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Seanan McGuire, Where the Drowned Girls Go: Cora, a former mermaid, is so haunted by the drowned gods she encountered in a previous book that she decides to transfer to the other school, the one where they encourage students to forget their experiences and see them as delusions. It doesn’t go well. At this point in the series, I think you know if you’ll like it.
Barbara Hambly, The Rainbow Abyss: Wizards in a world that hates wizards study and struggle to survive. The elder is convinced he’s communicating with a world that has lost almost all of its magic whose wizards need help; that world has strange powers like electricity and everyone can use it, instead of its use being reserved for the wizardly elect. The whole story rubbed me the wrong way insofar as the mentor-wizard insisted that magical knowledge was too dangerous to be shared with almost anyone else—even most other magic-workers—while his apprentice was earning their keep in their medieval-lite, slavery-positive setting by selling, among other things, love potions that overrode people’s actual desires. So they were both condescending and harmful! I did wonder how much Hambly intended this reaction, and the preview for the next book—when the apprentice has actually made it across to the other world—suggests that she was not exactly taking magical elitism’s side, but it didn’t make me want to keep reading anyway.
Kali Wallace, The Memory Trees: Sorrow Lovegood returns to her Vermont orchard home after eight years away in Florida—eight years after her older sister died in a fire she can’t remember. Intertwined with Sorrow’s story are interludes from the lives of previous Lovegood women, generally full of not-great things happening. The Lovegoods and the neighboring Abrams have been feuding for generations. There’s some magical realism but it’s mostly about damage being changed and carried down over generations.
Kali Wallace, City of Islands: Mara is an orphan who makes a living diving for treasures from the past, remnants of more-than-human magic. But a particularly good find turns her into a tool for her employer’s schemes against the most powerful mage in the islands, and sends her into danger where her own interest in learning magic might save her or destroy her. There’s a lot of world to build and not much time in this YA.
Kali Wallace, Salvation Day: Desperate members of a cult excluded from the Councils—which govern the parts of Earth that are easily livable—plot to steal a spaceship and find their own place to live. But the plot goes wrong when the ship, a prototype abandoned after a previous disaster, turns out to be highly dangerous. Maybe not more dangerous than the cult leader, though. The sole survivor of the previous disaster—now a hostage—and the daughter of the man blamed for it—now a hostage taker and cult member—have to decide what they’ll do to protect what they love. It’s a good adventure story and also a story about the effects of inequality and abuse.
Kali Wallace, Dead Space: I think the description of Murderbot meets the Expanse works well: the protagonist is an AI expert whose research ship was blown up by terrorists, leaving her deeply in debt to the corporation that rescued her and gave her glitchy prostheses. They have her doing security work to pay off her debt. When a message from one of the other survivors, and then he’s immediately killed after that, she goes to investigate and discovers a lot of disturbing things on the asteroid where he was working. Not entirely unpredictable—definitely follows the Chekov’s gun rule—but it was enjoyable to go along for the ride.
Kali Wallace, Shallow Graves: Breezy wakes up a after she was murdered, as a man is pulling her out of her grave. Instinctively, she fights back, which is how she discovers that she can kill murderers (and get burdened by their memories of their murders). But she doesn’t know anything else, and as she goes across the country trying to figure herself out, she encounters other monsters—and monster-hunters. It’s inventive and gripping. Lots of violence, obviously, including harm to children.
Genevieve Cogman, The Untold Story: Conclusion (at least to this arc) of Irene’s story as she finally confronts Alberich and learns the secret of the Library, despite forces in the Library that would rather kill her than make peace. It mostly delivers on explaining what’s going on, though it struggles with Alberich as both villain and victim.
Daryl Gregory, Revelator: Gregory is always inventive; this novel features a Tennessee bootlegger trying to escape her family secrets, specifically the god in the cave that she grew up with. But when her grandmother dies and the next generation is at risk, she has to return and fight, which is hard when the men of her family insist they know best and when the god offers such potential bliss. It’s not a reassuring story, but it does move.
