Jcm Berne

As part of the next round of the competition, my team is requested to read & review semifinalist books from two other teams. My team has to cross-read the 2 Semifinalists books for Team EPIC (which will be announced within the next 2 weeks), along with the Semifinalists for another team (I believe the team's name is Edpool where this book was voted for Semifinalist status).

Among the two Semifinalists I can start reading ahead of time, Wistful Ascending is one of them. I usually veer away from books with lots of gushing reviews that aren't in the genres I usually read. Usually what most readers adore end up being books that I can't connect with or they have something wrong with the book that I hyperfixiate on. So, I was already entering this book dipping my toes in with trepidation. Like usual, I started reading the book without knowing anything about it other than it has some guy with superpowers dressed in a Kill Bill costume slugging lizard folk in outer space DBZ style.

Now that I finished reading it, I can instantly see why the book is selling so well. In essence, Wistful Ascending is like Twilight for guys. The entire book revolves around our Bella... err... Rohan who frets about his life and gushes over his love interest. And we spend the entire book in his head where he thinks about his (very strained) relationship with his parents, fretting about the clothes he wears, and whether other people like him.

While the book mentions Rohan likes to dance in his free time (never shown in this book), we never really know his hobbies (yes he does martial arts training with Wei Li, but it's more like she forces him to do it). In fact, Rohan is quite like Bella in the sense the book purposely made him devoid as much as possible of a personality. He is a blank slate where the reader can inject their own personality and live a fantasy where they are the hero. If this was the author's intent, the book certainly accomplishes its intented purpose.

And if people think about it, the fact Bella is such a blank slate is a huge key to the reason why Twilight sold so many copies. Female readers can enjoy a fantasy where their tedious highschool years become more interesting, with a hunky brooding vampire crush and an even more morose wolf shifter are constantly fighting over her attention. To have a vampire coven protect her from a group of nomadic vampires and later on from the Volturi who have taken a huge interest in her for reasons Bella is unaware at the time.

Rohan exudes what I believe male readers want for themselves. To be physically strong and have everyone look up to them, to feel needed, where people want to listen to their opinions and ideas, to have women swooning over them even if they don't dress fashionably or spurt a bit too much beard stubble. While Rohan mentions several times in the book about his Telugu ethnicity, he's written with such a vague brush that readers from any cultural background could feel identified with him. Canadians will enjoy his politeness and love for a brand of doughnuts I have never tried before (not sure if that brand is good but it seems like Rohan likes them).

So, if a reader is looking for some male heroic escapism while flying in outer space Superman style and punching gigantic insects while making everyone respect his heroism, they are going to love this book.

As for me, well, it is quite obvious I am not the intended public for this book. So, that can leave me in an odd position where I have to glean the other aspects about the book, which is sort of a mixed bag.

I certainly like the worldbuilding where we have this mysterious and feared fascist superpowered race of strong men (very similar to the saiyajin but without being controlled by Freiza's dad) keeping control over the entire galaxy. We never get to know much about the Drach people, and only meet a few hybrids mixed with humans (like Rohan) and other alien races. The book hints Drach Hybrids tend to be taller and bulkier than normal members of their people, but we don't get to know much of anything about pureblood Drach because the entire book is written in Rohan's POV.

This book also takes some accidental inspiration in the 90's anime Lost Universe where intelligent spaceships become bonded to a captain and every ship has a specific personality. The early chapters in this book were quite confusing to me at first because I didn't understand for over 20 pages why Rohan was talking to a woman named Wistful who didn't get much of a description. Until we learn about a space station with a cross shaped structure hovering over a beautiful planet named Toth 3 and then I realized this book has sentinent AIs that interact with Rohan but don't have 3D hologram avatars like in Lost Universe. I never got much of a feel for the personality of most AIs in this book, but I thought the science lab/transport ship called Insatiable to quite live up to her chosen name. She was very funny and bubbly.

I would have wanted the book to talk more about how a baby smart ship is made and how they grow and if they can survive indefinitely wandering around the universe. Are they semi alive? Biological? Sillicon life based? Have a soul? Are they political allies with the Drach because they are one of the few intelligent life forms (?) that are capable of thrwarting their immense power? These are the kinds of questions I was fretting over during the entire book and I was really anxious hoping to learn about these ships. I love sentinent space ships in books and love it even more when they form life-long bonds with captains and risk death if they separate from their captains. It's one of my top favorite tropes in Sci-Fi books. And if they are organic ships, I go bonkers!

