Beginnings, by Kristina Ten

Beginnings is a gun fetish/fascism allegory, with a macho dad, and a directionless son.  But the protagonists are two girls that become best friends, exploring their relationship.  It's a sad tale but very well told and very innovative.  I would have voted it higher in the Locus polls.

A Monster In the Shape Of a Boy, by Hanna Yang

A Monster in the Shape of a Boy is a kind of folk tale.  A boy finds himself face to face with a being that looks exactly like him.  He is the son of a hunter of these monsters, but finds himself unable to kill it.  His father fixes that.  A fun story.

The Coward Who Stole God's Name, by John Wiswell

The privilege of omnipotence is explored in The Coward Who Stole God's Name.  Pretty good twist on the topic, giving social media a role.  This was at least as good as D.I.Y., his other highly nominated story this year.  I liked it.

D.I.Y. by John Wiswell

D.I.Y. is a story where justice is served.  The magical metaphor is really pretty thin, it would be fine if the protagonist was an amateur scientist fighting science patents instead of magical ones.  It is an enlightening and enjoyable read.

Master of Ceremonies by Frances Ogamba

Master of Ceremonies is an absolutely unique story.  I have never heard of a microphone passed down through generations that acquires magic powers, so kudos for that. The metaphors are way out toward the strange and nearly nonsensical.  Yet they clearly show the Nigerian cultural influence, so it was actually pretty cool to read.  I do not know if I could say I liked it, but I'm glad I read it.

Douen, by Suzan Palumbo

Douen is an ethnography as a story.  Palumbo is from Trinidad and Tobago and tells the story in her vernacular English.  We learn about child ghosts in this culture.  I liked reading it, and that I have read it.

Dick Pig, by Ian Muneshwar

Dick Pig is gay porn, on the sadistic side but actual consummation not described.  Kind of wrapped in a horror story, but maybe just weird not horrible. Guess it's worth 3 stars for ok writing.

Rabbit Test, by Samantha Mills

Rabbit Test is a reproductive rights protest story.  At first I was confused as to why at least part of this was set 70 years in the future.  All the things in the story (e.g. state supervision of menstrual trackers) are going on now.  The ending makes that somewhat more clear.

Incident at Bear Creek Lodge, by Tananarive Due

I read this story in The Wishing Pool and Other Stories--It's also in Other Terrors.  I do not know what to make of a writer who does not finish her stories.  Finishing stories is the hard part.  At first I thought maybe it was an error in book production, because the story seemed cut off.  But no, according to reviewers this is a pretty normal thing for her stories.  The Incident in question never occurs, though the setup is pretty good.  If you're David Foster Wallace you could get away with this, because his books contain so much other work it is worth reading them even if they don't resolve.  Due is not there yet.

Solidity, by Greg Egan

Solidity is a play-with-the-rules story.  People, and some things, all of a sudden do not persist when they are not observed.  They get swapped for other, sort of similar people and things.  So all of a sudden you're in a somewhat different house, with similar but not related people.  So the story has two tracks--the social handling, and the "scientific" handling.  Our protagonist (a boy named Omar) keeps his cool and tries to start sorting things out.  Most others do too, working out a way to live.  There is a Solidity manifesto that people figure out how to persist.  More magical than Greg Egan usually gets, this could be a Seanan McGuire story.

The Sadness Box, by Suzanne Palmer

The setting for The Sadness Box is America projected forward maybe 15 or 20 years, with worse climate.  Saying that, you'd figure the setting itself is the sadness box.  But no, it's a box built by a boy's father, a very detached inventor.  It is an AI built to be paranoid, and turn itself off every time it's turned on.  A useless machine.  But the protagonist finds a way to get through to it.  The boy just trying to live his life in this setting is sad enough.  Oof.

We Built This City, by Marie Vibbert

We Built This City is labor action on Venus.  And what a nasty place to settle.  Our protagonist really wants to do a good job, which in this case is to wash the windows of the settlement.  Important, since the atmosphere pits it if the nasty stuff is left.  But of course management does not understand.  Predatory capitalism in a nutshell.  Good stuff.

The Prince of Salt and the Ocean's Bargain, by Natalia Theodoridou

The Prince of Salt and the Ocean's Bargain is another fairy tale nominated for a Nebula.  The setup for this one is that the ocean's salt becomes personified (through desire--wanting) and makes a bargain with the ocean to be embodied.  Only a little of Salt is embodied, most is still dissolved in the sea.  The embodied Salt is a new person, with new person wonder in an adult body, and he is discovered by a woman.  The story is there life together, and then morphs into something else as the perspective of the story changes.  So it's pretty good, if you like fairy tales.  Good to know they can still be written, and don't have to be rewrites.

A Dream of Electric Mothers, by Wole Talabi

This is quite a good story. Interacting with artificial versions of ancestors is a well-trodden path in SF, and is in the process of becoming not-SF. Talabi tries to add a little mystery to the technology with some kind of overdone jargon ("memristic", etc). But that is how he is connecting the spiritual practices of the protagonist's country, and that intent comes across clearly, so for me it's forgivable. Describing the feeding of all of people's available data into a large language model with a particular kind of training would be believable, right now, but would lose that cultural connection.

I was very interested by how the country manages interaction with that entity. It is not a public tool. It is consulted by representatives at need. And part of the tension of the story is whether or not it is really needed. In the end, the Electric Mother AI helps to answer that question in an artfully indirect way. Very much worth reading.

