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Yoon Ha Lee, Conservation of Shadows: Fantasy/sf stories in which spaceships are origami monsters, linguistics is a combat discipline, and books can be drained of their words in order to create monsters to fight invaders. Reminded me of Kelly Link, except more influenced by Korean culture/traditional stories than Link—it’s really more the dream logic that links them.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen: I really, really wanted to like this latest in the Vorkosigan saga more than I did. It’s Cordelia and Aral’s right hand man, rebuilding their lives in the wake of Aral’s death and moving forward, and the most tension comes from bureaucratic wrangling and some literal fireworks, which were the liveliest part of the story. If you want to read these beloved characters taking a kind of victory lap, then this will satisfy a desire for warm fuzzies, but as much as I want them to be happy, I don’t necessarily need to see them doing it this way.
Lauren Esker, Guard Wolf: A shapeshifting koala social worker falls in love with a wolf shifter with PTSD from childhood abuse who works for the FBI. They meet cute when he brings her a box of abandoned wolf shifter puppies. The worldbuilding is interesting and there’s a large cast of shifter characters, presumably all candidates for other romance novels focusing on them (there’s already one before this, about a bear shifter and a non-shifter human). The protagonists are immediately attracted to one another and communicate well, though both are uncertain of their ability to succeed in a relationship. The barriers to the relationship are otherwise external and include some grim shifter-abusing people—the ultimate source of the shifter puppies. Well-written enough that if you liked the description you will probably like the book.
Kai Ashante Wilson, The Sorceror of the Wildeeps: Beautiful style, including a wonderful use of real-world languages to give the sense of fantasy cultures interacting, not always successfully. The main character—the titular sorceror—is well-educated and well-traveled, but considered a barbarian by many of the people he’s traveling with because he can’t communicate well in the merchants’ tongue. Also, the mercenaries in his company seem to frown on homosexuality, but he’s lovers with the captain of their company, a godling of some sort. (Magic here may be extremely advanced technology, left over from when the most advanced people left their bodies for the stars.) As his traveling company gets closer to the dangerous Wildeeps, fissures internal and external threaten the group, and in particular Demane and his Captain. The narrative jogs back and forth in time, and some of the phrases are quite striking; recommended for those who enjoy beautiful writing and not completely resolved mysteries.
Eric James Stone, Unforgettable: Nat has a very special talent: people and computers forget him a minute after he stops interacting with them. He uses this talent for the CIA, until on one mission he meets a beautiful Russian spy—and then, when he meets her again, she remembers him. Very neat and tidy, and there’s technobabble about his talent that is largely vitiated by the fact that it lasts exactly sixty seconds, but it’s still plenty enjoyable for what it is.
Jordan Castillo Price, Mnevermind 1: The Persistence of Memory: Dan is a mnem tech—mneming being a form of entertainment that allows you to have great experiences, but the memory fades like a dream soon afterwards. He’s worked as a tech, barely eking out a living, since he ruined his father’s memory with a mnem that went persistent. Then he meets a man inside a mnem—which shouldn’t be possible. And the guy is hot, if weird. This short sets up a longer series. The worldbuilding was pretty interesting, and the romance between Dan and his mystery man, who turns out to be non-neurotypical, felt real, though I would want more sf/external plotting if I continued.
Karin Lowachee, Burndive: Tried, couldn’t finish this sf novel about a disaffected teen whose mother is an important political figure on a space station and whose father is a military genius conducting negotiations that might end humanity’s long war with aliens. Everyone is very angsty and has a tragic backstory, but the teen is so believably mopy and overwrought—and also traumatized because of various violent experiences—that filtering the story through his viewpoint made it too painful for me. However, it does seem to have good space opera bones, if you like that.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen: I really, really wanted to like this latest in the Vorkosigan saga more than I did. It’s Cordelia and Aral’s right hand man, rebuilding their lives in the wake of Aral’s death and moving forward, and the most tension comes from bureaucratic wrangling and some literal fireworks, which were the liveliest part of the story. If you want to read these beloved characters taking a kind of victory lap, then this will satisfy a desire for warm fuzzies, but as much as I want them to be happy, I don’t necessarily need to see them doing it this way.
Lauren Esker, Guard Wolf: A shapeshifting koala social worker falls in love with a wolf shifter with PTSD from childhood abuse who works for the FBI. They meet cute when he brings her a box of abandoned wolf shifter puppies. The worldbuilding is interesting and there’s a large cast of shifter characters, presumably all candidates for other romance novels focusing on them (there’s already one before this, about a bear shifter and a non-shifter human). The protagonists are immediately attracted to one another and communicate well, though both are uncertain of their ability to succeed in a relationship. The barriers to the relationship are otherwise external and include some grim shifter-abusing people—the ultimate source of the shifter puppies. Well-written enough that if you liked the description you will probably like the book.
Kai Ashante Wilson, The Sorceror of the Wildeeps: Beautiful style, including a wonderful use of real-world languages to give the sense of fantasy cultures interacting, not always successfully. The main character—the titular sorceror—is well-educated and well-traveled, but considered a barbarian by many of the people he’s traveling with because he can’t communicate well in the merchants’ tongue. Also, the mercenaries in his company seem to frown on homosexuality, but he’s lovers with the captain of their company, a godling of some sort. (Magic here may be extremely advanced technology, left over from when the most advanced people left their bodies for the stars.) As his traveling company gets closer to the dangerous Wildeeps, fissures internal and external threaten the group, and in particular Demane and his Captain. The narrative jogs back and forth in time, and some of the phrases are quite striking; recommended for those who enjoy beautiful writing and not completely resolved mysteries.
Eric James Stone, Unforgettable: Nat has a very special talent: people and computers forget him a minute after he stops interacting with them. He uses this talent for the CIA, until on one mission he meets a beautiful Russian spy—and then, when he meets her again, she remembers him. Very neat and tidy, and there’s technobabble about his talent that is largely vitiated by the fact that it lasts exactly sixty seconds, but it’s still plenty enjoyable for what it is.
Jordan Castillo Price, Mnevermind 1: The Persistence of Memory: Dan is a mnem tech—mneming being a form of entertainment that allows you to have great experiences, but the memory fades like a dream soon afterwards. He’s worked as a tech, barely eking out a living, since he ruined his father’s memory with a mnem that went persistent. Then he meets a man inside a mnem—which shouldn’t be possible. And the guy is hot, if weird. This short sets up a longer series. The worldbuilding was pretty interesting, and the romance between Dan and his mystery man, who turns out to be non-neurotypical, felt real, though I would want more sf/external plotting if I continued.
Karin Lowachee, Burndive: Tried, couldn’t finish this sf novel about a disaffected teen whose mother is an important political figure on a space station and whose father is a military genius conducting negotiations that might end humanity’s long war with aliens. Everyone is very angsty and has a tragic backstory, but the teen is so believably mopy and overwrought—and also traumatized because of various violent experiences—that filtering the story through his viewpoint made it too painful for me. However, it does seem to have good space opera bones, if you like that.
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