Shadow Prisons, by Caroline M. Yoachim

Shadow Prisons feels very far-out speculatively, but I don't think it is such a stretch to go from the Metaverse to allowing our entire reality to be mediated virtually, especially if it becomes really inconvenient to live any other way as she speculates. But it may be a little on-point, and it has a happy ending, which given where this starts I just don't see happening. Very much a tale of our times.

My Goodreads Review

Where You Linger, by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Where You Linger is a time travel story--an author has become successful enough to afford a process where one can travel to the past and change one's own timeline.  That part isn't very fully explored, there are no consequences enumerated.  The protagonist had a complicated sex and relationship life and intends to save her past self from some of that.  Mostly it is a dialog between her present and past self as they travel through her experiences.  I don't know, I've seen versions of this that had more impact on me.  

Stepsister, by Leah Cypress

 Stepsister is set in the Cinderella fairy tale, but a very different imagining of it.  Prince Ciar has become king and has a bastard brother that he and no one else trusts.  Ella is now queen.  She was allowed to take vengeance against her stepfamily, killing the stepmother and one sister but letting the other (in this telling Jacinda) live.  Five years have gone by and things are a bit more sour.

Mostly this is a royal house tension story now.  Lots of people walking very thin lines.  Good if you like that sort of thing, and a good attempt at adding depth to the characters, but it's far enough removed from the original that to me it doesn't feel like the same space. 

Open House on Haunted Hill, by John Wiswell

This is a fun take on haunted house stories. Houses don't have ghosts. Houses do their own haunting. The author got a lot of good character development into a very small space, too. A very nice Christmas read.

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Metal Like Blood In the Dark, by Ursula Vernon as T. Kingfisher

A good solid escape story. Explores how AIs programmed to trust might figure out that humans (and other AIs) are not necessarily trustworthy. Like others, I think I have read this story before in some other form, but it's not a bad thing for it to come around again.

David Shontz’s review of Metal Like Blood in the Dark | Goodreads

A Guide for Working Breeds, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

This is a fun but serious story commenting on worker exploitation as robots.  Employers are taking it in the face at the moment since with Covid-19 staff shortages people won't put up with garbage, but automation is progressing and an intelligent but indentured AI might be forced to.  Pretty fun relationship story here too.

David Shontz’s review of A Guide For Working Breeds | Goodreads

The Mermaid Astronaut, by Yoon Ha Lee

This is what you would call a "pretty" story--the point of it is not explored through conflict. In fact, everything works out as well as it could, though there is some foreboding. But it's told like a fairy tale, and not one of those Grimm ones that's really a horror story. Hard to pull off, so the award nominations are deserved. This is the first thing by Yoon Ha Lee outside of the Machineries of Empire series that I have read, and I enjoyed it.

David Shontz’s review of The Mermaid Astronaut | Goodreads

Little Free Library, by Naomi Kritzer

There's a lot of this kind of story out there, where someone connects with a fantasy world by way of asynchronous, analog dispatches. They are always fun and need to be sprinkled into the world again sometimes for those who have not stumbled across them in old library collections. This is a solid example and it's time for one of these to come around again.

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Badass Moms In the Zombie Apocalypse, by Rae Carson

A good, action packed zombie story. You could pretty much drop this into Seanan McGuire's "Feed" universe, say in the early days, and it would provide a good perspective. The story makes excellent sense in its own space and highlights the incredible fear and reward of childbirth.

David Shontz’s review of Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse | Goodreads

Two Truths and a Lie, by Sarah Pinsker

I have to tell you it is a little frightening and intimidating how good a writer Sarah Pinsker is. In "Song for a New Day" she pretty much called our current times and had an incredibly moving and effective story arc. The story arc is just as good here in a shorter form. Our protagonist is a person used to lying about her past--even though these days it is pretty easy to check up on people. But she gets by with it. Then she makes up a lie that ends up being true and leading to a very creepy children's show host. This is told with a backdrop of her helping an old acquaintance (not quite a friend, and that explanation is good too) clean out his brother's hoarder home. It's just absolutely delicious to read, if for some reason you have not go do it now.

David Shontz’s review of Two Truths and a Lie | Goodreads

Monster, by Naomi Kritzer

 A solid, entertaining story.  Our protagonist goes to China to bait out someone she knew in high school, a guy that the girls get warned about.  Seemingly nice, but with a dark side.  He learns biology and starts in on a project to make humans superhuman.  Kritzer does a nice job of speculation, and an even better job at the end of the story tying in the layers outside of it.  Worth a nomination and a read.

Monster, by Naomi Kritzer

Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam the Super, by A. T. Greenblatt

Burn is almost a 4 but not quite. This is a good, pleasant read, bringing superheroes down to earth. Many may remember that this take on superheroes has been very thoroughly explored in George R. R. Martin's Jokers series, which is still going strong, but this is a good one-off. Our protagonist Sam goes through the phases of adjusting to his superpower, which is possibly a useful but not spectacular one. A good reminder that people with extraordinary powers like this would lead a lonely life, but Marvel and DC actually do make that pretty clear already.

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Helicopter Story, by Isabell Fall

This story was withdrawn from publication in Clarkesworld.  I am able to find it on the Internet, but out of that much respect for the author I will make you find the link for yourself.  I have read some of the backstory but not nearly all of the spilled ink.  But I am an activist in this space so was motivated to chase it down.

I understand it being viewed as controversial--it is a very unusual and continually disturbing take on the harnessing of gender roles for other purposes.  The protagonist told her story in extremely personal terms.  Isabell Fall is a writer who can really write, and I think it is a true loss for SF that she probably will never write again.  I have seen so many tired takes on LGBTQ+ support and gender issues get nominated for awards, where the main contribution seems to be simply role reversal--putting women in place of men and homosexual for heterosexual relationships.  This story takes gender seriously.  And the setting--a postapocalyptic matchup between a fugitive human government and one run by an AI--pretty much gets lost in the controversy.  I am sad that this went down the way it did.

Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliot

Well, I liked reading the book, it had some good battle scenes and kept me going. But "gender swapping Alexander the Great" is a little too literal. It reads like it is set on earth, in pretty much every way. We have modern references with Channel Idol (American Idol, get it?), and older references with descriptions of what is sumptuous (sandalwood incense). Instead of kings and sons we have queens and daughters, and broader sexual expression categories. But if those things are not explored (and they're not), the switch is just a bit flip and not signifying. I've read this story many times, in earthly fantasy, make-believe world fantasy, and galactic fantasy. It's not new or fresh and plays directly into the notion of someone having worth, merit and power because of their birth. Can we somehow get away from this?

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Attack Surface, by Cory Doctorow

Like other reviewers, my feeling as I read this book was that it was not science fiction--more of a cutting-edge thriller with technologies that seem very possible today. This is how Cory Doctorow usually writes--the technology is from the descriptions of alpha- and beta-version tools in the best technical journals and blogs (like Boing Boing).

For about 80% of the book I felt sad at the state of play that Doctorow describes. There's just no real hope of retaining your privacy if you have the nerve to stand out and get a powerful actor's attention. For the last 20%, the hope faded to cynicism. The setup was so bleak that it really did not leave much room for a turnaround beyond Masha's "waking" moment. It made me think about Hong Kong, where the protesters had the latest versions of all this technical and social engineering thrown at them. The protesters lost in the end. And they knew it was going to happen. I do have to give props to Doctorow's complex ending. Even a turnaround that stretches hope to the edges leaves the situation at status quo ante.

We live in historic times. This book is not going to make you feel better about them. Sorry.

My Goodreads Review

Machine, by Elizabeth Bear

Well...I liked Machine, better than I liked Ancestral Night.  I'm still not really enthused, even though I basically enjoyed it and was engaged in the plot.  The story is not simple, nor is the resolution.  But I agree with other reviewers that both Haimey (from Ancestral Night) and Jens spend a lot of time introspecting in our general direction, meaning that they infodump big time. 

They are also very similar in their basic belief in the Synarche.  It comes off as an inhumanly prosocial galactic empire, until it doesn't.  The plot situations are slightly different, but both characters react to their situations as though they were representatives of what the Synarche is about on an individual level, instead of real people.  I am reminding myself that Haimey was in many ways not a real person.  Jens seems to be, though we learn less about her background.

The novel stands alone, and you really wouldn't need to read one or the other first.  That is kind of what drives me nuts about this one, because Ancestral Night leaves a very large plot element out there for later development.  <spoiler>Singer, the shipmind from Ancestral Night, is a peripheral character in Machine so we know it takes place later.  I was really hoping this book would take the idea of the pattern written into the universe that only Haimey can see a bit further.  There's a very mild echo of it in the poetry written into the archaic humans of Big Rock Candy Mountain's DNA, but that particular reveal ends up getting dropped entirely</spoiler>  So this book, in my view, *should* have been a straight sequel but it wasn't.  

I liked Helen Alloy as a side character, and the way the action unfurled kept me reading.  But both of these books just leave me thinking they could have been better.  Darn.

My Goodreads Review

The Consuming Fire, by John Scalzi

The metaphor for the Interdependency is the Trade Winds. In the age of sail-driven cross-ocean trading (15th-19th centuries) ships would ride the southern Trade Winds to the Atlantic coast, and the northern Trade Winds back to Europe. So let's imagine interstellar Trade Winds that allow relatively easy contact between far-flung parts of an empire, and that the parts become specialized enough that life isn't possible without these trade winds. What would happen if climate change stopped them? That's the basic driver of the series. I kind of missed that in the first book, but the second book with all its exposition makes it more clear. Mind, Scalzi never *says* directly that that's what is going on, but it is.

So the plot has basically written itself, from the title of the first book. A collapsing empire, but instead of the Holy Roman or Ottoman empire it's a space empire. Honestly there are so many of these kinds of stories out there now, particularly among major award nominees, that I'm coming to pick the plot up pretty quickly. So I end up judging the book more by how interesting the characters are. We have a visionary (literally) leader, who doesn't really see herself that way, trying to act on behalf of a large and mostly functional empire, and all the other royalty is in complete denial and mostly out to screw the Emperox and each other.

The book rolls along nicely and there's plenty of humor so it's quite readable, but I can't say I engaged deeply with any of the characters. The Emperox Cardenia and her consort Mace Claremont are basically super nice people, out to help others. Their governing philosophy is expounded at some length throughout the book, which is pretty much straight Bentham utilitarian--the greatest good for the greatest number, in the most practical way possible. The Church of the Interdependency seems like worshipping Benthamite economics. Which would be a decent world--kind of like what's in John Rawls' Theory of Justice, with allowances for imperfect execution. Some think it's worthy on its own, but to me it's really a bridge to the next one, where I hope to engage a bit more.

My Goodreads Review

The Ministry For the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson

I am coming to this book later than most. As a work of fiction I would give it a weak three stars, but I read many of the reviews, and any book that can generate that much interesting discussion deserves better than that.

Even though it's kind of a flawed book in a lot of ways. Many of Robinson's books feature compelling central characters, and the story is told through and around them. This is not one of them, even though it features two interesting protagonists (Mary Murphy, head of the titular Ministry, and Frank May, climate disaster survivor). We are subjected to long philosophical discourses and chapters told from the perspective of a species, or a concept, or something. Some of these work really well and made people think. Others were just windy. Toward the end of the book it's pretty much all not real necessary--the book kind of peters out.

I'm with a lot of other reviewers in finding the plot both too easy and insanely hard. As we speak, fossil fuel interests are striking back with fierceness and precision at climate activists, and appear to be ready to take the risks of aligning themselves with authoritarian parties and regimes. After all, oil companies are very familiar with how to work with dysfunctional and downright evil authorities. Robinson either left out a lot of potential tension around how fossil fuel interests would react to having top executives killed in terrorist attacks (I have to think KSR is on multiple watch lists. Take care, sir...) or he didn't think it would actually happen. The terrorist drone swarms are interesting, but I would have to think there'd be countermeasures, or ways to use them against the terrorists as well.

