WEEKLYPRESS.COM · UCREVIEW.COM · OCTOBER 31 • 2012 7 Science Fiction for November 2012 by Henry Leon Lazarus I


t’s hard to mix humor with fantasy and sci- ence fic- tion. I tend to like my humor to be plot driven and it’s hard to be funny fighting monsters and bad guys. Jasper Fforde’s tale about The Woman Who Died A Lot (hard from Viking adult which I bought electronically) is about his recurring char- acter, Thursday Next who has been injured enough so that she can’t jump into books anymore. It’s her day cop- ies that die a lot, because someone stole them from the Goliath cor- poration to stop their evil plans to use dark reading mat-


ter (like dark matter, only in book world). Her ge-


nius daughter Tuesday is trying to develop a device to handle God’s smiting of Swindon due on Fri- day. Her son Friday was destined to be a leader of the Chro- noguard, but that has been disbanded because no one got around to invent time travel, and his new des- tiny has him committing murder the


same day as the smiting and spending the rest of his life in jail. Thursday has been appointed Chief Librarian of the Swindon All-You-Can- Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library, a very power- ful institu- tion that can raid homes for overdue books and whose li- brarians are armed. This current tale is a bit weak-


er than previous books which got me laughing


every half page. We’re down to a laugh every other page. Piers An- thony tells of an old man given The Luck of the Draw (hard from Forge) by being


youthanized and sent into Xanth to compete in a contest


to win Princess Harmony. For once the puns are not overwhelm- ing and


Bryce has to face real dif- ficulties to complete the contest. This may be the 36th


volume


of this long series, but it still pro- vides a good introduction


to the magical version of Florida because Bryce has to teach about the land. Light fun.


James S. A. Corey’s tale of a future human settled so- lar system and the effects when humans discover an alien weapon, Leviathon Wakes (paper) richly


deserved its Hugo nomi- nation. The story con- tinues when monsters attack the un-base on Ganymede and kill both them and the Mor’s marines opposing them. Cali- ban’s War (trade from Orbit which


I bought) tells how other scientists have kid- naped chil- dren with immune deficien- cies and also have released the alien, bio- logical nano- technology. Somehow getting the UN and Mars to


work together to fight this


new horror is the job of Avasaralla, a grandmother who loves to curse and knows how to move the wheels of power from her high po- sition at the UN. Even though it is the middle book of a trilogy, it stands well on its own. I really liked Bobbie the huge Mars marine sur- vivor and was glad to see her in an ebook, Gods of Risk which is


mostly about her teen- age nephew getting in- volved with the drug


trade on Mars.


Tad Williams imagines Sam Spade as an angel forced into solving a demon’s murder in a corrupt heaven hi- erarchy. The Dirty Streets of Heaven (hard from DAW which I purchased electronical- ly) is our in- troduction to Bobby Dollar an angel who defends souls in the heav- enly court convened at someone’s death. The case starts with a miss- ing soul and then the demon prosecutor has both his human and


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