Author: Marissa Lingen

Review copy provided by the publisher.

One of my friends likes to say, “it’s never too late to have a messy breakup,” and that could be one of the thesis statements of this book. Jay and Seb are having an epically messy breakup…also the world is literally ending in environmental collapse and at least one of them will probably leave the planet for another planet whose traits are not well known.

Also it’s a mosaic novel whose framing device is a book of fairytales.

Jazz hands.

So there’s Red Riding Hood here, but also Antigone, there’s the Snow Queen, but it’s not snow, there’s a kaleidoscope of animal ghosts and human passions, queer theater techs and cleverly named collectives. This book features a lot of fun elements wrapped in with deeply, horrifyingly unfun environmental consequences.

Isa Arsén, The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf. Look, when a character tells you that their favorite Shakespearean character (as an actress) is Lady Macbeth and then another major character says their favorite play is Titus Andronicus–whose favorite play is Titus Andronicus? I demanded when I first got to that part. And then the book went on and OH NO OH GOD OH NO. Anyway, from the beginning you will get a clear sense that this is a setting that will tear people to shreds (1950s theater world!) and that some of the people in question will assist their milieu in their own destruction. Be forewarned on that. For me the prose voice made all the difference in the world, for you it might not make enough difference to be worth that shape of book if you’re really not in a good place for it. This book goes hard, but uh…not any more pleasantly than my first sentence there would lead you to expect.

Andrea Barrett, Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction. I was a little disappointed in this, I think because I was expecting more/broader theory. It was in a lot of places a process case study, which is interesting too, and I’m not sorry I read it, I was just expecting something grander, I think.

Agatha Christie, Hickory Dickory Dock and Peril at End House. These sure were mysteries by Agatha Christie.

Justene Hill Edwards, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank. Very straightforwardly does what it says on the tin. A thing we should all know happened, in terms of Black Americans and finance, this book gets in and gets out and does what it needs to do.

Kate Elliott, The Witch Roads. Discussed elsewhere.

Margaret Frazer, The Witch’s Tale. Kindle. This is one of the short stories, and it was clearly something Frazer needed to say about justice and community, and it got in and said it and got out. For heaven’s sake do not start here, this is a series story that’s leaning heavily on you already caring about this place and these people and not spending many of its quite few words in introducing them to you.

Max Gladstone, Last Exit. Reread. This book made me cry four times on the reread. I knew it was coming, I knew what was going to happen, I had not forgotten many (on some cellular level: any) of the details, and yet, dammit, Gladstone, ya did it to me again. With my own connivance this time. Anyway gosh this is good, this is doing all sorts of things with power and community and priorities and old friendships and adulthood and, the reason I read it: American road trips. Oh, and weather! I read it for my road trip panel, it also related to my weather panel, frankly I brought it up during a couple of other panels as well. This booook.

Reginald Hill, On Beulah Height. Reread. Back to back reread bangers, although this one only made me cry once. I am not a big crier over books. Such a good series mystery, by which I mean that it works as a mystery but also, and more crucially, as a novel about some people you’ve already had a chance to know, so you know what their reactions mean even when they’re not in your home register. (Or, if you’re from Yorkshire, even if they are.)

Jordan Ifueko, The Maid and the Crocodile. Magical and fun and full of textured worldbuilding and clear character motivation, I really liked this.

Sarah Kay, A Little Daylight Left. The sort of deeply gripping volume of poetry that makes me add everything else the poet has written to my reading list.

Nnedi Okorafor, One Way Witch. A prequel, a mother’s story, which is not something we see often. Interesting, not long.

Rebecca Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning. Reread. Also reread for my road trip panel, also pertained to my weather panel–are there any road trip novels that’s not true for? Is a road trip in part a way to make modern people vulnerable to smaller-scale weather forces? In any case, I liked the ragged edges here, I liked the things she tied up neatly but also the things she refused to.

Sean Stewart, Galveston. Reread. To my relief, this holds up 25 years after I first read it: storms of magic, layers of history, weird alternate worlds overlapping with this one, hurrah.

Greg van Eekhout, Cog. Reread. A charming and delightful story of a little robot and his friends taking a road trip in search of their own freedom.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is the first book in a duology, and it’s the kind of duology that’s really one book split into two volumes. The end of this book is merely the stopping point of this book, not in any way an ending. If that bothers you, wait around until the other half is out.

