Cue Pain by Three Days Grace

This was so good, and gritty and just everything I want in a revengeful weird scifi. If you're looking for comp titles, I'd say it's a less thought out Count of Monte Cristo but on planet Hoth. And obviously Beowolf, but I am not subjecting myself to compare it to the 2007 movie.

Yorick and Thello's relationship, just tug on my heart strings already. So complicated, and wholesome at the same time? Yorick's relationship with his memories and home planet, also complicated. The world building too, just amazing! It wasn't overly complicated but still was complex enough that it kept things engaging. Just well done all around.

I look forward to other people gobbling this up, because Yorick is great and as flawed as a character he may be, he deserves his time in the sun.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Orbit Books for an advanced copy of this new science fiction thriller.

Sometimes a person can go home again. To a planet that is cold and brutal, both environment and people. Where the only family left is a brother who tried to kill that person, and succeeded in scarring that person forever. Where a the name that person was born with is used to either keep children from disobeying parents, or to stroke the flames of hatred against the company that controls every aspect of their lives, even past the point of their bodies dying. However when the monsters appear, a hunter is called, and home is where he goes. Ymir by Rich Larson is a powerful science fiction novel, full of monsters, both robotic and human, love, hate, maybe redemption, but a whole lot of revenge. And probably the sleeper book of the summer.

Yorick is a stalker of the creatures called Grendels who haunt the depths of mines and other places that the all- seeing, all- powerful company sends their human workers in search of minerals and other treasures to feed the company's coffers. Yorick is sent to the planet that he was born on, that he escaped after committing many atrocities to his family and others, which earned him a destroyed face at his brother's hand. Years have passed on Ymir, but to Yorick the pains are still fresh as so much time in suspended animation travelling the galaxy hunting Grendels, a mix of robot and alien flesh, whose violence to miners causes expensive disruptions to trade. Yorick has to pretend to be someone else as he hunts, as the world is prime for revolt, and danger could come from anywhere.

What a great book that took me completely by surprise. The story starts with just such an assured writing style that a reader knows they are in good hands. Everything the world, the environment, the science, the story unfolds carefully setting the reader in and not overwhelming but keeping the reader entertained, and wanting to know more. Yorick is a interesting character, that again the reader wants to know more of. The supporting characters are all described well, there place in society and role in the story all make sense. And once the story hits the book just goes for it storywise, even with jumps in view and time, but again never losing or confusing. The author really did quite a lot of work and it shows. A side note, this book gets a little vicious in some spots, and a lot bloody, but in the frame of the story it really makes sense.

This is the first book that I have read by Rich Larson, but it will not be the last. I'm excited to find another new author to put on my to read list. Really good science fiction, with a lot of heart and love surprisingly. Recommended for readers of the Sten novels, by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch, Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton and for the Beowulf content The Legacy of Heorot by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes.

Rich Larson's Ymir is going down as one of my biggest surprises of the year. A brutal sci-fi homage to Beowulf this book was a fantastic read and I really hope that someday we get to see an adaptation of it somehow because it deserves one.

Ymir is the story of Yorick who once left the icy world of Ymir more dead than alive and never thought he would be forced to return. Years later, he's now become a Grendel hunter, hunting the terrifying organic machine/monster things that once wiped out the precursors to humanity. However, when a Grendel appears on Ymir and leads to rumors of a strike of the laborers that make up a huge portion of the planet's population, Yoricks is forced to return home and face off against the mysterious possible ringleader of the revolution, his estranged brother.

This book was brutal and fun and I think people looking for a wild sci-fi adventure this summer will enjoy it thoroughly. Yorick was a fascinating character and I loved getting to spend time with him and delve deeper into his secrets. The Grendels, the monsters at the heart of this story, are terrifying and made for one of the most interesting science fiction monsters I've read in a long while. Rich Larson is a master of pacing and this book was paced so wonderfully that I couldn't put it down. I look forward to whatever Rich Larson churns out next.