Mirrored Heavens

 

Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth & Sky #3) by Rebecca Roanhorse (2024) 597 pages

There are reviews of the first and second part of this trilogy on this blog. After the middle part of the trilogy took the main characters to different parts of the world of the Meridian, it was great that this book has them all converging in the same climactic battle. This series is consistently full of intrigue as leaders and gods vie for power, characters try to understand cryptic prophesies, and they discover hidden magic within. Serapio, the Crow God Reborn, and Xiala are such captivating main characters. Balam is a great tormented villain hungry for power. Naranpa, Iktan, and Okoa are the major supporting characters, who are fully brought to life. I enjoyed that the world building is bigger than the city of Tova, which was the focus of the first book. I love that the characters continue to be three-dimensional with faults and heroic aspects. There is a lot of action, exploration of gruesome darkness, and also love stories. 

Fevered Star

 

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse (2022) 384 pages

I've been excited to continue this fantasy series, which Ms. Roanhorse calls Between Earth and Sky. The land, the Meridian, and the people and magic are based on Mesoamerican culture before Europeans arrived. It has been two years since I read the first book of the planned trilogy, so it took a little while to reacquaint myself with the main characters and where the first book left off. I love the world building and exploring it with the old and new characters. I love that even though there is a cosmic battle between the dark and the light most characters are not one-dimensionally evil or good. There are faults and heroic aspects of all the main characters. The author expertly builds tension through the suspense of courtly intrigue with multiple tribes of people vying for power. Several storylines are left open-ended to be resolved in the third book. However, this one still feels satisfying as the protagonists have grown and changed, and recommitted themselves to new goals that will change the order of the Meridian.

FBP, volume 1

FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics, vol. 1: The Paradigm Shift by Simon Oliver, art by Robbi Rodriguez, and color by Rico Renzi, 160 pages

When your sink breaks, you call a plumber, but when gravity breaks, you call the FBP.

For some reason, the laws of physics have gone a bit haywire. Gravity may decide to stop working outside of your local high school, or time will decide to run a little faster inside your home than outside of it. When that happens, the FBP will come in and fix whatever's wrong. A relatively new agency, it's seeing a fair amount of change itself - veteran field agents who were there in the beginning, doing whatever it took to get the job done are suddenly finding themselves superseded by kids fresh out of college who have largely spent their lives learning about physics instead of seeing it. Agent Adam Hardy is caught between these two. The son of a physicist who disappeared when he was a child, he was attracted to the glamorous danger of the FBP's work. But physics isn't the only problem facing the FBP. Like anything government does, there are legislators who bristle at the idea of the government being the only one in charge of protecting people from physics and think that the private sector should have a whack at it. So when a bubble universe forms in a major metropolitan area, everyone is interested to see how the FBP handles the job. And in the case of Agent Hardy, he begins to quickly realize that there is more going on here than simple American politicking might suggest.

FBP is a comic that has been on my radar for awhile, but it wasn't until I bought a copy of this volume for my brother's birthday that I finally took the chance to read it. And I'm really glad I did. It's stories like these that I'm glad that comics exist. Simon Oliver's premise of "physics is broken" is perfectly suited to being told panel by panel, where art and color can also help tell you what's going on. He manages to explain to you what is going on, science-wise, and why that's not right pretty clearly (though, let's be honest - I'm a librarian, not a physicist, so I have no clue if his science is correct to begin with). And Robbi Rodriguez's art is fantastic. Slightly messy, he manages to convey energy and movement in his lines, even when the characters are standing or sitting still. Rico Renzi's coloring work is equally great, with muted colors contrasting perfectly from the brighter, almost neon colors denoting moments where physics is going wrong. If you're looking for science fiction that is closer to science fact, then you can't go wrong with FBP. I'm looking forward to reading more set in this world.