or risk dooming the entire human race to a death of choking apathy. When it comes to dystopias I do like, I prefer this kind of ending, the uncertainty of victory versus the ridiculous ideal of one person overthrowing an entire system of oppression with a few hollow words and meaningless actions. So yeah, the first story worked for me.
The second, not so much. Pimp My Airship is a steampunk story, and I have yet to read any of these from any author that roused my interest. I can understand the aesthetic appeal of alternate technology for some fans, and the historical appeal for others. But I hold no fascination for either of these things, and so most steampunk flies far, far off my radar.
It doesn't help that I know very little about the three characters beyond their struggle and their plans to attack a prison complex. Despite Deaconess Blues and Knowledge Allah speaking in lofty terms, their plan amounts to little more than a suicide mission that will likely do little to change the balance of power in this alternate world. I get their frustration about oppression and remaining slaves despite a supposed emancipation, but these two chastise Sleepy Nixon for being too simplistic, only to turn around and launch a plan that's never been shown to work in our own history of class struggles. Ultimately, all three are doomed, and Sleepy's fate is just delayed to a lingering death through imprisonment.
I will give the story points for presenting a stemapunk world from the viewpoint of the colonized and oppressed, but it is still a steampunk story, and those trappings end up outshining the characters for me.
I have to give two separate scores rather than grade this as a whole. So the score for I Can Transform You is 4 stars, while Pimp My Airship gets 3 stars. I think both are worth reader's time, but the second tale is in a genre that doesn't float my boat, and shouldn't be taken as a knock to the author.
In maybe 75% of the story, you could find the same idea present in any hard-boiled detective story, and the future setting with its trappings of bioengineering and cybernetic officers might be seen as superfluous. But it's in the final quarter that all those little crumb-clues begin adding up to a bigger conspiracy and lead to an explanation for the changes in the world. Then the pieces of world-building become more important in explaining the stakes of this one seemingly open and closed case.
Mac Peterson's washed out PI is balanced by the tight-laced and cybernetically enhanced Ade Walters, and both play a verbal tug of war teasing out bits of character development from each other. Mac's a rebel without a cause who's too afraid of himself to ever let anyone get close to him. He numbs his insecurities with drugs, alcohol or sex; whatever's available to take the edge off. On the other hand, Ade is a man well aware of his past and his pains associated with it, and he chooses work as his addiction. The law is his refuge from a dysfunctional family, but his loyalties are put to the test by this case in particular.
So we have trappings of a buddy cop movie mixed with a strong dose of dystopia, plus one other trope I can't reveal without spoiling the conclusion. It's hard to sell me on dystopias, but this one works by focusing on the struggles of the main characters to the point where the world building is just window dressing to the real point of the story. There's no definite ending to the story, only the implied ideal of a longer battle in which justice must throw off the strangle-grip hold of bureaucratic laws or risk dooming the entire human race to a death of choking apathy. When it comes to dystopias I do like, I prefer this kind of ending, the uncertainty of victory versus the ridiculous ideal of one person overthrowing an entire system of oppression with a few hollow words and meaningless actions. So yeah, the first story worked for me.
The second, not so much. Pimp My Airship is a steampunk story, and I have yet to read any of these from any author that roused my interest. I can understand the aesthetic appeal of alternate technology for some fans, and the historical appeal for others. But I hold no fascination for either of these things, and so most steampunk flies far, far off my radar.
It doesn't help that I know very little about the three characters beyond their struggle and their plans to attack a prison complex. Despite Deaconess Blues and Knowledge Allah speaking in lofty terms, their plan amounts to little more than a suicide mission that will likely do little to change the balance of power in this alternate world. I get their frustration about oppression and remaining slaves despite a supposed emancipation, but these two chastise Sleepy Nixon for being too simplistic, only to turn around and launch a plan that's never been shown to work in our own history of class struggles. Ultimately, all three are doomed, and Sleepy's fate is just delayed to a lingering death through imprisonment.
I will give the story points for presenting a stemapunk world from the viewpoint of the colonized and oppressed, but it is still a steampunk story, and those trappings end up outshining the characters for me.
I have to give two separate scores rather than grade this as a whole. So the score for I Can Transform You is 4 stars, while Pimp My Airship gets 3 stars. I think both are worth reader's time, but the second tale is in a genre that doesn't float my boat, and shouldn't be taken as a knock to the author.
scamp1234's review
4.0
Before this I was unfamiliar with Maurice Broaddus. The introduction by Matt Forbeck, which in my opinon is the greatest introduction any author can give another author, made me feel like I was familiar and loved the all the stories from Mr. Broaddus.
So big expectations have been set right at the start.
But I wasnt disapointed. I expected huge world building, characters that provided great dialouge, intrigue, and suspense. I wanted a story that I could feel familiar with but was different all the same. And I really enjoy stories that I seldom have to read over passages to gather the hidden gems that you may have missed. Both stories have this.
The title story ended up being my favorite but I'll probably swing back and forth as I read these again soon. My only beef with the whole thing was in the title of the book. The second story, Pimp my Airship, is brilliant! But I Can Transform You doesnt, tell me much and didnt interest me right away when I got the book. But this doesnt bother me much and I'm out to search for more by Mr. Broaddus.
So big expectations have been set right at the start.
But I wasnt disapointed. I expected huge world building, characters that provided great dialouge, intrigue, and suspense. I wanted a story that I could feel familiar with but was different all the same. And I really enjoy stories that I seldom have to read over passages to gather the hidden gems that you may have missed. Both stories have this.
The title story ended up being my favorite but I'll probably swing back and forth as I read these again soon. My only beef with the whole thing was in the title of the book. The second story, Pimp my Airship, is brilliant! But I Can Transform You doesnt, tell me much and didnt interest me right away when I got the book. But this doesnt bother me much and I'm out to search for more by Mr. Broaddus.
tiggum's review
1.0
I only finished this because it was very short. The plot was dumb and didn't hold together, and the setting seemed to get in the way of and confuse the message. Worse, anything good about it just reminded me of much better books.
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