Fiction
C.S. Friedman, Dreamwalker: Friedman is the latest author to decide that YA is where it’s at, so this novel features a 16-year-old protagonist whose strange patterned dreams lead to her brother’s kidnapping, which in turn leads her to a strange secret world. Travelers to our world abuse their power in various grim but not hugely explicit ways (there’s none of the sexual coercion of some of Friedman’s other work), and also abuse most of the people back in their own world, which never got democracy because of the special superpowers of the aristocracy. Jesse, our hero, may have one of those superpowers-and they’ll kill her for it if they catch her. Interesting worldbuilding, but I found the contrast between Hot Safe Boy and Hot Dangerous Boy a little by-the-numbers.
Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise: Set in Gladstone’s Craft world but set half a world away, this book stars Caleb, a Craftworker loyal to the ruling firm of his Inca-derived city. Since his father is a priest of the old gods sworn to bring down the firm, this sometimes poses a problem for Caleb, who detests the sacrifices required by the old regime. Now, as his firm is poised to make another important acquisition, someone’s poisoning the water with demons. Caleb has to navigate his job, his friends, his new lover, and his father, and they can’t all be satisfied. I liked the first book better because it had more magic-as-law, but this continues the intriguing worldbuilding.
Mira Grant, How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea: Feed novella of Mahir’s trip to Australia, where they deal with zombies a bit differently, including by having an enormously ramped-up rabbit-proof (now zombie kangaroo-proof) fence. I don’t know whether I find it plausible that Australia, alone of all countries, would adopt openness and wildlife conservation as goals in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, but it did allow Grant to show another level at which humanity might accommodate the virus.
James S.A. Corey, Caliban’s War: Sequel to Leviathan Wakes. The deadly protomolecule that consumed hundreds of people has retreated to Venus, except that a monster attack on a Jovian moon puts Earth and Mars into a state of war, and the people of the Belt are going to be destroyed with them. The man who exposed the previous conspiracy, a botanist in search of his missing immunocompromised daughter, the one Martian Marine who survived the monster, and a UN politician join forces, provisionally at least, to try to save the solar system. It’s a briskly moving space adventure with plenty of politics and the occasional spaceship battle.
Tananarive Due, The Lake: Short story. Outsider moves to sleepy town, goes swimming in a lake where she shouldn’t have. The twist: as she becomes a (sexual?) predator, the suggestion is that she always had at least inclinations towards preying on young men.
Frances Hardinge, Verdigris Deep: Three friends make a wish at a very special wishing well, and start to gain powers the well wants them to use to grant other wishes. But the wishes keep going wrong, and the ringleader of the friends seems too enamored of his powers. This is a solid story about the terrors of childhood and the ways in which friends can be cruel to each other.
Frances Hardinge, Fly By Night: A mistreated orphan burns down her aunt and uncle’s mill and runs away with the dangerous stranger visiting her village. Further crimes, and goose attacks, ensue. There’s both death and slapstick as Mosca Mye tries to find her place in the world in the midst of political intrigues, floating coffeehouses, unlicensed printing presses, brain-addled princes, and more. That probably sounds uneven in tone, but it’s more that both the death and the slapstick all happen at the same high-drama pitch. The made-up politics of Birdcatchers, Locksmiths and Stationers competing for influence are only slightly more ridiculous than real religious/political disputes.
Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass: Neverfell is an anomaly in the underground world of Caverna. Whereas everyone in Caverna is born expressionless and has to be taught to make appropriate Faces, everything Neverfell thinks is visible on her face. When she leaves the home of the master Cheesemaker who took her in (Cheeses have magical and even deadly powers, as do several other substances in Caverna), she gets sucked into political machinations that force her to fight for her life as she goes from poison taster for Caverna’s ruler to advocate for the Drudge class. Again, the flights of fancy and ridiculousness leaven the otherwise quite deadly and grim stakes.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Max Gladstone, Two Serpents Rise: Set in Gladstone’s Craft world but set half a world away, this book stars Caleb, a Craftworker loyal to the ruling firm of his Inca-derived city. Since his father is a priest of the old gods sworn to bring down the firm, this sometimes poses a problem for Caleb, who detests the sacrifices required by the old regime. Now, as his firm is poised to make another important acquisition, someone’s poisoning the water with demons. Caleb has to navigate his job, his friends, his new lover, and his father, and they can’t all be satisfied. I liked the first book better because it had more magic-as-law, but this continues the intriguing worldbuilding.
Mira Grant, How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea: Feed novella of Mahir’s trip to Australia, where they deal with zombies a bit differently, including by having an enormously ramped-up rabbit-proof (now zombie kangaroo-proof) fence. I don’t know whether I find it plausible that Australia, alone of all countries, would adopt openness and wildlife conservation as goals in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, but it did allow Grant to show another level at which humanity might accommodate the virus.
James S.A. Corey, Caliban’s War: Sequel to Leviathan Wakes. The deadly protomolecule that consumed hundreds of people has retreated to Venus, except that a monster attack on a Jovian moon puts Earth and Mars into a state of war, and the people of the Belt are going to be destroyed with them. The man who exposed the previous conspiracy, a botanist in search of his missing immunocompromised daughter, the one Martian Marine who survived the monster, and a UN politician join forces, provisionally at least, to try to save the solar system. It’s a briskly moving space adventure with plenty of politics and the occasional spaceship battle.
Tananarive Due, The Lake: Short story. Outsider moves to sleepy town, goes swimming in a lake where she shouldn’t have. The twist: as she becomes a (sexual?) predator, the suggestion is that she always had at least inclinations towards preying on young men.
Frances Hardinge, Verdigris Deep: Three friends make a wish at a very special wishing well, and start to gain powers the well wants them to use to grant other wishes. But the wishes keep going wrong, and the ringleader of the friends seems too enamored of his powers. This is a solid story about the terrors of childhood and the ways in which friends can be cruel to each other.
Frances Hardinge, Fly By Night: A mistreated orphan burns down her aunt and uncle’s mill and runs away with the dangerous stranger visiting her village. Further crimes, and goose attacks, ensue. There’s both death and slapstick as Mosca Mye tries to find her place in the world in the midst of political intrigues, floating coffeehouses, unlicensed printing presses, brain-addled princes, and more. That probably sounds uneven in tone, but it’s more that both the death and the slapstick all happen at the same high-drama pitch. The made-up politics of Birdcatchers, Locksmiths and Stationers competing for influence are only slightly more ridiculous than real religious/political disputes.
Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass: Neverfell is an anomaly in the underground world of Caverna. Whereas everyone in Caverna is born expressionless and has to be taught to make appropriate Faces, everything Neverfell thinks is visible on her face. When she leaves the home of the master Cheesemaker who took her in (Cheeses have magical and even deadly powers, as do several other substances in Caverna), she gets sucked into political machinations that force her to fight for her life as she goes from poison taster for Caverna’s ruler to advocate for the Drudge class. Again, the flights of fancy and ridiculousness leaven the otherwise quite deadly and grim stakes.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.