My Goodreads Review

Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness, by S. L. Huang

Murder by Pixel reads like a current Wired Magazine article.  I'm only halfway sure it isn't one.  The actions described (digital harassment until the target commits suicide) happen now.  The bot doing the harassing is not overly sophisticated, except in that it is able to penetrate various devices to deliver messages to the target.  I think the awards committees knew what they were doing, and as such believe that the characters and specifics were made up.  Why present this as SF, rather than, say, doing some reporting and finding real instances?  

Perhaps it reads like that because it was probably written 18 months ago.  It does reference Chat-GPT3.

It's an interesting take, I'm just not sure how it could be speculative, even then.  Cory Doctorow says that he writes SF by looking at the cutting edge of what is possible now.  I think perhaps Huang missed the edge and is further back.

Two Hands, Wrapped In Gold, by S. B. Divya

Two Hands, Wrapped In Gold is a fable.  It's told in S. B. Divya's plain-spoken style (I like it), but it's probably the most literary thing I've read by her.  The protagonist is gifted (cursed) with the touch of gold, like King Midas.  His mother figures out how to manage it, so he can sort of manage with it as a gift if everyone is careful.  He finds love, but it's a complicated story of immigration and confidence.  Well worth reading.

If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You, by John Chu

I found If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You interesting in several ways.  First, the Tom of Finland reference made me go look it up.  The intersection of bodybuilding and Asian culture was a unique one for me.  It's very well written and made me aware of aspects of Asian American culture (and hatred towards it) that I had not encountered before.  Good stuff.

What Moves the Dead by Ursula Vernon

I'm going to give it a 3.5 and round up. This is a pretty good story as retellings go. If you're not familiar with the original story then the pretty clear telegraphing of the root cause of the Fall of the House of Usher takes away from it a bit. Recasting the protagonist as a non-binary soldier is a solid move. So overall I enjoyed it.

So this is the first in a series. Where else is Easton going to go? We shall see.

My Goodreads Review

Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire

I mostly liked this entry in the series. It's not my demographic or normal reading fare, but the stories are well told and keep me turning pages. This installment keeps most of the formula, but we're revisiting a character (Cora the mermaid of size) and getting to see that other school, the one for children who do not have good experiences with their Door.

I enjoyed seeing things through Cora's eyes. This series is useful for me to understand the world from a young woman's perspective. Except that the author is no longer young (not old either), so it definitely now feels like a reflection on childhood by a very connected, sympathetic adult.

Sadly, we don't get to see the real Whitethorn Institute. The ending does not live up to the setup and I'm left a bit sad that we haven't gotten a better portrayal of those who do not want their doors to reclaim them.

I'm sure this series will continue to get award nominations, so I'll likely keep reading it and not be disappointed in doing so. But I'm looking forward to a time when Seanan McGuire decides to take some time writing a book that grapples with an adult plot. AI is going to catch up to formula writing.

My Goodreads Review

Tread of Angels, by Rebecca Roanhorse

Well...I'm going to give this a 3.5 and round up.

This story just didn't feel like it had the depth of the other work I've read from her. At first I thought it might be from coming to this setting from the outside--but no, she actually has deep spiritual grounding in Christianity, as she explains in her Afterword. For me the book picks up as protagonist Celeste and sister Mariel's blind spots and secrets are revealed, and that improved my rating.

The setting is a difficult one for me. I resist metaphors that refer to the losing side in the Battle of Heaven as equivalent to oppressed people of today. Maybe more important, fictional work in this space is really crowded, all the way back to Milton (whom she references). Lucifer and company as antiheroes has been done and done and done, so if you're going to come to this space you have to bring something new. Aliette de Bodard has been mining this vein for awhile, and this book even uses the same term (Fallen) for the demons that de Bodard does. If Roanhorse wants to come back to this world I would want it to be in the form of a novel, maybe a long one, that gets very deep into a unique build of this kind of world. Good luck to her.

My Goodreads Review

Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, by Aliette de Bodard

This book takes two characters from the Dominion of the Fallen series, Thuan from the dragon royal family and Asmodeus the main Fallen angel, and puts them in a murder mystery. I haven't fully kept up on the series so I may be missing some context for their relationship. And that's the core of the book. If you're a devoted fan of this series you get a nice helping of story in the space, well written and satisfying. Otherwise it's kind of confusing.

My Goodreads Review

Servant Mage, by Kate Elliot

This is a standalone novella, but in the end it reads more like a first in a series. Not super sure I would return for the second. The basic plot is somewhat familiar--some people are born with magical powers, and the powers that be manage this by heavy handed control.

Fellian (a Lamp mage) becomes more interesting as the book goes on as she is a questioner, pushing back on what she's being told. She does not take it for granted that people who come to rescue her (the Monarchists) are necessarily better than the cruel leadership (the Liberationists) that she has been living under. She says the quiet parts out loud, embarrassing her comrades many times.

Unfortunately I found the book confusing and hard to read. Lots of dangling references and kind of hammy plot points (Fellian ends up involved in a direct confrontation between the leaders of the two groups, which felt a bit contrived). I would say there's potential here (I don't think Unconquerable Sun had these problems) but it wasn't quite ready.

My Goodreads Review

A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow

I have to say I didn't immediately connect this to the first book in the series--the opening makes more sense now. I actually liked this one better than the first, because I enjoyed the interaction between Zinnia (from Sleeping Beauty) and the Evil Queen in Snow White (I was particularly affected by the fact that the Queen has no name). The derivative nature of the story is a feature, not a problem, which makes it hard to give a raving review for me. But Harrow has enough new and interesting things to say about what it means to make your own story that I can give it 4 stars. There are plenty of fables out there for this treatment and they will make a comfortable living, which I hope Harrow uses to push off into something more ambitious.

