Reviews and Comments

The Sleeping Car Porter is kind of an ensemble farce with subtle paranormal elements, experienced through a porter for a sleeping car on a transcontinental voyage across Canada.

The porter is a gay (or bi?) black man in Canada in the 1920s, and there's a strong focus on the various aggressions and disadvantages he's exposed to in light of that.

Weird and enjoyable.

Mara@hachyderm.io - Reminder that my book—Rust Atomics and Locks—is freely available online: marabos.nl/atomics/ 😊

(If you read it, please leave a review on www.goodreads.com/book/show/63291820-rust-atomics-and-locks)

#rustlang

hachyderm.io/@Mara/112955923628217214

The #SFFBookClub pick for August 2024

If you loved Service Model, or wanted to love it but wished it was more "serious", I can also recommend The Mechanical

This is one of the ones you can tell he had fun writing.

The tone is all across the spectrum, from farcical to bleak to heartwarming, and the writing is characteristically delightful, with lots of flippant throwaway lines.

I love that @janellecshane@wandering.shop got a well-deserved mention in the acknowledgements.

I have encountered the word "yeeted" in a sophisticated literary novel, and now I can die happy

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS has been out in the world just over a year. As of today, it's collected NINE award nominations (today's news: the Dragon Award shortlist is out) The Ignytes and Dragons are now open for public voting! See the post for how to vote. vajra.me/2024/08/05/ten-toes-in/

wandering.shop/@vajra/112912787089558217

Exordia is a wild, weird scifi novel with snappy writing and a surprising level of commentary on genocide, imperialism, and american exceptionalism.

cw: so much violence

I'm not sure how many more Anna puns I can withstand

The setting is unique and interesting, and I loved the final segment, but I felt like it went off the rails at around 50% and just kind of floundered around for like … half the book.

Philip K. Dick once called Dhalgren “the worst trash I’ve ever read,”

This gave me an immediate and urgent desire to read Dhalgren

The July 2024 #SFFBookClub pick

Today, I learned en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/haecceity

This is not my usual type of read - in fact, I almost put it down early on, but then I identified so hard with the first Minjun chapter that I stuck with it.

It's very much like a version of Bookshops & Bonedust without the fantasy trappings and the larger plot - characters with a variety of personal issues come together around a bookshop.

It's well written (and well translated! which is not a given!) - what I'm really missing is something actually happening. The characters each go through their different journeys of personal discovery and/or growth, but nothing is materially different at the end of the book. 🤷