Month: September 2019

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Nicky Drayden is one of the most creative writers working in speculative fiction at this time. One of the ones with the most pleasant, happiest work…I can’t say that, really. But creative, oh Lord yes, and this is no exception. Escaping Exodus takes a generation ship saga and moves those ships inside massive gigantic space beasts. Y’know, just another one of those.

So if you are thinking, human parasitism inside the organs of a truly epic-sized space herd, wow, cool, yes, you are correct, and if you are thinking, that has the potential to have some really gross bits with sphincters and bodily fluids, you are also very correct. Drayden does not wimp out on including pus and goo here. Our characters carve bone, but also they deal with organs galore.

It’s all in the service of real, flawed human relationships and science fictional conceit that goes beyond “ooh lookit,” though: the lives of the giant beasts are tied intimately to the lives of our protagonists in ways that go beyond the understanding their culture has evolved. They have to come up with new and better ways to manage their own lives–which they can barely do under the current cultural norms–and the beast’s life and life in space, if anyone is to survive. If you’re thinking about the interdependence of life and fragile ecosystems–which, ahem, please do–or if you’re thinking about the way people who love each other manage to hurt each other anyway, you probably want this book. Pus and all.

Review copy provided by the author.

I am writing this review several months ahead of posting it for its release, and honestly it is going to KILL ME to spend the entire late spring, summer, and early fall without people to talk to about this book. But hey! Thanks to the miracle of [checks notes] saving things and posting them later, you now exist in a world where you can go get Cog for yourself.

Much better world.

This is the story of a young robot boy who doesn’t want to be a human, he wants to be his own best robotty self. He is full of curiosity and loyalty and conviction and also a determination to learn from his mistakes. Possibly by making as many of them as possible.

He also has a weaponized sister, a robot dog, and a couple of other companions I will leave as the glorious surprises they are. And also maybe some unexpected special powers.

He is great.

He has a very satisfying plot arc, but truly I would just be happy to hang out with Cog while he shops for cheese and figures out the world. His voice is lovable and satisfying and fun. The themes of the story are the sorts of things that you probably already know–even if you’re part of its child audience–but never fully internalize. This book is a delight. Self-actualizing robots forever.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a Twitter buddy.

Eva Innocente and her crew may not be rich, but at least they’re honest–mostly honest–welllll, more honest than Eva’s family. So when Eva’s even-more-honest sister is kidnapped and threatened by a galactic crime syndicate called The Fridge, Eva has to save her–even if some of the decisions she makes along the way are not technically what would be known as wise or sensible or OH MY GOD EVA WHAT ARE YOU DOING. There are spaceship maneuvers, low-gravity cats, brain parasites, human-alien relations…in more senses of the word than one…fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, true love…actually I’m not remembering the fencing very well. But this is in fact a kissing book, and also there are true friends who stick with the heroine.

Also she expresses herself in emphatic Spanish from time to time, so if that’s a thing you need–and for some of you it definitely is a personal positive, I know–and the rest of you can pick up what you need to from context, trust me. No, you can. Suck it up, buttercups, you can do Klingon, the Spanish is great.

Here’s my caveat, though, having read it but also seen the marketing and some other reviews: there is a purple upbeat Julie Dillon cover, and the first chapter features the cats, and the word “fun” is getting used a lot for this book in discussions I’ve heard. How much you parse it as a pure fun adventure is likely to depend on how you read a book where one of the main engines of plot is (and this happens very early, so I don’t feel like it’s a major spoiler) the threat of sexual violence against the heroine. Because there is a very persistent sexual violence threat against the heroine. It is, in fact, one of two or three central things that drives the plot. If you don’t find that fun or relaxing–and I don’t–you might still find this book interesting and well done for the things it is doing–and I did–but your “fluffy fun yay!” quotient is going to vary considerably. One of the things it is not doing is providing a place where people who find the threat of sexual violence stressful can relax and read about space battles and cats and aliens and spaceships. Not every book has to do that, but be forewarned that this one is not. Well-written, yes; fluffy, no.

(I’ve also seen some assumptions that this must be YA based on the cover and–let’s be real here–the fact that the author is a woman of color. Don’t do that. This is adult space opera, go read it as adult space opera. Or not, if you were looking for YA! But be clear that Valerie never once claimed this was YA, not even a little. Know what you’re getting.)

Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate. This is a charming novella of extrasolar planetary exploration. The crew works well together while having clear and distinct personalities, the planets are very different and spark different human psychological reactions, it’s all very classic SF while at the same time being very contemporary…there is hardly anything that is for everybody, but among SF fans I should think this will come pretty close.

Gavin Chappell, trans., The Saga of Half and Half’s Champions and The Saga of Ragnar Shaggy-Breeches and the Yarn of Ragnar’s Sons. Kindle. Two more legendary sagas, full of random mythical beasts and great weirdness. I live-tweeted one of them, because the depths of weirdness were inspiring. Hypothetically I am reading legendary sagas as preparation for a project I might be doing (read: will be doing, but when, who knows), but in reality let’s all admit that I just love them a lot. Also, as I clarified on Twitter, the first one is the saga of Half’s champions, and also of Half himself, not the saga of the champions of a thing you can put in your coffee. Oh, phrasing and punctuation.

