Wednesday, August 31, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Holiday Heroine by Sarah Kuhn

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 30, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Holiday Heroine is the sixth and final novel (not counting the one novella) in Sarah Kuhn's "Heroine Complex" series, as series which I have absolutely fallen in love with over the last few years.  The series, which began with Heroine Complex (Reviewed Here), features a trio of Asian American superheroines in a San Francisco that faced an unsuccessful demon invasion from another dimension....which resulted in some people getting superpowers and demonic forces possessing odd choices of normal objects - birthday cakes, wedding dresses, microphones, etc. - and causing havoc.  In this story we have our three major heroines, Evie, Aveda (Annie) and Bea, as they kick demon butt, deal with their own insecurities about their own lives and their romances, have steamy romances, and form their own families in their own very different ways.  The books are incredibly incredibly fun, at times incredibly sexy (with great sex scenes), and each deals with one of the main characters as they struggle with new circumstances and anxieties as they grow and change. 

Holiday Heroine is the second of these books to follow Bea Tanaka, maybe my favorite of the heroines, who is almost a YA heroine....she's college aged roughly unlike her older sister and friend, wants to prove herself as independent at times, and is just plain fun in how she approaches life...which got her in trouble when her empathy superpower turned into emotion/mind-altering, led her to being manipulated by a demon into almost supervillainous actions like sacrificing the girl her best friend was starting to like all the way back in Book 3, Heroine's Journey.  I loved Heroine's Journey, and it turns out, I loved this second Bea novel, as she deals with a long-distance relationship, what her heart truly wants in her relationship with Sam, Killer Kaiju, time traveling, and the holiday (Christmas) spirit that she loves so much...This is apparently the last installment there will be in the series, and if so, this is a great sendoff - super fun, sexy (oh yeah), and just charming in one last ride with the old characters I've come to love and the new ones here who are just as charming as the rest. 

More specifics after the jump.  Fair warning: Spoiler for the first five books may be below, but this is not really the type of series to be affected too much by you having too much foreknowledge. 

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Thursday, August 25, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Fault Tolerance by Valerie Valdes

 



Fault Tolerance is the third (and for now last) book in Valerie Valdes' space opera series - which began with Chilling Effect (reviewed here) and continued with Prime Deceptions (reviewed here).  The series is often essentially a comedic version of Mass Effect, following Captain Eva Innocente and the crew of the La Sirena Negra as they get into some zany and dangerous adventures.  The first two books were tremendous fun, featuring a ton of geeky references (even other than Mass Effect), really strong characters - ones who weren't the typical white guy ones - and just dialogue and plots that have both a ton of humor as well as some serious themes mixed alongside there.  So I pre-ordered this book months in advance (helped along by a B&N sale on pre-orders).  

And Fault Tolerance delivers exactly what I wanted - tremendous fun with lots of humor, some serious situations and themes, great characters and more.  This time around the stakes are higher than ever, with the entire universe under threat, and the only solution is for Eva and her crew to find a series of giant robots (mecha) they can supposedly pilot to save the day from an evil army of what are basically Transformers.  It's really well done, and the book ends with a finale that just perfectly fits this series, so if it's the conclusion of the story of these characters, well, I'll be very satisfied (and if not, I'll be right back for book 4).  

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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Book of Night by Holly Black

 






Book of Night is the first "Adult" novel by author Holly Black, known for her highly successful YA work, of which I've enjoyed what I've read (The Folk of the Air trilogy is really enjoyable).  It's kind of similar in that vein to Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House - both in that it is the first ostensibly "Adult" novel from a successful YA author and in that it features a cynical noirish protagonist in a woman desperate to move forward in some way while also finding herself drawn to trouble and wrong decisions.  I actually liked Ninth House a bunch, and well given my love of Black's YA stuff (which I think works just fine for adults), you'd think I'd really enjoy Book of Night.  

And well....Book of Night is solid, and enjoyable kind-of....and yet it never really clicked with me like I wanted, making me kind of nonplussed at the ending (which offers the possibility for a 2024 sequel while also working as a stand alone).  The world and atmosphere involved works somewhat well, and the main characters work well enough, but there's a number of leaps and assumptions here in the plot that just felt a bit like stretches too far, and I don't know, I guess the cynical dark world where a character who had a rough background just makes mistake after mistake until a final reveal just doesn't really do it for me anymore without much more thematically.  And I didn't really find much more here?  

