Fiction
Rebecca Roanhorse, Trail of Lightning: Maggie is a monsterslayer in the Sixth World of the Diné, which returned after most of the world drowned. Abandoned by her immortal mentor for being too violent, she struggles to survive when she’s alienated almost everyone around her. Then a medicine man who’s been kind to her tells her to work with his grandson Kai, who’s too handsome for his own good (and maybe has powers of his own), and she’s sent on an errand by Coyote, but her trauma may keep her from being able to see who’s really on her side. It’s a great new series and I look forward to more.
Ruthanna Emrys, Deep Roots: Aphra Marsh is back, leading her small band of Innsmouth survivors to look for mistblooded relatives who might be able to help rebuild the ranks of the children of the water. Looking for a cousin in New York City, they stumble upon an incursion by the Old Ones, another group of Lovecraftian creatures with an interest in evaluating and controlling humanity. Aphra really doesn’t know what she’s doing, and gets herself into serious trouble, caught between humans she can’t trust and Old Ones who might be worse. Not a happy volume, even if they survive.
Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens: I mistakenly expected they’d all be f/sf and was disappointed in that expectation with several romance/finding the self stories that were fine but not my thing. The best story was by William Alexander, a fantasy about a teen whose chronic pain fuels his magic and who accidentally created a Richard III out of his theater activities-the stakes are just high enough for some tension while allowing the story to focus on the teen’s relationship with his powers, his dead grandfather, and his maybe-girlfriend who might or might not be ready for the truth about him. I’ll be looking for Alexander’s other stuff. The other protagonists have a variety of disabilities, including vision impairment, schizophrenia, an anxiety disorder, and mobility impairments. No disability is “cured,” though the girl with the anxiety disorder does beat it back to take part in fighting off a planetary invasion.
Wild Cards: Mississippi Roll, various authors: The sexism of previous volumes had turned me off, but I’m still vaguely interested in the universe. Here, jokers are suffering under an isolationist, bigoted president who deploys sadistic ICE agents to make sure that no foreign jokers enter American soil. A ghost-haunted steamboat on its last journey on the Mississippi is moving some joker refugees from slaughter in Kazakhstan, and there are other shenanigans onboard as well. I didn’t hate it-Cherie Priest has a story, though not her best-but I didn’t love it either.
Emma Newman, Between Two Thorns: Introduces the Split Worlds, with Fae and magically-touched humans living in the Nether, unknown to the mundanes. There are four central characters: Cathy fled her physically and mentally abusive family, but a Fae lord catches her and forces her to return; Max is a soulless Arbiter trying to enforce the rules against an apparently massive conspiracy; Will is Cathy’s intended (women have no formal rights in her world) and determined to do a good job for his family while preserving his own freedoms; and Sam is a mundane accidentally sucked into all the Nether’s maneuvering. I liked this much better than Brother’s Ruin, but I didn’t like the misogynist society of the Nether, which everyone in the story but Cathy (and the long-disappeared tutor who instilled a spirit of rebellion in her) apparently thinks is just fine. Newman is very clear that oppression often produces just suffering, not nobility; Cathy is small and scared and can’t stop most of what happens to her, and Will was completely convinced that he was a good man doing good things by ignoring Cathy’s opinions even though he also disapproved of the physical abuse, which was realistic within the scenario given but hard to read and not what I’m going to fantasy for right now. Newman’s sf features many of the same dynamics, centering on a person who can only decide how much they’re going to give in to a horrible system, but in her future sexism doesn’t play a big role and that matters to me as a reader.
Anne Charnock, A Calculated Life: The protagonist is a construct, physically indistinguishable from a human but grown without a childhood and with data analysis skills implanted that make her better at finding patterns than ordinary humans; she reads as non-neurotypical. But something seems to be going wrong with her programming, as unexpected thoughts and desires impinge on her. Corporate dystopia with a focus on the nature of personhood.
KJ Charles, Flight of Magpies: Things between Lord Crane and his overwhelmed justiciar lover Stephen Day come to a breaking point; Crane loves Day but can’t stand to see him use himself up in the service of ungrateful and hostile magicians. Meanwhile, someone is killing police officers, and somehow it’s connected to their old enemies. A nice conclusion to the main series.