I really enjoyed the side story of the Ursans with their political conflict and how they ended up stumbling into the space station where Rohan lives. Since the entire book is designed to focus on Rohan's heroism, we are only teased with snippets about them, which felt a bit like a bummer for me. Maybe the author will write a short story focusing on their planet and why captain Ursula felt compelled to escape? That would be a fun read.

Writing wise, the book has this very odd prose style where some chapters that focus on the worldbuilding were fabulous intertwined with very awkward chapters where Rohan is eating in restaurants (apparently Wistful has a lot of very good Earthian cuisine joints) or going on dates. Most readers will love the comical banter, whereas I couldn't quite understand the strange sort of humor. It isn't that Rohan is unlikeable (the book purposely makes him the reader's relatable archetype ideal protagonist), it's more of a cultural/linguistic barrier that I couldn't quite get into the more flirty date chapters of the book. I tended to feel very pulled out and after my 3rd very long chapter about Rohan having breakfast, I started skimming because I wanted to get to the next chapter about the sentinent spaceships or the Ursan refugees. The book tends to meander around a lot about Rohan's strange towing job and having lunch while he chit chats with all of his new friends.

In fact, I also spent an inordinate amount of time wondering why such an advanced sentinent space station and super smart spaceships need to be towed to a station in the first place. I could imagine Wistful giving Rohan the spaceship towing job as a zen exercise to keep him happy (and not blow up the station when he enters a berserk state). Maybe even lie to him his skills are needed, which might explain why nobody felt impressed with his odd job title. I just couldn't understand why super smart spaceships with warp drives and stealth technology need someone to tug them to the station. Maybe I am just overthinking things like usual.

In a nutshell, for the right audience, this book delivers its intended purpose of recreating the 'make yourself the hero of the story fantasy'. But I would have personally wanted more POVs. Wen Li would have been a nice choice because she is Rohan's closest friend in the station, already knows parts about his past but she's also discovering new things in the story due to the arrival of the Ursans and the Insatiable research ship. I quite felt the more comical chapters of this book in Rohan's POV were far too reminiscent of the really cringey filler episodes of the Majin Boo saga in DBZ (particularly the episodes where Majin Boo moves into Mr. Satan's house). I only saw a few episodes of DBZ dubbed to English, and the script in this book gave me really haunting memories of the huge liberties taken in the English dub. So, for readers that didn't grow up with a sense of nostalgia for the English DBZ dub, they might react the same way I did and have a hard time deciding whether to laugh at the cheesy dialogue or feel utter disbelief. While the worldbuilding in this book is great and overall I liked the story and characters, I felt the cheese factor was a bit too much for me and would have wanted the book to have had more POVs. I am awarding this book 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.… (más)

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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THE FIRST CHAPTER
Don't worry, I'm not about to go through this book chapter-by-chapter talking about each one—there are thirty chapters, and while I know I can go on and on about books that I like...

No, I'm going to focus on the first chapter for a moment for one reason—your reaction to the first chapter is going to tell you everything you need to know about this book. If you read that chapter (and everyone who's stumbled onto this post should do at least that) and you think "Yeah, I can see myself enjoying this book." You almost certainly will. If you read it and think, "Oh yeah! Give me more of that!!" You definitely need to read on. If you read this chapter and aren't that interested in going on—trust that instinct and move on with your life. Also, I feel bad for you. (but I say that without judgment, even if it doesn't sound like it).

This chapter isn't quite the novel in microcosm, but it comes close—it has the spirit, the humor, the action, the supernaturally-charged martial arts, and the panache that will characterize the rest of the book. Anddddd, best of all, it features a very good dog. The book will bring in more characters than just Akina Azure and her dog (frustratingly named Dog*), which is the biggest reason I can't say this chapter is a microcosm.

* It's not just this that Akina has in common with Walt Longmire—I actually could write a post comparing the two—but this is my biggest complaint with both of them. You two have great canine companions, they deserve a great name.

SO, WHAT'S PARTIAL FUNCTION ABOUT, ANYWAY?
I don't know that I can do better than the description I was given for the cover reveal a couple of weeks ago—I've tried, and I keep unintentionally borrowing elements from it, so let's just use it:

If Taken starred Michelle Yeoh and was set on a Jurassic Park-inspired Cradle.

Monster hunter Akina Azure inherited the most powerful weapon in the martial world before retiring to a peaceful life raising her twin girls.

The Reaver has them kidnapped, thinking Akina will trade that weapon for their safe return.

Will she? Or will she use it to wreak a terrible retribution on the men who took her girls?

You get one guess.

I'll expand a bit on that, though.