Chen Qiufan, Waste Tide. There are certain kinds of books that get translated first, I am noticing, because I tend to read a lot in translation. Maybe this is unfair of me. I enjoyed Waste Tide for what it is, but…I also notice that in the wave of Chinese SF that is getting translated first, the stuff that is fairly traditionally structured and extremely male-focused to the point of being somewhat sexist is getting translated first. So this is interesting in its ideas about waste disposal and intercultural assumptions both inside and outside China, and also there is fridging and minimal use of women’s perspectives, and it is basically exactly what you’d expect would get translated early. Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t have interesting points, just…I’ll be glad when there’s more variety of what’s written in Chinese SF available in English.

Amanda Downum, Still So Strange. This is a collection of Amanda’s short mostly-urban dark fantasy, and I had been missing her work, and now here’s a bunch of it all at once. Yessss.

Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten, A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World’s Extinct Animals. This is a beautiful compendium of extinct animals, each with a description and a painting. Some of them are heartbreaking, and it’s hard to predict which.

Sarah Gailey, Magic for Liars. If you’ve been missing books that center a non-romantic relationship, this one is all about, all about sisters. There is noir detective work around a magic school, and either of those things may push some of your buttons, but for me it was the sister relationship that centered the book’s appeal.

Theodora Goss, Snow White Learns Witchcraft. This is substantially fairy tale retellings, but for me the poems were the best part, crystallizations in a few pages of fairy tale extensions and extenuations.

Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Discussed elsewhere.

Jaime Lee Moyer, Brightfall. Discussed elsewhere.

Malka Older, State Tectonics. The conclusion to a science fiction series about microdemocracies in a high-information society. Basically I would not recommend reading it without the first two, but as a series conclusion I found it thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Sarah Pinsker, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea. This is a beautiful and varied collection. Highly recommended. Spans length, genre, theme, mood. Yay.

Sherwood Smith, Inda. Reread. I think what stuck out to me on this reread was how much this book was a study in leadership in its different modalities, how to inculcate leadership in people who didn’t have it naturally, how to use it for your own ends, all sorts of themes and variations around education toward leadership. I should probably restrain myself from just plowing through the rest of the series.

Pauline Stafford, Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. This is a fascinating look at England over the period of the Norman Conquest with an eye to the commonality of culture more than its disruption. Extremely useful if you’re doing a thing.

Jane Yolen, A Plague of Unicorns. This is one of those children’s books where the adults will have seen the twist a million times, but the crucial difference is in how it’s handled–in this case not just deftly but kindly, deeply kindly. And also with lots of apples and cider.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

For a long time you couldn’t get a portal fantasy for love nor money, most particularly not for money, as I’m pretty sure the fanfic ones were out there for love. But for several years, portal fantasies were out of fashion for adults. They seem to have come back in the last few years, but in a self-aware, self-examining iteration.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is one instantiation of that. It is full of portals–the title is no exaggeration–but almost all the action takes place in this world, or a version of it. January Scaller has spent her entire childhood puzzling over various mysteries of her existence–when her father will make one of his brief returns from his assorted travels, for example, or what happened with the mysterious and magical door she found in Tennessee as a child, what the coin she picked up beyond it meant. The other people she meets are her guardian’s house are varied in age, race, expertise, but none of them seems ready to answer her questions.

And then as January comes closer to coming of age, everything seems to happen all at once. Her guardian tells her that her father is dead, that she must adjust to a new role in the world–and all of the things that she has hoped and known about her guardian shift out from under her. The world opens up new possibilities, many of them terrifying–many of them worlds themselves. And her own power and control are simultaneously beyond what she dreamed and woefully inadequate for the task at hand.

So it’s a good thing she’s made some loyal friends along the way.

Review copy provided by the author, who is a long-time friend.

I was obsessed with Arthurian legends in my early adolescence, as I think a lot of kids that age are and especially a lot of kids that age in that period were. I also read Robin McKinley’s Outlaws of Sherwood, and somewhere along the line it occurred to me to wonder why there weren’t more Robin Hood novels. On the surface there was a strong similarity with Arthurian stories: both British, both featuring nearly infinitely expandable bands of buddies and sidekicks and character actors, both romantic and action-packed. But the shelves were packed with the one, nearly empty of the other. Why?

One of the theories I formulated was that the Arthur story has a narrative arc, whereas the Robin Hood story’s arc, when it has one, is a deus ex machina: King Richard returns and all is well through no particular action on the characters’ part. It’s not even ripe to be a picaresque because nobody really goes anywhere. It’s full of episode without direction. In order to have an actual novel, I speculated, you’d have to add a lot to the basic Robin Hood story.

Brightfall is basically exhibit A for this theory. This is a Robin Hood novel, no mistake, but Jaime brought so much to the table. Witchcraft! The Fair Folk! A dragon! Entirely new characters completely separate from the extensive original cast! Plot that extends in time–that, in fact, starts–far after the glory days of the Merry Men, that gives Maid Marian her own home and priorities and life–a life that can be disrupted by nefarious plots from another realm.

Also Robin Hood is a complete butt in this book.

Seriously, though. A. Complete. Butt. But it’s not one of those books where the author doesn’t recognize it; a good third of the dialog is approximately:  Someone: Why are you such a butt, Robin Hood? RH: …I dunwanna talk about it. Is he not a butt in the end? Well, that’s for you to find out for yourself. Marian gets an earned happy ending, I’ll promise you that, but with whom and how and when is for you to find out.