KJ Charles, Rag and Bone: Ned the paper seller loves Crispin the graphomancer, and Crispin loves him back, but Crispin is having trouble mastering his powers and the other magicians are suspicious he’ll turn evil, as his first teacher did. When a series of mysterious deaths starts Ned on an investigation that puts him in danger, it’s not clear whether their relationship-or the two of them separately-can survive, but they’re better together than apart.
KJ Charles, Jackdaw: Jonah is the rogue windwalker who got on Stephen Day and Lord Crane’s bad side in earlier books; he was blackmailed into helping with a deadly plot against them with threats against his lover, Ben. Unfortunately, he also had to leave Ben in a compromising position; Ben lost his job as a constable and spent months in jail for sodomy. Ben is angry, but also still in love with Jonah, who may or may not be able to leave his thieving ways. The jail part is a reminder that this fantasy world, in which almost everyone we care about is gay, is also harsh and homophobic, but the novella is still hopeful.
Emma Newman, Brother’s Ruin: In an England whose empire is sustained by magic, those with magical talents have to use them for the Crown no matter what, and can’t marry. Charlotte, an illustrator who loves her fiance, thus is desperate to keep her talent hidden, despite the serious penalties that might be imposed on her family as a result. When her brother is tested for magical talent, and she’s endangered as a result of her investigations into her father’s debt, she’ll have to decide who if anyone she can trust. This wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as Newman’s later work.
Emma Newman, Planetfall: Decades after their arrival on a planet that was supposed to hold God’s city, the elite group of mostly scientists assembled by Lee Suh-Mih after her revelation about the technology to get them there are now colonists, living a privileged life supplied by printers. Ren, the resident printer technician, has a number of terrible secrets, not least of them what happened during Planetfall to the expedition’s leaders, including Lee. Then a young man shows up, the heir of what they thought was a fatal crash. It’s a novel with a lot of backstory you have to infer and some sad messages about how those to whom evil is done do evil in return. And, having read these in reverse order, I can say it’s not the novel I was expecting, which from a different (possibly lesser) writer would have been about the process of leaving Earth to find God’s city; instead that’s the catalyst that drives all three novels but not the focus.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Ruthanna Emrys, Deep Roots: Aphra Marsh is back, leading her small band of Innsmouth survivors to look for mistblooded relatives who might be able to help rebuild the ranks of the children of the water. Looking for a cousin in New York City, they stumble upon an incursion by the Old Ones, another group of Lovecraftian creatures with an interest in evaluating and controlling humanity. Aphra really doesn’t know what she’s doing, and gets herself into serious trouble, caught between humans she can’t trust and Old Ones who might be worse. Not a happy volume, even if they survive.
Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens: I mistakenly expected they’d all be f/sf and was disappointed in that expectation with several romance/finding the self stories that were fine but not my thing. The best story was by William Alexander, a fantasy about a teen whose chronic pain fuels his magic and who accidentally created a Richard III out of his theater activities-the stakes are just high enough for some tension while allowing the story to focus on the teen’s relationship with his powers, his dead grandfather, and his maybe-girlfriend who might or might not be ready for the truth about him. I’ll be looking for Alexander’s other stuff. The other protagonists have a variety of disabilities, including vision impairment, schizophrenia, an anxiety disorder, and mobility impairments. No disability is “cured,” though the girl with the anxiety disorder does beat it back to take part in fighting off a planetary invasion.
Wild Cards: Mississippi Roll, various authors: The sexism of previous volumes had turned me off, but I’m still vaguely interested in the universe. Here, jokers are suffering under an isolationist, bigoted president who deploys sadistic ICE agents to make sure that no foreign jokers enter American soil. A ghost-haunted steamboat on its last journey on the Mississippi is moving some joker refugees from slaughter in Kazakhstan, and there are other shenanigans onboard as well. I didn’t hate it-Cherie Priest has a story, though not her best-but I didn’t love it either.