Max Gladstone, Last Exit: Change of pace for Gladstone, towards urban fantasy not entirely dissimilar in theme from Jemisin’s most recent but also very different. The protagonist can walk to alternate worlds, but stopped when she lost her beloved Sal and now just tries to fight off the rising rot in her own America, which is much like ours. But when her attempts to apologize to Sal’s mother land her with Sal’s niece instead, and the monster that ate Sal starts coming after her, she decides to make one final push to fix what she broke.
Cadwell Turnbull, No Gods, No Monsters: Monsters are real, and after “the fracture” they are coming out into the open, but there are contending secret societies suppressing knowledge and controlling people with spells, contributing to the lack of consensus on whether monsters are real—very 2020s; no spells were required for the success of disinformation. It’s clearly trying to do something about race, community, police violence, and alterity, but I found it incoherent and unpleasant. If you like self-consciously “poetic” language, you might disagree.
John Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society:As the pandemic gears up, our protagonist loses his tech job and is reduced to delivering food for the app he once actually worked for. Then he gets a much weirder job. Kaijus, asshole billionaires, and gleeful fun ensue. It is as slight and rollicking as it sounds, and I enjoyed it though probably not as much as Scalzi enjoyed writing it because that’s probably impossible.
Charles Stross, Quantum of Nightmares: A nanny with a magical handbag (Mary, but not Mary Poppins) kidnaps four superpowered kids at the behest of her boss; a supermarket prepares for a takeover while experimenting with its equivalent of Residual Human Resources (there are many Sweeney Todd references); and Eve Starkey struggles to root out the cultists from her new commercial empire, which turns out to involve owning an island where her late unlamented boss was absolute ruler. I still miss Bob, but things under the New Management are not boring.
Charles Stross, Invisible Sun: Finishes the second trilogy in Merchant Princes—finally, a lot of stuff happens. To wit, the political transition in the not-like-us timeline occurs and it is very eventful and dangerous; the princess tries to avoid capture by the authoritarian US in “our” timeline; and the aliens who destroyed the people who created timeline switching in the first place have found us. Stross could have used an editor to tighten up on all the repetition—it reads like a serial, where each chapter reminds us of what went on previously—but I like the series’ heavy-handedness about the mistakes that governments routinely make about others’ intentions, capabilities, and knowledge.
Barbara Hambly, The Rainbow Abyss: Wizards in a world that hates wizards study and struggle to survive. The elder is convinced he’s communicating with a world that has lost almost all of its magic whose wizards need help; that world has strange powers like electricity and everyone can use it, instead of its use being reserved for the wizardly elect. The whole story rubbed me the wrong way insofar as the mentor-wizard insisted that magical knowledge was too dangerous to be shared with almost anyone else—even most other magic-workers—while his apprentice was earning their keep in their medieval-lite, slavery-positive setting by selling, among other things, love potions that overrode people’s actual desires. So they were both condescending and harmful! I did wonder how much Hambly intended this reaction, and the preview for the next book—when the apprentice has actually made it across to the other world—suggests that she was not exactly taking magical elitism’s side, but it didn’t make me want to keep reading anyway.
Kali Wallace, The Memory Trees: Sorrow Lovegood returns to her Vermont orchard home after eight years away in Florida—eight years after her older sister died in a fire she can’t remember. Intertwined with Sorrow’s story are interludes from the lives of previous Lovegood women, generally full of not-great things happening. The Lovegoods and the neighboring Abrams have been feuding for generations. There’s some magical realism but it’s mostly about damage being changed and carried down over generations.
Kali Wallace, City of Islands: Mara is an orphan who makes a living diving for treasures from the past, remnants of more-than-human magic. But a particularly good find turns her into a tool for her employer’s schemes against the most powerful mage in the islands, and sends her into danger where her own interest in learning magic might save her or destroy her. There’s a lot of world to build and not much time in this YA.
Kali Wallace, Salvation Day: Desperate members of a cult excluded from the Councils—which govern the parts of Earth that are easily livable—plot to steal a spaceship and find their own place to live. But the plot goes wrong when the ship, a prototype abandoned after a previous disaster, turns out to be highly dangerous. Maybe not more dangerous than the cult leader, though. The sole survivor of the previous disaster—now a hostage—and the daughter of the man blamed for it—now a hostage taker and cult member—have to decide what they’ll do to protect what they love. It’s a good adventure story and also a story about the effects of inequality and abuse.