My Goodreads Review

Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo

This installment is a little different in that our protagonist Chih and her neixin Almost Brilliant are more a part of the legend than a recorder of it, though they are definitely recording. They pick up an unlikely couple (by appearance a princess and a peasant, not true of either) and a likely couple (stern motherly woman and a quiet competent man). They travel to a rough part of the region (the Riverlands) and are sure enough set upon by legendary bandits (the Hollow Hand). Lots of action and good storytelling, so it's a fun read. Nghi Vo has put together a rich setting, the Singing Hills could produce stories for the rest of her career if she can build them carefully.

My Goodreads Review

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo

A fairly straightforward way to capture an audience that likes stories is to write a book (or series) about collecting stories. The plot drives itself. Nghi Vo continues a very old tradition (One Thousand and One Nights) of telling a story for one's life. I especially liked the tiger characters. Vo makes them very engaging characters, utterly confident of their power and rights as apex predators. Except they're not, quite--intelligent mammoths are part of this tale and a lone small mammoth can take a tiger. And there are big ones. I hope she does more with the mammoths in Into the Riverlands. All in all it's a good read, exciting without too much bite. Enough to make we want to read more.

My Goodreads Review

Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

"Ogres" is a cracking good story, one actually worth award nominations. Yes it's told in the second person but for good reason. The setting is a dystopian future where humans are ruled by massive beings who lord over all and keep technology to themselves due to their sheer size. It's an exciting story and moves right along--I am good about putting books down, but really struggled to stop reading this one at bedtime. There's a good cautionary tale here--even though society has advanced considerably, and you don't have to be physically strong to succeed in politics, we still defer to the large and strong--in the person of men. It really helps to be tall to succeed in politics. Attacking this issue at its root may be a key to resolving oppression.

There's a series notation attached here, but don't worry about it--it was applied after the fact to three of Tchaikovsky's novellas.

My Goodreads Review

High Times In the Low Parliament, by Kelly Robson

I'm more generous that some in rating this novella, though I agree with more of the negative reviews. I too found the protagonist somewhat unlikeable--making her a lesbian does not make her approach to sexual relations OK. Lana belongs in the "dudes in drag" category of LGBTQ+ fiction. There appear to be no men anywhere so it's not clear how they procreate (budding?). And the plot has holes, a rather gaping one being the motivations of the faction of parliament that wants everyone to drown.

I get the metaphor. Democracies everywhere are struggling with significant factions that don't believe in democracy and will "drown everyone" to bring the house down. So maybe it got award nominations as catharsis? There are cute parts, and places where Lana's likeability improves--she is attuned to the unloved and oppressed--but it's not enough to really make the story work.

My Goodreads Review

Even Though I Knew the End, by C. L. Polk

So if you've read a few thousand books as I have, the basic flow of this short book is not super original. Lots of fiction out there with embodied angels and demons walking the earth (Aliette de Bodard most prominently). But this is a satisfyingly good read. It goes beyond mere substitution of genders for the romantic interest into some discussion of what it was like to be a lesbian at that time. Kept me hooked to the conclusion.

My Goodreads Review

Bishop's Opening, by R. S. A. Garcia

It's a decent story. It should be read as a speculative fiction romance piece, the romance being between the title character (the Bishop, part of a very regimented, advanced and competitive wing of humanity) and Sebastian (happy-go-lucky but honorable member of a tightly knit crew of an independent cargo carrier). It's decent filler for a SF magazine but I'm not sure about all the award nominations. Definitely good enough to encourage Garcia to keep going and deepen his craft. We need writers to try and stay ahead of the machines.

My Yelp Review

Sweep of Stars, by Maurice Broaddus

So this book has gotten a lot of positive attention. Broaddus' viewpoint is an underrepresented one and needs to be heard. He has a great idea for a solar system and galaxy-spanning tale of cultural clash. Now he just needs to learn to write. "Show, don't tell" is a basic instruction to would-be authors, and he violates it all the way through the book--right down to having the character state a line of dialog and then telling the reader what the character is expressing through that statement. The didactic prose made it a real slog. There's a bit of sex and violence (together) to try to hold interest. But it doesn't work. There's a science framework but it doesn't show any evidence of research, just kind of putting together what the author already knows and hope it sounds good. Confusing "attenuated" with "attuned" was a constant irritant. There are so many great African authors. Broaddus could be one but it will be a lot of work. It does him no favors to say that a work like this is worthy of award consideration (the Locus) when it's an early writing exercise. Keep trying, and listen to those who will work with you, Mr. Broaddus. 

My Yelp Review

The Red Scholar's Wake, by Aliette De Bodard

Romance stories aren't usually my thing but I can enjoy a good one. Not so much here. This book is really light on plot, really light on characterization, not even a whole lot of sex (though what there was, was uniquely described and interesting speculation), but much, much, much feelings. All the feelings. Romance is supposed to be about feelings, but there has to be something to hang the feelings on, and there's just not enough here. Other critics mentioned the way the mindship and the protagonist wanted to bang each other right away, the romance kind of exploded rather than developing. It's a love overcoming differences story, but the differences (pirates do bad things! They steal, kill and indenture! I got kidnapped by the pirates and given no choice! But I love the pirate leader anyway!) just get stated over and over rather than developed in any way. De Bodard has written a lot in the Xuya space and there's plenty to speculate on with mindships, but we don't see it here. A ship is just a person with a large and complex mechanical body.

This got a Locus nomination. Oof.