Akina was part of a legendary band of adventurers, The Five Fangs, and then she and her husband Petrick (also one of the band) retired to go live far away and start a family. None of their friends have seen—or heard—from them or of them in years. Long enough for them to raise twins into their teens before Petrick died of blood plague (I don't know what that is, but the name alone...).

Now, Akina tracks down one of the Fangs, Remy, to help her. She needs his connections to put her in touch with the people she needs to put her rescue plan into action. It wouldn't hurt to have one of the few people alive that she trusts to have her back, either.

Remy isn't crazy about the idea, but he can't say no to Akina. These two past-their-prime warriors are soon joined by a much younger fighter (who is not quite in her prime and has a lot to learn first) that they can't entirely trust, but can certainly use. Three people and a dog against the most powerful, feared, and twisted warrior (and his army) living. That's if they can dodge the kaiju-esque monsters along the way.

It's really not a fair fight.

FANTASY'S ANSWER TO SAM AXE
I predict that most people talking about this book are going to focus on Akina—as they should. And I'm tempted to spend a lot of time talking about Dog, because he's such a good boy.

But I want to hone in on Remy for a bit. He's so essential to the way this book works, and I think he's so easy to overlook. Sure, Akina and Zhu have some good, snappy, dialogue, and Dog being dog is amusing. Remy's easily the funniest character in the novel and can be seen as only comic relief. That's an error.

A couple of days ago, in an earlier draft of this post, I made a joke about him essentially being Sam Axe from Burn Notice. I haven't been able to get that comparison out of my mind. It's so on the nose. Remy serves as Akina's Devil's Advocate, voice of reason, conscience, and confessor. He's the only one she fully trusts anymore. He knows someone (or knows someone who knows someone) everywhere they go and can get them whatever resources they need. In a fight, he's almost as good as Akina and saves her on more than one occasion.

He covers all this with a commitment to doing nothing but drinking, womanizing, and lazing about all day—which is pretty much what he's been doing since Petrick took Akina off to who-knows-where. When called upon, he steps into action, griping the entire time about how it's cutting into his drinking. Again—Sam Axe.

If you've ever wondered what a wuxia-adjacent Bruce Campbell would be like, this is the book for you.

Okay, setting that all aside—at the end of the day, you're going to like Remy and trust him to do the right thing more than pretty much anyone else in the book (see the next section for a hint of that). His agenda is pretty clear—do the right thing by his friend, do the right thing in general, and then leave everyone to their business so he can get back to pickling his liver. He may not understand the nuances of everything going on—but he's honest, he's clever, and he's tough. Just the kind of guy you want to have around.

THE CENTRAL QUESTION OF THE BOOK
Most—possibly all—of the "bad guys" in this novel wouldn't describe themselves that way. They think they're doing the right thing to save the world, or at least civilization. Not just the right thing—the only thing that will save humanity.

But they're so focused on the ends that they cross all sorts of lines when it comes to means. They do things to increase their power that are repugnant to the reader and just about every character in the novel. Honestly, kidnapping Akina's twins in order to compel her to surrender her weapon is pretty much the mildest thing the "villains" like the Reaver do to secure the ability they think will help them.

It'd be easy to write them off here—ends don't justify the means and all that, right?

But when you stop and think about the steps that Akina takes to enable her to rescue the twins? It's hard to think of her as a hero (and she doesn't pretend to be one, in fact, she outright denies it).

The novel focuses on Akina; she's nice (generally) to Remy, Zhu, and her dog as they travel; she's funny; she defends young women from creeps and slavers...and so on. So you reflexively think of her as a "good guy" a "hero."

As we read Partial Function, we're thinking about things like Taken. So let's start there—are the actions that Bryan Mills takes to rescue Kim, the right thing to do? Sure some of them—but all of them? How about John Wick—think of the death and destruction that comes from him getting his vengeance? We're inclined to think of Mills* and Wick as the heroes—but are they? I'd ask the same thing about Akina.

* Who am I kidding? None of us think of him as Mills, we think "Liam Neeson"—or "Liam Neesons," maybe. No one thinks of him as Bryan Mills.

Now, that isn't a criticism of her as a character. I loved Akina. I wanted to see her win, her whole plan was brilliant, I enjoyed watching her fight, banter, be corrected, and wreak vengeance. Maybe even more than I enjoyed Neeson or Wick doing the same.

I'm just not sure I should.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT PARTIAL FUNCTION?
I have a couple of pages of notes that I can't get to. There are so many quotable moments—because of heart or laughs. Berne's got a way with words that I'm tempted to call Butcher-esque, and I just want more of it. But I need to get moving, so let's just say that I had so, so, so much fun with this. Between this, Chu's The War Arts Saga, and talking a little to Tao Wong this summer, I've decided I need to make more room in my reading for wuxia-inspired works.

