Author: 5t4n5
The Night Portrait — Laura Morelli
Before the Coffee Gets Cold — Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Somewhere in Tokyo there’s a tiny basement cafe with no windows, three clocks telling different times, Mocha coffee, and has a special seat with a ghost that sits in it reading a book while drinking said coffee. Once a day the ghost needs to go to the toilet and while she’s away from the seat anyone who sits in it can be served a coffee and travel back in time: but there are rules.
Rule 1: nothing you do in the past will ever change the present.
Rule 2: you cannot leave the seat.
Rule 3: you can only meet people who were in the cafe at the time you go back to.
Rule 4: you only get to use the seat once, no second chances.
Rule 5: you must finish the coffee before it gets cold.
If you don’t drink the coffee before it gets cold you become a ghost. It doesn’t say whether you replace the existing ghost or if that’s how the existing ghost came to be, just best not let the coffee get cold.
The book is divided into 4 chapters, each with it’s own time travel escapade. The character list is quite small as it only involves the staff and customers of the cafe — which is a very small cafe — this gives us a much more intimate relationship with each of them and their problems.
As the book builds so does the emotional level of each journey, getting deeper and deeper until the very last journey which i found to be quite a damper of ones eyeballs.
The main point of these stories seems to be that if you could go through time to meet someone but meeting them wouldn’t change a thing in the present what exactly would be the point? This is where most temporal sci-fi falls flat on its face because we always get to the paradox of you wouldn’t have gone back in time if you changed the reason for going back in the first place: this book doesn’t make those temporal mistakes.
All in all, very enjoyable and emotionally moving.
My only gripe: why’s there a cat on the cover when there isn’t a cat in the book?
And the journeys don’t end in this book, there’s a sequel, Tales from the Cafe, which has another 4 characters and their respective journeys in time: maybe the cat gets a mention in this. I’ll be sure to write a review when i get around to reading it.
Toshikazu’s Page
#scifi #japan #toshikazukawaguchi
Digging Up Mother — Doug Stanhope
Downward To The Earth — Robert Silverberg
Exhalation — Ted Chiang
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate – 2007
Exhalation – 2008
What’s Expected of Us – 2005
The Lifecycle of Software Objects – 2010
Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny – 2011
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling – 2013
The Great Silence – 2015
Omphalos – 2019
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom – 2019
Ted’s Page
#scifi #tedchiang
Holy Sister — Mark Lawrence
A brilliant ending to a really enjoyable trilogy.
It was a slow start in Red Sister, some might even say “tedious” in those early pages, but for those who stick with it you’ll be rewarded well for your reading efforts as the whole trilogy has been a good, slow crescendo all the way to the end, and it’s an end that doesn’t disappoint at all.
If you like really good fantasy with a little sci-fi thrown in then these books will not to disappoint. It’s big, a lot of pages, but it’s well worth all the hours.
Best of all, when you get to the end of the Kindle version you’ll find out that it doesn’t end there. For all us Abeth fans, Mark has just begun a new trilogy with The Girl and the Stars. I am so looking forward to more from this ice world.
Ten out of ten.
Mark’s Page
#fantasy #marklawrence
Bound — Mark Lawrence
A novella that fits in between Grey Sister and Holy Sister.
Essentially, it’s just an enjoyable little side escapade for our protagonists as we are all invited to a Sis’, young adults, soiree down in Verity after a series of unexplained poisonings. And we even get the beginnings of some real romance creeping into our story line for Nona: ooh-er!
Yes folks, more of that great action packed shenanigans that we have come to expect from a Sis soiree: all good fun.