The opening sequence is one of the best graphic descriptions of a heat disaster that I have ever read. Took days to get over it. Consider that a trigger warning. And incredibly plausible at that. Wet bulb temperatures above body temperature are very real and happening increasingly in populated areas (part of what cleared out Syria).

Overall I am more depressed after reading this than hopeful. KSR is an incredibly imaginative writer, and I think he meant to write a difficult but hopeful book. But the path to survival involves a generous dollop of murder along with some pretty incredible changes of direction by world elites, in particular bankers. He may be onto something in thinking that legislative bodies in both democratic and authoritarian countries become less relevant due to their inability to act. So the conspiracy theorists end up being sort of correct. Yikes. I am sleeping even worse now.

All that said, it's a book that should be read, as I believe KSR properly gauges the threat of climate change and gives a good idea of the scope of changes that would be necessary for the bulk of the population to survive. Will we actually do this, or something like it? I don't like the odds. I personally cannot take or defend this path on moral grounds. Would we manage something like it with more justice? It would be irresponsible to give up.

My Goodreads Review

Agency, by William Gibson

I actually liked this book better than The Peripheral, though it has some of the same weaknesses. We have kind of moved past how the stubs (alternate futures not connected to the "main" line) get generated, and that's a good thing because there's nothing in either book that pretends to explain them beyond the fact that they are Chinese. Several logical things are happening--Ainsley Lowbeer, whose title is Metropolitan Police but that's about a toenail worth of what she does, is getting ever more powerful. It's more clear how the stubs connect to the main, since by using peripherals they can exchange information. And the AI feels like it could have happened already. If it has, would we know? Only if it decided to announce itself...

That said, it doesn't live up to the visionary fire of The Sprawl trilogy, though that's setting the bar awfully high. The extrapolations feel less like a whole new world, and more like a good anticipation of the very sad current one we're dealing with. The characters in Agency have grown, relative to Peripheral--Netherington has stopped drinking, though he is now very boring (perhaps deliberately so, he's a very familiar family man now), and protagonist Verity Jane is a more worldly wise ingenue than the one in The Peripheral.
Throughout the book it becomes clear that Lowbeer has gone beyond the point where anyone can control her, and the end of the book makes that perfectly clear. That sets up a turn in Book three--absolute power corrupts absolutely. We shall see.

My Goodreads Review

The Four Profound Weaves, by R. B. Lemburg

I struggled with this one a lot--I had read "Grandmother Nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds" a few years ago so I was a little familiar with the context, but the author says you don't need that and I believe that is correct. It helped a bit to let go of the idea that this was primarily a story with a plot, and lean into the exploration of identity. And you know what, a little bit of plot and adventure does sneak in.

The characters are fully realized, imperfect people, which seems to distress some reviewers. Benesret, the great weaver, sits right on the line between good and evil. The best thing in the book for me was the profound struggle of the Nameless Man to claim his identity, particularly since he had transitioned to a man's body late in life but did not grow up as a man and therefore was profoundly uncertain about how he fit. Us cis-gendered folks do not realize how much context we get from being raised with our genders.

The prose is heavily styled and poetic, and takes some getting used to. I can appreciate the exploration but since the book was not meant for me I can't get my arms around it.

My Goodreads Review

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo

The "protagonist" in this story is Chih, a monk from an order devoted to recording history. The order requires that its clerics take nonbinary pronouns, making it a relatively painless way to include that perspective in the story. But Chih is a listener--the true focus of the story is Rabbit, servant to the empress In-yo, a northern princess from a defeated people. The tale unfolds as a series of stories from Rabbit.

The storytelling style gives the book a very relaxed and easy feel. It's not about action or suspense, since all events happened long ago in the telling. That gives the reveal a bit of a lift. It's a short book, just a night or two of reading, but a good way to pass a little time. Rounding up to 4 stars.

My Goodreads Review

Tower of Mud and Straw, by Yaroslav Barsukov

There are some things to like about this book. Lord Shea Ashcroft is a complex character, a fully realized person with significant weaknesses trying to make his way through a very complex set of circumstances. And his superhuman race, the Drakiri, are worthy of unpacking in future work. They are a powerful race who do not understand themselves very well, which is really cool for storytelling. The giant tower is cool.  The adversary country on the border has possibilities.  But overall it's a bit of a weak 3 stars for me. Maybe if he would have given it more space it would work better, but only with some care.

I got lost trying to follow the action in several places. I was most of the way through the book before I figured out that the protagonist's full name was Shea Ashcroft. It seemed like characters who used one or the other name were talking to different people. And we had two characters named Lena who were involved with Drakiri technology, which is kind of a no-no. If you do it, you have to do something with it. I think the ending was a bit limp as well. But I can recommend it for the world-building--there's a lot one could do here. I hope he comes back and gives this universe another try, it would be worth it.

My Goodreads Review

Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi

This story blends fantasy and science fiction in a really interesting way to capture the essence of our time. You have the protagonists, Ella and Kev, with mystical, nearly omnipotent powers to see and affect the future. And they are under incredible pressure from living in Compton and being in prison. The transitions can throw you a bit, but they work well to ease you into the science aspect--that this is taking place in a future-but-already-possible world. The construction of the intense surveillance of Black neighborhoods and prisons, and the intentional gaps in that surveillance, are worked into the action and brought home really well. The author's intimacy with the characters shows throughout the book. I'm glad I came across this and read it, and can highly recommend it.

My Goodreads Review

Come Tumbling Down, by Seanan McGuire

This installment of the Wayward Children series is back in the Moors, but mostly about the characters going there and secondly about the general setting--the major characters (the Master and Dr. Bleak) are pretty much missing. But there's lots of action around Jack and Jill switching bodies, and Jack trying to set that right. Definitely an engaging read.

