Month: August 2024

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is a rerelease (coming this fall!) of the author’s preferred edition of this 2000 fantasy novel.

Maskelle is supposed to be the Voice of her god, but they’ve had a falling out. She misinterpreted a vision in a way that angered the powers that be, and she’s been a cursed outcast ever since. Her journeys with a band of players are taking her back where her god wants her, back in the city that is the center of his worship.

And the god wants her there for a reason. The ritual that renews the world every year–with particular emphasis on this year’s centenary observation–is going awry no matter how they try to fix it. Maskelle has been out in the world, her connection with the god at least used to be the most powerful–surely she’s the right choice to set the world right.

This is about as big a job as you might expect. Add in a cursed puppet for the traveling players and all sorts of personal complications for the swordsman they meet along the way, and there’s a recipe for a giant shitstorm at the end. Which happens, which definitely happens, and the climax comes together as only Martha Wells books can.

Clara Benson, A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia and The Murder at Sissingham Hall. Kindle. These are each the first in a longer series of historical mysteries. Benson made them available for free on the Kindle, which was very smart of her because I will now be giving her money for the rest of each series. The two detectives are distinct without one of them being deeply obnoxious, and the early 20th century setting is a favorite of mine.

Chaz Brenchley, Radhika Rages at the Crater School, Prelude through Chapter 9. Kindle. I’m still enjoying this series of boarding school books from Chaz, but I notice as it goes on that there isn’t one single person who doesn’t end up settling in and loving boarding school. That’s the genre. But it’s a genre I start to have more quibbles with the more I read of it, because I don’t actually believe that any institution is for everyone, and boarding schools of this type certainly not, and the longer it goes the more I start to get antsy about it, even though each book is no less fun than the last.

Elise Bryant, It’s Elementary. A bubbly fun mystery where the detective is a mom investigating suspicious goings-on at her kid’s school. She’s a single Black mom whose interactions with her ex are cordial and plot-crucial (getting the kiddo on her calls with her dad is one of the most important things in the protag’s world) and for whom race is also key to her experience at a “gentrifying” school. I found the ending a bit disappointing but enjoyed the narrative voice throughout.

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, eds., Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells. Reread. Still enjoyed stories by stalwarts like Elizabeth Bear, Veronica Schanoes, and the writing team of Ellen Datlow and Caroline Stevermer. Worth keeping on my shelf.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton. Kindle. Her first novel, and Charlotte Bronte has not yet yelled at her about beloved people who transgress social standards getting to live out the book. So you can pretty much guess who is going to get a noble tragic death and who is going to still be around. On the other hand, the prostitute aunt and opium-addict father get a great deal more compassion than would have been standard for the era, and it’s set entirely in the working classes and firmly takes their side. Explicitly, in fact; this is a book that came out in 1848, and its author’s attentions were firmly on the revolutions of 1848 though the scope of her book is much smaller.

Marianne Gordon, The Gilded Crown. Do you want necromancy? Because this has necromancy. This has so much necromancy, in fact, that I’m not sure you could fit more in with a shoehorn. Court politics and so, so much necromancy, including of a very nice bird.

Helen Hardacre, Shinto: A History. This very correctly labels itself a history: it is the sort of book that is much more concerned with when movements related to Buddhism affected Shinto and how than it is with the experience any person might have of Shinto. It’s briskly written, very fast for its size, and interesting as long as you go in knowing that it will not be about the subjective experience of being(/doing?) Shinto even a little bit.

Selma Lagerlöf, The Outcast. Kindle. Early 20th century moral melodrama about a person who is reputed to have engaged in cannibalism (that part is chapter 1, I’m not spoilering anything) and all the good he does attempting to redeem himself in the eyes of his community. Not her best, I think.

Tiya Miles, Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation. Quite short, focused on 19th century women’s relationships with the out-of-doors, explicitly takes the time to look at Black, White, and Native American women in this context–but very American, not particularly concerned with a compare-and-contrast with other countries.

Ng Yi-Sheng, Lion City. Kindle. Queer Singaporean surrealist short stories. Weird and fun and, yes, weird. And weird.

Meredith K. Ray, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. This is about the era when scientific culture itself was only barely emerging, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s right on that line where practical plant knowledge becomes botany or distilling expertise starts contributing to chemistry. Interesting stuff.

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time. Basically this is “time: how does it $##@&% work?” There’s some elementary thermodynamics and some elementary quantum mechanics, nothing that will be troublesome if you’re shaky on math. There are also startling numbers of Smurfs employed in the time-related diagrams, apparently on the theory that Papa Smurf is the aged version of a default Smurf? Huh.

Naben Ruthnum, Helpmeet. Creepy Victorian body horror novella. I feel like this comes closer than anything else I’ve read that was written in the 21st century to actually feeling like how the Victorians would have done it, rather than being about Victorians (although it is that too).

