Nemesis Games, by James S. A. Corey

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This series is great for escapist reading--you can put the news aside and spend time with some characters that, while they deal with a lot of rotten human behavior, in the end have total faith in people.

All of them. James Holden, Naomi Nagata, Alex Kamal, and Amos Burton come to this from different directions, but they all end up in the same spot in terms of having faith in people. That does take somewhat different forms--James is more about people being fundamentally good, while Amos goes for people being people. Alex and Naomi are more biographical. But in the end they are in the same place.

There's some pleasing space opera wrapped around that. The aliens are a presence in this novel, but not much of a one--more of a foreboding of things to come. This is a good stage-setter for the rest of the series. I'll keep reading.



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Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I picked this up for its relevance to racial justice--the author goes into detail on that in the postscript. But I found it hard to connect those dots. There's a similarity to N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance series--people lacking magical powers misunderstanding and oppressing those who have them. That's as close as I could get.

Otherwise it's a fairly straightforward YA romance in a fantasy setting, but special in that the setting is West Africa. Some commenters have mentioned the strong, platonic friendship between the protagonist and the main supporting female character. There seems to be a strong expectation that those relationships become sexual, but that's not how it's played here. All the relationships are hetero and cis-gender, though there's a minor supporting character that could go either way.

Doesn't break new ground as a fantasy plot, but having different faces as heroes could bring in a new audience.



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