The Story of Kao Yu, by Peter S. Beagle.

My LibraryThing review.

Foxfire, Foxfire, by Yoon Ha Lee

My review on LibraryThing.

Red as Blood and White as Bone, by Theodora Goss

Here's my review on LibraryThing.

A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky  Chambers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a thoroughly entertaining book that shows Chambers' skills well. We have two parallel narratives, one with Lovelace the embodied AI living with Pepper in current time, and a flashback to Pepper's origins. The stories weave together well and keep things fresh. It's an excellent followup to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Have fun with a classic SF piece



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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky  Chambers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I like to read the major award nominated novels each year. Chalmers' A Closed and Common Orbit was nominated for the Hugo award this year, and now that they've gotten their act mostly back together I take them seriously again. So I wanted to catch the series up.

I would describe the Wayfarer's setting as an alternate, less heroic version of the Star Trek universe. The GC (Galactic Congress?) is the equivalent of the Federation, a group of spacefaring races that took in a faction of the human race that left Earth when it collapsed environmentally. The alien species are closely related, most having some kind of symmetric body plan, a central nervous system including a brain, and DNA. Interspecies sex is just as common but brought up to date.

The author shares a reflection of Roddenberry's vision of Federation goals--an inclusive grouping dedicated to helping all, but prone to mendacity in the details. That mendacity drives the plot, as the GC prepares to take in a new, perhaps not very stable, race.

The protagonist is Rosemary, a woman from a different (wealthy, escapist) faction of the human race that was found later. She is fleeing her past. She joins the ensemble cast of the Wayfarer on their part in working with this new race.

The strength of the book is in its deft, solidly competent weaving together of the stories of the crew and the current situation. The characters are easy to care about. Chalmers makes a solid case for Federation (er, GC) values through characters' actions, so it's only mildly preachy. And the writing carries you along, you're never bored waiting for something to happen.

Original? Not so much, but that's pretty hard to achieve now. This is darned good storytelling, and I'm excited to move to the next book in the series.



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That Game We Played During the War, by Carrie Vaughn

That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the last story I read of this year's Hugo nominees. The setting is a peace in a long-running conflict between two countries, one where the people are telepaths, one not. The protagonists were involved in the war, one as a combatant and one as nurse. The story is told from the nurse's point of view.

The premise is a little shaky, and I don't know how a race of people could be telepaths and otherwise be pretty much normal people. But Vaughn does a good job of selling that notion through the story, and describing what such people would be like from the perspective of someone who isn't one. That would be the main reason the story deserves a good rating. Overall it was fun to read, but my favorite in the group is Seasons of Glass and Iron. It won the Nebula and will likely take the Hugo too.



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Lovecraft Country, by Matt Ruff

I am now going to write these reviews on reviewing sites, and link them here.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I have to say I really enjoyed this book. It's a fine nominee for the World Fantasy Awards. It fits the horror genre well without getting overly gross. Most interesting is the fresh perspective, of having African Americans in the Jim Crow south as protagonists. I don't think it spoils much to say that the very end of the book sums it up perfectly--it's very hard to scare them with supernatural horrors, given the treatment they have received from ordinary humans. The book is a fine sampling of horrors of various kinds, held together most obviously by the theme of race, but also by the notion of the practice of wizardry and witchcraft as some sort of "science". We see that the notion is mostly to make the practitioners feel in control of what they were doing, and they really didn't understand it at all. A fine many-layered book that I think will make a strong showing for an award.



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