SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed

 

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 March 12, 2024 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 Siege of Burning Grass is a science fiction novel from fascinating and incredibly prolific author Premee Mohamed. Mohamed's works tend to be weird in setting/concept even as they deal with serious themes and rarely go the way you expect: her lovecraftian Beneath the Rising trilogy for example was incredibly propulsive and twisty in some of the best and most infuriating ways. And the Siege of Burning Grass is similar in some ways: the story is incredibly weird in setting - featuring two warring Empires, one of which uses extremely weird biotechnology (wasps that sting you and administer drugs to you on a regular basis!) and one that uses regular tech from their floating cities - and twisty in plot and deals with some serious themes all at the same time as it follows pacifist Alefret as he's forced by one Empire to give his support to an infiltration mission to end the war.

The result is a pretty interesting piece of work, as it poses questions such as what is the value of pacifism in the middle of war and how much is that worth, at what price can one stick to one's values when the circumstances are always bad, and what is the cost of nationalism and what it drives people to do. There's also themes of class and how that affects who gets to protest, and well probably a bunch of other themes I'm forgetting or may have missed. It's a pretty deep novel but not one that ever drags or feels like some philosophy tract: like Mohamed's other works, it captivates you and doesn't let go until it hits its ending and is well worth your time.

Trigger Warnings: Thoughts of Suicidal Ideation and discussions of how soldiers are taught to commit suicide, as well as disability euthanasia are parts of this novel. None of it is gratuitous and all serves a purpose, but fair warning.

SciFi Novella Review: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

 

The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is the sequel to Malka Older's "The Mimicking of Known Successes", her really well done F/F Romantic Science Fiction take on the Sherlock Holmes/Watson story (which also dealt heavily with science and environmental concerns). As you might tell from the prior sentence, that first book was really deep for a novella, covering a lot of themes and ideas (and set in a future where with Earth devastated, humans have settled largely on platforms around Jupiter), but at its heart was the relationship between neurodivergent investigator Mossa and "Classics" scholar Pleiti. And that relationship was really lovely, as the two exes got back together over the course of Mossa's investigation and Pleiti (from whose perspective nearly all of the story is shown) finds herself entranced and drawn to this woman in Mossa who struggles with human interaction and expressing romantic interest but is oh so brilliant at her job. It was really lovely, and the questions of environmental/scientific ethics in this post-devastation-of-Earth future were really interesting, so the fact that the mystery wasn't really one where the reader could guess the answer really didn't matter - I liked it a lot.

In that sense, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is similar to its predecessor: the heart of the story is still Mossa/Pleiti, this time with the focus being on Pleiti trying to realize how much Mossa actually cares for her given Mossa's difficulty expressing that fact and how much about Mossa and Mossa's thoughts that Pleiti doesn't actually know. The mystery this time is honestly even weaker than that of the last book, but it serves well enough to keep the plot and relationships rolling, as we deal with both the fallout from the last book as well as new ideas about how humans will try to break away from constriction and sometime-oppression to try and thrive on their own, even when that is incredibly implausible. In short, as I'll explain below, it's a pretty well done sequel and I can't wait for the next installment.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu

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 12, 2023 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 Death I Gave Him is a Science Fiction adaptation/retelling of Hamlet, with a bit of a Queer twist. It's not a long novel and it's also one that is, while updating the setting and details, kind of faithful in many ways to the original play: certain acts Hayden (our version of Hamlet) does and certain tricks he tries to pull as he seeks to discover the truth behind his father's death and to get revenge come kind of right out of the play. At the same time, the novel combines certain characters and its change of setting - from historical revenge drama to a drama over future biotechnology that could lead to breakthroughs in both healing and perhaps in reversing death itself - work really really well, especially as told from several points of view through pseudo archival materials.

And the result is pretty damn interesting honestly, even as its most prominent character Hayden is probably the least changed in tone. But the story's atmosphere and writing is excellent and its secondary POV characters Felicia (this book's version of Ophelia, who has bits of Ophelia's brother Laertes mixed in) and Horatio (who keeps his name from the play but is now an AI who gets hooked into Hayden's being) are fascinating in their actions, emotions, and changes. All in all, an adaptation well worthy of your time.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang

  The Water Outlaws is a genderflipped queer retelling of the classic Chinese novel "The Water Margin", in which a gang of 108 bandits rise up to fight against corrupt and unjust officials plaguing the weak and impoverished in the then existing Chinese Empire. But Huang does more than just retell the story with a gender flip and queer characters: she transforms the story into a Wuxia epic featuring mystical powers, amazing martial arts (of course), and magical materials that can grant people incredible powers but are hard to control...materials that the antagonist is seeking to learn through research how to reproduce and make into more powerful weapons for the "good" of the Empire. And so we get a Wuxia tale that is not only queer, genderflipped and modern, but deals with both some of the old themes of the original work (the fight against injustice in support of the weak and powerless against the strong and corrupt) and newer ones (fighting against misogyny and homophobia, for the freedom for people to be themselves) etc.