Catherine Shaw, The Three-Body Problem. Kindle. A 19th century murder mystery about solving the N-body problem, fun even if you’re not interested in that. Will pursue more of this series. (This is good. I’ve been in the mood to find more mystery series.)

Vandana Singh, Distances. Another very readable genre-central SF novella from Vandana Singh, the second one I got for this year’s birthday.

Bogi Takács, Power to Yield and Other Stories. I really like it when collections provide durable locations for stories I’ve liked in their original printing plus other stories I haven’t gotten to yet. This delivered admirably on that combination.

Kat Tang, Five-Star Stranger. This is one of those literary novels that might have been science fiction and isn’t. The society in it has Rental Strangers who can be hired to perform roles in people’s lives–really basically any role from parent to job candidate. The protagonist has this profession and gets emotionally involved with some of his clients, which is a no-no. The ending was very flat, which is what happens when you want to have a premise like this and not examine any of the broader social stuff, it’s just: yep, that’s how that very specific personal thing plays out, okay.

P. G. Wodehouse, The Coming of Bill. Kindle. What a weird book. The problem with the eugenicist is that she…doesn’t let the titular little white boy play enough? Uh. Huh. So on the one hand, the eugenicist is vanquished in the end and the people she was trying to control are free of her, but on the other hand a lot of things about her go completely unchallenged and unremarked. Also this is one where strong men are supposed to wear the pants, seeeee, which: oh buddy no.

Patricia C. Wrede, Caught in Crystal. Kindle. One of the things that has come up several times on convention panels is the desire for more stories where parents and kids have adventures together. This is definitely one. Kayl is a retired swordswoman with two middle-sized kids who bicker like kids and get excited about new stuff like kids and generally act like kids, but also are plot-crucial to the fantasy adventure here.

Kelly Yang, Front Desk. A sweet, earnest MG book about a young Chinese immigrant girl who works at the front desk of the motel her parents manage. Her struggles are, as Yang notes in the afterword, entirely based in Yang’s experience, and they feel real throughout.

Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris 1900-1940. By “women of the Left Bank,” Benstock specifically means literary women: writers, editors, bookstore owners. This is not the tour de force that some more recent group biographies have been, but it’s still an interesting compare-and-contrast if you’re interested in the period.

Stephanie Burgis, A Marriage of Undead Inconvenience. Kindle. Light, fun novella about a scholar who is hustled into marriage with a vampire and has to belatedly learn the ways in which they can work together to their own benefit (but not necessarily their relatives’…).

Zig Zag Claybourne, Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe. Second in the Jetstream Brothers series, the focus of this volume is not on the eponymous brothers but on some of the women in their general circle. Similar gonzo full-on every-genre-in-a-blender tone, when you’re looking for something that just won’t quit.

Michael Cronin, Eco-Travel: Journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene. Kindle. A brief work looking at various shapes of environmental impact of travel, direct and indirect.

Ellen Datlow, ed., Mad Hatters and March Hares. I picked this up on a whim, not because I have a particular Lewis Carroll interest, but there were a few quite good things in here–Jane Yolen’s, for example, what a surprise, and CSE Cooney’s, again not shocking but still satisfying. The bent of this volume is a bit darker than my tastes tend to be, but well done for that.

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, eds., Black Thorn, White Rose. Reread. I can’t say “every one of these is a banger,” but pretty close, most of them are. There are some formative stories for me in here that I didn’t realize I first encountered here–I haven’t reread this since I was a teenager. I won’t say something foolish like “timeless” because all art is made in particular times, and the framings and concerns of these stories are of their time as much as anything else is. Shakespeare is, Middlemarch is, there’s no shame that these stories are. I should have gotten back to this sooner.

Michael J. DeLuca, The Jaguar Mask. Discussed elsewhere.

Harriet I. Flower, The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture. Through no fault of the author, I got a copy of this book that had every fourth page printed slightly blurry, which made it more of a slog than the text would otherwise be. The chapters that were most interesting to me were about disgrace during the Roman Republic and about empresses and other highly ranked women’s disgrace.

Margalit Fox, The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss. Short and vividly written, this is an interesting view of a kind of person who doesn’t often get the spotlight. Fox is particularly clear about the different shape of crime bosses in the 19th century, particularly in this case the focus on property crime rather than “vice” or violence as a central factor.

Margaret Frazer, The Prioress’ Tale and The Maiden’s Tale. Kindle. The next two Sister Frevisse mysteries. The Prioress’ Tale is in the sort of emotionally low part of the series thus far, and The Maiden’s Tale pulls the mood up a bit, to my relief. It also gets more political and changes up the structure of the book to have one of the murders very early rather than the first murder halfway through as this series has liked to do.

Maggie Graber, Swan Hammer: An Instructor’s Guide to Mirrors. Beautiful poetry, vivid, referential, grounded. I was surprised at the breadth of geography in Graber’s groundedness, much of the North American continent really, well done her.