Honestly I can’t tell you why I didn’t love this book. I wanted to love this book. It’s a secondary world fantasy where one of the central relationships of the book is an aunt and nephew, and that kind of non-standard central relationship is absolutely up my alley. It’s a fantasy world where magical environmental contamination is a major threat, which is also of great interest to me. Sensitive yet matter-of-fact handling of trans characters, check. Worldbuilding that deviates from standard, check. And there wasn’t anything that made me roll my eyes or say ugh! It was just fine! But for me, at least, it was just fine. Honestly if this is your sort of thing I kind of wish you’d read it and tell me what you think might have been going on here, or if it’s just…that some books and some people are ships passing in the night.

Yukito Ayatsuji, The Labyrinth House Murders. The first of two books I read this fortnight whose ending made me actively quite angry. The ending did not work for me at all, leaning hard on two twists one of which frankly did not work for me logistically. Yuck.

Peter Beinert, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. This is a great example of a time when it’s good to be aware that I am not the target audience for everything, because I think Beinert’s main target audience is the overlap of his fellow Jewish people (I am not) and people who need convincing that being concerned for Jewish safety in the Middle East (and elsewhere) and being concerned for Palestinian safety in the Middle East (and elsewhere) do not have to be opposing concerns (I already believe that). It was still interesting to see how he approached this topic writing to people who are not me, and it’s a very short book, but it’s not any more cheerful than you might think, especially as he is willing to discuss recent deaths in this region from both/several groups in some detail.

Elizabeth Bowen, The Complete Stories of Elizabeth Bowen. It is what it says on the tin: all her stories, arranged chronologically. They are the sort of slice of life vignettes (and somewhat longer sometimes) that I don’t often like, and I liked these enough to read hundreds and hundreds of pages of them. Why? I’m not sure. I think because the slicing of life was done with a firm, wry hand? I think most people would enjoy this more in small bites, and maybe I would too, but I was traveling and had limited book supply, so this is where we landed.

Chaz Brenchley, Radhika Rages at the Crater School, Chapters 25-26. Kindle. This is the end of this book, and it has an ending entirely in keeping with its genre, so it likely won’t surprise you if you parcel out the reading like this, but it will satisfy inasmuch as the boarding school story can satisfy you. If you’re not a boarding school story fan, this is definitely not the story for you.

Adrienne Maree Brown, Ancestors. I can verify that it’s okay to read this without the two that precede it in its series because that’s just what I did. You’ll get all the incluing you need about what has happened (a plague, Detroit being enclosed behind a wall) and who these people are (a diverse bunch of people with intermittent super-ish powers), and their personal problems entwine satisfyingly with their science fiction problems. Also there is a bunch of sex and gender, in case you want some. Also, and importantly, there is a quite good dog.

Willa Hammitt Brown, Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack. This is lavishly illustrated though a bit repetitive–it’s definitely for the general/casual audience. (We live in a time when a book interrogating the masculinity of lumberjacks can be for the general/casual audience. What a world.) I learned some things that apply to my own ancestors as well as more general things about the lumber camps and their later mythologization, so that was interesting.

Stephanie Burgis, How to Write Romantasy. Kindle. This only gets categorized as “books” because it was an individual ebook. What it is actually is an essay, and I picked it up because I am not fond of romantasy as a category but am fond of Steph’s work and the work of a few others I know she also enjoys, and I thought I would learn more from someone doing it in a way I like and respect than from people whose work doesn’t connect with me. This did turn out to be the case–there were thoughts about subgenre and relationship arc that are useful to me even as I write things that are definitely not romantasy.

A.S. Byatt, A Whistling Woman. Reread. This is the wrong end of the series, this is starting at the ending, but I still find these characters fascinating, and this is the one I could–with some joy–find used, that I was missing. (I still need a copy of the first one but I can reread the middle two any time I like.) Midcentury women struggling to lead meaningful lives, love to see it.

Antonio Carbone, Epidemic Cities. Kindle. A quite short monograph on the various handling of different plagues by different cities, probably will not be much new if you think about this topic a lot but a good intro.