My Goodreads Review

Eversion, by Alastair Reynolds

It's a bit hard to review this novel without either spoiling it entirely or misleading the reader. Most reviews choose to do the latter. So I'll just say that this is a novel for our time, in a lot of different ways. It's one you should put in a time capsule from the early 2020's and get out 20 or more years from now, not for the predictions necessarily but for what we were thinking about at this time. And the way Reynolds goes about it is very clever. He plays with how fiction works in the narrative--fiction itself has a role. The adventure part of the story doesn't get a lot of attention, but it's not the point. Reynolds has given us a clear look at ourselves by way of our latest and greatest creation. I'll think back on this one regularly.

My Goodreads Review

Neom, by Lavie Tidhar

Central Station, the world in which this novel is set, was a fix-up from stories Tidhar wrote over a decade or so. It reads like one but it's still interesting, I read it in order to be ready for this one. Neom was not really supposed to be a fix-up novel, but it still reads like one. Much is explained in the afterword. Tidhar did not know where the narrative was going, he just took the setting and started writing chapters to see what would happen. Some writers put this stuff aside after using it to craft a narrative. Tidhar rolls with it and puts it out there. So we have interesting characters and an increasingly complex world to unpack, but as a story it's more slice of life or even soap opera (the central plot doesn't resolve in any particular way, though a side romance does). But it's fun to read, kind of an amalgamation of science fiction and magical realism. Tidhar is a capable writer and enjoys what he's done with this, so we could see more and even better stories in the future.

My Goodreads Review

Central Station, by Lavie Tidhar

I actually liked this book, but just barely enough to give it four stars. It's not really a novel--it started out as a series of short stories and novellas that have enough of a relationship to sequence them. So I didn't get a sense of continuous plot progression so much as a series of snapshots. Maybe more lifelike. I liked the characters enough to rate it well--there is a lot going on and they lead full, complex lives. Central Station is set on an Earth that has worked through some of the problems we have today and feels like it is past the crisis point. So I hope we can get to something like this, it's much better than I expect.

Central Station is science fiction, with a heavy dose of magical realism. Characters like Ibrahim the alten-zachsen man inhabit a space somewhat beyond human. It makes this book difficult to classify, in a reasonably good way. It's not a totally amazing book but it is an amazing world. I'm reading Neom now, we'll see if the novel inhabiting this space enhances it.

My Goodreads Review

Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel

 I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, as I find Emily St. John Mandel's writing delicious. Science fiction written as literature more than as a genre novel. Time travel stories are pretty much all the same in their impossibility, and this one doesn't break out of the mold. But what Mandel does within the mold is highly enjoyable. The characters and situations are something you can feel deep sympathy for--Olive Llywellen's book tour exhaustion at the end of normal life, Gaspery's obsessive pursuit of the novel's central mystery, all the other supporting cast that built out the story--very satisyfing.

To me it feels like a more ambitious, less conventional novel was within reach here, which is why I hold back a bit in my review. Loose ends could have been left untied. But it's very good as is.

Mandel discusses the simulation hypothesis a lot, since it's a central part of the plot. Personally I think that if time travel is possible then the simulation hypothesis pretty much has to be true--events are foreordained. But here, as in most time travel novels, the simulated beings can somehow affect the simulation, and I don't think that would be possible.

But Mandel has the very best answer for simulation-obsessed folks--so what? Simulated lives are still lives lived.

My Goodreads Review

The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal

A lot of critical readers are being hard on this one. I think it's better than that, but in the end still not amazing.

The setting is a space cruise liner on a trip to Mars, set in the late 21st century. The author gives us touches of background that can help with understanding some of the plot elements, but it's such a light touch that it's easy to miss. Dogs are very rare and only the wealthy can afford them, thus her little Westie (a darling breed) is much doted upon and useful in our protagonist's crime solving. How this came to be the case would have been helpful, though it might be hard to know when to stop (it sort of seems like our present conditions continued in a straight line, with income inequality getting more severe?). But this story is all about the crime solving. The protagonist (Tesla Crane) is a daughter of privilege but has suffered a horrific accident that has left her in chronic pain. Her pain and her wealth feature prominently in the crime solving.

As a mystery though, it's not a great one. I won't totally spoil the ending except to say that I don't think it works given the state of technology at the time, or even now for that matter. Tesla Crane is concerned about equity and treating less powerful people well, but that goes right out the window when her new husband is accused of the murders. Some find that to be a bug, but it might be a feature for me--Tesla is a pretty accurate portrayal of white privilege, in that she makes full use of it when she feels that she needs to.

It's a decently fun read, but not super compelling. A generous 3 stars.

My Goodreads Review

Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree

So I now have a name for this genre of fantasy--cozy fantasy. I have read things like it but didn't have a name.

Other reviewers have said it quite well--this is a very comfortable and comforting book, nothing challenging, all plot twists fully anticipated. Warm, likeable characters except for the few obvious villains. The romance is lesbian, which is by now not challenging either. The restaurant the retired adventurer Viv builds works its way up from an abandoned livery to a lively coffee bar, with the help of unlikely and oppressed employees with underappreciated talents When disaster strikes and it is burned down Viv has enough social credit to build it back better than ever. This is not a spoiler because there cannot be spoilers for this story.

Two questions arise:

1) Why is this so incredibly popular? I get that. There's always a large audience for stories that are comforting and not challenging, and our times are so incredibly scary that there's simply no more room for dystopias. Those are all coming true. Now we want escape.

2) Why is this nominated for so many awards? This is a harder one. It's a writing exercise that got popular, not unlike Andy Weir's The Martian, but a whole lot of research and effort went into that work of fiction. I've been playing with ChatGPT and it isn't quite up to writing Legends & Lattes yet, but we're maybe six months away. It is a well crafted story but there's not enough to it to justify the buzz.

