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Fonda Lee, Untethered Sky: After her mother and brother are killed by a manticore, all Ester wants to do is fly one of the rocs that are the manticore’s only real predator. In this novella, she gets her wish, but it turns out that’s not the end of the story. A little short/abrupt, but a fine story of loving animals and moving on when forced to do so.
Douglas Smith, The Hollow Boys: Power fantasy that was too YA for me. The main protagonist is a billionaire genius teenager who writes a comic that is the most famous in the world; his secret superpower is that he can walk in dreams (like the comic he writes, Dream Rider) and find out information, which he uses both to invest and to save kidnapped children. But he’s also an orphan still trying to figure out what happened to his parents and gave him this superpower, and also he’s severely agoraphobic and unable to go outside in the real world. He meets a street kid with her own superpower, searching for her kidnapped brother, and they face a mystical threat together. Various plot conveniences occur.
Al Hess, World Running Down: In a world where many wealthy elites have fled, life goes on, with scavengers in the desert and cities in which people live well. Valentine, a trans man, would love to get a visa for a city where he could get T and top surgery, but his undiagnosed ADHD and the general expenses of living as a scavenger hold him back. With his partner, he’s offered an incredible opportunity—retrieve some androids for a citizen and they’ll both get visas. But the opportunity comes by way of an android who is actually a sentient AI city manager displaced into an android body, whose own dysphoria and experience of abuse lead Valentine to make riskier choices. It’s mostly a romance; despite the sometimes-dangerous circumstances and a lot of misgendering by non-heroes, the people at the heart of the story are largely trying to be kind.
T. Kingfisher, A House With Good Bones: Horror about a woman who returns to her mother’s house (formerly her grandmother’s house) when her entomological work hits a snag and discovers that her mother seems to be taking on many of her grandmother’s most toxic behaviors, but not voluntarily so. It was definitely creepy, even though the most relevant bugs were ladybugs; I didn’t like it as much as some of Kingfisher’s other work though that may be because the audio narrator rubbed me the wrong way (caricatured old-lady voice for the grandmother, especially).
N.K. Jemisin, The World We Make: In this sequel, the war against the Lovecraftian horrors determined to exterminate living cities (and humanity) accelerates, with white supremacists on the side of death and NYC struggling to get the other cities to fight on its side. I would have liked it a bit better if the machinations of cities didn’t mean that the people of NYC “had” to vote in the right mayoral candidate, but it has lots of city pride and found family.
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Wish You Weren’t Here: Wish I liked it; an English family goes around saving people and hunting things—more of the latter than the former, really. Unfortunately they were all flip and blasé from the get-go, and largely hateful to each other, and I felt I was being told more than shown that actually they really loved each other. But if you miss SPN and do enjoy families being mean to each other because they know each other really well, then there’s demons, ghosts, and a family business that rubs up against the apocalypse when they go to try to clean out a church on a very odd island. And the reason the horrible mom is horrible is actually quite understandable, even if you don’t feel inclined to excuse her.
Kai Butler, Saffron Wilds: This book in the series finds our heroes preparing for a wedding and learning more about fae politics and the other worlds that abut ours. One of the old gods is trying to return and destroy all the others, as well as any human power, and so there are lots of battles and some power-ups. I think the next book is supposed to end the arc or even the series, so hopefully there will be a happily ever after.
Connie Willis,The Road to Roswell:When I was younger, I could more easily see the charm of Willis’s scattered, chaotic protagonists and “there’s no time to explain, get in the car” scenarios. Now they just seem exhausting. Here, a young woman is trying to attend her friend’s wedding to a UFO enthusiast. But when she arrives in Roswell, she’s kidnapped by an actual alien that looks a lot like a tumbleweed. Now she has to try to follow its orders, deal with the other kidnappees, and see if she can make it back in time to prevent her friend from making yet another relationship mistake. I fear it left me cold.
Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found: Antsy is a young girl whose father died and whose mother married a man who makes Antsy afraid. When he attempts to molest her, she runs away and finds a magical shop where lost things go. The metaphor of lost childhood is pretty on the nose, but it’s otherwise pretty much what you expect from a Wayward Children book, including unfair bargains made with incomplete information.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation: Third in this trilogy about post-Earth humanity constantly on the run from the Architects, who turn inhabited worlds into art. The scrappy little spaceship that’s accidentally been at the center of huge political conflicts stays that way, and also plunges into unreal space to see if the fight can be taken to the Architects—which most people are willing to kill off even knowing that Architects are actually the slaves of some other entities. There’s plenty of adventure and compromise to go around.
Samit Basu, Resistance: Superpowers don’t make things easier, especially when more and more people keep getting them. Reminiscent of The Boys, but with a more international cast (the leader, Uzma, is a brown woman with a Muslim name, but the UN wants them in the US, so that’s fun) and contending factions including an evil supe-experimenting corporation and a zaibatsu head who’s also part of a mecha team that fights kaiju. It’s a bit all over the place; Basu’s later work is better.