But like some others, I'm missing the aspects of searching for a Door that some of the other books have. These characters are longing for their doors, but it's an all-star show and they've all been through and been heroes in those worlds, saving them.

The setting is both endlessly generative (alternate worlds that seem to have some relationship, and structure for how they are classified) and maybe a bit limiting. The worlds may seem very structured or highly arbitrary, but they are all simplified versions of the reality we live in, which is not expressly privileged in the books but sort of comes out that way by reflection in the alternates. So we could call where we are Reality in this series.

The well-spoken bickering is really pronounced in this one. There's a lot of one-uppy "you don't understand because you don't know arbitrary rule x from my special universe". There are often larger points at play, but platitudes seem pretty close to hand in these instances. I don't know, it's just perhaps a little tiring. Maybe time to bring this series to its exciting conclusion?

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Juice Like Wounds, by Seanan McGuire

I read Juice Like Wounds as a setup for Come Tumbling Down. It's set in the Goblin Market universe, as a side quest with Moon, Lundy and Mockery. It's more lyrical and "writer-y" than the novellas. It's pretty much all explication--McGuire gives us a spoiler up front (one of the characters dies), and goes forward from there to explain the girls' characters and relationships from her omniscient perch. The action of the story is over before you know it, so I didn't get as wounded as some folks that read it. Probably optional to read in the series, but it's so quick that there's no reason not to read it. Available for free at TOR.com. 

My Goodreads Review

The Fated Sky, by Mary Robinette Kowal

I'm a fan of hard SF where the writers do research in order to tell the story properly. So this really hit the mark for me, there's a lot of great history. Including the social history, where she works in elements of the civil rights movement and how much of an object of suspicion it was for the country. It's a really interesting juxtaposition, how we could achieve so much technically with those old concepts of who belonged in power. Being under tremendous pressure helps, some. Kowal alludes to, but could perhaps be more clear about, how the United States of 1960 would get there through exploitation. She has sympathy for protesters, but their motives (the handling of Meteor refugee resettlement adding to existing inequities) only get a partial exploration. I'm hoping this gets sharpened in the third book.

There's a lot to like. The action really keeps the book moving, and the evolving relationship between Stetson Parker and Elma York holds one's interest. I had a hard time putting it down. What really clanked for me was the ending, so I have to put it in a spoiler.

Throughout the book Kowal builds racial tension as the FBI tries to connect Black astronauts to the terrorist incident that leads off the book, and Mission Control feeds the suspicion through their assignment of Black and Female astronauts to menial duties. Then a major terrorist incident (that the FBI seems to have missed) disrupts the mission and Earth. The astronauts overcome the obstacles, land on Mars and...everything is fine. The terrorists lose sympathy at home, a Black astronaut is the first man on Mars, and colonization proceeds apace. Quite a lot is missing here. The turnaround basically happens offstage, before the epilogue.

This has potential as a steampunk setting, just about 70 years later than classic steampunk. We are going to Mars with punch card computers. And we really could have done it--except for the colonization, we probably can't pull that off even now because we haven't figured out what to do about Moon and Mars dust--it's incredibly sharp and gets everywhere, the moon suits were leaking like sieves by the end of a mission of just a few days. I don't think that's the focus of the third book, but I'll look forward to reading it all the same. 

My Goodreads Review

Finna, by Nino Cipri

The McGuffin in Finna is the hidden, perhaps confusing space that ends up leading to an alternate universe--I remember these well from Roger Zelazny, Seanan McGuire, C. S. Lewis (Narnia), etc etc. It lets you get a story going without a lot of complication, and that's what is done here. Finna is definitely a book for our times--these crappy service jobs probably pay $1 over minimum wage so they're *good* jobs, and you should be lucky to have one, you ingrate. A lot of reviewers complain about the characterization--I thought it was actually the good part, the characters grew on me a bit through the book. Maybe it's just a little densely packed.  There's some obvious motivation stated about why the missing grandma analog actually wants to come back to the crappy universe with our protagonists, but it seemed a bit cut off. Probably because it's the first in a series. Overall it's kind of lightweight, but it's fun and I'd probably read the next one.

My Goodreads Review

Upright Women Wanted, by Sarah Gailey

I feel like I am supposed to like this book because I was a librarian and work to be an LGBTQ+ ally. I share the disappointments of some readers that the story wasn't filled out more. The Librarians seem superhuman (the whole thing with superpowerful women who are better at violence than men seems vaguely misogynistic to me--it sets up expectations for female performance that should not need to be met in order to be considered equally human), taking down multiple gangs of men while sustaining only a flesh wound. The perspective is historically underrepresented but there's a lot of it available right now, so a new entry has to stand out in some way and I can't see where that special something is here.

I rate it a bit better than the disappointed set, though, because I think the protagonist has potential to be more complex than the rest of the book setting, and I do think there's a series being set up here. Esther is oppressed by her situation and looks to blossom as a librarian, but she's also got quite a bit of moral and personal flexibility. Some wonder why she took to Cye so quickly after losing Beatrix--I read the story as Esther having started to distance herself from Beatrix before she was killed. Her character could go any which way, possibly simultaneously. Not sure if I am motivated to pick up the next one, but I might if someone else reads it and says this is what happened.

My Goodreads Review

Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

Well, I finished it. Took a very long time, relatively, and I guess I am glad I did. Most of the book is both confusing and brutal. It's not just the second person perspective. The reveal on why it is written that way is actually pretty cool and helped make sense of some parts for me. But then it keeps going, and the perspectives all mush together. Also, the same characters go by a lot of different names with only the barest connection to bring them together.

All the emotions in the book are awful, and described as hyperbolically as possible, with relief being the only tiny respite. And it's not enough. There's a lot of "You're wrong, and impossibly stupid" "No, YOU'RE wrong, and impossibly stupid". Back and forth. With all this going on it's really hard to pick out how the plot is driven--I sort of think I figured out that Resurrection Beasts are a consequence of some actions the Emperor undertook.