A fatigue nomination maybe? Award committees are simply worn out with reading challenging, sound-the-alarm material and sorting out its merits? I would understand, I'm feeling that too. All the same, there is a good argument for critical acclaim to be different from popularity. Critics need to stake out a space to lift up difficult, experimental, or provocative work. In these times that's been lifting up stories of and by marginalized groups. Legends and Lattes will still manage to get banned by our latest round of conservative Christian bluenoses because it does not suit their reading of the Bible. Some might say that's enough. But there are still important stories to be told, and lightweight fantasy/romance novels don't need critical attention in order to get readers' attention.

My Goodreads Review

Eyes of the Void, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is the middle entry in the Final Architecture series. Middle books often fade a bit, but this one really impressed me. It seems to be hard to be original in Space Opera these days--so many of the award-nominated books in most of the majors are fantasy, alternate history, or barely speculative at all. Tchaikovsky manages to tell a real grabber of a story and at the same time add something to the subgenre.

All space opera is really sea stories--a technology is introduced that makes voyages between stars possible, but difficult, like a long hazardous sea voyage. The sea here is Unspace, a place where nothing seems real but something is present. Idris Telemmier is one of the few remaining identified talents at navigating, and bearing the strain of, this space.

The plot is amazing and convoluted, and the fights are somehow realistic among all the speculation. I still don't know how writers do that--what incredible world building goes into making aliens and technology come together in believable combat. There's a lot of it here and it's really well integrated and satisfying.

What I like best about this series, though, is the relationship of the crew. There are plenty of intrepid, marginal spaceship crews pulling off amazing feats through their devotion to each other (the Rocinante of the Expanse is the best). The great thing here is the crew's unique devotion to utterly damaged, fragile, crucial Idris Telemmier. He is so obviously vital to every player's plans that he can't move without an army chasing him. He is also utterly helpless in most circumstances, such that the Vulture God crew would do anything for him and yet it's not at all weird or cloying, just charming and inspiring. Even those who want to use him utterly tend to soften up. His specific strengths allow him to come through and save the day.

Am looking forward to reading the last one in the series, and if it's the end, I will miss this bunch.

My Goodreads Review

Inheritance, by Hannah Yang

Inheritance is posted free temporarily by Analog for award season--it is nominated for a Locus award.  The SF part is straightforward enough--memories can now be extracted and passed on, and our protagonist and the "good daughter" are at their mother's deathbed to see who will get them.  The protagonist had a difficult relationship with the mother and is not sure she wants them.  We see that difficult relationship in the story.  Not earth shattering but it's fine.

Destiny Delayed, by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

Destiny Delayed is told as a hard science fiction tale but includes a more fantastic element in a specifically African style.  Nigerian scientists have found a way to determine and extract a person's "destiny", meaning their drive to achieve their fated accomplishments.  This turns out to be transferable, and the wealthy are using it to become wealthier still.  Ekpeki is coming along as a writer, this story makes some powerful points and his characters are real people trying to make their way in a difficult and unjust world.  A good short tale.

Falling Off the Edge of the World, by Suzanne Palmer

Asmov's Science Fiction has put Falling Off the Edge of the World out for free temporarily during award season.  It's a very sweet and readable story of a crew searching for a lost ship, gone 30 years.  They find it in strange but not horrifying condition, and unexpectedly a couple of survivors--maybe?  Not a groundbreaking story but well crafted and entertaining, worth the read.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Sylvia Garcia-Moreno

This book is an interesting intersection of her previous book, Mexican Gothic, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. Moreno-Garcia is retelling the H. G. Wells story with a young female lead, one very similar to Noemi in Mexican Gothic. She is a child of privilege, living the life of an upper-class Mexican girl, but this time the isolation is caused by her father's vivisection experiments. Although you wouldn't have to do it that way now. You could go more steampunk, with Moreau somehow coming up with a CRISPR process.

What I find interesting and compelling about this work is that in writing it Moreno-Garcia seems to be channeling Wells' style in a very period-authentic way, but with a strong female lead who shapes the tale. The book really feels like Wells could have written it with input from a woman. This shows most clearly in the character of Montgomery, the new mayordomo at the hacienda. He is a classic British sort of anti-hero, troubled and self-doubting but highly capable. He, like the other men in the story, shows no sign of 21st-century feminist influence. He is constantly trying to put Carlota in her place. But he reveals his inner life in a way that builds him powerfully as a character.

Carlota's growth from a meek teenager to a young woman rising to the occasion makes her a powerful character as well. Moreno-Garcia takes more time revealing Carlota's depths, with her capabilities maturing in time with the plot.

The move of the experimental facility from an isolated island to the isolated Yucutan peninsula feels very authentic as well. It is not quite as isolated as the island, which gives Moreno-Garcia the opportunity to situate it culturally.

This is about as good as a conscious retelling can get. I can't quite give it 5 stars--maybe because it's so tied to Wells' style that it reads kind of stilted to me in the same way that Wells does now. It's a real achievement and deserving of the attention it's getting.

My Goodreads Review

Babel, by R. F. Kuang

This is an incredible piece of work. The author says it is her most ambitious work yet, and I agree. I thought The Poppy War was pretty good--this book amazed me with Kuang's command of writing and the way it kept me turning pages through a very long volume. In a year where so many of the award-nominated books seem to have very little depth, and that's on purpose, this one goes all out. I come away from reading the novel and the comments of other readers much smarter than I was before.

The book is meticulously set in Oxford, England in the 1830s. The author spends a lot of effort on getting the details right, except for planting the tower of Babel in the middle of Oxford and having silver magic being the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution and colonialism of the time. A spot-on critique of this work is that the power of silver, which would pull it in the direction of a kind of fantasy cyberpunk, instead changes nothing at all--except maybe to create a single point of failure for the British Empire.

The setting is early 19th century Oxford but in every other way the book reads as something written today, with 2021 understanding of racial issues (Not gender. I think Kuang was aware of how much shoehorning it would have taken to include it in some affirming way). So it's not going to be a classic, and is best read as a novel of its time. That time is pretty dark. The protagonists of the story are taken as children from their countries and presented with a life of ivory tower (literally) privilege with no awareness of any other choice. That bubble is broken early on and the description of the shattering process is gripping. The colonialists will never let go of their privilege, and will destroy everything to keep it or at least deny it of other lesser beings.

Britain did release the Jewel in the Crown (India) through the mostly nonviolent resistance led by Ghandi, but there's no hint of that Britain here. The white men of privilege are uniformly vicious and ruthless. The book is in no way subtle. Pretty much a club all the way through. I align with its conclusions on systemic racism but it's fairly recent that this perspective has come to the fore in racial justice. Previous generations of reformers for the most part repeatedly asked for equal treatment by the oppressors unless they were forthright Marxists.

It's a good book, and well worth reading. The expositions on translation are lengthy but never boring, so you come away learning something new. I think the setting held Kuang back. She knows the setting and culture like the back of her hand (degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, studying at Yale) but this turns into a trap. It is a work worthy of deep reading and critique, which is a great achievement in this time when we so desperately want to turn away from what is expressed here.

My Goodreads Review

Nettle and Bone, by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)

This is really a strong book, very character-driven and the protagonist, Marra, is truly relatable.  The book starts in the middle of Marra performing the three impossible tasks the dust-wife asks of her in exchange for her help dealing with the abusive Prince of the North.  The story in its way is pretty familiar--Marra, the dust-wife (a keeper of cemeteries who can speak to the dead) and her demon-possessed chicken go on a hero's journey to save Marra's sister Kania.  They pick up an unwillingly evil godmother and a heroic knight along the way.  All of these characters are fully developed in the book, and I was attached to them by the time it was finished.  She also scores some solid points on the patriarchy and the pain being imposed.  It's a cozy yet powerful read.  Good stuff.

My Goodreads Review

Spear, by Nicola Griffith

This is a very good after-dinner read, a solid re-telling of one of the Arthurian stories, the tale of Percival (the afterword is very worth reading where Griffith goes into the naming). A historical name for Percival is Peretur, which our protagonist goes by. In this telling Peretur has a secret (though not a plot twist, so I'm not giving anything away)--Peretur started out as a girl, Dawnged or Tal depending on her mother's mood. Peretur's pronouns remain female throughout, she is simply built and destined to be a knight in a circumstance where women aren't knights.

Queer retellings still fill a void, though they are not as new and fresh as they were a decade ago. Now you have to seriously bring the narrative skills in order to expand the space. Nicola Griffith is a master and does this effectively.

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

It took me forever to read this book. Superlative and plot overload. There is so much going on, and I was able to relate some of it back to the earlier books but the whole thing just never did resolve and make sense to me. Could have to do with it being kind of an impromptu book wedged in between Harrow and Alecto. Nona is kind of a cute character, but I was really distracted trying to relate what she was narrating, and what the others were doing, back to Gideon and Harrow. Gideon Nav appears but is really someone else (happens a lot) and Harrow might be appearing? "Dead" is a term of art, dead people walk around and act pretty much like anyone else (except in John's interludes, which are the most interesting part of the book since they give it a little structure)(are we on Earth for this one?), and the word and idea are used so much, with so many different kinds of fairly animate people, that the word loses its meaning.

Layered snark also loses its effect with repeated use. Again, the other books push the line in interesting ways, but this one just goes over.

There are complex plots and there are confusing ones, and it's a fine line an author has to walk to write a book like this. The other two in the series just barely pulled it off for me, and this one just didn't.

My Goodreads Review

The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

This book drives some folks nuts, but I understood that it was a first novel and read it as such. Ray Nayler has digested quite a lot of material on his subject (the octopus, of course) and a lot about everything else. His choice to have the quotes at the beginning of chapters be from books he made up is a tip for the experienced reader--you're going to get a novel that is pretty up front about being an exposition of the author's philosophy on whatever is covered. Nothing wrong with that, some really good authors (Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov) have done it. I think it's even better when an author can make other non-fiction authors speak for them (I should have examples but I don't), but the quotes worked so I have no objections.

The characters in the story are not meant to be either sympathetic or not--they just are who they are. A recurring theme is that of people who are trapped by the larger forces at work on their issues. Eiko, a trafficked slave on an automated fishing boat, is the most obvious one. Some think this subplot is a digression, but I disagree--his story is meant to illustrate the depraved cruelty of the times and get you to anticipate the captivity of all of the other major characters. It's pretty easy to imagine instantiating something like this now. If we're lucky we'll read about it in a few years. If we're not lucky the story will be suppressed and we'll never know.

So the evolution of octopus intelligence is the macguffin in the story, but it really reads more like a backdrop for the author's philosophical vision of the future. Pretty dark but that's where we are now. I think it is worth the read if you go in understanding the limitations.

My Goodreads Review

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, by Becky Chambers

The Monk & Robot series is set in the world we would like to live in after the world we live in now collapses and recovers. We have gotten a few references to the dystopian past but the focus is on the Here and Now, with Dex on his journey to find himself and Mosscap trying to find out what humans need.

