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Entry tags:
Fiction
It's been a while! I've been busy with classes; didn't even manage to pick up a Yuletide pinch hit this year, sadly. I've been listening to Kesha on repeat (and Dessa and Taylor Swift with her cat chorus). And I just saw either a very large mouse or a small rat poke its head out of our basement closet, which was very unpleasant. While I wait for the pest control to call me back, have some fiction!
Alix E. Harrow, Starling House: Southern Gothic. Opal is raising her little brother, who’s too smart for their little, racist town. Trying to earn enough money to send him to boarding school, she takes a cleaning job at Starling House despite it and its owner’s bad reputation. But others want the secrets of Starling House and will stop at nothing to get them. It’s totally fine, and has some things to say about specifically Southern forms of wounded memory, but I would have liked it better as a teenager.
Jason Pargin, Zoey Ashe Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia: There’s a mayoral election coming up, and Zoey has to be involved because one of the candidates is a fascist, Trumpy type who threatens ruin both physical and financial. Unfortunately the opposition is corrupt too. Also, a prankster keeps breaking through her security, which she finds unaccountably hot. It’s a good continuation of the series with plenty of absurd action and discussion of how to live in an imperfect world.
Christopher Golden & Amber Benson, Slayers: A Buffyverse Story: Good to hear the familiar voices, but the writing was sadly not good.
Seth Dickinson, Exordia: I loved this, and have very little to say that isn’t spoilery, but it feels like Dickinson let go of some fear and just wrote without embarrassment. It starts with Anna, a victim of the Iraqi genocide against the Kurds, forced to commit atrocities of her own, living now in the US with no real hopes or dreams. Then the alien Sssrin comes, claiming that their stories match (which is a pretty bad sign, actually, and also that Sssrin explains that her entire species is doomed to hell). Then comes the EMP, and then the men with guns to take Anna back to her homeland, where an alien spaceship has appeared. It is about colonialism, and about how the world ending is not unusual for some humans, and also about physics and trolley problems and compromises and tragedies that are too big to comprehend and therefore humans (and aliens) can inflict them. I dunno, read it!
Alexis Hall, 10 Things that Never Happened: Sam is a flailing manager about to get fired by his boss, when an accident gives him a concussion. When his boss misinterprets his momentary confusion as amnesia, Sam decides to go along with it to give himself and his team time before the firing. His asshole boss takes him home to watch over him, and Sam gets sucked into a big family drama. Cue “oh no he’s hot.” Since it wasn’t sff, I was not super into it, but the banter was very bantery.
Martha Wells, System Collapse: Murderbot! Murderbot! It’s still just as enjoyable as ever. Murderbot is not over the trauma of getting nearly assimilated by alien tech, but it’s staying on the planet anyway. As with the previous book, the denouement is super fast, but at this point we’re here mostly for the relationship talks and excitement over media (Cruel Romance Personage needs to be its own fandom stat). I wonder what Three’s perspective on this all would be.
Rebecca Kuang, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023: Isabel J. Kim’s Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist, starring Cool and Sexy Asian Girl, is great. The others were fine but I don't really have anything to say about them.
Terry Pratchett, A Stroke of the Pen: Selection of short fiction published in newspapers; a couple of Discworld predecessors (a guy who is selling inedibles at a price that is cutting his own throat, for example) but nothing vital.
Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory: Kyr is a happy fascist, proud to be the best girl in her cohort. But when that doesn’t bring her the combat assignment she expects, she disobeys—she knows she has more to give the fight against the aliens who destroyed almost all of humanity. Very rapidly, she learns about the other abuses that shape her existence. She’s a reflexive homophobe—sex without reproduction is unhelpful to the human cause—though she’s willing to work with her brother’s gay friend. Her attitudes change over the course of the book, including for spoiler reasons, but the spoilers are possible because, while Kyr likes being strong and powerful, she also wants to do good—and as her definition of good changes, her concerns widen. Tesh upends the game several times during the book, which helps speedrun Kyr through her development, and I ended up having a good time.
John Scalzi, Starter Villain: A man inherits a huge criminal organization from an uncle he barely knows; the organization involves, among other things, talking cats used for surveillance. Shenanigans ensue. I found it slight but fine; could have used more kaiju.
Tobias S. Buckell, A Stranger in the Citadel: The cornucopia provides everything the people need—but access is controlled by the Musketeer, who knows the secret of making gunpowder, and his family. The cornucopia is provided by the gods in return for giving up reading; thou shalt not suffer a librarian to live. Then a librarian comes to town, changing the Musketeer’s youngest child forever, as she learns just how many lies her life was based on. It’s an intriguing read.