There's some good fight scenes toward the end that get the blood going, but the subsequent reveal is more of the same--confusing, "everything you know is wrong" "No, everything YOU know is wrong".

Hard to say if I'm going to read the last one in the series. I'll have to hear that it's better.

My Goodreads Review

Ring Shout, by P. Djeli Clark

Ring Shout is in the horror/fantasy category, but I really began to enjoy it when I started to read it as a fable. The way the book works through its moral arc leads directly to its final lesson, that if we give back all the hate we receive then we lose ourselves in hatred. Come for the great storytelling but stay for the history--Clark has all his ducks in a row and delivers a real education in with the fable. The Gullah translations were really valuable to me. You kind of see things coming, but if you let go of the notion that you shouldn't then you will fully enjoy the book. TIL what a Ring Shout is, and I am better for it.

My Goodreads Review

Network Effect, by Martha Wells

The Murderbot Diaries is pretty reliable as entertainment.  This one rolls along nicely, but it might have been a bit better as a novella like the others.  We get a lot of description of frenetic battles, with Murderbot processing a lot of inputs at once.  It's very true to the character but gets tiring to read after awhile.  Murderbot was kind of growing up over the last four books, but at least the pace of that development is slowing--seems like fans really enjoy the petulant adolescent thing.  If you're waiting for him to grow out of that you might get tired of this series after awhile.  I wish that some of his clients were more memorable--I have trouble keeping them straight in the stories.  But I crack on it too much--it's fine entertainment.

My Goodreads Review

The City We Became, by N. K. Jemisin

Jemisin took some chances with writing this book, and it's apparent from reading some of the other reviews. The core of the book is about deeply identifying with a place, specifically a city, so much so that the place itself takes on an identity. New York City is the most written about example in America, but there are other places (Chicago, Los Angeles, Albany NY, etc) that get that treatment in literature. But if you're a suburban reader or simply more rootless (pretty common) then your experience with that kind of place identification is second hand.

The context of the book is people from various oppressed groups viewing the city through the experiences they have had there. White supremacy culture is named and held up as toxic, personified by Staten Island but pervasive in the story. If you are white, consider yourself liberal, and have not "done some work", this story is going to grate on your "ally" sensitivities (non-liberals are not a target audience for this book, and would mostly read it in order to troll it). If you've read and digested books like Ta-Nehesi Coates' "Between the World and Me" you're better prepared to appreciate the road this book is traveling.

Since I have that context I was better able to appreciate how the book was written. It's not perfect, but it's pretty darned good. The fantasy world construction is pretty thoroughly subordinated to the social justice context--see above. But the characters themselves and their stories are absolutely engrossing. I tend to read late at night and set time limits but I had a really hard time putting this one down.

One can learn a lot from this book if one is open to it, but it's not about teaching. It's telling a story very much in today's context. It will be interesting to see where it sits 20 years from now. 

My Goodreads Review

The Midnight Bargain, by C. L. Polk

This was nominated for a Nebula award for 2020. Not sure why. Not that it's a bad book. It's reasonably fun to read.

But it's pretty much a standard romance novel, maybe elevated a little bit. The setting is basically Regency England, though all country names and geography are changed. Lots of attention to the layers and layers of clothing that wealthy women of the time wear. Including its social implications--the stays and stomachers that forced women into artificial shapes.

Women are severely oppressed in Chasland, prevented from studying magic and forced to dull their powers with "warding collars" due to very real danger to unborn babies. The danger is spun into a whole social structure that oppresses women. Pretty familiar. It's an uplifting story, and would have been a cutting-edge plot 80 years ago. Not so much now. The author does try to flip the racial script, but having the desirable people be dark-skinned with no other discussion of racial dynamics at all doesn't really help.

It's a fun read, a little slow early on but it picks up. The ending is a bit pat, romance-novel style. 2.5 stars rounded up.

My Goodreads Review

Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse

Really happy I read this one, and am looking forward to the rest of the series. What I really like about reading Rebecca Roanhorse is how her important scenes, whether they are action sequences or dialogs, draw you in and make you hold your breath. The opening of this book is one such scene. An interesting note for me is that it relies less on actual fights than some other books of hers. There's some violence and even gory stuff, but in this book the combat is more long-term chess moves, especially the process of creating Serapio. Teek, where Xiala is from, is going to be particularly interesting to develop in later books. Right now it comes off as pretty much Lesbos, but I'm sure there's more to it.

Roanhorse kind of telegraphs the cliffhanger through the book, but it still works really well. The plot itself, at least at this stage, is pretty much hero's journey/vengeance/love affair, but those are a pretty strong triangle and Serapio and Xiala populate it very well. The other main character in the book, the Sun Priest Naranpa, has not grown on me yet--she seems pretty naive early on--but is coming along well.

Fun stuff! Pick it up if you like fantasy at all.

My Goodreads Review

Mexican Gothic, by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

Well, to be honest, horror is not my genre, so for me it was hard to like. It was hard to like for a lot of other reasons too. Our protagonist, Noemi, is a hero but not an engaging one, and the villains are kind of cardboard. Francis, younger brother of main villain Virgil, has a little promise of development but until the last few pages it really doesn't happen.

It's interesting to know that the town Moreno-Garcia describes is based on a real place and in many ways close to it. Mexico is a colonial society so in that way how events unfold (especially for privileged people like those in the story) is going to be familiar. Like other reviewers, I'm not sure what is particularly Mexican about it other than Noemi's fashions--but that may be pretty accurate. Given that the setting is transplanted England I guess it is not surprising that there's not much that's identifiably Mexican--adding it in here might have been artificial.

The writing is good, other than characters that don't develop much. The scenery is evocative, and the sciencey explanation of the supernatural elements works OK. In the end, I'm not sure why I read it. Oh well. 2.5 rounded up.

My Goodreads Review

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

It's just about impossible to describe anything about the actual content of this book without pretty much spoiling it. The process of the reveal starts at the beginning and slowly unrolls, so anything said after the first paragraph gives it all away. So I'll do that.

