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Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter: A nested narrative in which a struggling academic tries to use her great-great-grandfather’s newly discovered journal as a tenure project; the journal mostly recounts the story told to him by a Blackfeet, Good Stab, about how Good Stab was turned into a vampire and battled his maker over the course of decades, while also seeking revenge on, among others, the journal-keeper. The twist here is that vampires gain the characteristics of what they feed on. Good Stab discovers that only if he feeds on Blackfeet can he keep feeling—and being perceived as—Blackfeet. So he does. It’s a grim story with a lot of different levels of horror, and the academic’s likely mental breakdown is just the cherry on top.
T. Kingfisher, Illuminations: A ten-year-old girl from a family of magical artists accidentally unleashes a magical art-eating monster and has to figure out how to stop it. It’s fun and would be good for younger kids, like Kingfisher’s magical baking book.
Dessa, Tits on the Moon: Tiny book of poetry; my favorite title was “A Rose By Any Other Name Will Have to Rebuild Brand Awareness: Proverb Updates for This Week’s All-Staff Meeting.” And I loved “Counterfeit,” which discusses attributes of real jade, cocaine, LV handbags, “superwhite tuna,” and female orgasms, does a lovely pivot to love. “She was well aware that she had enough love to last only two years, three if rationed. But in her reports to you, she made no mention of the deficit. And although she now casts herself as a fellow hapless victim, it’s a con./She is a forger like the rest.” Plenty of other wordplay, as in her lyrics.
Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped: Two of the actors on a ST/Farscape-esque show have hated each other for years even as the fans yearn to see them together. But a family crisis, and a desire for better PR, leads them to take a road trip together, and it turns out they’re both deeply neurotic—the POV character more than the other—and also really into each other. The POV character has serious anxiety and moderate OCD along with migraines, and these are not fixed by being in love. Picked up because of the fandom connection, and you will definitely recognize the fannish interludes.
Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author: The most powerful parts of this novel are from the perspective of a Nigerian-American author who has an improbably big hit with her sf book about post-humanity robots; the least powerful for me were excerpts of the novel itself, which did not persuade as to its hit potential. (There are also “interviews” with other characters, which didn’t work particularly well for me because they didn’t do much to complicate the author’s story.) But the author’s story kept me going—she lost the use of her legs in a childhood accident, which put her in a particular place in her controlling family; she spends most of the novel fighting their attempts to keep her there, often in understandable ways that get predictably bad reactions. More plausibly, her novel brings her in contact with tech bros—white guys who share her interest in eliminating dependence on accidents of the body (which also reads as an interest in eliminating dependence on other humans and even on the planet)—whose offers entice her. It was messy and interesting to have a character well aware of how race and gender shaped what the world was willing to allow her make common cause with tech bros because they offered her otherwise unavailable opportunities. I didn’t like her and she’d despise me, but I liked the challenges she presented as a character.
Kai Butler, Shadow Throne King: Third in an as-yet-unfinished series about the assassin who falls in love with the emperor he was sent to kill. Fully united in purpose, the emperor and his consort attempt to destroy the empire from within, sparking rebellions and dealing with neighboring states. It’s burbling along fine; I will likely read the next book.
T. Kingfisher, Snake-Eater: In a near future US with conservation zones, a young woman flees to her aunt’s desert house in order to escape her psychologically abusive partner. As she learns to live with herself again, she encounters desert spirits, including one that seems oddly hostile, then oddly … solicitous. It’s a nice story about rebuilding self within an accepting community.