Funny question to ask, since it appears that robots took themselves out of the picture when things got very bad and they decided they were part of the problem. Humans winnowed themselves and muddled through, and have now achieved the Beloved Community (it is not referenced as such, but see Josiah Royce or Martin Luther King and substitute a future kind-of-pagan religion and we're there). So what Mosscap encounters when he asks this question is that no one is in particular need.

The writing and characters are engaging, but these get harder to read as the distance between where we are and where these books are set gets wider. I think it's just plain hard to please people in a time when anything pleasing is a reminder of what can be taken away. Cheers to Becky Chambers for bringing the warmth and light--sad for us if we can't appreciate it.

My Goodreads Review

Homeland, by Cory Doctorow

I recently picked this up in order to complete the series. It is a bit behind the curve now, just because of how Doctorow writes--his books are ripped from the latest blogs, the cutting edge of now that sounds like SF. Knowing this, the books are also pretty depressing. We now know that exposing Carrie Johnstone will not bring her to justice--it will only make her and her handlers mad. There are a lot of good descriptions of handling protests that ring true according to friends in Portland that have participated. Afterwords by some solid and well known activists. But it's a tough read, I have to say.

My Goodreads Review

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow

 I know I have read this book, but somehow never wrote a review of it.  It is something of a period piece now, just because of how Cory Doctorow writes--his stories are on the cutting edge of the present.  As I recall it was good, you really got into the main character Marcus Yallow, but also depressing.

The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi

The author intended this as a fun romp, and like everyone else I agree that it is. For several days straight I have had something to read that I actually looked forward to. I have now picked up Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and am back to being depressed.

The best part about the book for me is the world building. Scalzi does a pretty good job of creating a plausible world where nuclear-powered Japanese monster movie horrors are viable. How kaiju get to be kaiju is interesting stuff, and I'd read more about it.

The characters are meant to be central to the plot, but there's just not enough distinction between them to make them individualized and likeable. The protagonist (Jamie Gray, ex startup exec/food deliverator) and main support character Tom Stevens (recruits Jamie to the title society, and is assistant to the director) possibly excepted. But the dialog is a lot of Aaron Sorkin back-and-forth that consistently goes two or three exchanges too long.

The sheer entrancing ridiculousness of the world saves all. Kaiju, and the people trying to preserve them, are just too much fun. They even overcome the downer of the villainous plot. I picked this one up kind of randomly from a list of "best of 2022" items and am quite glad I did.

There's room for a sequel here, but if Scalzi goes for that he will have to work harder. All signs point toward it going pretty dark.

My Goodreads Review

Goliath, by Tochi Onyebuchi

Wow what a tough book to read. In the end I am glad I persevered, but I think the book would have had more impact if there was more of a narrative. Some refer to it as nonlinear, and that it is, but also the various threads don't really converge. Along the way are some amazing expositions of the continued devolution of how race works in America. The summary I find misleading. Yes the main characters in the book are stackers, collecting bricks for souvenirs for whites who have fled earth, but most of the focus is on what the work does to their bodies, combined with the enforced toxicity of the environment. The extended diversion in the third book gives another view of America in this time, but if it actually connects back to the main line I don't know where.

A narrative did start to come out for me as I worked through the book and thought about it. There is a path that is sequenced in time, and on it the space colonists seem to get tired of being away, particularly after some progress is made in how to live on a toxic Earth. They begin to return and commit the same crimes they did in order to leave. There are pieces of the book that really bring the message home, but they aren't separable from the whole thing, which challenges the reader and sometimes does not reward perseverance. Recognizing the authors and events described as history will make you feel good about other work you have read. Did I like it? No, not really. Did I appreciate it? In the end, yes.

My Yelp Review 

Leviathan Falls, by James S. A. Corey

I've read several fantasy and science fiction series in my time, though only a few are as ambitious as this one. The absolute hardest thing to do is end them well. Many don't even try, they just let them tail off (looking at you, George R. R. Martin and Song of Ice and Fire. Tolkien too) or rush the ending. Leviathan Falls brought this incredible series to a satisfying conclusion, exactly when it was done. The crew of the Rocinante had gone from a tight group of people who worked really well together to a team that was infatuated with each other--and the authors manage to convey that the characters KNEW it. Brilliant. All the elements were brought together to get across that sense of impending doom. No soap opera here, it was very clear that things were coming to a head and that everyone was sacrificing themselves, all they had, and all their loved ones and followers to make it work.

The Expanse was a great series for making the reader feel like a very small part of a sweeping history, and Leviathan Falls managed to scale that up an order of magnitude. A Jupiter-sized diamond containing all the knowledge of the Ring Gate builders? Really works to convey the scope of their accomplishments.

In the end it all comes down to James Holden, and individual decisions that he makes. That sacrifice trope has been done a lot, but it still works here. He grew the most out of all the characters, and that was set up from the beginning--it was foreordained that the man with "no inner life" would acquire one. I feel like I know them all.

In my view this is the defining work in Space Opera. The speculation is amazing and the storytelling is perfect. For me it does not break new ground, but it is the very best example of all that has gone before in that genre.

My Goodreads Review

Auberon, by James S. A. Corey

I read the other novellas and short stories in the Expanse series mostly because I'm an obsessive completionist. But you would definitely miss some things about the Expanse if you skipped them. Strange Dogs introduced Cortazar, who of course becomes very central. I don't think this book will introduce a character of that scale since the series is almost done, but it is an essential moral commentary on how people and systems would work at that scale. We've had Winston Duarte *thinking* he understood that problem, and creating a system where absolute control delivers healthy and satisfactory lives for most people. But absolute moral codes don't survive contact with reality, and boy is the ending a zinger of a way to deliver that. The outcome is in some ways telegraphed, but you really understand more about this universe by reading this novella. Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank really know how to write together.

My Goodreads Review

Tiamat's Wrath, by James S. A. Corey

 I don't give out a whole lot of five star reviews. This book earns it in part based on all that leads up to it. All of the characters are incredibly real, and that realism rubs off on Teresa Duarte, whom we don't know nearly as well.

Hard for me to say anything previous reviewers have not. The main characters have an incredibly intense relationship, and the authors ride right on the edge of having the intensity spill over into sappiness. There are a lot of authors trying to do this kind of book or series now, but this is the one they have to live up to for sheer entertainment value. I don't know if there's any one aspect where The Expanse is the best of its kind, but it's so close to the top in all of them that it's my favorite in 50 years of reading SF. I loved Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga series, but this one edges it out and I can't think of any other extended series that comes close.

Now comes the hard part--the ending. So many series in fantasy and science fiction come to an unsatisfying end. But I think they're going to pull this off.

My Goodreads Review

Laughter Among the Trees, by Suzan Palumbo

Laughter Among the Trees is a Nebula short story finalist.  Horror story, lost child coming back to haunt the living trope.  Good execution probably, since horror is not as much my thing I may not fully appreciate it.

Unknown Number by Blue Neustifter

I think it's kind of interesting that a Twitter thread gets a Hugo nomination, but that's what makes it special. As a story it's a well-explored trope--the letter, phone call, etc. from someone who seems to know a lot about you that only you know. Those get harder to do now because there's so much of our lives that is surveilled and recorded. So it was fun to chase this down and read it in the thread, but as a story, well, it's fiction I guess. The author wrote it the way she did because she is against others trying to monetize her work.

My Goodreads Review

Tangles, by Seanan McGuire

Like a lot of others, I think Tangles is OK for what it is, which is a story especially written for Magic: The Gathering lore. McGuire is a competent writer and can bring the story off. I'm kind of assuming that the explaining about the roles of the characters is to make them fit in the MtG world. So I'm not sure how it got on the Hugo list, though it's a great thing for MtG fans.

My Goodreads Review

The Black Pages, by Nnedi Okorafor

I'm rating this a 3 but it's a 3.5 I just couldn't quite round up. I really did like the story. The setting seems to confuse some folks, since it mentions Al-Quaeda but is not set in Afghanistan or the Middle East. Al-Quaeda is active in Africa also, and this story is set in the sack of Timbuktu. The protagonist has been off making his way in America, but returns to Mali to see his family and retrieve his sense of place. But he arrives in the middle of a battle between the French and Al-Quaeda, which ends in a lot of destruction, murder and book burning. The book burning releases a genie, who rescues a book of power.

The story lifts up heritage and sense of place in the face of terror. Like a lot of short stories it doesn't really conclude, but that's fine, it's more of a setting.

My Goodreads Review

Crazy Beautiful, by Cat Rambo

Crazy Beautiful is in the March/April 2021 issue of F&SF Magazine.  An AI is created that can make art, and can take works of art and transform them into "living" digital works.  It decides to "liberate" master art work that is being stored in Paris warehouses by wealthy collectors, hidden away from the world.  In so doing it creates rather a big mess.  Fun to read.

emet by Lauren Ring

This review is for by Lauren Ring. This is one where the world has caught up--the facial recognition technology the protagonist is working on in the story exists and is in use. So more of a fantasy story in that we have fantastic golems working with the resistance to it. Kind of a stab to the conscience of all of us working for an enterprise we know is destructive, and that's where a lot of today's wealth in America is coming from. Glad to have read it, deserving of its Nebula nomination.

My Goodreads Review

Broad Dutty Water, by Nalo Hopkinson

This is a good, solid, enjoyable story. Jacquette is an interesting protagonist but mostly a canvas for the setting, which is the Gulf Coast adjusting to disastrous sea-level rise. She is out for a ride in a 3-d printed ultralight plane with her modified pig Lickchop when they encounter rough weather and have to ditch. I'm surprised, maybe not surprised, that this didn't get more attention for the novelette category in the Hugos or Nebula. Paywalling does not help, but F&SF did make it available for free for awhile so there's more to it, and Nalo Hopkinson is an unapologetically Black author. She is getting a grandmaster award at the Hugos.

My Goodreads Review

An Arc of Electric Skin, by Wole Talabi

An Arc of Electric Skin is a classic short story in that it works with one plot point and one speculation.  Kind of gory, as that one plot point is assassination of corrupt African political leaders, but you can tell the author feels pretty strongly.  So it was fine as an example of that kind of single-focus story, but I can't say much else about the literary value.

Huginn and Muninn and What Came After, by Michael Swanwick

Huginn and Muninn and What Came After is a story of alternate reality--maybe a dream, maybe something else.  Michael Swanwick is very much a literary stylist, and when you read him you get caught up in the writing, perhaps more than the story.  That's definitely what happened to me here.  He has a really interesting take on gender identity and fluidity, and escape from unwanted relationships.  I liked it.

For Lack of a Bed, by John Wiswell

For Lack of a Bed was nominated for Locus and Nebula awards in 2022.  Wiswell brings his own acquaintance with chronic pain to the story.  And it's very inventive and fun--the world is familiar in that we have people struggling to make it, just barely getting by on their clerk jobs.  Our protagonist is scraping by on what she makes from a pet shop job, and can't afford basics like a bed to allow her to manage her pain better.  The clerk jobs are in a more fantastic place with pets from hell (hellhounds).  She gets an offer of a sofa from a friend, which is really comfy, but the sofa isn't a sofa and it's hungry.  Had a good time reading this one.