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This is an amazing(ly depressing) story about global warming. In Men’s Journal. Yeah, I was surprised too!
G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen: Many others have called this steampunk + the Arab Spring/the Thousand and One Nights, since jinn and computing interact and intersect in the story. That story centers on hacker Alif’s encounter with a very dangerous book and a very dangerous man. Alif’s coming of age includes his passionate romance with a woman much higher in the class hierarchy and his attempts to protect his childhood friend Dina from the problems that his activism will cause her, since as a woman she’s much more vulnerable. I would add that it’s steampunk flavored with Evgeny Morozov: the repressive state is capable of using technology, as well as jinn, for its own purposes, and revolutions aren’t pretty. Alif rebels against the rules that constrain him, but not against rules that constrain other people; the story notices that, but has him as a hero nonetheless.
Ilona Andrews, Clean Sweep: New universe, where advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. An innkeeper struggles to maintain her inn, where alien visitors can shelter on earth, against the incursions of werewolves (genetically engineered killing machines), vampires (similar), and other, nastier things—and gets two hot love interests in the process. Points for the vampire pointing out that, culturally speaking, the vampire always wins the love triangle, but overall I like Andrews’ other series better so far.
G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen: Many others have called this steampunk + the Arab Spring/the Thousand and One Nights, since jinn and computing interact and intersect in the story. That story centers on hacker Alif’s encounter with a very dangerous book and a very dangerous man. Alif’s coming of age includes his passionate romance with a woman much higher in the class hierarchy and his attempts to protect his childhood friend Dina from the problems that his activism will cause her, since as a woman she’s much more vulnerable. I would add that it’s steampunk flavored with Evgeny Morozov: the repressive state is capable of using technology, as well as jinn, for its own purposes, and revolutions aren’t pretty. Alif rebels against the rules that constrain him, but not against rules that constrain other people; the story notices that, but has him as a hero nonetheless.
Ilona Andrews, Clean Sweep: New universe, where advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. An innkeeper struggles to maintain her inn, where alien visitors can shelter on earth, against the incursions of werewolves (genetically engineered killing machines), vampires (similar), and other, nastier things—and gets two hot love interests in the process. Points for the vampire pointing out that, culturally speaking, the vampire always wins the love triangle, but overall I like Andrews’ other series better so far.
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