Laura Elliott, Awakened: Warning: I hated this. It’s about survivors of an apocalypse they caused. The protagonist became a researcher because of her mother’s chronic post-viral pain and disability, which doctors dismissed, and there is a great line to the effect of “Somehow a patient’s sanity always becomes an issue just at the point a doctor’s knowledge stops.” For some reason, she becomes part of a project to put chips in people’s brains to let them avoid the need to sleep. But they didn’t put in an off switch, and—a few years in, after millions (?) of people have gotten the implants, in part because you now can’t get a good job without being willing to do it without sleep—somehow all the implanted people turn into bloodthirsty monsters and society collapses. (The “all implantees become monsters” is the one thing that gets a bit of an explanation.) The surviving key figures in the invention retreat to their billionaire backer’s tower and rely on the extensive food supplies there. Some years (?) later (the handwavy worldbuilding annoyed me because I already didn’t like the style), a Sleepless man arrives at the researchers’ tower with a traumatized woman—and he’s capable of speech. He plays cat & mouse with our narrator, who insists to the others with her that it’s wrong to experiment on him without his consent … but doesn’t really do anything about that except conclude that the humans are also monsters. She finds him attractive, possibly because our narrator is a rootless, guilt-stricken mess, or possibly because he’s got psychic powers that let him read everyone’s mind or emotions or something. I found the style almost unbearably pretentious; I wanted to know more about the Sleepless, not about the protagonist’s musings on responsibility or the mind/body relationship. I should have paid more attention to the labeling of this as “horror” because I was unhappy that the Sleepless were essentially magical (rapid healing, bodies change back to human standard immediately upon death, etc.).
Tasha Suri, The Isle in the Silver Sea: Highly recommended! In an alternate Albion where stories are embodied by avatars who are repeatedly reborn, the existence of a story can determine the existence of the land on which it occurs. Although foreigners are distrusted, and the island is surrounded by forces that cause new arrivals to forget their past languages and stories, one of them ends up an avatar for a story close to the core of the kingdom: the Witch, who will eventually corrupt the Knight and then they will die together. But the Witch doesn’t want her fate—and someone is killing avatars. It’s a great read about stories: the desire to fix them, the need to change them, and their relationship to actual lives.
Jim Butcher, Twelve Months: A quick read: Harry is recovering from the loss of Murphy, trying to build a relationship with his daughter, and trying to navigate his new betrothal to Lara Raich of the White Court of vampires. I thought it did a good job of depicting grief and handling the ramp up of Harry’s powers.
Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me: A woman wakes up in the world of her favorite fantasy series—naked and with no resources. (I finally understand isekai and how it is a subgenre of portal fantasy!) Maggie is a classic Andrews heroine: deeply competent, prickly, and quickly entangled with hot, dangerous men. This is long, fun, and satisfying, though I am eager for the sequel.
T. Kingfisher, Illuminations: A ten-year-old girl from a family of magical artists accidentally unleashes a magical art-eating monster and has to figure out how to stop it. It’s fun and would be good for younger kids, like Kingfisher’s magical baking book.
Dessa, Tits on the Moon: Tiny book of poetry; my favorite title was “A Rose By Any Other Name Will Have to Rebuild Brand Awareness: Proverb Updates for This Week’s All-Staff Meeting.” And I loved “Counterfeit,” which discusses attributes of real jade, cocaine, LV handbags, “superwhite tuna,” and female orgasms, does a lovely pivot to love. “She was well aware that she had enough love to last only two years, three if rationed. But in her reports to you, she made no mention of the deficit. And although she now casts herself as a fellow hapless victim, it’s a con./She is a forger like the rest.” Plenty of other wordplay, as in her lyrics.
Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped: Two of the actors on a ST/Farscape-esque show have hated each other for years even as the fans yearn to see them together. But a family crisis, and a desire for better PR, leads them to take a road trip together, and it turns out they’re both deeply neurotic—the POV character more than the other—and also really into each other. The POV character has serious anxiety and moderate OCD along with migraines, and these are not fixed by being in love. Picked up because of the fandom connection, and you will definitely recognize the fannish interludes.
Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author: The most powerful parts of this novel are from the perspective of a Nigerian-American author who has an improbably big hit with her sf book about post-humanity robots; the least powerful for me were excerpts of the novel itself, which did not persuade as to its hit potential. (There are also “interviews” with other characters, which didn’t work particularly well for me because they didn’t do much to complicate the author’s story.) But the author’s story kept me going—she lost the use of her legs in a childhood accident, which put her in a particular place in her controlling family; she spends most of the novel fighting their attempts to keep her there, often in understandable ways that get predictably bad reactions. More plausibly, her novel brings her in contact with tech bros—white guys who share her interest in eliminating dependence on accidents of the body (which also reads as an interest in eliminating dependence on other humans and even on the planet)—whose offers entice her. It was messy and interesting to have a character well aware of how race and gender shaped what the world was willing to allow her make common cause with tech bros because they offered her otherwise unavailable opportunities. I didn’t like her and she’d despise me, but I liked the challenges she presented as a character.
Kai Butler, Shadow Throne King: Third in an as-yet-unfinished series about the assassin who falls in love with the emperor he was sent to kill. Fully united in purpose, the emperor and his consort attempt to destroy the empire from within, sparking rebellions and dealing with neighboring states. It’s burbling along fine; I will likely read the next book.
T. Kingfisher, Snake-Eater: In a near future US with conservation zones, a young woman flees to her aunt’s desert house in order to escape her psychologically abusive partner. As she learns to live with herself again, she encounters desert spirits, including one that seems oddly hostile, then oddly … solicitous. It’s a nice story about rebuilding self within an accepting community.
Laura Elliott, Awakened: Warning: I hated this. It’s about survivors of an apocalypse they caused. The protagonist became a researcher because of her mother’s chronic post-viral pain and disability, which doctors dismissed, and there is a great line to the effect of “Somehow a patient’s sanity always becomes an issue just at the point a doctor’s knowledge stops.” For some reason, she becomes part of a project to put chips in people’s brains to let them avoid the need to sleep. But they didn’t put in an off switch, and—a few years in, after millions (?) of people have gotten the implants, in part because you now can’t get a good job without being willing to do it without sleep—somehow all the implanted people turn into bloodthirsty monsters and society collapses. (The “all implantees become monsters” is the one thing that gets a bit of an explanation.) The surviving key figures in the invention retreat to their billionaire backer’s tower and rely on the extensive food supplies there. Some years (?) later (the handwavy worldbuilding annoyed me because I already didn’t like the style), a Sleepless man arrives at the researchers’ tower with a traumatized woman—and he’s capable of speech. He plays cat & mouse with our narrator, who insists to the others with her that it’s wrong to experiment on him without his consent … but doesn’t really do anything about that except conclude that the humans are also monsters. She finds him attractive, possibly because our narrator is a rootless, guilt-stricken mess, or possibly because he’s got psychic powers that let him read everyone’s mind or emotions or something. I found the style almost unbearably pretentious; I wanted to know more about the Sleepless, not about the protagonist’s musings on responsibility or the mind/body relationship. I should have paid more attention to the labeling of this as “horror” because I was unhappy that the Sleepless were essentially magical (rapid healing, bodies change back to human standard immediately upon death, etc.).
Tasha Suri, The Isle in the Silver Sea: Highly recommended! In an alternate Albion where stories are embodied by avatars who are repeatedly reborn, the existence of a story can determine the existence of the land on which it occurs. Although foreigners are distrusted, and the island is surrounded by forces that cause new arrivals to forget their past languages and stories, one of them ends up an avatar for a story close to the core of the kingdom: the Witch, who will eventually corrupt the Knight and then they will die together. But the Witch doesn’t want her fate—and someone is killing avatars. It’s a great read about stories: the desire to fix them, the need to change them, and their relationship to actual lives.
Jim Butcher, Twelve Months: A quick read: Harry is recovering from the loss of Murphy, trying to build a relationship with his daughter, and trying to navigate his new betrothal to Lara Raich of the White Court of vampires. I thought it did a good job of depicting grief and handling the ramp up of Harry’s powers.
Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me: A woman wakes up in the world of her favorite fantasy series—naked and with no resources. (I finally understand isekai and how it is a subgenre of portal fantasy!) Maggie is a classic Andrews heroine: deeply competent, prickly, and quickly entangled with hot, dangerous men. This is long, fun, and satisfying, though I am eager for the sequel.