fiction
Julie Czernada, The Gossamer Mage: There’s a corner of the world where magic works, and it’s based on the Goddess’s language. Only certain women (her Daughters) can speak it; only certain men can write it (and thus perform magical transformations on the world like making made-horses that work tirelessly, or accidental gossamers that interfere or float off smelling like bread or something else weird). Writing magic takes a portion of a mage’s life, so they age and die quickly, but the pleasure is still so great that they do it (and also it makes them rich). When a killer who doesn’t seem to pay the price for using magic appears, and also a dark force that opposes the Goddess starts invading, various Daughters and mages have to figure out what’s going on. I wanted to like the book, but I got bogged down. With a longer work, it turns out that I really need a lot of full sentences, subject verb object and articles and all that, and Czernada used so many sentence fragments that I just got exhausted.
Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes, and William Hutson, The Deep: Short book about the mermaid-ish descendants of pregnant Africans thrown over slave ships to die; their babies magically were born breathing water, with gills and fins. Most of them don’t know their history or even have specific long-term memories; Yetu is the historian, who holds memories for them. But the immensity and the horrors of those memories are killing them. When Yetu abandons their post and meets humans, but leaves their people lost amidst the memories, they will have to decide what kind of person they are going to be-whether cycles of pain can be broken, or reinterpreted, or lived with and improved on. No one is perfect, but they are generally trying (even if that means imposing rules on how others should experience the world that end up doing harm, the way Yetu’s parent does). For me, it was too short to have the kind of impact that Solomon’s first book did. What I ended up focusing more on was the afterword attributed to the three non-Solomon authors, which explains that the book is based on a song that Diggs’ group did, which was itself based on the concept behind some instrumental music by another group; each has its own version of the tale, and Solomon’s isn’t taken in any direct way from the song. Nonetheless, and despite what the afterword says about shared stories and the importance of reinterpretation, the copyright page shows that the copyright is entirely in Diggs et al., not shared with Solomon (and if Solomon had just released this story on its own, there’s no way it would be an infringing derivative work of the song, although I respect the desire to share some credit). That sat badly with me.
Stephen King, The Institute: Most King books are, ultimately, about how there is a lot of evil and a lot of good in humanity, and which prevails in the end may depend on which impulse we choose to feed. This is classic King with more Trump references. Luke is a prodigy about to start college at age 12 when he’s kidnapped because of his minor psychic gifts. At the Institute, mysterious tests and injections prepare him and other kids for use as psychic weapons. The adults at the Institute are a mix of sadists and true believers (who also become sadists as a defense against the horror of what they’re doing). With his new companions, Luke has to figure out how to escape and, ultimately, stop the Institute-despite its staff believing that what they do is necessary to save the world (think Cabin in the Forest, though not in specific).
Django Wexler, Ship of Smoke and Steel: An awful lot of worldbuilding going on here, in an entertaining way. There are different “Wells” of mystical power; our heroine possesses one that lets her make lightning swords out of her arms. She’s eking a living out as a mob enforcer, keeping her sister in a respectable house, when she’s grabbed by the Empire and sent as a sacrifice to a ghost ship, with the mission of taking command of the powerful ghost ship or her sister will suffer the ordinary fate of pretty young girls without protectors. The ship itself seems to be something like a haunted mystical computer. She falls in with another young woman whose well is healing, which is reviled because when it goes wrong it creates plagues and worse. Romance, adventure, and further mystery follow. I liked it!
Best of British SF 2018, ed. Donna Scott: What was most striking about reading these stories together is how many of them were at least straddling the fantasy margin (any significantly advanced technology and all that). Some edged more horror-ish, specifically Aliya Whiteley’s explorer-deteriorates-fast narrative that begins “Watkin has also been eaten.” Sunyi Dean’s “-Good.” is a revenge fantasy by way of cloning/advanced reproductive technology that stood out to me. “Not with a bang but a whimper” is the general theme, and it’s hard to blame anyone for that.
Ginn Hale, Master of Restless Shadows: Everyone’s gay but there’s not an awful lot of sex in this palace politics fantasy; the old gods/kings keeping the city safe are under threat from a baddie who uses magical brands to make others his slaves. He’s sent thralls even into the house of his greatest enemy, but they’re holding him off somehow as they deal with their own internal political struggles. Also, a stranger comes to town-a young physician who’s still a little in love with the noble who changed his life and then forgot about him; the noble is now a political player and the physician gets swept up in the intrigue. It was pretty elaborate but I probably won’t be pursuing the series further, though those god-kings swirling in their tank were very creepy.
Margaret Owen, The Merciful Crow: Fie is a Crow, a member of a despised caste whose sole power comes from immunity to the plague that kills other castes. Though some who hunt Crows maintain that they’re the source of the plague. When Fie’s father, the chief of her band, gets them involved with royals and royal plots, the Crows will either get real change-or get wiped out. It’s a good adventure, with some doomed cross-caste romance thrown in.
Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever: In the middle of her attempt to unseat oppressive governments, billionaire genius playgirl inventor Vivian Liao is taken by a mysterious green woman into the far future, where she immediately plunges deep into galactic politics. Almost every speaking role with a gender is a woman, which is quite interesting (and gives Vivian a number of possible love interests, though she doesn’t play the field). I enjoyed it.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes, and William Hutson, The Deep: Short book about the mermaid-ish descendants of pregnant Africans thrown over slave ships to die; their babies magically were born breathing water, with gills and fins. Most of them don’t know their history or even have specific long-term memories; Yetu is the historian, who holds memories for them. But the immensity and the horrors of those memories are killing them. When Yetu abandons their post and meets humans, but leaves their people lost amidst the memories, they will have to decide what kind of person they are going to be-whether cycles of pain can be broken, or reinterpreted, or lived with and improved on. No one is perfect, but they are generally trying (even if that means imposing rules on how others should experience the world that end up doing harm, the way Yetu’s parent does). For me, it was too short to have the kind of impact that Solomon’s first book did. What I ended up focusing more on was the afterword attributed to the three non-Solomon authors, which explains that the book is based on a song that Diggs’ group did, which was itself based on the concept behind some instrumental music by another group; each has its own version of the tale, and Solomon’s isn’t taken in any direct way from the song. Nonetheless, and despite what the afterword says about shared stories and the importance of reinterpretation, the copyright page shows that the copyright is entirely in Diggs et al., not shared with Solomon (and if Solomon had just released this story on its own, there’s no way it would be an infringing derivative work of the song, although I respect the desire to share some credit). That sat badly with me.
Stephen King, The Institute: Most King books are, ultimately, about how there is a lot of evil and a lot of good in humanity, and which prevails in the end may depend on which impulse we choose to feed. This is classic King with more Trump references. Luke is a prodigy about to start college at age 12 when he’s kidnapped because of his minor psychic gifts. At the Institute, mysterious tests and injections prepare him and other kids for use as psychic weapons. The adults at the Institute are a mix of sadists and true believers (who also become sadists as a defense against the horror of what they’re doing). With his new companions, Luke has to figure out how to escape and, ultimately, stop the Institute-despite its staff believing that what they do is necessary to save the world (think Cabin in the Forest, though not in specific).
Django Wexler, Ship of Smoke and Steel: An awful lot of worldbuilding going on here, in an entertaining way. There are different “Wells” of mystical power; our heroine possesses one that lets her make lightning swords out of her arms. She’s eking a living out as a mob enforcer, keeping her sister in a respectable house, when she’s grabbed by the Empire and sent as a sacrifice to a ghost ship, with the mission of taking command of the powerful ghost ship or her sister will suffer the ordinary fate of pretty young girls without protectors. The ship itself seems to be something like a haunted mystical computer. She falls in with another young woman whose well is healing, which is reviled because when it goes wrong it creates plagues and worse. Romance, adventure, and further mystery follow. I liked it!
Best of British SF 2018, ed. Donna Scott: What was most striking about reading these stories together is how many of them were at least straddling the fantasy margin (any significantly advanced technology and all that). Some edged more horror-ish, specifically Aliya Whiteley’s explorer-deteriorates-fast narrative that begins “Watkin has also been eaten.” Sunyi Dean’s “-Good.” is a revenge fantasy by way of cloning/advanced reproductive technology that stood out to me. “Not with a bang but a whimper” is the general theme, and it’s hard to blame anyone for that.
Ginn Hale, Master of Restless Shadows: Everyone’s gay but there’s not an awful lot of sex in this palace politics fantasy; the old gods/kings keeping the city safe are under threat from a baddie who uses magical brands to make others his slaves. He’s sent thralls even into the house of his greatest enemy, but they’re holding him off somehow as they deal with their own internal political struggles. Also, a stranger comes to town-a young physician who’s still a little in love with the noble who changed his life and then forgot about him; the noble is now a political player and the physician gets swept up in the intrigue. It was pretty elaborate but I probably won’t be pursuing the series further, though those god-kings swirling in their tank were very creepy.
Margaret Owen, The Merciful Crow: Fie is a Crow, a member of a despised caste whose sole power comes from immunity to the plague that kills other castes. Though some who hunt Crows maintain that they’re the source of the plague. When Fie’s father, the chief of her band, gets them involved with royals and royal plots, the Crows will either get real change-or get wiped out. It’s a good adventure, with some doomed cross-caste romance thrown in.
Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever: In the middle of her attempt to unseat oppressive governments, billionaire genius playgirl inventor Vivian Liao is taken by a mysterious green woman into the far future, where she immediately plunges deep into galactic politics. Almost every speaking role with a gender is a woman, which is quite interesting (and gives Vivian a number of possible love interests, though she doesn’t play the field). I enjoyed it.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.