The world-building deserves a paragraph or five to celebrate it (but it's taken me 2 weeks to get this much written, I'm not risking putting this off any longer). For example, I should talk about the kaiju-ish creatures, but beyond saying they're dinosaurish animals with powers that love snacking on humans (when they're not stomping on them), I don't know what to say. The political/clan system serves the whole thing well and I'd enjoy seeing more of it in a future installment.

Partial Function is a fast, enjoyable, action-packed read with a lot of heart and just enough humor to help you deal with the stakes and destruction. And these characters? I loved getting to know them and spending time with them. There's a lot to chew on in these pages if you're in a thoughtful mood, and if you're not? You don't need to, you can just enjoy the ride.

This was intended as a stand-alone, but the door is open for another adventure or so for the survivors. If we get a sequel, I'll be first in line for it. If we don't? This is going down as one of my favorite fantasy stand-alones. Either way—I'm encouraging you to read the first chapter and apply what I opened with. I'm sure there will be those who don't get into this, but I can't understand why.… (más)

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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A WORD ABOUT THIS
If I approached this novel the way I typically would, you wouldn't read it. I wouldn't blame you, because I wouldn't either. It would just be too long to bother with. There's just too much that I want to talk about here. So I'm going to do this differently, I'll provide a little setup, give a couple of pros and cons in bullet points (many of these bullet points would be 2-3 paragraphs otherwise), and then a wrap-up thought.

There's still a good chance that this is going to be too long, but I tried.

* WHAT'S WISTFUL ASCENDING ABOUT?
For some time, Rohan was one of the most feared warriors in the il'Drach Fleet. As a human/il'Drach Hybrid, he had powers and abilities beyond what most are capable of—flight, super strength, speed, stamina, healing, etc. He tires of that way of life and retires to the space-station Wistful, just outside the empire, and gets a fairly menial job. Work, a couple of beers, and sleep—before starting it again the next day. That's the kind of life he wants.

And it works for a while. Then a previously dormant wormhole opens up and refugees from the other side of the galaxy (or further) show up. Then scientists from the Empire arrive to study that wormhole. Dangers, soldiers, spies, and assassins are suddenly all over Wistful and Rohan is called upon to defend his home, his friends, and himself.

THE CONS
This is going to be a short list:
* The Title. Yeah, it's fitting. But it's not really an eye-catcher, is it?
* The Prologue is one of those action-packed intros that stops just before something major happens before giving us "X Hours Earlier," "Y Days Before," etc. Twelve Days, in this particular case. I don't get the appeal of this kind of introduction, and while I can't say that I've never seen it done well, the percentage is pretty low. I don't understand why writers keep going back to that device, someone must like it.

THE PROS
Basically everything else.