Kali Wallace, Dead Space: I think the description of Murderbot meets the Expanse works well: the protagonist is an AI expert whose research ship was blown up by terrorists, leaving her deeply in debt to the corporation that rescued her and gave her glitchy prostheses. They have her doing security work to pay off her debt. When a message from one of the other survivors, and then he’s immediately killed after that, she goes to investigate and discovers a lot of disturbing things on the asteroid where he was working. Not entirely unpredictable—definitely follows the Chekov’s gun rule—but it was enjoyable to go along for the ride.
Kali Wallace, Shallow Graves: Breezy wakes up a after she was murdered, as a man is pulling her out of her grave. Instinctively, she fights back, which is how she discovers that she can kill murderers (and get burdened by their memories of their murders). But she doesn’t know anything else, and as she goes across the country trying to figure herself out, she encounters other monsters—and monster-hunters. It’s inventive and gripping. Lots of violence, obviously, including harm to children.
Genevieve Cogman, The Untold Story: Conclusion (at least to this arc) of Irene’s story as she finally confronts Alberich and learns the secret of the Library, despite forces in the Library that would rather kill her than make peace. It mostly delivers on explaining what’s going on, though it struggles with Alberich as both villain and victim.
Daryl Gregory, Revelator: Gregory is always inventive; this novel features a Tennessee bootlegger trying to escape her family secrets, specifically the god in the cave that she grew up with. But when her grandmother dies and the next generation is at risk, she has to return and fight, which is hard when the men of her family insist they know best and when the god offers such potential bliss. It’s not a reassuring story, but it does move.
Max Gladstone, Last Exit: Change of pace for Gladstone, towards urban fantasy not entirely dissimilar in theme from Jemisin’s most recent but also very different. The protagonist can walk to alternate worlds, but stopped when she lost her beloved Sal and now just tries to fight off the rising rot in her own America, which is much like ours. But when her attempts to apologize to Sal’s mother land her with Sal’s niece instead, and the monster that ate Sal starts coming after her, she decides to make one final push to fix what she broke.
Cadwell Turnbull, No Gods, No Monsters: Monsters are real, and after “the fracture” they are coming out into the open, but there are contending secret societies suppressing knowledge and controlling people with spells, contributing to the lack of consensus on whether monsters are real—very 2020s; no spells were required for the success of disinformation. It’s clearly trying to do something about race, community, police violence, and alterity, but I found it incoherent and unpleasant. If you like self-consciously “poetic” language, you might disagree.
John Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society:As the pandemic gears up, our protagonist loses his tech job and is reduced to delivering food for the app he once actually worked for. Then he gets a much weirder job. Kaijus, asshole billionaires, and gleeful fun ensue. It is as slight and rollicking as it sounds, and I enjoyed it though probably not as much as Scalzi enjoyed writing it because that’s probably impossible.
Charles Stross, Quantum of Nightmares: A nanny with a magical handbag (Mary, but not Mary Poppins) kidnaps four superpowered kids at the behest of her boss; a supermarket prepares for a takeover while experimenting with its equivalent of Residual Human Resources (there are many Sweeney Todd references); and Eve Starkey struggles to root out the cultists from her new commercial empire, which turns out to involve owning an island where her late unlamented boss was absolute ruler. I still miss Bob, but things under the New Management are not boring.
Charles Stross, Invisible Sun: Finishes the second trilogy in Merchant Princes—finally, a lot of stuff happens. To wit, the political transition in the not-like-us timeline occurs and it is very eventful and dangerous; the princess tries to avoid capture by the authoritarian US in “our” timeline; and the aliens who destroyed the people who created timeline switching in the first place have found us. Stross could have used an editor to tighten up on all the repetition—it reads like a serial, where each chapter reminds us of what went on previously—but I like the series’ heavy-handedness about the mistakes that governments routinely make about others’ intentions, capabilities, and knowledge.
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In any case, I find your reviews more interesting than the books they are about sometimes!
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