The story fits in the "lost worlds" genre. Piranesi lives in a world of statues. He obviously has background of living in a more normal world, but he has forgotten it and is in the moment in the statue halls. He contentedly keeps a journal of his findings on the statues, and meets with The Other, the only other living person in the world, who is attempting to find Great and Secret Knowledge.

Bit by bit the story gets darker as Piranesi discovers or remembers more about where he lives. The Other accuses him of losing track of time, and what he is doing. He starts to question how he knows about things he has not seen, like the police, or more people than the 16 he knows about (14 of them dead). He eventually discovers that he is in a place that others (including The Other) only visit. And the dark past of the world, mostly dark because of its discoverer (a practitioner of "transgressive thinking", scholarship for perversion) and how he manipulates people.

So it's not my normal kind of read, but it is something that as it unfurls I can say I have seen before. I think Clarke brings it off quite well, and the protagonist's awakening by slow degrees is very well done. Another reviewer said this book would appeal to "a certain kind of reader". I think that's true, and I don't think I'm it, but I can still appreciate the craft involved. 

My Goodreads Review

Luna: Moon Rising, by Ian McDonald

When I finished New Moon (the 2nd book), I had become fascinated but also somewhat frustrated and worn out with this story. It felt like there were no grownups present--the members of the Dragons, the 5 oligarchies that ran the Moon, broke big expensive things in extravagant feuds without regard for consequences for their employees. It seemed like half the Moon made a living as soldiers (blades or dusters) in the various private armies. All with very colorful names (escoltas, jackaroos, etc) to make it seem very cool.

The start of the third book was kind of awkward and made me think the trend was going to continue. The violence gets ever more picturesque. But as the story goes along, some human elements finally emerge, and those human elements get handled very well at the end. It made me happy that I had persevered and read the whole series. Character development that seemed tedious to me on first reading explains itself as I think about the ending. All in all, good stuff.

I am not surprised to see that this series was optioned for television--it's very visual, and a feud of wealthy and beautiful families always seems like it's going to be a winner.

My Goodreads Review

The Rosewater Redemption, by Tade Thompson

This series is definitely not perfect. You have to adjust your expectations as you go along. Overall I'd say it's loosely written and feels kind of out of control in places. But if you can just kind of roll with it and enjoy the point of view, it ends up working pretty well.

The final installment begins with Oyin Da, aka Bicycle Girl, and through the book we get more of her story. She is definitely the most confusing character in the bunch, doing some kind of low tech time travel for her part of the story, phasing in and out of people's lives through the xenosphere, the aliens' pervasive communication scheme. But the rest of the bunch--Femi the operative, Aminat the heroic agent, Jacque Jacques the highly complex politician, and Kaaro the sensitive sensitive--really grew on me with this last installment. There are several other characters I didn't name that get their own line and personality, so in that sense the work is very well balanced.

There's a whole lot of action throughout, which really kept me reading. I thought several times during my reading that there is a movie script here--the characters are described as very attractive and it seems like the visuals would be interesting. But capturing the plot would be kind of hard, since there's so much going on.

Some reviewers were pretty bothered by the plot inconsistencies, and it made the ending less satisfying for them. But I have to say I liked how he wrapped things up. Yes it is consciously done, in a chapter called "Reprise", but that doesn't mean it's too simple.

Overall I'm glad I chose to persist and finish this series. There's a lot of fun to be had reading it, and some interesting ideas there as well.

My Goodreads Review

The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex, by Tobias S. Bucknell

This is a fun short read--about Earth being discovered by alien species, most of whom are more advanced than we are, so Earth becomes mainly useful as a tourist attraction.  The major cities are mostly geared around providing habitats and merchandise for curious aliens.  It would be bad if something happened to disrupt that...

Bucknell's description of future cities as tourist attractions rings true now--worldwide, the major cities for tourism are starting to resemble each other pretty closely, with large areas given over to tourist management, and even managed experiences for people who want to have "more authentic" experiences.  Good stuff.

Late Returns, by Joe Hill

Late Returns is part of Hill's Full Throttle collection, and was nominated for a Locus award for 2020.  It's a time travel story--an old bookmobile seems to have the ability to go back in time and give books from the future to readers that need one last read.  It's a sweet story, not dwelling much on paradox.  Joe Hill even name checks himself (in a Joan Baez song) in the story.  It's a nice way to spend an evening with people that want the best for each other, and find an interesting way to do it.  And of course books about books are always tempting to write.

The Rosewater Insurrection, by Tade Thompson

The first book in the Wormwood Trilogy was a fascinatingly weird setup--there was a lot of ground to cover, and Thompson managed to do it without large blocks of characters lecturing each other or "historical" chapter introductions. The second story is more action-oriented as we see the continuing development of the alien invasion of Earth. The characters are incredibly engaging and complex--there's no one lead, and all of them have their own distinct role and voice in the story. There's plenty of great action to carry it along--I think it's got potential as a movie, if it could avoid getting kitschy over weird alien life.

A very interesting aspect of this is its African setting, in a world where American has gone completely dark and has no present influence. Colonial organization structure lives on, but much more Africanized. This fresh perspective and great action writing are keeping me hooked.

My Goodreads Review

Thoughts and Prayers, by Ken Liu

This story was commissioned for Slate Magazine's Future Tense project.  It's a pretty straight-line projection of how intense trolling is going to get in the future, focusing on a mass shooting victim's family where the mother decides to go public and try to change things.  Seems like a much more intense version of what we do today, and much more intensely ignored.  

I don't think we're going to go in a straight line.  We are going to adjust to how social media works and put it in its place--I think ordinary people are already moving in this direction.  The terminally outraged will become more so, though and that is going to lead to more trouble and pain.  