Some more attempts at specifics after hte jump:

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Monday, August 22, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Terminal Peace by Jim C. Hines

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 23, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
Terminal Peace is the long delayed* conclusion to Jim C Hines' fun space opera series "Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse", which began with Terminal Alliance a bunch of years back.  As you might imagine from the series title, this is a fun space opera series, in which humanity has fallen into feral monsters due to an unknown plague (explained in the series), cured somewhat and recruited by an alien alliance to help secure the galaxy as soldiers....only for the story to follow a series of Janitors/Sanitation-working humans who wind up in control of an alliance ship and forced to save the day repeatedly.  There's a lot of sanitation/toilet based humor, the characters all take names after various parts of pop culture that they don't quite understand the 20th/21st century context of for maximum humor, and well...it's a whole bunch of fun.

*The delay is explained in the back of the book as due in large part due to Hines' struggle with losing his wife during that time.  

Terminal Peace continues the story of the EDFS Pufferfish and Captain Marion "Mops" Adamopolous and her crew and manages to conclude the trilogy in an enjoyable, poignant, and well immensely satisfying volume.  It even adds in sort of a sob-story that made me tear up a bit, especially when combined with the author's note, and deals with some serious themes of free will, predestination, and well, lots of cleaning and alien humor to continue to keep the fun going along the way.  Is it some profound work?  No, of course not - again this is the silly side of space opera, and it knows it.  But it still pulls it
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Thursday, August 18, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi

 




Bitter is a young adult novel by author Akwaeke Emezi and a prequel to their novel, Pet, which came out in 2020 and was highly acclaimed (for good reason).  Pet featured a utopian City in which humans and mysterious Angels had together managed to eliminate the "monsters" of society, those who had abused and oppressed others for their own greed and prejudice - only for the story to feature the discovery by its protagonist Jam - a teen trans girl - of a new monster.  By contrast, Bitter promises to show how that utopian world - the City of Lucille - came about, with a spotlight on Jam's mother Bitter.

It's a very different story - whereas Pet was about the vigilance needed to ensure that oppression, cruelty, and wrongs don't return (and the importance to always remember so as to never forget what led to such evils), Bitter is about what it may take to get the world there....and what parts people may play in making that better world.  It's a story that takes on the idea that everyone MUST be on the frontlines of the fight and instead submits that each person should do whatever they're able, with backline roles and other less open support being just as important.  And it's a story that suggests the price of revolution may involve horrors from those with good intentions....ones which must be tamed as much as used, if not fought against.  A really interesting and well done short book.  

More specifics after the jump:

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Wednesday, August 17, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire

 




 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 6, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Be the Serpent is the sixteenth book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series of urban fantasy novels, one of my favorite continuing series that I currently read.  As you might expect from the sixteen book in a series, you can't really start the series here, even as this is the beginning of a new act in this Fae Fantasy series: with the fifteenth book finally featuring October "Toby" Daye getting married and getting a pretty seemingly happy ending.  But well, if you've read this series for a while, and you know Seanan McGuire, you should know that such happy endings (see Book 6, Ashes of Honor, Book 10, Once Broken Faith, etc.) never last too long, as McGuire follows them up by putting Toby through more traumatic experiences than ever before....although those novels tend to be thrilling and strong so you never really feel too hoodwinked about having the rug pulled out of you.  

And man is Be the Serpent no exception, with McGuire taking the happiest ending Toby has ever had and forcing her to deal with the greatest tragedy yet.  The story honestly begins in a bit of a frustrating fashion for the first third - not because it's bad or slow or anything, but because a lot of the drama relies upon a mystery that invested readers of the series (of which should be most of the readers at this point) will have guessed the answer to already, so it feels like it takes a bit too long for Toby to catch up.  Once she does however, this novel becomes incredibly dark, strong and thrilling, and concludes with an ending that is just breathtaking and will leave you desperate for the next novel to see how things shake out - as for the first time I can remember in the series, this book ends with a genuine cliffhanger, and it's one that will leave you gasping.  

Note: This post will contain spoilers for Books 1-15 only.  Spoilery discussion of THIS book and speculation about the future of the series, will go in a separate post that will be posted after this book is released - which can be found here.
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Tuesday, August 16, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Tinderbox by W.A. Simpson

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 16, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.     

Tinderbox is a debut epic fantasy novel from author W.A. Simpson courtesy of small press Flame Tree Publishing. It's the type of novel whose description would usually make me skip it - seriously the summary that shows up on its publishing page and on NetGalley, which kind of feels like word salad, with each sentence being an incomplete thought and it all feeling stilted and just odd to read.  Still something about it's cover intrigued me a little bit, so I did wind up requesting it on NetGalley anyhow to see if its contents were better than what it's description suggested. 