However accurate, that's probably not that helpful. So let me share some highlights.
* In the tradition of William Munny, John Rambo, John Wick, Clay Cooper, and countless others, you have a man of war, a man of violence who has made a conscious decision to leave that to pursue a quiet life, a peaceful life—a life of no notoriety. Then circumstances compel them to return (hopefully temporarily) to that life they had forsaken. Who doesn't like this kind of story?
* Before he joined the il'Drach Fleet, Rohan was a super-hero on earth—or tried to be, he apparently didn't get much attention due to being on the weaker side. Which is just a great idea for an origin. If nothing else, it makes Rohan instantly accessible to the reader—we get his humor, his references, and have heard stories like his before. Also, by "weaker" think Invincible/Mark Grayson compared to Omni-Man/Nolan Grayson. So technically weaker, but not a major downgrade. Also, hold on to that Invincible comparison—we'll be coming back to it.
* So his father was an alien, but his mother was from India and she relocated to Canada when he was very young. That's a lot of cultures to draw from, it explains his tastes in food—and it keeps Rohan from being a Clark Kent/Mark Grayson/etc. clone.
* Not only does Rohan have nifty superpowers (as do some of his opponents)—the way that Berne describes their use is just fantastic—really. If it's not the best description of super-powers in prose that I've read in the decades I've been reading them, it's so close as to be negligible (and I'm too lazy to dig up the couple of contenders that I'm thinking of to do the comparison).
* Beyond that—his explanation for the source of the powers in the metaphysical sense? Think of the Force in episodes 4-6, and then do a better job of explaining it.
* (there's a later explanation of how those abilities manifest themselves in the Hybrids that's pretty clever, too)
* There are kaiju. Or kaiju-esque creatures.
* Wistful, the space station Rohan lives on and works for, is the kind of multi-species hive of activity and commerce that's catnip for Space Opera/SF junkies. And the alien races/cultures that are represented there are well-designed and interesting. Really, if Berne gave us an illustrated guide to his aliens, I'd snap it up.
* Wistful is a sentient space station (I'm on a roll with these lately), who actually has legal jurisdiction over the solar system she occupies. Can be a party to treaties, etc. How cool is that?
* It's not just space stations, either. Ships of a certain size are sentient, too. They grow and develop. They have wills and desires of their own—for example, there's a ship that got tired of being a troop transport and changed themselves (with the appropriate approvals, etc., I'm sure) into a science vessel because they wanted to learn and explore. I'd take a novel just about that ship.
* The explanation behind the way the ships/stations act and have sentience, etc. in contradistinction to those of other cultures is interesting and fits in with the world that Berne created so well.
* I don't know how I've made it this long in this list (which is longer than I anticipated and makes me all the more certain I shouldn't have tried a traditional post) without mentioning the humor. Think Jim Butcher. Think Invincible. Think Peter Parker at his best. Think MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy. Think Nicholas Eames. You get that humor throughout the novel and it's shown through all the characters in some way (at least those not trying to kill someone at the moment), but it's particularly expressed in Rohan's point of view and the way he talks to himself.
* But more particularly Rohan's banter with just about everyone—it's almost at the level of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League
* Most of the characters—from Wistful's security chief to the staff at Rohan's favorite place to get breakfast are so well-developed and distinctive, with such interesting points of view and characteristics that you almost want every scene to be twice as long just to spend time with them.
* This is related to the depiction of super-abilities. But these fight scenes are dynamite. One of the problems a lot of writers have with Superman, for example, is when someone like him lets loose and say punches a guy—bad things happen. I remember an old DC role-playing game when I was a kid—no one wanted to be Supes because it was too easy to kill someone. Now, people like Robert Kirkman embraced that, and the pages of Invincible (I told you to hang on to that) are dripping with blood, gore, bits of bone, and the debris of buildings/mountains everywhere. We get the same kind of power on display here with the same kind of consequences (also, several displays of Rohan not letting that happen).
* Related to those fights. Seriously. Don't make Rohan angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry (he sure doesn't—see the first bullet point in this list)
* One more Invincible note—doesn't that cover kind of look like Chris McGrath did a take on a Ryan Ottley cover? I don't know who the cover artist was, but I loved it.
* Lastly, aside from the Prologue issue (which is my personal taste, but it's my blog so I get to call it an issue), the way Berne plotted this thing, constructed the story, doled out information, and everything else along those lines was so well done, so impressive that you have to believe that he's been at this a long time.

Okay, I lied. I have one more point:
* Talking bears in space. Well, an alien species that happens to look like sentient, talking bears, who have the strength of large bears, and enjoy catching/eating fish. So....close enough. I'll say it again: talking bears in space.

SO, IT'S PRETTY CLEAR ALREADY, BUT WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT WISTFUL ASCENDING?
I want to say more—believe it or not. I don't think I've captured how excited I was reading this and am now while trying to talk about it.

I was talking to a friend about Wistful Ascending the other day, or maybe I was just trying to—like with this post, I struggled. I said, "It's like he's doing "Scenes from a Hat" from Who's Line is it Anyway?, but instead of transitioning from one idea to the next, it's like Berne takes each idea as it's pulled out and adds it to the story. He says 'Yes, And' to everything.—'Sentient Space Station? Okay. Golden-Age Super-Hero Sidekicks who've become old scientists? Fine. Kaiju? Sure thing!'" I'd honestly love to know what he thought wouldn't work in this novel.

And the maddening thing, the thing I can't wrap my brain around is that it somehow all works. Because that was my friend's first reaction—"oh, that's just way too much for one book, the guy needs to edit." I had to say no, it somehow all comes together just fine, "I don't understand how, but it's working great. I'm loving it. I want to become his new best friend."

And readers, I was at the 52% point when we had that chat. I still didn't know everything he could do with the book. I wasn't kidding when I listed two things as cons to this book. I couldn't think of anything else that I didn't like.

I'm not saying this is the best thing I've read this year (but it might be). I'm definitely not suggesting everyone's going to relish it the way I did. But, boy howdy, this hit all the right spots for me. I couldn't get enough of this. And yeah, I want to be JCM Berne's new friend.

Nevertheless, it's getting 4.5 stars from me because of the Prologue, because I round up for Goodreads and Amazon, and because I like to give an author room to get more stars as a series progresses and they get better at their craft. And if that half a star dissuades anyone from reading the book, they weren't paying attention to anything I said above.… (más)