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop. Kindle. I said sarcastically to my niblings, “You’ll never guess how it ends.” But there’s a lot that comes for the archbishop before death, wandering around the American Southwest in an era that…look, Cather doesn’t have what we’d call modern consciousness of colonialism, but she has better awareness of Native people as people than I would have feared for this era.

Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang, eds., The Way Spring Arrives: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators. Kindle, reread. Reread this for my book club, glad to discuss the stories in more detail with other interested people.

C.S.E. Cooney, Saint Death’s Herald. Second in its series, and just as lovely in its writing and characterization and combination of whimsy and seriousness, no one else is quite like Cooney in that combination. Very happy to have this, you might be too.

Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages. This contains comparisons of art/archaeology to literary portrayal in this era, which is interesting, but also you will know just from the title whether you are the audience for this book or not. It is an absolutely lovely thing that it is, but it’s not some other secret thing that will surprise you. I got it off a shelf labeled “history of WHAT???,” and you will know whether that shelf is your heart’s home or not.

Francis Dupuis-Derland and Benjamin Pillet, eds., Anarcho-Indigenism: Conversations on Land and Freedom. A series of interviews with people who have very different relationships with this term–gave me a lot more questions than answers, which is I think a good sign in this kind of book, especially when the people being interviewed have more writings available elsewhere.

Elizabeth Fair, A Winter Away. Reread. Unfortunately I was not immediately aware that this was a reread and more or less didn’t notice, because it was not particularly notable either time. Had I read this already, or was the plot and characterization that predictable? We now know the answer, but at the time either seemed plausible. (Again, traveling. Limited book supply.) It’s not offensive, it’s fine, it’s just…gosh I hope to remember not to read it a third time.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth. Kindle. This is my least favorite Gaskell novel so far. This is the sort of book that you read and think, ah yes, we had to go through this to get to where we are, but…unless you’re a Gaskell superfan (which, fair, hi, hello), I feel like a book whose thesis is “maybe we should treat women who have sex like they are fellow humans rather than demons from the lowest pit of hell, at least if they’re otherwise completely angelic” is–hmm, I wanted to say that it’s not something most of us need any more, but I think what I would rather say is that it’s unlikely to reach those who need it in quite this form these days.

Bill Hayton, A Brief History of Vietnam: Colonialism, War, and Renewal: The Story of a Nation Transformed. On the up side, this introductory history of Vietnam contains a great deal of pre-20th century stuff that sometimes gets skipped over in Anglophone histories, and it’s a quick read. On the other hand, it’s an entire country, you may well find yourself dissatisfied by a treatment this short, and it surely was not consistent about things like providing pronunciation or defining terms, sometimes doing so repetitively and sometimes not at all. I hope there’s a better starting place for this.

Mohamed Kheir, Sleep Phase. A short dreamy novel (yes) about emerging from being a political prisoner in Egypt in this century, readjusting to life outside and its changes. Glad I read it but will not want to reread it.

David Kirby, The Baltic World, 1773-1993: Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change. So on the up side, Kirby is very solid about paradigm shifts like Sweden sometimes being central Scandinavia, in political terms, and sometimes being the northwest corner of the Baltic. Unfortunately his focus of scholarship (I’ve read his history of Finland) and the timing of this book (basically right at the end date in the title) tipped the balance towards him being one of the people of that generation who felt the need to come up with explanations for why it was inevitable or just or…something, why it made sense for the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to be conquered when Finland was not…without reference to bloody geography for heaven’s sake get it together my dude if your explanation does not lean heavily on “Finland is a frozen swamp and the others less so,” what are you even doing. Ahem. Okay. Anyway, it’s in some ways a useful historical reference and in other ways a cautionary tale for not trying to make history more just and sensible than the world actually is. (Please note that I say “frozen swamp” with the deepest of affection.) (It’s just, look, I know you all wanted to have impeccable reasons why it couldn’t happen to you, but it could bloody happen to you, of course it could, that’s why we had to let the entire Baltic into NATO ffs, it could happen to you any day of the week, victim blaming for your own comfort is not a reasonable worldview thank you and good day to you.) (The thing is that not a lot of people read Baltic history with no strong feelings about the Baltic, I think, and I am no counterexample.) (If more of this book had been about the Winter War, would he have…no, he’s an historian of FInland, he ought to already have.) (Harumph.)