And the answer is - sort of: Tinderbox is a folk tale inspired (as in Grimm Fairy Tale type tales - such as the classic ) epic fantasy story with a pair of very enjoyable lead characters, who I did in fact grow to care for.  It also is overly complicated, throwing together way too much in there to the point where it's original antagonist is out of focus for nearly all of the book and then winds up being far less threatening than he should be in the end, and does have a bit of that stilted dialogue and descriptiveness within its full pages.  This is the type of novel that probably could've used a better editor to form a really good novel, as the core of that is definitely here, just muddled.

Trigger Warning:  Attempted Rape

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Monday, August 15, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (Translated by Philip Gabriel)

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 16, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book. 

Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a young adult book that was originally published in Japan a few years back, and became a big hit - with it being adapted to various other formats (manga, etc.) in that nation.  It was originally translated into English in the UK seemingly last year, and now Erewhon books is bringing it over to the US in 2022.  The story features a group of teens in junior high struggling with mental issues that make them unable to go to school, issues stemming from things like bullying, abuse, neglect, tragedies, and more.  

And it's really really easy to see why it won accolades in Japan, as this story features a really easy to care for group of teens, particularly its main character, and its fantasy castle and real world settings are incredibly well done and easy to relate to.  The story emphasizes how little support such kids usually get and how that can be changed if people put in the effort to understand how such kids battle every day to get through such stresses and offer them support.  It's not a short novel, but it moves really quickly and it just works so well....extremely worth your time.  


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Thursday, August 11, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Centers of Gravity by Marko Kloos

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 30, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.     


Centers of Gravity is the eighth and final book in Marko Kloos' Military Science Fiction series "Frontlines".  This is basically the only MilSF series I actually read, because Kloos' prose and characters are highly enjoyable, as are the situations they get into against mostly the seemingly unstoppable and highly alien Lanky forces (with occasional human-human conflict as well).  Kloos' ability to play the human v aliens thing somewhat straight, while also adding in real human on human conflicts and issues with our future along the way has made this series highly enjoyable to follow, even if it never really approaches anything must read, and after the seventh book ended on a major cliffhanger, I was excited two years later to get to this eighth and seemingly final book.  

And well, Centers of Gravity is a solid finale to the series, resolving the character arc of series protagonist Andrew Grayson as he finds himself hopelessly in deep space, well away from his wife, in an area that no human has been before...and where their battlegroup seemingly has no way to get back.  It still, like the last book, elides the issue of Andrew's PTSD somewhat, but it still tells a strong story of the battle-weary Andrew forced to make some tough choices, with some disastrous consequences, and features one more struggle between he and his human allies against the alien threat as they try to survive and make it home.  If you're this far into the series, you will enjoy this finale, as more of what you expect from it and a reasonable way to put it all to bed.  


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Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Reviewing the 2022 Hugo Nominees: The Hugo Award for Best Novel

 

Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the August 11, 2022.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last five (wow, 5!) years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

This is the seventh and final part of this series.  You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.

Here we're dealing with the big kahuna of the awards: Best Novel.  Best Novel gets all the headlines and gets the most votes every year mainly because these are the big novels that Hugo readers will likely have read even prior to nominations, and especially afterwards.  This is where the average SciFi & Fantasy fan is likely to encounter the Hugo Awards (if they ever do), as getting a Hugo Award is something that has for many a book been featured on second printing book covers.  Winning the other categories gets you press in specialized media - winning Best Novel gets press from regular media.  So you really hope that there are some deserving candidates year after year.  

And well, that's the case this year...mostly.  This year's ballot consists of six novels that are very different, from a few new authors and a few well established Hugo-favorite authors, plus one author who has managed to hit the public consciousness.  That said, two of these books I actually didn't like and will rank below no award, while one of these books was easily my favorite book last year.  So there's a wide scope in my assessment of quality as well.....

Anyhow after the jump are my rankings of this year's ballot.  

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Reviewing the 2022 Hugo Nominees: The Hugo Award for Best Series

 


Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the August 11, 2022.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last five (wow, 5!) years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

This is the sixth part of this series.  You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.

This time around I'm looking at the nominees for Best Series, a relatively new award which was seemingly meant to reward series whose value became clear over a series of installments, whose individual novels might not be award worthy but who as a whole were something truly special. Basically it was meant to remedy the fact that there were a few classic series in genre that never managed to get a big award - especially longer series, and the thought was that a Best Series award could remedy that. 