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear, by Kelly Link

The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear is very much a literary story, only speculative in a bit of an out-of-body sequence.  The premise is a kind of Groundhog Day In An Airport thing, where a professor coming back from a conference is stranded in Detroit for 5 days waiting for a flight.  She's not much of a traveler so it's that much worse, though she seems mentally prepared.  It feels weirdly off center, since the title character is actually kind of a side story in a tale of intensely difficult and deeply felt coincidence.  The flight in the story is as horrible as one I took on my one and only overseas trip, to London, which was in the end quite worthwhile even though both ends of the trip competed with each other for worst flight ever.  The story will find a lot of sympathetic ears.

I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married, by Fonda Lee

I am not sure what the (28m) parenthetic piece is in the title of this story, but it seems to have become kind of a meme.  Lots of riffs on the title out there.  The story itself is pretty darned good--seems to be from tomorrow's newspaper, so to speak.  A social media company lets you create a virtual significant other.  It kind of works like a Tamagotchi, you interact with it and it gets happier and better at being your partner.  In this case, the girlfriend of a guy who is not trying to hook up that much but his parents are after him.  It all sounds so very real that I think in 6 months it will be.  Very well executed by Fonda Lee as well.  Definitely go read it.

Lest We Forget, by Elizabeth Bear

This one is on the disturbing side of SF, though not severely so.  A veteran is dying of the war they fought, in an unusual way.  Not in combat.  Much of the story is description leading up to the moment of the reveal.  A doctor has found a way to infect people with memories via a virus, but it requires some sacrifice to get the memories into that form.  Our veteran is making it.  Lots of possibilities here, this could go wrong in so many ways, and they know it too.  I think that would be the end of our species as thinking beings--we'd never know again when a thought was ours.  The leadup is pretty believable too.  Good stuff!

Erase, Erase, Erase, by Elizabeth Bear

This is a story that F&SF says it has held for a long time, waiting for the right time to publish.  And it is a fine literary piece.  Our protagonist is slowly disappearing--parts fall off, become transparent to ordinary objects.  Not consistently, but inconveniently.  And she is losing her memory, and losing track of things.

Sounds like an Alzheimer's story, but the cause seems to be guilt--the protagonist does a lot of writing, and is trying to remember the name of the leader of the terrorist cult she joined in college.  Before he does terrible damage.

The story is well written and good to read.  Made me think about the Unabomber a lot.  How do people in this position find their way back to reality?

It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning, by Ted Chiang

This story was commissioned by the New York Times as part of a series of "future editorials"--opinion pieces speculating on how some event or social trend is going to develop in the form of a newspaper opinion piece.  Ted Chiang's version, like pretty much everything else he does, is fully brilliant.  His piece speculates on a social intervention where some disadvantaged children are given a genetic enhancement that is popular with wealthy parents--one that boosts the IQ.  The kids generally finished a college education, but are still not any better off.  He gives various reasons for this that are drawn from today's knowledge, and draws reasonable conclusions.  He could do this for a living, except that being a sysadmin has to be more fun.

A Country Called Winter, by Theodora Goss

This story belongs in that small but significant set of stories featuring small, obscure countries that are semi-magical but exist in our world.  Veriska (approximately) is from a country called Winter (approximately).  She came with her mother when they left for America.  A lot of the story is centered around her relationship with the son of the Danish ambassador, and how his foreignness contrasts with hers.

Her ambition is to get a doctorate in English literature and go into teaching.  She is pretty buried in that space.  But (spoiler alert) it turns out that she is royalty in Winter, and will be instrumental in getting Summer to come.

It's nice, not a lot of powerfully original stuff here but well written.

Permafrost, by Alastair Reynolds

This is a pretty standard time-travel story, but adds to that literature in a good way. Time is a crystal with flaws--people who know about time travel can add to those flaws, but can't break it. The protagonist and colleagues are trying to save what's left of the future by stealing some seeds that can grow in mostly sterile soil, because pretty much all small-scale life has died during the Scouring. There's nothing left to grow and stored food is running out.

The story is set in Russia, which gives it an exotic twist and explains the laconic feel of the story. The protagonist is an interesting person--she is a 71-year old teacher, and in the book she is an action hero. Good on you Al!

There are some loose ends--the teacher is recruited because her mother invented the mathematics that permitted time travel, and worked out some of the theories with her daughter. They think she can help, but it's not clear that her math knowledge really helps at all. But overall it is good stuff--the desperation is conveyed through circumstance, and the strain on the characters, rather than any over the top explication.

My Goodreads Review

A Time to Reap, by Elizabeth Bear

I'll say right off the top that I loved this story.  Time travel stories are all about the motivation, and in this case it's a gorgeously told tale.  Kat is a child actor, performing in a play based on a videogame, that is in turn based on a murder mystery set in 1978.  She goes to the scene of the murder to gather background for the character she is performing.  Some characters live, and some die--her character is one of the victims.

Kat is a sixteen year old playing a twelve year old, and that makes a lot of difference in the story.  Because she gets sucked up in a time machine one of the characters built (by accident, it was supposed to be a space bender) and is deposited back in 1978.

There's a lot of interesting nostalgia about that time--being kind of old I am personally familiar with it.  Lots of junk food (that has not changed, though the character stays away from it to maintain low weight), unaccompanied children, no cell phones--it's an odd world for her.  Interesting to see the surprise at how that time was, reflecting on the difference between what I remember and how things are now.

The story centers on the relationship between Kat and the IRL version of the character she is playing, Sissy.  It is beautiful and complex, and weaves well into the mystery story as Kat tries to solve and prevent the murders, even as she risks changing the future in unknowable ways.  We get some time travel paradox and it is central to the resolution but not the story.

This should have gotten more respect.  It didn't get on the major (Hugo, Nebula) ballots and finished somewhat low on Locus.

The Bookstore At The End of America, by Charlie Jane Anders

This is a very modern-day allegory in which California has split from the rest of the United States, now known as America.  The split must be somewhat amicable, because America does not thoroughly invoke the current right wing border fetish--the protagonist's bookstore sits on the border, with one side in each place, and with some navigation one can cross over.  The proprietor finds things to like and dislike about both sides, and they seem economically tied.  But a water war breaks out, and all the propaganda leading up to it is making the respective citizens hate those caricatures of each other.  But they must shelter together.