Ann LeBlanc, The Transitive Properties of Cheese. Kindle. A delightful novella about the lengths a genetically modified cheesemaking clone will go to in order to protect outer space’s most perfect cheese cave. I had a good time with this.

Rose Macaulay, Told By an Idiot. Kindle. This is a family novel that follows its characters from the late Victorian period through the postwar period although since it was published in 1923, it’s not very far into the postwar period. It’s got her characteristic humor and observations of humanity and its foibles, and she’s very explicitly talking about how The Young Generation is perpetually being credited with all sorts of new traits that have in fact been in humans the whole time. I love her, and this was a fun one for me, albeit with somewhat less plot direction than some of her others.

Charlotte McConaughy, Wild Dark Shore. This was the other book I read this fortnight with a catastrophically disappointing ending. It was going so well with climate change and botany and repairing families, but the ending upset and frankly really offended me–this is not an “I don’t like sad endings” problem, this is an “I don’t like what the shape of sad ending once again implies about the worth of women” problem. Not recommended despite copious botany and several seals.

Tashan Mehta, Mad Sisters of Esi. Discussed elsewhere.

Candace Robb, A Gift of Sanctuary. I managed to finish this medieval mystery novel without attaching to any of the characters even a little bit. There was a lot of “which one is he? oh right that one” going on in my head. I finished it, I left it in a rental apartment, I can’t say I recommend it but it probably won’t do you any harm.

Rosália Rodrigo, Beasts of Carnaval. Discussed elsewhere.

Silky Shah, Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition. Kindle. Explorations of how the carceral criminal justice system feeds the carceral immigration system, sure-handed and angry where it needs to be.

Vivian Shaw, Strange New World. The fourth full-length book, fifth story, in the Dr. Greta Van Helsing series, and this one goes to the heights of Heaven and the depths of Hell for its monster medical drama, and also to [gasp] New York. I would not start here, because there are character implications and because the previous ones are still in print, but I actually think you could. But also the previous ones are still in print.

Sujit Sivasundaram, Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire. This was brilliantly done, pointing out that even the histories of the Age of Revolution that make an effort to include people of color are mostly still extremely focused on the Atlantic world, and things of interest were absolutely going on in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as well. Interesting, well-written, hurrah.

A.G. Slatter, The Path of Thorns. A very classically formed governess novel but with a ton of magic stuff in it. Yay, enjoyed this.

Sarah Suk, Meet Me at Blue Hour. A sweet novel about two Korean-American teens in Korea coping with the results of a memory removal clinic while one of them has a grandfather in the early stages of dementia.

Sunaura Taylor, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert. I’ve read several of this genre of book, which is case study of an ecological region and the humans who live in it being ravaged by particular companies who know exactly what they’re doing and attempt to lie about it. This is probably the best one I’ve read so far, as it has very solid grounding in both disability theory and ecology, as well as the politico-historical chops for the research, and also the personal disabled/community connection to the subject, so if you only read one in this genre, read this one. (And hey, read one in this genre sometime, maybe, huh? You might think you already know how bad it is, and I promise it’s worse.)

Sienna Tristen, Hortus Animarum. Kindle. A glorious collection of botanical poems paying tribute to loves that are not necessarily sexual or romantic but are definitely queer. One of the best indices I’ve seen in years, for friends who are index hounds.

Mai Der Vang, Primordial. The saola, a rare bovid native to Vietnam, is Vang’s central metaphor here about the Hmong refugee experience. Some of the poems about it are stunning, brave, and vivid, but the whole is rather more monofocus on the one image (the saola) than I prefer in a collection of this length.

Elizabeth von Arnim, The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight. Kindle. This is a very silly book about a German princess who runs away to live in England in a little cottage and learns to appreciate being a princess. At no point does anyone consider that she is not inherently superior to all who surround her. It’s briskly written and got me through waiting for an airplane, but I can’t say it was wonderful enough that I recommend it more generally.

Neon Yang, Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame. Okay, so there are books where the twist is the point, and there are books where you see the twist coming from a mile away and the journey is the point. This is definitely more in the latter camp, but unfortunately it meant that I started to find the protagonist frustrating for not also seeing the twist coming. Possibly this is because it’s much harder to be in a fantasy novel than to read one. If you want a well-written sapphic knights-and-dragons story and don’t much care about the plot, here you go.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Sofía has been waiting for years for her twin brother Sol to return. He was taken away by their former owner, now employer, to serve as his valet during a stay at an expensive resort, and neither of them has been heard from since. Adalina, her owner’s daughter and her best friend, insists on accompanying her–which means Sofía has access to the absolute most lavish and decadent aspects of the resort while she’s searching for her father.

