Fiction
Mary Robinette Kowal, The Calculating Stars: In a slightly alternate 1950s (Dewey beats Truman), Elma York is a computer for the young satellite program when the meteorite hits, destroying a huge chunk of the Eastern US and plunging the earth first into a long, starving winter and then probably into extinction-level warming. The space program is the only way out, but the sexists (and racists) running the program don’t want female astronauts, even though Elma is a genius mathematician as well as a great pilot from her time in the WASPs. Bureaucratic wrangling and struggles with Elma’s anxiety (and her sexist nemesis, the handsome hero pilot running a lot of the program) ensue. She's also Jewish, though anti-Semitism provides relatively few of the problems she faces. I absolutely understand why people like this, but I had a very similar reaction as I did to Mad Men: it seemed like a retreat into a kind of nostalgia, where the bad guys were overt about their prejudices because they could be. We’re not so far away from that, and yet the bad guys are far more likely to disclaim their true biases-and people believe them. So I don’t take much comfort from celebrations of the grit required to prove the overt bigots wrong. But if you like badass women overcoming internal and external obstacles in an overtly sexist environment that they themselves are just learning to contest, this does definitely deliver.
Margaret Killjoy, The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion: Novella about Danielle, a perpetual wanderer, who comes to a small anarchist town to investigate the death of an old friend and discovers that before he died he summoned a demon that attacks predators, defined pretty broadly. Anarchy as unachievable but better than the alternatives; violence as always wrong but often necessary or at least inescapable. Begins as it means to go on, which I appreciate: “Sometimes you have to pull a knife. It’s not a good thing. I don’t enjoy it. But sometimes you just have to get a knife in your hands and make it clear which way the stabby end is pointing. ‘Let me out here,’ I’d said, before the knife got involved. It hadn’t been a question. Men always assume that declarative statements like that are questions.”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow: Caseopia Tun is a poor relation of a locally rich and powerful family in 1920s rural Mexico, willful and hungry for more from life. When she accidentally releases a god who’s been hurt and imprisoned by his brother, she starts a journey as his semi-willing helper and, eventually, love interest. But gods don’t love humans. Working from a set of traditional stories that are unfamiliar to me, the story, full of lush imagery and wry commentary on the follies of youth, shows how stubbornness and self-chosen duty can turn a girl into a woman and give her strength to meddle in the affairs of gods.
Joëlle Jones, Fernando Blanco, & Laura Allred, Catwoman: Copycats: This Catwoman takes place in a Batverse I haven’t been following-Selina, mourning Bruce’s loss and unable to sleep, flees to a different city controlled by a mobster family led by a woman who uses drugs and prosthetics to hide her physical corruption. When the mobster unleashes a bunch of faux-Catwomen to attract Selina’s attention, and when one of those Catwomen kills police officers, Selina is forced to take action. I loved the art, though the story probably required more current canon knowledge than I have.
Kat Howard, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone: OK, I admit it, that name made me think of the meme about your YA novel name. Short stories riffing off of fantasy tropes, or at least written as if they are in narrative self-consciousness-a couple involve a woman touring through different narratives, none of which quite fit her. The longest, in which an attempt to retell the Arthur story makes itself real, was my favorite. I think I like Howard best at a longer length, when she can develop themes beyond “stories are powerful/dangerous/seductive.”
If This Goes On, ed. Cat Rambo. Speculative fiction collection focused on trends in the US given the 2016 elections. Would have been better without the on-the-nose explanations of what you just read from the editor. Some nice variants, though, including Priya Sridhar’s Mustard Seeds and the Elephant’s Foot, about old myths returning under newer conditions.
Linsey Milller, Mask of Shadows: Genderfluid (sometimes he, sometimes she, sometimes they) Sal is a thief and, quickly, a killer, setting out to become the Opal, one of the Queen’s trusted servants/assassins. To do so, Sal must kill the other contenders (which has always struck me as a really inefficient way to get the top person-so destructive to a true reservoir of talent!). Suffering from PTSD from the deaths of their family-in fact their entire nation-because of the perfidy of nobles in the destructive war that resulted in the end of magic in the land, Sal has a secret mission to kill all those responsible while rising to the post. It’s a decent palace intrigue, but I couldn’t really get over the “kill all others with the guts and training to the job” part, even when it turned out to have a small asterisk.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Margaret Killjoy, The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion: Novella about Danielle, a perpetual wanderer, who comes to a small anarchist town to investigate the death of an old friend and discovers that before he died he summoned a demon that attacks predators, defined pretty broadly. Anarchy as unachievable but better than the alternatives; violence as always wrong but often necessary or at least inescapable. Begins as it means to go on, which I appreciate: “Sometimes you have to pull a knife. It’s not a good thing. I don’t enjoy it. But sometimes you just have to get a knife in your hands and make it clear which way the stabby end is pointing. ‘Let me out here,’ I’d said, before the knife got involved. It hadn’t been a question. Men always assume that declarative statements like that are questions.”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow: Caseopia Tun is a poor relation of a locally rich and powerful family in 1920s rural Mexico, willful and hungry for more from life. When she accidentally releases a god who’s been hurt and imprisoned by his brother, she starts a journey as his semi-willing helper and, eventually, love interest. But gods don’t love humans. Working from a set of traditional stories that are unfamiliar to me, the story, full of lush imagery and wry commentary on the follies of youth, shows how stubbornness and self-chosen duty can turn a girl into a woman and give her strength to meddle in the affairs of gods.
Joëlle Jones, Fernando Blanco, & Laura Allred, Catwoman: Copycats: This Catwoman takes place in a Batverse I haven’t been following-Selina, mourning Bruce’s loss and unable to sleep, flees to a different city controlled by a mobster family led by a woman who uses drugs and prosthetics to hide her physical corruption. When the mobster unleashes a bunch of faux-Catwomen to attract Selina’s attention, and when one of those Catwomen kills police officers, Selina is forced to take action. I loved the art, though the story probably required more current canon knowledge than I have.
Kat Howard, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone: OK, I admit it, that name made me think of the meme about your YA novel name. Short stories riffing off of fantasy tropes, or at least written as if they are in narrative self-consciousness-a couple involve a woman touring through different narratives, none of which quite fit her. The longest, in which an attempt to retell the Arthur story makes itself real, was my favorite. I think I like Howard best at a longer length, when she can develop themes beyond “stories are powerful/dangerous/seductive.”
If This Goes On, ed. Cat Rambo. Speculative fiction collection focused on trends in the US given the 2016 elections. Would have been better without the on-the-nose explanations of what you just read from the editor. Some nice variants, though, including Priya Sridhar’s Mustard Seeds and the Elephant’s Foot, about old myths returning under newer conditions.
Linsey Milller, Mask of Shadows: Genderfluid (sometimes he, sometimes she, sometimes they) Sal is a thief and, quickly, a killer, setting out to become the Opal, one of the Queen’s trusted servants/assassins. To do so, Sal must kill the other contenders (which has always struck me as a really inefficient way to get the top person-so destructive to a true reservoir of talent!). Suffering from PTSD from the deaths of their family-in fact their entire nation-because of the perfidy of nobles in the destructive war that resulted in the end of magic in the land, Sal has a secret mission to kill all those responsible while rising to the post. It’s a decent palace intrigue, but I couldn’t really get over the “kill all others with the guts and training to the job” part, even when it turned out to have a small asterisk.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.