Juliana Hu Pegues, Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska’s Indigenous and Asian Entanglements. Accounts of the relationships of both Alaskan Indigenous and immigrant Asian-Alaskan groups with each other and with white cultures. I wanted more here, but I’m glad to have even this much, it’s a pretty specialized topic.

Premee Mohamed, We Speak Through the Mountain. A sequel novella to The Annual Migration of Clouds, and you should probably read that first to enjoy this fully. Its protagonist has now arrived at the Promised Land that is college. Prepare to be disillusioned. I don’t think this is Dark Academia as I understand the genre, but it sure isn’t “academia is pure and lovely and will cherish its acolytes as humans,” and I like that it isn’t. Further SF ramifications since the first volume. Loved it.

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. It’s inevitable that some people will have to form theories right before major change, and this is one of those cases: Piven and Cloward were writing this leading up to the point where all the graphs of trends in American life in the 20th century hit a sharp turn. That’s not their fault. But it makes their assessment of movements and tendencies less useful than it otherwise might be.

Cameron Reed, The Fortunate Fall. Discussed elsewhere.

Zoe Schlanger, The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. Mostly about plant behavior. Schlanger occasionally seems more confused than I think is warranted about why the botanists she’s talking to are so intent on avoiding entangling themselves with debates about the nature of intelligence and instead try to focus on behaviors they can observe and document, but even with that caveat there’s a lot of interesting plant behavior in here.

Vivian Shaw, Bitter Waters. Kindle. The latest Dr. Greta Helsing story, this one in novella form. All the vampires you could possibly want in here. There’s never a moment where you could fairly say, “Good stuff but I wish you’d put in more vampires.” I don’t like vampires, this novella is wall-to-wall vampires, and I still like this novella, because I like Viv’s careful and humane exploration of the tropes.

Kathleen Sheppard, Women in the Valley of Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age. This title can’t quite be Lesbians in the Valley of Kings, but it’s close. There are a lot of wlw in this particular bit of history, and Sheppard is not shy about letting you know who they are–or which people might not have identified in ways that we do today. She also does a great job of making clear when the subjects of her work were on both ends of crushing prejudice, because some of them had to battle really terrible sexism and then perpetrated really terrible racism on their own hook, and Sheppard doesn’t shy away from that.

Dana Simpson, Unicorn Crush. This is the latest Phoebe & Her Unicorn volume, and it is not particularly outstanding as a stand-alone thing, but if you’re continuing to enjoy Phoebe and Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, as I am, it’s fun. And it sure won’t take you long.

Vandana Singh, Of Love and Other Monsters. This novella (it was a very novella birthday for me) is clearly in conversation with Octavia Butler about mental connection and the alien, which I find interesting as a subgenre categorization.

C. Spike Trotman, Kate Ashwin, Kel McDonald, and Taneka Stotts, eds., The Girl Who Married a Skull and Other African Stories. This is an anthology of short comics retelling African fables of the sort where there’s a clear moral to the story. The art styles vary considerably, so if you don’t like one, another will be along in 1-10 pages. Don’t go in expecting depth or substance, though, there’s only so much that can be done with three comic book pages at a go.

Nicola Twilley, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. What it says on the tin. Goes briskly and has lots of interesting details. If you like this kind of cultural history, I’m glad to be able to recommend you another of its genre.

Boyce Upholt, The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi. A mostly-cultural somewhat-natural history of the Mississippi River and what humans have done to try to manage it, and the ways in which that has and has not gone well. Interesting stuff, some stuff even I didn’t know, and I am a northern waters nerd.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a good friend and I read an early draft of this book.

Cristina Ramos is not making the art she meant to make–it didn’t sell. Her paintings now are safe, predictable–things she can sell to tourists. Things that keep her buying more art supplies, things that keep her helping her large and beloved family in the way she wants to, not in her mother’s restaurant the way she feels everyone expects from the oldest daughter. Her nephews need her, her mother needs her, everyone needs her. But she still has visions of another way–sometimes literally. And when her mother is gunned down as an afterthought to a political murder, she can’t hold those visions back any more.

That’s when she meets Felipe K’icab. He’s a jaguar shapeshifter who’s been driving an unlicensed cab, trying to use his collection of masks to get by in a world that’s tumultuous enough for plain humans. Felipe’s roommates have been trying to draw him into their activism, but he gets pulled into the wrong end of dealing with his country’s corruption when he picks up a fare who’s a corrupt cop who recognizes him for what he is. Coopted into an investigation that gets in the way of his own loyalties, he has to scramble to keep his own secrets–and save his closest friends.

Lushly written and beautifully imagined, The Jaguar Mask reaches for the truth of artist’s visions and the needs of family and friends. Their road to unmasked truth is fraught and so, so very human–even when it comes on velvet paws. One of my favorite books of the year, full of tension and hope.