This is, however, a fantasy novel. So the resort is ominously not the paradise it seems. Instead of having her questions answered, Sofía gets lost in a jumbled spiral that even her scientist mind can’t make sense of. No one around her seems to notice that anything is wrong, but the one thing she can hold onto–she hopes–is that she is there to find Sol, or at least find out what happened to him.

Most of the other specifics I could give here would be major spoilers, so I will just say some more elements of this book: intense grappling with the interpersonal ramifications of colonialism. Aro-ace heroine. Stubborn, imperfect, caring community members whose vision for their community doesn’t always line up. Deeply weird magic happenings. And, of course, the titular Carnaval, in all its vivid glory.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

I like books that don’t follow a standard hero’s journey or quest narrative, and wow, is this in that category. This one has–and this by itself should tell you a large part of whether you want to read it–a gigantic whale of space–in space? but also comprising space? and multiple worlds inside the whale, that part is certain. Doors into unfolding different worlds, all inside the whale.

The whale used to be something else, but *what* else is a spoiler.

So there is more worldmaking than worldhopping here, and the titular sisters–there are two pairs of candidates for the title–are trying to figure out what madness means in their context. It is not a book that is trying to make a commentary on mental health in our own context, or if it is, it’s being very roundabout and obscure about it. But there is a lot about how cultures construe madness, sanity, fitting in and not.

And there are indeed sisterhoods, very strong sororal relationships. And also space whale. Which you might like, and if so, step right up, here it is.

Sonja Arntzen and Ito Moriyuki, trans., The Sarashina Diary: A Woman’s Life in Eleventh-Century Japan (by Sugawara no Takasue no Musume). This is brief but delightful. Its author is one of the most relatable historical figures I have ever encountered, book-obsessed and delighted by the written word.

Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On. The modern world, the Korean-American experience, a dozen other things in a score of emotional ranges. Sometimes I find it interesting to contemplate which volumes of poetry resonate me and which with similar descriptions leave me cold. This one resonated.

Christopher Hale, A Brief History of Singapore and Malaysia: Multiculturalism and Prosperity: The Shared History of Two Southeast Asian Tigers. A bit too much Singapore in the balance for my taste–I have no objection to Singapore, but if you’re putting both Singapore and Malaysia on the cover, I want both. This is more a starting point than an ending point in the history of this region, but that’s valuable too.

Reginald Hill, An Advancement of Learning, An April Shroud, Bones and Silence, Child’s Play, A Clubbable Woman, Deadheads, Exit Lines, A Killing Kindness, A Pinch of Snuff, Recalled to Life, Ruling Passion, Underworld, and The Wood Beyond. Rereads. And here we come to the reason this is one of the easiest book posts I’ve written in ages: I’m 2/3ish of the way through rereading the Dalziel and Pascoe series, and I find them more or less where I left them–the early ones are fine, and now I’m into the part of the series that’s quite good, with the best yet to come. Gosh I’m glad I read them out of order originally. The exception to finding them where I left them is that three times through is enough for me on A Pinch of Snuff, I do not expect to find it worth my time for a fourth go-round.

Natalie Shapero, Popular Longing. This is also poetry engaging with the current moment. Like the Franny Choi collection, it is frequently angry. For some reason it doesn’t resonate for me nearly so well–I find it more grating in places but most often it’s just that Shapero’s gears and mine don’t mesh. Ah well.

Tom Stoppard, Plays: 5 (Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night and Day, Indian Ink, Hapgood). Rereads. I’m passing this on to a young theater-lover in my life and read it on the way out. One masterwork, one mid-century adultery play (YAWN), two attempts at reckoning with colonialism very much from a colonizer viewpoint, and a spy thing that is less clever than he thinks about quantum mechanics. I have another copy of Arcadia, I’m not sorry I read the others, but I’m also not sorry to hand them on.

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor writing as A. Merc Rustad, So You Want to Be a Robot. Reread. Remains varied, wrenching, and brilliant, one of the best debut collections of our generation, yay.