Novel Gazing Redux

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a friend.

I love planetary settlement novels, and I love alien communication novels, and Cam has given us both. When John Maraintha arrives on the planet Scythia, he has no particular intentions toward its inhabitants. It was never his intention to be there, and now that he is, he expects to serve as a doctor for the colonists. But he’s simultaneously shut out of some parts of Scythian society and drawn into the puzzle of its sentient species and their communications. Their life cycles are so different from humans’, but surely this gap can be bridged with goodwill and hard work, even in the scrubby high desert that serves as home for human and alien alike?

Science fiction famously touts itself as the literature of alienation; Cameron actually delivers on that here in ways that a lot of the genre is not even trying to do. The layers of alienation–and the layers of connection that can be found between them–are varied and complicated. This book is gentle and subtle, even though there are scenes were John’s medical training is put to its bloodiest use. If you’re tired of mid-air punching battles as the climax of far too many things, the very personal and very cultural staged climax of What We Are Seeking will be a canteen of water for you in this arid time. Gender, relationship, reproduction, and love mix and mingle in their various forms, some familiar and some new. I expect to be talking about this one for a long time after, and I can’t wait for you to be able to join me in that.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is another of the novellas featuring Cleric Chih and their astonishing memory bird Almost Brilliant, although Almost Brilliant does not get a lot of page time this go-round. This is mainly the story of hunger, desperation, shame, and unquiet ghosts. It’s about what depths people might sink to when famine comes–in this story, a famine demon, personified, but the shape of the story won’t be unfamiliar if you’ve read about more mundane famines.

The lines between horror and dark fantasy are as always unclear, but wherever you place A Mouthful of Dust, I recommend only reading it when you’re fully prepared for something unrelentingly bleak.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is not a stand-alone book. It’s a close sequel to Witch King, and the characters and their situation are more thoroughly introduced in that volume. Unless you’re a forgetful reader or specifically like to reread whole series when new installments come out, I think Wells gives you enough grounding to just pick this one up, but not enough for this to stand alone–it’s not intended to.

If I had had to pick the title of this book, the word “alliances” would have figured heavily in it. I get that the two titles pair well this way, but this is a book substantially about dealing with one’s allies–the ones who are definitely, definitely not friends as well as the ones Kai loves dearly who are not actually as reliable as he might have hoped. The other enemies of Hierarchy are not all immediately eager to team up with an actual demon; some of them require convincing that the enemy of their enemy really is their friend (VALID, because that is not a universally true thing). And of course Kai’s own nearest and dearest are growing as people and have the growing pains associated with that. If you enjoyed Witch King, you’re in for a treat as this is very much a continuation of all the things it was doing.

Syr Hayati Beker, What a Fish Looks Like. Discussed elsewhere.

A.S. Byatt, The Virgin in the Garden. Weirdly I had read books 2-4 of this series and not this one. It worked perfectly well that way, and I think for some people I’d even recommend it, because this one is substantially about teachers attempting (and often succeeding) in sleeping with their teenage girl students and a mental health crisis not being responsibly addressed. All of it is very period-appropriate for the early 1950s, all of it is beautifully observed and written about. It still had the “I want to keep reading this” nature that her prose always does for me. And Lord knows Antonia Byatt was there and knew how it all went down in that era. It’s just that if you want to do without this bit, it’ll be fine, it really is about those things and it’s really okay to not want to do that on a particular day.

William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. This is largely How Buddhism Transformed the World and a little bit of How Hinduism Transformed the World. There is a tiny bit about math and a few references to astronomy without a lot of detail. If you’re looking for how Ancient Indian religions transformed the world, that’s an interesting topic and this is so far as I, a non-expert, can tell, well done on it. But I wanted more math, astronomy, and other cultural influences.

Robert Darnton, The Writer’s Lot: Culture and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France. Comparing the economic situations and lifestyles of several writers of the era–how they lived, how they were able to live, how they wrote. Also revisiting some of his own early-career analysis in an interesting way I’d like to see more of from other authors. Should this be your first Darnton: no probably not. Should you read some Darnton and also this: quite possibly.

J. R. Dawson, The First Bright Thing. Reread. Still gut-wrenching and bright, superpowers and magic circus and found family, what we can change and what we can’t. Reread for an event I’ll tell you about soon.

Reginald Hill, Arms and the Women, Death’s Jest Book, Dialogues of the Dead, and Good Morning, Midnight. Rereads. Well into the meat of the series on this reread now. The middle two are basically one book in two volumes, which the rest of the series does not do, and also they feature a character I really hate, so I kept on for one more to clear the taste of that character out of my brain. Still all worth reading/rereading, of course; they also have the “I just want to keep reading this prose” quality, though in a very different way than Byatt. Really glad we’ve gotten to the part of the series with contrasting younger cop characters.

Vidar Hreinsson, Wakeful Nights: Stefan G. Stefansson: Icelandic-Canadian Poet. Kindle. This is the kind of biography that is more concerned with comprehensive accounts of where its subject went and what he did and who he talked to than with overarching themes, so if you’re not interested in Stefansson in particular or anti-war/immigrant Canadian poets in the early 20th more generally, will be very tedious.

Deanna Raybourn, Killers of a Certain Age. Recently retired assassins discover that their conglomerate is attempting to retire them. Good times, good older female friendships, not deep but fun.

Clay Risen, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. Very straightforwardly what it says on the tin. Recognizes clearly the lack of angels involved without valorizing the people destroying other people’s lives on shady evidence.

Caitlin Rozakis, The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association. When Vivian and Daniel’s daughter Aria gets turned into a werewolf, they have to find another kindergarten to accommodate her needs. But with new schools come new problems. This is charming and fun, and I’m delighted to have it be the second recent book (I’m thinking of Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent, which is very different tonally and plotwise) to remember that schools come with grown-ups, not just kids.

James C. Scott, In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings. You know I love James C. Scott, friends. You know that. But if you’re thinking a lot about riverine flooding in the first place, this does not bring a lot that’s new to the table, and there are twee sections where I’m like, buddy, pal, neighbor, what are you doing, having the dolphin introduce other species to say what’s going on with them, this is not actually a book for 8yos, what even. So I don’t know. If you’re not thinking a lot about watersheds and riverine ecosystems and rhythms in the first place, probably a lovely place to start modulo a few weird bits. But very 101.

Madeleine Thien, The Book of Records. You’d think she’d have had me at “Hannah Arendt and Baruch Spinoza are two of the major characters,” but instead it just didn’t really come together for me. The speculative conceit was there to hang the historical references on, and in my opinion this book’s reach exceeded its grasp. I mean, if you’re going to have those two and Du Fu, you’ve set the bar for yourself pretty high, and also a cross-time sea is also a firecracker of a concept, and…it all just sort of sits together in a lump. Ah well.

Katy Watson, A Lively Midwinter Murder. Latest in the Three Dahlias series, still good fun, the Dahlias are invited to a wedding and get snowed in and also murder ensues. Not revolutionizing the genre, just giving you what you came for, which is valid too.

Christopher Wills, Why Ecosystems Matter: Preserving the Key to Our Survival. “Did the author have a better title for that and the publisher made him change it to something hooky?” asked one of my family members suspiciously, and the answer is probably yes, you have spotted exactly what kind of book this is, this is the kind of book where someone knows interesting things about a topic (population genetics and their evolution) and is nudged to try to make its presentation slightly more grabby for the normies in hopes of selling more than three copies. It’s interesting in the details it has on various organisms and does not waste your time on why ecosystems matter because duh obviously. If you were the sort of person who wasn’t sure that they did, you would never pick up this book anyway.

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.