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