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Mira Grant, The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell: Short story: Zombie outbreak in an elementary school in Grant’s Feed universe. Things go pretty badly, because security design always fights the last battle and is often implemented by the lowest bidder. If you liked Feed enough to buy the other short stories, you’ll probably also like this.
Michael Marshall Smith, Everything You Need: Short story collection. Smith is a sharp observer of modern masculinity who writes horror/sf/thrillers (as Michael Marshall), and I’ll read anything he writes, but this collection showcases that he really mostly does write about middle-aged heterosexual white men discovering that the world is not what they thought. When that’s put into a horror context, it can deliver some thrills (like the story about the man whose mixed-up grocery delivery sends him on a quest for the woman he imagines did order all that meat and chocolate, unlike his health-conscious wife), but the short story form doesn’t let Smith build up to the kind of violent, cathartic climaxes that I think he does better than small realizations.
Lindsay Buroker, The Emperor’s Edge: Amaranthe Lokdon is a female Enforcer on a police force suspicious of women, in a city where the military always trumps the police. When she stumbles onto a plot against the emperor, her dogged determination gets her a death sentence—and then her inventiveness keeps her alive, as she negotiates with a (hot) assassin, finds herself muscle and magic and research help, and does her best to save the emperor against the will of high officials. This is basically Leverage done as undercover sting in a fantasy setting with a female leader, with Amaranthe putting her team together and ending in the right place to have more adventures.
Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions, vol. 2): I liked this volume better than the first, though this early Snicket adventure doesn’t yet have the bizarre genius of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Snicket’s search for a missing genius scientist who’s inventing invisible ink takes him throughout the decaying seaside town he’s stuck in while his sister is all on her own in the city, after a very different but equally mysterious target. I still have no idea what’s going on, but that’s not really the point, as the presence of the statue of the Maltese Falcon—I mean, the Bombinating Beast—makes clear.
David Brin, Tomorrow Happens: Short story/essay collection, including an Uplift story as well as two chapters of an abandoned novel that I would have read. There are paired essays/stories engaging with Verne/Wells, Asimov, and Tolkien, the latter of which is the most interesting—it’s about the racism etc. of Tolkien’s setup, though he argues that Tolkien himself was more conscious of that than many readers have been. Completists only.
Greg Rucka et al., Lazarus vol. 1: In a broken and hungry world where serfs serve the ruling Families and most humans, defined as Waste, struggle to survive, the Families turn to engineering perfect protectors. Forever has been bioengineered to withstand almost any physical assault, and her loyalties are guaranteed by a combination of drugs and emotion: she thinks she’s actually the daughter/sister of the rest of the Family, though we quickly learn she’s not. When one of her brothers (whose relationship with another sister is far too close) starts scheming to take over the Family, she’s plunged into dangerous waters. It wasn’t bad, but nothing really grabbed me.
Michael Marshall Smith, Everything You Need: Short story collection. Smith is a sharp observer of modern masculinity who writes horror/sf/thrillers (as Michael Marshall), and I’ll read anything he writes, but this collection showcases that he really mostly does write about middle-aged heterosexual white men discovering that the world is not what they thought. When that’s put into a horror context, it can deliver some thrills (like the story about the man whose mixed-up grocery delivery sends him on a quest for the woman he imagines did order all that meat and chocolate, unlike his health-conscious wife), but the short story form doesn’t let Smith build up to the kind of violent, cathartic climaxes that I think he does better than small realizations.
Lindsay Buroker, The Emperor’s Edge: Amaranthe Lokdon is a female Enforcer on a police force suspicious of women, in a city where the military always trumps the police. When she stumbles onto a plot against the emperor, her dogged determination gets her a death sentence—and then her inventiveness keeps her alive, as she negotiates with a (hot) assassin, finds herself muscle and magic and research help, and does her best to save the emperor against the will of high officials. This is basically Leverage done as undercover sting in a fantasy setting with a female leader, with Amaranthe putting her team together and ending in the right place to have more adventures.
Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions, vol. 2): I liked this volume better than the first, though this early Snicket adventure doesn’t yet have the bizarre genius of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Snicket’s search for a missing genius scientist who’s inventing invisible ink takes him throughout the decaying seaside town he’s stuck in while his sister is all on her own in the city, after a very different but equally mysterious target. I still have no idea what’s going on, but that’s not really the point, as the presence of the statue of the Maltese Falcon—I mean, the Bombinating Beast—makes clear.
David Brin, Tomorrow Happens: Short story/essay collection, including an Uplift story as well as two chapters of an abandoned novel that I would have read. There are paired essays/stories engaging with Verne/Wells, Asimov, and Tolkien, the latter of which is the most interesting—it’s about the racism etc. of Tolkien’s setup, though he argues that Tolkien himself was more conscious of that than many readers have been. Completists only.
Greg Rucka et al., Lazarus vol. 1: In a broken and hungry world where serfs serve the ruling Families and most humans, defined as Waste, struggle to survive, the Families turn to engineering perfect protectors. Forever has been bioengineered to withstand almost any physical assault, and her loyalties are guaranteed by a combination of drugs and emotion: she thinks she’s actually the daughter/sister of the rest of the Family, though we quickly learn she’s not. When one of her brothers (whose relationship with another sister is far too close) starts scheming to take over the Family, she’s plunged into dangerous waters. It wasn’t bad, but nothing really grabbed me.
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