And the Water Margin is really good. The Wuxia action is very good and, well more importantly to me, so are the major characters we predominantly follow - Martial Arms Instructor Lin Chong; Intellectual and Progressive Socialite Lu Junyi; and reckless and violent but good hearted exiled monk Lu Da; and of course antagonist Cai Jing, Channelor to the Emperor. The characters' development throughout is fantastic, and the story provides a strong examination of and use of themes as it deals with oppression, redemption, fighting for justice, fighting for the right of people to be who they want to be no matter the gender, and the use of dangerous powers...and probably more I'm omitting here. All in all an excellent novel that will enrapture you fairly quickly.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline

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 April 4, 2023 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.

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is the most recent young adult novel by Métis author Cherie Dimaline. Dimaline is most known for her young adult novel The Marrow Thieves, featuring a dystopian future in which indigenous people are hunted for their ability to dream, and has written a bunch of other adult and YA novels, all of which feature indigenous protagonists of some sort. I've really enjoyed at least parts of all of Dimaline's works - they're often powerful in themes, rarely subtle, and even when I think they miss they do so in interesting ways. So I was very interested to try this latest YA novel of hers, which sounded in description like a bit more small scale YA novel than some of her other works.

The good news is that Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a well crafted young adult novel, which will certainly work for a lot of the young adult audience. The novel follows Winifred, a 16 year old half-Métis girl who lives in an apartment above the cemetery office where her father works, as she deals with both the normal struggles with growing up as a girl who doesn't quite fit in, has OCD, feels pressure to have sex, and struggles severely with loneliness....as well as the more particular struggles of living in a cemetery with a father who hasn't gotten over the woman who died birthing her. Oh and in the process of it all, Winifred both prompts a con artist ghost tour company to come to the cemetery and meets a real ghost in Phil, a girl she grows more and more to care about. It's a story that deals with YA themes even as it gets very tropey at times, but it's also one that well, wasn't one that quite matched my own experiences as a teen and thus wasn't quite FOR this adult reader. That's not necessarily a problem with the book of course - as I'll detail below, that's part of the peril of being an adult reading YA.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta

 

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 in the US on February 20, 2024 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.

River Mumma is the debut novel of Canadian author Zalika Reid-Benta. The novel is a modern fantasy novel dealing with Jamaican folklore, as our protagonist Alicia is given a task by River Mumma, a Jamaican deity/spirit/mermaid with a connection to rivers and waterways, to find and return her magical comb before a deadline....and features Alicia and two of her friends, Heaven and Mars, searching around Toronto while being pursued by duppies and monstrous beings out of Jamaican folklore. It's a short novel, but one that is pretty packed and feels longer than it is.

And it's a novel that is really really enjoyable. Alicia is a really relatable and understandable protagonist - working in menial work after her masters and professional degrees failed to get her a job like some of her (probably White) classmates, struggling with socializing with friends and feeling lost, etc. And so her journey is really easy to care for as she gets swept up along with her two friends, who are also pretty well done. And the characters are all, even in the seriousness of it, pretty quirky and amusing and genre savvy and nerdy, even if the story never ever verges into comedy. It's a well rounded really enjoyable novel with some solid themes.

Disclaimer: This reviewer is a White Ashkenazi Jewish American, and as such my cultural knowledge of the culture that forms the backbone of this book is slim to none. So take this review for what it's worth (and you may want to see what people with more connections to this culture think in their own reviews).

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Wilderwomen by Ruth Emmie Lang

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 November 15, 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 Wilderwomen is a contemporary fantasy novel written by author Ruth Emmie Lang. The novel follows two sisters - Zadie, who's in her early 20s, secretly pregnant and just leaving the place she used to stay with her ex; and Finn, who is just about to leave her foster family for college for the first time - as they go on a ride to try and figure out why their mom left them five years ago. But Zadie and Finn aren't quite normal - they both have extrasensory powers, with Zadie able to gain glimpes of the future and Finn able to experience the memories of others tied to a place, and their mother might've had such powers as well. And so the story follows the two as Finn desperately tries to search for her mom and Zadie follows along regretfully, trying not to lose the last relationship she values.

The result is in large part an effective novel of two sisters who love each other but are different both in age and temperament, with Finn hopeful of finding answers and coming from a decent situation and Zadie cynical due to what she once observed and the rough life she's had since her mom left. And the road trip story here is pretty effective, as the two sisters encounter people and places that change their understanding of what happened and who they are. At the same time, the book seems to be leading up to some interesting ideas or answers and instead peters out, with its ending just being abrupt and kind of unsatisfying in how it answers its central idea...and in the process it manages to tie off every question in ways that didn't really work. The result is a mixed bag.

More explanation after the jump: