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Alaya Dawn Johnson, Trouble the Saints: Was not for me, but if you like alternate 1920s NYC with mobsters and magic, this could be very good for you. The protagonists are a light-skinned black woman who passes as an enforcer for a white mobster, and a man of Asian Indian/white descent—her (ex)lover who can’t stand the violence she inflicts and has secrets of his own. They both have “saint’s hands”—magical gifts that only nonwhite people have and that most white people purport to disbelieve in, which has turned into another vector of discrimination. Lots of angst of all kinds.
N.K. Jemisin, Emergency Skin: Atlas shrugged—a bunch of rich white guys left the planet, and nobody noticed/the planet got better. Now one of their underclass has returned to get some necessary germ plasm, promised the reward of real skin and high status if he succeeds, only to find that Earth isn’t the broken and awful place he’s been raised to believe. A little preachy but in a way I can get behind.
Jenn Lyons, Ruin of Kings: YA-ish fantasy with a lot of slavery, including soul-slavery that makes defying any orders painful and even deadly if continued. I understand that a technique like having your snarky teen character say “my bad” and similar modern formulations is one way of indicating that they’re doing whatever slang is in their completely different fantasy world (this one has multiple gods that occasionally bring people back from the dead if they like them enough, and also the sun is going out because of god shenanigans), but it is a very difficult thing to pull off successfully and I didn’t think it was successful here. Also one of the narrators is a psychotic shapeshifter who eats her victims and gets their memories to substitute for third person omniscient, and she is a caricature who calls everyone, including the other narrator/person she’s torturing, dearie and darling, and that put me off too. Also also, the narrative starts with two different timelines; eventually it becomes clear that both star the same person, albeit under different names, but it’s never clear why they’re split and they then rejoin about 2/3 of the way through, so that was also unbalanced.
Ben Aaronovitch, False Value: Beverly is heavily pregnant and Peter is undercover at a tech company trying to figure out what weird stuff is going on there, apparently connected to a magical Difference Engine. The stakes feel lower/more domestic, including Beverly’s adoption of a couple of the people that Peter has to fool, but we get to see Peter trying to find out more about American magic, which is cool.
Jordan L. Hawk, Widdershins: Percival Whybourne is a mild-mannered philologist haunted by the death of his first love. Griffin is an ex-Pinkerton with his own demons. When a murder leads Griffin to seek the translation of an ancient book, the sparks fly between them, but Lovecraftian horror (Whybourne went to Miskatonic for college) might prevent the course of true love from running smooth. It was fine, though I’m not much in the mood for “illegality is the reason we have to hide our gay love.”
Akwaeke Emezi, Pet: In a future that has supposedly eliminated human monsters, Jam has grown up with few barriers or worries, once her parents understood that she was a girl. But when her mother’s painting comes to life and says that there’s a monster in town, she and her friend Redemption have to confront the question of whether the adults are right after all. Trying a lot of things; it was interesting although it wasn’t exactly for me.
Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys: Blue, the daughter of a psychic who isn’t psychic herself but can enhance others’ powers gets involved with boys from a local private school who are looking for the (undead?) king Glendower, who for some reason has supposedly been buried along a ley line in Virginia. Also, if Blue kisses her true love, he will die. It really wasn’t for me; I didn’t care about anyone and their angst was just jumped straight into, but if you like angsty boys with quickly announced backstories justifying the angst, it might work for you.
Frances Hardinge, Deeplight: Hark is an orphan/petty scammer on an island whose terrible sea-gods died nearly a generation ago. When his best friend (and worst enemy) Jelt cajoles him into the wrong scam, he’s caught and only manages to escape certain death by being enslaved to a god-researcher. As he takes care of damaged priests, Jelt still manages to get him involved in searching for more advantages. And when they find a lost piece of godware, Jelt starts to change in other ways. As usual, an incredible adventure, with lots of human and inhuman darkness and some light.
Julian Peters, Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry: Peters uses various styles—including manga-esque for “When You Are Old” by Yeats—and both color and black-and-white to illustrate (and indeed, interpret, though often enough the interpretations seem pretty obvious) the poems. Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” gets some interesting color and imagery, with birds apparently made out of paper and scissors. And the last poem, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conscientious Objector,” with which I wasn’t familiar before, was made genuinely disturbing by Peters’ use of skeletons dressed in various military and other uniforms, threatening the protagonist.
N.K. Jemisin, Emergency Skin: Atlas shrugged—a bunch of rich white guys left the planet, and nobody noticed/the planet got better. Now one of their underclass has returned to get some necessary germ plasm, promised the reward of real skin and high status if he succeeds, only to find that Earth isn’t the broken and awful place he’s been raised to believe. A little preachy but in a way I can get behind.
Jenn Lyons, Ruin of Kings: YA-ish fantasy with a lot of slavery, including soul-slavery that makes defying any orders painful and even deadly if continued. I understand that a technique like having your snarky teen character say “my bad” and similar modern formulations is one way of indicating that they’re doing whatever slang is in their completely different fantasy world (this one has multiple gods that occasionally bring people back from the dead if they like them enough, and also the sun is going out because of god shenanigans), but it is a very difficult thing to pull off successfully and I didn’t think it was successful here. Also one of the narrators is a psychotic shapeshifter who eats her victims and gets their memories to substitute for third person omniscient, and she is a caricature who calls everyone, including the other narrator/person she’s torturing, dearie and darling, and that put me off too. Also also, the narrative starts with two different timelines; eventually it becomes clear that both star the same person, albeit under different names, but it’s never clear why they’re split and they then rejoin about 2/3 of the way through, so that was also unbalanced.
Ben Aaronovitch, False Value: Beverly is heavily pregnant and Peter is undercover at a tech company trying to figure out what weird stuff is going on there, apparently connected to a magical Difference Engine. The stakes feel lower/more domestic, including Beverly’s adoption of a couple of the people that Peter has to fool, but we get to see Peter trying to find out more about American magic, which is cool.
Jordan L. Hawk, Widdershins: Percival Whybourne is a mild-mannered philologist haunted by the death of his first love. Griffin is an ex-Pinkerton with his own demons. When a murder leads Griffin to seek the translation of an ancient book, the sparks fly between them, but Lovecraftian horror (Whybourne went to Miskatonic for college) might prevent the course of true love from running smooth. It was fine, though I’m not much in the mood for “illegality is the reason we have to hide our gay love.”
Akwaeke Emezi, Pet: In a future that has supposedly eliminated human monsters, Jam has grown up with few barriers or worries, once her parents understood that she was a girl. But when her mother’s painting comes to life and says that there’s a monster in town, she and her friend Redemption have to confront the question of whether the adults are right after all. Trying a lot of things; it was interesting although it wasn’t exactly for me.
Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys: Blue, the daughter of a psychic who isn’t psychic herself but can enhance others’ powers gets involved with boys from a local private school who are looking for the (undead?) king Glendower, who for some reason has supposedly been buried along a ley line in Virginia. Also, if Blue kisses her true love, he will die. It really wasn’t for me; I didn’t care about anyone and their angst was just jumped straight into, but if you like angsty boys with quickly announced backstories justifying the angst, it might work for you.
Frances Hardinge, Deeplight: Hark is an orphan/petty scammer on an island whose terrible sea-gods died nearly a generation ago. When his best friend (and worst enemy) Jelt cajoles him into the wrong scam, he’s caught and only manages to escape certain death by being enslaved to a god-researcher. As he takes care of damaged priests, Jelt still manages to get him involved in searching for more advantages. And when they find a lost piece of godware, Jelt starts to change in other ways. As usual, an incredible adventure, with lots of human and inhuman darkness and some light.
Julian Peters, Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry: Peters uses various styles—including manga-esque for “When You Are Old” by Yeats—and both color and black-and-white to illustrate (and indeed, interpret, though often enough the interpretations seem pretty obvious) the poems. Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” gets some interesting color and imagery, with birds apparently made out of paper and scissors. And the last poem, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conscientious Objector,” with which I wasn’t familiar before, was made genuinely disturbing by Peters’ use of skeletons dressed in various military and other uniforms, threatening the protagonist.