Eddie Robson, Hearts of Oak:I picked this up because I liked Robson’s more recent book; this one is substantially less polished, no pun intended. Ianthe teaches architecture and designs buildings, both important tasks in the city, which is constantly growing despite mostly being able to use only wood in construction. Funny thing is, Ianthe can’t remember quite how long she’s been doing this … It’s probably too slight to handle the big questions it gestures at about identity and doing the right thing under conditions of futility.
Douglas Smith, The Hollow Boys: Power fantasy that was too YA for me. The main protagonist is a billionaire genius teenager who writes a comic that is the most famous in the world; his secret superpower is that he can walk in dreams (like the comic he writes, Dream Rider) and find out information, which he uses both to invest and to save kidnapped children. But he’s also an orphan still trying to figure out what happened to his parents and gave him this superpower, and also he’s severely agoraphobic and unable to go outside in the real world. He meets a street kid with her own superpower, searching for her kidnapped brother, and they face a mystical threat together. Various plot conveniences occur.
Al Hess, World Running Down: In a world where many wealthy elites have fled, life goes on, with scavengers in the desert and cities in which people live well. Valentine, a trans man, would love to get a visa for a city where he could get T and top surgery, but his undiagnosed ADHD and the general expenses of living as a scavenger hold him back. With his partner, he’s offered an incredible opportunity—retrieve some androids for a citizen and they’ll both get visas. But the opportunity comes by way of an android who is actually a sentient AI city manager displaced into an android body, whose own dysphoria and experience of abuse lead Valentine to make riskier choices. It’s mostly a romance; despite the sometimes-dangerous circumstances and a lot of misgendering by non-heroes, the people at the heart of the story are largely trying to be kind.
T. Kingfisher, A House With Good Bones: Horror about a woman who returns to her mother’s house (formerly her grandmother’s house) when her entomological work hits a snag and discovers that her mother seems to be taking on many of her grandmother’s most toxic behaviors, but not voluntarily so. It was definitely creepy, even though the most relevant bugs were ladybugs; I didn’t like it as much as some of Kingfisher’s other work though that may be because the audio narrator rubbed me the wrong way (caricatured old-lady voice for the grandmother, especially).
N.K. Jemisin, The World We Make: In this sequel, the war against the Lovecraftian horrors determined to exterminate living cities (and humanity) accelerates, with white supremacists on the side of death and NYC struggling to get the other cities to fight on its side. I would have liked it a bit better if the machinations of cities didn’t mean that the people of NYC “had” to vote in the right mayoral candidate, but it has lots of city pride and found family.
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Wish You Weren’t Here: Wish I liked it; an English family goes around saving people and hunting things—more of the latter than the former, really. Unfortunately they were all flip and blasé from the get-go, and largely hateful to each other, and I felt I was being told more than shown that actually they really loved each other. But if you miss SPN and do enjoy families being mean to each other because they know each other really well, then there’s demons, ghosts, and a family business that rubs up against the apocalypse when they go to try to clean out a church on a very odd island. And the reason the horrible mom is horrible is actually quite understandable, even if you don’t feel inclined to excuse her.
Kai Butler, Saffron Wilds: This book in the series finds our heroes preparing for a wedding and learning more about fae politics and the other worlds that abut ours. One of the old gods is trying to return and destroy all the others, as well as any human power, and so there are lots of battles and some power-ups. I think the next book is supposed to end the arc or even the series, so hopefully there will be a happily ever after.
Connie Willis,
Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found: Antsy is a young girl whose father died and whose mother married a man who makes Antsy afraid. When he attempts to molest her, she runs away and finds a magical shop where lost things go. The metaphor of lost childhood is pretty on the nose, but it’s otherwise pretty much what you expect from a Wayward Children book, including unfair bargains made with incomplete information.
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Lords of Uncreation: Third in this trilogy about post-Earth humanity constantly on the run from the Architects, who turn inhabited worlds into art. The scrappy little spaceship that’s accidentally been at the center of huge political conflicts stays that way, and also plunges into unreal space to see if the fight can be taken to the Architects—which most people are willing to kill off even knowing that Architects are actually the slaves of some other entities. There’s plenty of adventure and compromise to go around.
Samit Basu, Resistance: Superpowers don’t make things easier, especially when more and more people keep getting them. Reminiscent of The Boys, but with a more international cast (the leader, Uzma, is a brown woman with a Muslim name, but the UN wants them in the US, so that’s fun) and contending factions including an evil supe-experimenting corporation and a zaibatsu head who’s also part of a mecha team that fights kaiju. It’s a bit all over the place; Basu’s later work is better.
Eddie Robson, Hearts of Oak:I picked this up because I liked Robson’s more recent book; this one is substantially less polished, no pun intended. Ianthe teaches architecture and designs buildings, both important tasks in the city, which is constantly growing despite mostly being able to use only wood in construction. Funny thing is, Ianthe can’t remember quite how long she’s been doing this … It’s probably too slight to handle the big questions it gestures at about identity and doing the right thing under conditions of futility.