Richard Kadrey & Cassandra Khaw, The Dead Take the A-Train: There aren’t actually any NYC subway scenes in this book, sadly, which features an evil law firm in the vein of Wolfram and Hart with just a little bit of the Laundry Files (yes, we support eldritch horrors, but the ones that eat us more slowly than the other kinds). Julie, the protagonist, starts out dissipated with drugs and alcohol but sobers up quickly as her friend/crush Sarah arrives in town with an abusive spouse on her heels; meanwhile, Tyler, Julie’s evil ex, is trying to use her demon-slaying talents to rise in the law firm’s hierarchy. It ends too rapidly and with lots of sequel fodder, but it was fine while I’m waiting for more Stross.
Shelley Parker-Chan, He Who Drowned the World:Sequel/final book in duology; the Mandate of Heaven is real in the sense of producing a flame/giving mystical powers, though many different people can have the Mandate at any given time. Our main protagonist (who largely identifies as a woman throughout this book) is one such holder and schemes and fights to take the Empire for her own. It’s a little rapid, after giving basically every major character the same arc: the world wouldn’t let me be who I was, so I’m going to control/destroy the world while hating the fact that I am embodied (and sometimes hating women too). It’s supposed to be hopeful that the new Emperor focuses on changing the world instead of destroying it, though it’s not clear how much she understands the difference. I read it quickly!
Christopher Rowe, The Navigating Fox: I was hoping for an extension of the noir world from Rowe’s short story about talking/sentient animals, but this was good too—in a world dominated by a quasi-Roman empire but also full of communicating animals, a fox takes a priest, a woman who hates the fox for being involved in her sister’s death, and various hangers-on in search of the gates of Hell. It is dreamlike and compact, and I quite enjoyed it.
Best of British Science Fiction 2022, Donna Bond, ed.: The pandemic obviously affected fiction, but not necessarily in obvious ways. It would take a better analyst than me to explore the ways in which environmental collapse sf now differs from its 70s version (emerging from an era in which US rivers would catch on fire from pollution), but a number of these stories are about either escaping, or not escaping, a ravaged world. Many others are about some kind of machine intelligence, which I expect we’ll see even more of next year.
Stephen King, Holly: Holly tracks down serial killers (their identity is immediately disclosed to the reader). This was interesting for refusing some of the obvious (cliched) next moves but then immediately suggesting other, also refused possibilities. It’s also interesting for being set during 2021, and covid precautions function as defining personality and setting the context just as much as King’s past and ongoing use of brand names. (He even has an author’s note about it, as if he himself wondered.) I wonder if other novelists will also do this or whether it will be like the flu pandemic was, with authors writing around it.
Ben Aaronovitch, Winter's Gifts: Set in the US as an FBI agent tries to figure out magical shenanigans; it felt like Aaronovitch was trying to stretch himself, but the absence of all the familiar folk made itself felt.
Alix E. Harrow, Starling House: Southern Gothic. Opal is raising her little brother, who’s too smart for their little, racist town. Trying to earn enough money to send him to boarding school, she takes a cleaning job at Starling House despite it and its owner’s bad reputation. But others want the secrets of Starling House and will stop at nothing to get them. It’s totally fine, and has some things to say about specifically Southern forms of wounded memory, but I would have liked it better as a teenager.
Jason Pargin, Zoey Ashe Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia: There’s a mayoral election coming up, and Zoey has to be involved because one of the candidates is a fascist, Trumpy type who threatens ruin both physical and financial. Unfortunately the opposition is corrupt too. Also, a prankster keeps breaking through her security, which she finds unaccountably hot. It’s a good continuation of the series with plenty of absurd action and discussion of how to live in an imperfect world.
Christopher Golden & Amber Benson, Slayers: A Buffyverse Story: Good to hear the familiar voices, but the writing was sadly not good.
Seth Dickinson, Exordia: I loved this, and have very little to say that isn’t spoilery, but it feels like Dickinson let go of some fear and just wrote without embarrassment. It starts with Anna, a victim of the Iraqi genocide against the Kurds, forced to commit atrocities of her own, living now in the US with no real hopes or dreams. Then the alien Sssrin comes, claiming that their stories match (which is a pretty bad sign, actually, and also that Sssrin explains that her entire species is doomed to hell). Then comes the EMP, and then the men with guns to take Anna back to her homeland, where an alien spaceship has appeared. It is about colonialism, and about how the world ending is not unusual for some humans, and also about physics and trolley problems and compromises and tragedies that are too big to comprehend and therefore humans (and aliens) can inflict them. I dunno, read it!
Alexis Hall, 10 Things that Never Happened: Sam is a flailing manager about to get fired by his boss, when an accident gives him a concussion. When his boss misinterprets his momentary confusion as amnesia, Sam decides to go along with it to give himself and his team time before the firing. His asshole boss takes him home to watch over him, and Sam gets sucked into a big family drama. Cue “oh no he’s hot.” Since it wasn’t sff, I was not super into it, but the banter was very bantery.
