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Stephen King, Herman Wouk Is Still Alive.
Jo Walton, Among Others: Mor, a teenager in 1979-1980, keeps a diary. It’s about her sf/fantasy reading, her new life at the school she’s been sent to by her father’s relatives after she ran away from her disturbed mother, her dead twin, the injury she sustained in the accident that took her twin’s life—and also about the fairies and the magic she does with their help. It’s not clear how much is diegetically “real,” and there’s even some confusion about Mor’s identity, though I didn’t feel like that was a big deal since we never really got to know the other twin even through Mor’s memories. It was very well done; I’m intimately familiar with Mor’s distanced, readerly reaction to life events, and she and I read a lot of the same books growing up. Still, I suppose I like my fantasy more fantastic.
Alaya Johnson, Moonshine: Highly recommended! Zephyr Hollis is the vampire suffragette: though she has a background hunting vampires and assorted Others in Prohibition-era America (NYC by way of Montana), now she does social work and agitates for fair wages and other protections for vampires. When a mysterious stranger enters her life, seeking her help to find a notorious vampire criminal, matters get complicated fast. While some of the plot connections were a bit neat, Zephyr was a fantastic character who both relied on and wanted to escape her past, and I loved her interactions with the multiple other women of importance in her life. The sexual tension between her and the romantic interest was also quite well done; Zephyr is determinedly modern about sex, and her choice to give in to attraction was always a choice. The sequel is coming out next month, so I read this at just the right time! (This author, I think, wrote a gen SPN story I liked a lot, also with a NYC setting.)
Kage Baker, Gods and Pawns: Stories of the Company: What it says on the tin. If you want to read more of the adventures of Mendoza and Lewis throughout time, working to steal the secrets of history to benefit the financial interests of the Company in a future of extreme political correctness, this will deliver.
Sarwat Chadda, Devil’s Kiss: Billi’s mother died defending her from the evil her father and the other remaining Knights Templar have fought all their lives. Now her father seems interested only in turning her into the perfect werewolf- and ghul-fighting soldier, despite the resistance of the other Templars to having a girl—and a notional Muslim, at that—in the Templars. Then the psychic friend of her childhood returns, mostly grown up, and a new young man is also nosing around, but he’s not what he seems. My reaction was basically that, had Billi been a white guy (and the love interests girls), this would have been an entirely typical coming of age story; this is in no way a bad book, but its surprises are tightly tied to the gender reversal. I didn’t love it, but I’d give it to someone who wanted paranormal YA.
Jon Armstrong, Grey: Michael Chabon blurbed, but I didn’t like this theater-of-the-absurd if-this-goes-on YA-ish story about Michael Rivers, teenaged scion of one of the privileged corporate overlords who also happens to be a buffoonish sex-and-violence-crazed lout who’s constantly being filmed for a 500-hour documentary of his life. When Michael falls in love with the daughter of a corporate rival, his calm grey life (adopted in rebellion to his father’s color, but also in conformity with a privileged style that depends on massive amounts of resources) turns into Romeo-and-Juliet melodrama. The first sentence probably tells you whether you’d like it: “Nora and I finished our fried whale and plum sandwiches, our cream coffees, and the cocoa and coca pastries, and sat in a comfortable silence as the landscapes of buildings and millions of well-wishers whirred past the windows at six hundred kilometers per hour.”
Jo Walton, Among Others: Mor, a teenager in 1979-1980, keeps a diary. It’s about her sf/fantasy reading, her new life at the school she’s been sent to by her father’s relatives after she ran away from her disturbed mother, her dead twin, the injury she sustained in the accident that took her twin’s life—and also about the fairies and the magic she does with their help. It’s not clear how much is diegetically “real,” and there’s even some confusion about Mor’s identity, though I didn’t feel like that was a big deal since we never really got to know the other twin even through Mor’s memories. It was very well done; I’m intimately familiar with Mor’s distanced, readerly reaction to life events, and she and I read a lot of the same books growing up. Still, I suppose I like my fantasy more fantastic.
Alaya Johnson, Moonshine: Highly recommended! Zephyr Hollis is the vampire suffragette: though she has a background hunting vampires and assorted Others in Prohibition-era America (NYC by way of Montana), now she does social work and agitates for fair wages and other protections for vampires. When a mysterious stranger enters her life, seeking her help to find a notorious vampire criminal, matters get complicated fast. While some of the plot connections were a bit neat, Zephyr was a fantastic character who both relied on and wanted to escape her past, and I loved her interactions with the multiple other women of importance in her life. The sexual tension between her and the romantic interest was also quite well done; Zephyr is determinedly modern about sex, and her choice to give in to attraction was always a choice. The sequel is coming out next month, so I read this at just the right time! (This author, I think, wrote a gen SPN story I liked a lot, also with a NYC setting.)
Kage Baker, Gods and Pawns: Stories of the Company: What it says on the tin. If you want to read more of the adventures of Mendoza and Lewis throughout time, working to steal the secrets of history to benefit the financial interests of the Company in a future of extreme political correctness, this will deliver.
Sarwat Chadda, Devil’s Kiss: Billi’s mother died defending her from the evil her father and the other remaining Knights Templar have fought all their lives. Now her father seems interested only in turning her into the perfect werewolf- and ghul-fighting soldier, despite the resistance of the other Templars to having a girl—and a notional Muslim, at that—in the Templars. Then the psychic friend of her childhood returns, mostly grown up, and a new young man is also nosing around, but he’s not what he seems. My reaction was basically that, had Billi been a white guy (and the love interests girls), this would have been an entirely typical coming of age story; this is in no way a bad book, but its surprises are tightly tied to the gender reversal. I didn’t love it, but I’d give it to someone who wanted paranormal YA.
Jon Armstrong, Grey: Michael Chabon blurbed, but I didn’t like this theater-of-the-absurd if-this-goes-on YA-ish story about Michael Rivers, teenaged scion of one of the privileged corporate overlords who also happens to be a buffoonish sex-and-violence-crazed lout who’s constantly being filmed for a 500-hour documentary of his life. When Michael falls in love with the daughter of a corporate rival, his calm grey life (adopted in rebellion to his father’s color, but also in conformity with a privileged style that depends on massive amounts of resources) turns into Romeo-and-Juliet melodrama. The first sentence probably tells you whether you’d like it: “Nora and I finished our fried whale and plum sandwiches, our cream coffees, and the cocoa and coca pastries, and sat in a comfortable silence as the landscapes of buildings and millions of well-wishers whirred past the windows at six hundred kilometers per hour.”
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