Not really a new idea, but in the end I think a very necessary one in these times, and Anders handles it very gracefully.

A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy, by Rebecca Roanhorse

The references in the title are all oblique--no actual astronomy, but the story concerns Native American celebrity actors and even involves some space travel.  The protagonist has lost his lover, who tragically died young.  There is a way to experience her again--essences of people's memories can be extracted, and consumed by way of a VR Experience (see Welcome to Your Authentic Native American Experience).  They can also be experienced by injection where they go straight to your brain, but that's not recommended.  Our protagonist does it anyway, and gets his lover back--but she is not so well preserved.  Certainly a fun story.

Fisher-Bird, by T. Kingfisher

 This story is a retelling of the Seven Labors of Hercules, as a dialog between a fisher-bird and a simple, but very strong and somewhat reluctant hero.  Most of what's interesting here is the dialog between the bird and the man--he is a poor, put-upon soul, and the bird is quite spicy.  They take a risk together to complete one of the labors.  It's fun.

The Justified, by Ann Leckie

 Our protagonist is Het, one of the Eyes of Mehar, and she has been away for a long time.  She is called back to deal with her ruler's paranoia about opposition.  Dissent keeps arising in the underclass known as the Single-Lived.  The Justified and above come back, by way of their Animas.  Het is one bloodthirsty goddess, enjoying solving issues through mass slaughter.  She observes that the single-lived come and go, but the Justified are constant.  Her lieutenants recommend a purge of the single-lived--she goes the other way.  This one is also in The Mythic Dream and comes by way of Egypt.

Phantoms of the Midway, by Seanan McGuire

 This story is a retelling of Hades and Persephone for The Mythic Dream collection.  Our protagonist lives in a carnival, and never gets to leave--her mother does it to protect her.  Turns out she is being protected from the knowledge that she is dead--hit by a truck as a little girl.  Her mother has trapped her ghost, which has grown up as a normal and substantial girl to everyone in the carnival--they can't even tell she is dead.  But as all young people do, she has to leave.  And find kindred spirits.

It's a good story, enjoyable and sad, but nothing deeper than that for me.

The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday, by Saad Z. Hossein

This book was just incredibly fun to read. Didn't get near enough respect this year. Our protagonist is a powerful djinn imprisoned in rock for 3000 years, coming back to life in a postapocalyptic future where humans survive with a lot of careful management and help from AIs. The AI that manages Kathmandu is called Karma, and it's intelligent but does not have agency--it's just an algorithm. Other reviewers have commented that this is how they understand karma IRL--it's just rules. With the djinn we have a Gurkha who has renounced technology, and a "sheriff" who serves as backup to Karma.

It's hard to convey all the fun you have reading this without just quoting large blocks of it. The djinn who would be King likes to party, and finds the best partying among the "zeros", people with no Karma points at all. Some folks have hacked the system and seem to have all the Karma. Drama ensues.

Descriptions do very little for this lively novella. You just really need to read it.

My Goodreads Review

The Ascent to Godhood, by Neon Yang

I don't know. I read the first three books. Everyone seems to love this one, but I just didn't really get it. Having this relationship told as a drunken monologue just seems to sell it really short. To me it came out sounding like an ordinary authoritarian monarch story, and the first three entries had a lot more going on. There's not really any drama, since it is all recollection. So the loose ends are now tied. I just hoped for more. My Goodreads Review

 

Away With the Wolves, by Sarah Gailey

 Away With the Wolves was nominated for a Hugo in 2020.  This story is well written but I have to say it confused me a bit. The protagonist's struggles with chronic pain and the choice between a lonely wolf life and a pain-filled but social human life are a real strength, as is the strained support she gets from her community. So there's a compromise of some kind where she gets to spend most of her time as a wolf (acting kind of like a dog?)--I'm looking for the tradeoff but it's not clear. It was OK.

My Goodreads Review

Luna: Wolf Moon, by Ian McDonald

 I struggled with giving this four stars but am going to do it. This entry, in my view, is a better book than New Moon, especially as I started thinking about it in a larger social context. The Moon is what Texas and California, and now Nevada, are to America--chances to leave and start fresh. Except that the Moon is a full on corporate/family oligarchy (I am remembering last year, when it seemed like over half of the major award entries were for stories of family oligarchy). To me, the book is an unintentional indictment of the moon's premise (which is more clearly articulated here, near the end of the book by Luis Corta, than anywhere else)--that no one owes you anything and you live on what you earn, or not at all.

The book starts where it left off, with more profligate destruction. The incredible McKenzie smelter, the Crucible, is destroyed by sabotage. What follows is a fascinating tale of family intrigue and survival, with lots of interesting details--and a lot of bloody combat, with more large-scale sabotage and promises of even more to come. There are no grownups present--all egos are completely outsized and the result is destruction on the Game of Thrones scale.

There are a lot of really good elements to the book, enough to make me want to complete the series. The newness of the Moon means new social structures and sexual possibilities, enhanced by technology. Then again the rich are often kinky, they can afford to be. Wagner Corta is explained--he and others like him have found a unique way to manage their manic-depressive condition and turn it into an advantage. It's a very good story that mostly ends up highlighting personal failings, and the incredibly bad consequences of them, with some heroism thrown in.

My Goodreads Review

Caine's Mutiny, by Charles E. Gannon

I did not completely hate this book. It was a comfortable read at the end of a long day, just engaging enough to keep me awake but not enough to make me lose sleep. A comfortable read for a long, long time. There's enough plot here for a short novel or novella, but it is doled out over 800 pages. Gak. Very long and detailed battle scenes with lots of acronyms, which should be good for military SF buffs and seems to work for some, but way too much of it to make the action interesting. The plot is convoluted, which would be OK except I lost track of things because they occurred so many pages back. With a heavy editorial hand it might have been nominated for Gannon's fourth.

My Goodreads review