The award hasn't really worked out that way, with four of the five Best Series winners being series that have earned Hugo Awards or Nominations for individual works within those series (The Expanse is the only one whose individual novels have never won an award).  The series has also featured a bit more trilogies than longer series as nominees, which has kind of seemed to defeat the purpose of the award for me.  I've also not loved the combination of works that aren't really a series but are simply within the same setting that have been made eligible for the award, honestly, but I'm clearly in the minority there.  

This time around though, we have a really good ballot of six series, of which a few seem to be the type of work that Best Series is really meant for.  Well to a certain extent anyway.  As I've read at least two novels/novellas in each of these series, I'm pretty comfortable ranking all six series works, which I will do after the jump:

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Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Reviewing the 2022 Hugo Nominees: The Astounding Award for Best New Writer

 

Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the August 11, 2022.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last five (wow, 5!) years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

This is the fifth part of this series.  You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.

In this post, we're going to take a step away from the traditional categories and move to one of the "Not-A-Hugo" awards, the awards that aren't officially Hugos but are voted on alongside them and might as well be.  I'm talking this time about the Astounding Award, which celebrates the best new writers in SciFi & Fantasy, those who have published their first genre works in the last two years (and thus can have two years of eligibility).  

This year we have two repeat nominees from last year, one other second-year eligible writer, and then three writers who are in their first year of eligibility.  And I really loved five of these six writers, so it's another great ballot, and if you haven't tried any of these authors before, I highly highly recommend them.  


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Monday, August 8, 2022

Reviewing the 2022 Hugo Nominees: The Hugo Award for Best Novella

 


Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the August 11, 2022.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last five (wow, 5!) years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

This is the fourth part of this series.  You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.

In this post we're dealing with the nominees for Best Novella, which includes works of between 17,500 and 40,000 words.  In essence, these are stories that are longer than most people will usually read in one sitting (although I still do so usually) but are shorter than that of a full length novel.  This format has had a resurgence in the last 5-7 years in genre publishing, led by Tor's Tordotcom imprint, which used to publish such novellas exclusively.  

And yes, this year we do indeed get another Tordotcom sweep of the novella category, for the second year in a row, after it seemed we were seeing some other publishers breakthrough for once in 2020.  That said, the publisher sweep does not mean we don't have a diverse group of nominees, with the stories including one fairy tale subversion, one tale of romantic, parental, and colonial abuse, one SF/Fantasy mix-up, one ecological dystopian sci-fi novella, one extremely optimistic character driven story, and one coming of age finding yourself in a portal fantasy world story - six very different stories centering very different but all valid perspectives.  On the other hand, all six of these nominees are well known authors in the field with at least five of them having prior Hugo Noms and possibly wins.  So I guess it's a mixed bag in that way.  

I've reviewed all six of these works in individual posts, so I'll link them next to my rankings below, but yeah all six of these were scored by me between 8 out of 10 and 9.5 out of 10, so this is another hard ballot to rank.  

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SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Kalyna the Soothsayer by Elijah Kinch Spector

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 9, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.     


Kalyna the Soothsayer is the debut novel of author Elijah Kinch Spector, and is a fantasy example of a pretty classic genre: the fake psychic story (think Psych or The Mentalist), where a character pretends to have visions of the future and instead relies upon intuition or incredible observation skills to make it work for whatever purposes.  In this case, unlike the usual story, Kalyna is the story of a girl in an actual soothsayer (future teller) family, where she's the first one to not have the gift of foresight, to the embarrassment of her grandmother and to her own internal shame.  Naturally this doesn't stop her from getting involved in a fantasy tale filled with court intrigue, as she gets forcibly drafted to the service of a Prince in a Kingdom cracking at the seems...both politically and perhaps in reality as well.  

And despite Kalyna the Soothsayer featuring an absurd satirical narrative about its ridiculous kingdom setting - something that tends to get on my nerves more than make me chuckle - I found it to be highly enjoyable by the end, as its tale featured a number of enjoyable characters, surprises, and a protagonist in Kalyna who very much does not make the traditional choices you expect along the way.  It's probably a bit too long - the book is listed at 400 pages but shows up in my eReader as something closer to 500 - but by the book's last act I was eagerly turning the pages to see how it would all wind up, and while some things are resolved a bit easily, it all fits and winds up in a really satisfying ending.  A very interesting debut novel.

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Friday, August 5, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope

 


Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 9, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.     