Martha Wells, System Collapse: Murderbot! Murderbot! It’s still just as enjoyable as ever. Murderbot is not over the trauma of getting nearly assimilated by alien tech, but it’s staying on the planet anyway. As with the previous book, the denouement is super fast, but at this point we’re here mostly for the relationship talks and excitement over media (Cruel Romance Personage needs to be its own fandom stat). I wonder what Three’s perspective on this all would be.
Rebecca Kuang, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023: Isabel J. Kim’s Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist, starring Cool and Sexy Asian Girl, is great. The others were fine but I don't really have anything to say about them.
Terry Pratchett, A Stroke of the Pen: Selection of short fiction published in newspapers; a couple of Discworld predecessors (a guy who is selling inedibles at a price that is cutting his own throat, for example) but nothing vital.
Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory: Kyr is a happy fascist, proud to be the best girl in her cohort. But when that doesn’t bring her the combat assignment she expects, she disobeys—she knows she has more to give the fight against the aliens who destroyed almost all of humanity. Very rapidly, she learns about the other abuses that shape her existence. She’s a reflexive homophobe—sex without reproduction is unhelpful to the human cause—though she’s willing to work with her brother’s gay friend. Her attitudes change over the course of the book, including for spoiler reasons, but the spoilers are possible because, while Kyr likes being strong and powerful, she also wants to do good—and as her definition of good changes, her concerns widen. Tesh upends the game several times during the book, which helps speedrun Kyr through her development, and I ended up having a good time.
John Scalzi, Starter Villain: A man inherits a huge criminal organization from an uncle he barely knows; the organization involves, among other things, talking cats used for surveillance. Shenanigans ensue. I found it slight but fine; could have used more kaiju.
Tobias S. Buckell, A Stranger in the Citadel: The cornucopia provides everything the people need—but access is controlled by the Musketeer, who knows the secret of making gunpowder, and his family. The cornucopia is provided by the gods in return for giving up reading; thou shalt not suffer a librarian to live. Then a librarian comes to town, changing the Musketeer’s youngest child forever, as she learns just how many lies her life was based on. It’s an intriguing read.
Richard Kadrey & Cassandra Khaw, The Dead Take the A-Train: There aren’t actually any NYC subway scenes in this book, sadly, which features an evil law firm in the vein of Wolfram and Hart with just a little bit of the Laundry Files (yes, we support eldritch horrors, but the ones that eat us more slowly than the other kinds). Julie, the protagonist, starts out dissipated with drugs and alcohol but sobers up quickly as her friend/crush Sarah arrives in town with an abusive spouse on her heels; meanwhile, Tyler, Julie’s evil ex, is trying to use her demon-slaying talents to rise in the law firm’s hierarchy. It ends too rapidly and with lots of sequel fodder, but it was fine while I’m waiting for more Stross.
Shelley Parker-Chan, He Who Drowned the World:Sequel/final book in duology; the Mandate of Heaven is real in the sense of producing a flame/giving mystical powers, though many different people can have the Mandate at any given time. Our main protagonist (who largely identifies as a woman throughout this book) is one such holder and schemes and fights to take the Empire for her own. It’s a little rapid, after giving basically every major character the same arc: the world wouldn’t let me be who I was, so I’m going to control/destroy the world while hating the fact that I am embodied (and sometimes hating women too). It’s supposed to be hopeful that the new Emperor focuses on changing the world instead of destroying it, though it’s not clear how much she understands the difference. I read it quickly!
Christopher Rowe, The Navigating Fox: I was hoping for an extension of the noir world from Rowe’s short story about talking/sentient animals, but this was good too—in a world dominated by a quasi-Roman empire but also full of communicating animals, a fox takes a priest, a woman who hates the fox for being involved in her sister’s death, and various hangers-on in search of the gates of Hell. It is dreamlike and compact, and I quite enjoyed it.
Best of British Science Fiction 2022, Donna Bond, ed.: The pandemic obviously affected fiction, but not necessarily in obvious ways. It would take a better analyst than me to explore the ways in which environmental collapse sf now differs from its 70s version (emerging from an era in which US rivers would catch on fire from pollution), but a number of these stories are about either escaping, or not escaping, a ravaged world. Many others are about some kind of machine intelligence, which I expect we’ll see even more of next year.
Stephen King, Holly: Holly tracks down serial killers (their identity is immediately disclosed to the reader). This was interesting for refusing some of the obvious (cliched) next moves but then immediately suggesting other, also refused possibilities. It’s also interesting for being set during 2021, and covid precautions function as defining personality and setting the context just as much as King’s past and ongoing use of brand names. (He even has an author’s note about it, as if he himself wondered.) I wonder if other novelists will also do this or whether it will be like the flu pandemic was, with authors writing around it.
Ben Aaronovitch, Winter's Gifts: Set in the US as an FBI agent tries to figure out magical shenanigans; it felt like Aaronovitch was trying to stretch himself, but the absence of all the familiar folk made itself felt.