Emma Newman, Between Two Thorns: Introduces the Split Worlds, with Fae and magically-touched humans living in the Nether, unknown to the mundanes. There are four central characters: Cathy fled her physically and mentally abusive family, but a Fae lord catches her and forces her to return; Max is a soulless Arbiter trying to enforce the rules against an apparently massive conspiracy; Will is Cathy’s intended (women have no formal rights in her world) and determined to do a good job for his family while preserving his own freedoms; and Sam is a mundane accidentally sucked into all the Nether’s maneuvering. I liked this much better than Brother’s Ruin, but I didn’t like the misogynist society of the Nether, which everyone in the story but Cathy (and the long-disappeared tutor who instilled a spirit of rebellion in her) apparently thinks is just fine. Newman is very clear that oppression often produces just suffering, not nobility; Cathy is small and scared and can’t stop most of what happens to her, and Will was completely convinced that he was a good man doing good things by ignoring Cathy’s opinions even though he also disapproved of the physical abuse, which was realistic within the scenario given but hard to read and not what I’m going to fantasy for right now. Newman’s sf features many of the same dynamics, centering on a person who can only decide how much they’re going to give in to a horrible system, but in her future sexism doesn’t play a big role and that matters to me as a reader.
Anne Charnock, A Calculated Life: The protagonist is a construct, physically indistinguishable from a human but grown without a childhood and with data analysis skills implanted that make her better at finding patterns than ordinary humans; she reads as non-neurotypical. But something seems to be going wrong with her programming, as unexpected thoughts and desires impinge on her. Corporate dystopia with a focus on the nature of personhood.
KJ Charles, Flight of Magpies: Things between Lord Crane and his overwhelmed justiciar lover Stephen Day come to a breaking point; Crane loves Day but can’t stand to see him use himself up in the service of ungrateful and hostile magicians. Meanwhile, someone is killing police officers, and somehow it’s connected to their old enemies. A nice conclusion to the main series.
KJ Charles, Rag and Bone: Ned the paper seller loves Crispin the graphomancer, and Crispin loves him back, but Crispin is having trouble mastering his powers and the other magicians are suspicious he’ll turn evil, as his first teacher did. When a series of mysterious deaths starts Ned on an investigation that puts him in danger, it’s not clear whether their relationship-or the two of them separately-can survive, but they’re better together than apart.
KJ Charles, Jackdaw: Jonah is the rogue windwalker who got on Stephen Day and Lord Crane’s bad side in earlier books; he was blackmailed into helping with a deadly plot against them with threats against his lover, Ben. Unfortunately, he also had to leave Ben in a compromising position; Ben lost his job as a constable and spent months in jail for sodomy. Ben is angry, but also still in love with Jonah, who may or may not be able to leave his thieving ways. The jail part is a reminder that this fantasy world, in which almost everyone we care about is gay, is also harsh and homophobic, but the novella is still hopeful.
Emma Newman, Brother’s Ruin: In an England whose empire is sustained by magic, those with magical talents have to use them for the Crown no matter what, and can’t marry. Charlotte, an illustrator who loves her fiance, thus is desperate to keep her talent hidden, despite the serious penalties that might be imposed on her family as a result. When her brother is tested for magical talent, and she’s endangered as a result of her investigations into her father’s debt, she’ll have to decide who if anyone she can trust. This wasn’t anywhere near as interesting as Newman’s later work.
Emma Newman, Planetfall: Decades after their arrival on a planet that was supposed to hold God’s city, the elite group of mostly scientists assembled by Lee Suh-Mih after her revelation about the technology to get them there are now colonists, living a privileged life supplied by printers. Ren, the resident printer technician, has a number of terrible secrets, not least of them what happened during Planetfall to the expedition’s leaders, including Lee. Then a young man shows up, the heir of what they thought was a fatal crash. It’s a novel with a lot of backstory you have to infer and some sad messages about how those to whom evil is done do evil in return. And, having read these in reverse order, I can say it’s not the novel I was expecting, which from a different (possibly lesser) writer would have been about the process of leaving Earth to find God’s city; instead that’s the catalyst that drives all three novels but not the focus.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.