The Monsters We Defy is the latest novel by author Leslye Penelope, who previously had published (and first self-published) a number of romantic (epic) fantasy novels under the name L. Penelope.  Unlike those novels, The Monsters We Defy is a different genre: Historical Fantasy, taking place in Washington D.C. during Prohibition, using a real life person - Clara Johnson, a black girl who shot a white policeman in self-defense - as the basis for its heroine.  In this setting, in which humans, particularly black humans, kind find themselves in debt to the trickster Enigmas of the spirit world, Clara and a cast of others will have to pull of a heist for the sake of the entire Black community.

The result is a really well done novel, and while it never goes full on into heist mode like you might imagine it would by the midway point, it features some really great strong characters, a great setting, and some really strong themes.  Its heroine Clara deals with severe anxiety around people relating in part to her tragic past and magical curse, and the story features themes of class, greed and exploitation even among people of the same oppressed group...and all of this works very well.  A very enjoyable piece of Historical Fiction/Fantasy, and definitely recommended.  

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Wednesday, August 3, 2022

SciFi Novella Review: The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

 


The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente


The Past is Red is a Hugo nominated novella from Hugo Winner Catherynne M. Valente, and really an expansion of a prior novelette by Valente (The Future is Blue).  Valente's work is very hit or miss for me - it's often marked by really clever wordplay and outrageous dialogue/happenings for comedy, but also often includes fairy tail subversions alongside such things.  In longer form, like her Hugo Nominated Novel Space Opera, I've found it too much for me.  In shorter form, like in a few anthologies, I've found these works really good.  

The Past is novella length and managed to work really well for me, with its ridiculous story feeling like a modern ecological sci-fi version of Candide.  The story features a girl named Tetley who lives in our ruined Earth, in Garbagetown, who takes for granted how ridiculously fucked up the world is after the "fuckwits" ruined it all and forced everyone to live on basically garbage and ridiculousness - a girl who refused to believe in false hope and was shunned for it, even as she tried to maintain a happy face.  The first half of the story is the original novelette, with the new addition finishing out the novella, and it all works really well, even with how ridiculous it is, to parody with happy ridiculousness how human selfishness is destroying our world....and how the privileged will never recognize that fact while those without privilege will be left only to hope for something better that will never come....


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Tuesday, August 2, 2022

Reviewing the 2022 Hugo Nominees: The Hugo Award for Best Novelette

 



Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the August 11, 2022.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last five (wow, 5!) years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

This is the third part of this series.  You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.

This time around we're going to look at the nominees for Best Novelette.  Novelette is the term for stories between 7500 and 17500 words in length - basically still what most people think of as "short stories", but the longer ones that have more time to develop characters and plots...sometimes Novelettes can be long enough to even be sold as novellas when they're really short, although that's fairly rare.  This time around, we don't quite have any of those long novellas, but still have six stories that take the format in very different directions - several fun and breezy stories, one angry ecological dystopian story, one take on Greek myth (subverted into a take on the Male gaze), one tale about surviving abuse, and one story of art and of being an outsider everywhere over years and finding oneself.  It's another very good crop with a number of candidates I'd be happy to win the award, so ranking these will be difficult.  

But I have to do it, so my rankings are after the jump.

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Monday, August 1, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

 




The Memory Librarian is an anthology of stories written by artist (most known for her* songwriting) Janelle Monáe, in collaboration with a number of generally established Black Science Fiction authors, inspired by the world Monáe created for her album, Dirty Computer.  It's a pretty great list of collaborating authors, including one of my favorite authors in Alaya Dawn Johnson - so I was pretty intrigued, despite never having listened to Monáe and not knowing really anything about Dirty Computer.  

*Monae is non-binary and uses both she/her and they/them pronouns, but the bio in this book uses She/Her, and so will in this review for consistency.* 

And I'm glad I did, because this is a pretty interesting Afrofuturist anthology, dealing heavily with gender, womanhood and otherness, control and oppression, and finding new ways to hope despite it all, in a world that is so so dystopian.  This is not to say that every story is optimistic - with the US controlled in large part by a memory altering fascist society that oppresses those who don't fit into the default gender (and largely racial) hierarchy, there's a lot of pain here...and much of that pain is also inflicted here by those who aren't necessarily cis fascists themselves.  And the stories are largely distinct as they explore science fiction and magic, and feature some really strong characters - so things never get boring here, even if the stories never really hit that top top tier of must read stories.  The result is a collection that's very good and well worth the hype this book has garnered.  


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