The Martian Obelisk, by Linda Nagata

The Martian Obelisk by Linda Nagata

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This story was well and clearly told, and I found it easy to sympathize with the protagonists. Maybe a little too easy. It sounds very much like Nagata follows the same news I do, and took everything I (we) are afraid of, and convinced is going to happen, and put it in as the backdrop for a short story. Very compelling, and depressing. Others have said it is a bit derivative, but really, what story isn't? I liked it the best of all the Hugo short story entries this year, and hope it wins.



View all my reviews

The Secret Life of Bots, by Suzanne Palmer

The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is an enjoyable little novelette. It's a bit standard for a Hugo win, but it will contend. Highly humanized robots have always been a thing, and they definitely are this year (see All Systems Red and Fandom for Robots). Sometimes I think about wanting to see a story from a more uniquely "robotic" perspective, but then again, we are creating them so I guess it's a good bet that they will end up with our personalities. Anyway, it's worth the time to read.



View all my reviews

The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Jemisin is a big thinker and an autobiographical writer (the latter in this series, at least). I really enjoy big ideas, so this story was appealing. It didn't blow me away as it has some readers, but it's a worthy conclusion to the series. And as I have found over the years, that's no mean thing. Concluding a series effectively is incredibly hard.

I learned a lot from reading the afterword. Jemisin became a full-time writer during the writing of this book, and that shows despite the fact that she had a lot of external challenges. She is focusing on refining her style. For me, some of those edges show, in the way Hoa tells Essun's story. Throughout the series I sometimes had trouble keeping track of her identity with all the name (and truly, identity) changes. One thing that comes up persistently, and is always a challenge for writers who work at her scale, is how to convey the action. It's meant to be more visual, with lots of CG effects and breathless, strained, exclamatory dialog. I really could see this being a big-budget movie, but in print there's a bit of a struggle.

These are pretty minor points. The story speaks to us, in our time, about our history and how we restrain people with unknown power through fear. In the end the story is grand enough to fulfill its scope. Jemisin did an effective job of conveying how the earth had come to its present pass, and awesome is an accurate word for it.



View all my reviews

The Black Tides of Heaven, by J. Y. Yang

The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y.  Yang

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


There's a lot packed into this little book. The magical system, Slack, is interesting in itself (though we don't really learn much about it besides the fact that it is difficult to master). I think there's some significance in how it's named that may become more apparent later. It's also not a completely fantastic world--technology progresses, and things that can be done in Slack might also be accomplished without magic. This gives the relationships and the politics a more grounded feel.

All this is illustrated, rather than described, through the relationship of Akeha and Mokoya, twins who at the start have yet to declare their sexuality. The author is non-binary, which may account for why the non-binary nature of children and sexuality as a choice feel very natural, and contribute to the Otherness of the work as a reflection of ourselves.

Since it's part of a series I expect that all this is going to get filled in a bit. I think it will be worth it.



View all my reviews

River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The one good thing about this story is hippos. Introducing African wildlife to the U.S. is a thing, and Gailey gives us some good background on how this got considered. Hippos as potentially dangerous beasts that are a challenge to domesticate but repay the effort is pretty cool, and a great driver of the book. But that's about all there is to it. The characters are forced into two molds--roles in an Old West outlaw gang (explained, and deliberate) and also into modern sex and gender roles (not explained, though with more development it could have been illustrated).

The book has the feel of a YA novel but doesn't work as one--there's a lot of violence, including some very sad stuff. The plot is pulled off well enough around these forced characters, but it's necessarily uncomplicated in a short work. There's a couple of big gaps:

1) Gailey explains in the introduction that she has taken the real interest in hippo imports back about 60 years to set it in the old west. Trying to imagine some steampunk or Wild Wild West type technology to get the hippos to the Americas would have added a lot, but she chose not to.

2) The gender roles could have worked if Gailey had gone more in for this story as alternate history--where those gender roles are known and out but still marginalized. It sort of makes sense that these characters would be criminals in the Old West, because what else would they be in that society? Instead it just feels like modern liberal sensibilities are picked up and dropped into a Western setting. Not really helpful.

But 3 stars and yay for hippos.



View all my reviews