Reviews and Comments

Ignore All Previous Instructions is an incredibly 2026 book. Ostensibly, this is at some nebulous far future time, but topically, it's about a world where generative "ai" has been normalized and is often required to avoid bias, whereas writing your own stories is illegal. Reasonably following from this, being trans is also criminalized and queers are closeted. The most improbable science fiction element here is that there is a functional hyperloop.

The backbone of the plot is that a trans man gets back in touch with his autistic ex in order to get her involved in a heist. The pacing is split with flashback chapters from when both characters were much younger in school together. Unfortunately, I found the pacing to be quite slow—there's just not enough elements and including flashbacks thins this out even further.

Not to forcibly put a label on it when this book isn't pitched as a YA book, but it's hard for me to see it as anything but YA (derogatory). It's mostly a story about childhood relationships and friendships. And, not to disparage young readers, but it just felt like there was so much heavy-handed moralizing here. even as I agreed with all of it.

And I should mention here that I myself am not autistic; and I would be deeply curious if this novel would resonate much more strongly with somebody who is. I think it just felt so much of Kelli's experience felt so over-told, even for me. I think the parts that landed the best for me were the "Prompt" chapters where Kelli is imagining herself as the character Orlando that she writes, and using that internalized script as a way to figure out how she wants to act. I also think the titular ending of the book works quite well too.

On the writing front, it struck me as weird that Kelli largely feels positive about the "turn-taking" (with the language model) writing process that she is accustomed to using. I was expecting more of a critique here. It's especially surprising reading this novel after reading this nonfiction piece from Sightless Scribbles about the effect of using "ai" on confidence and writing. In contrast, this piece hits SO much harder: sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-colonization-of-confidence/

Large language models are clearly the villain of the story, but honestly they're just not villainous enough! Sorry, my hate knows no bounds but also objectively there's just not enough here. There's no face or name in the corporation to blame. Kelli's boss at the llm company is supportive of her even as he is a cog in the machine. If there's a heart of the novel, it's anger over the effects of somebody being forced to use an llm for therapy when they needed something much more than that.

It has to be tough to write something that's topical, but it feels like this is a case of science fiction not extrapolating far enough past our current dystopian reality.

A tale about grad students travelling to hell to save their advisor. I found this to be overall a lot of fun. As you might expect, lots of "grad school is hell" themes (but also ironically "hell itself is a school"), as well as getting at the purpose of suffering and questions of asceticism.

Overall, this novel is a linear trip through classic circles of hell. However, it feels more about the slow backstory reveal about Alice, Peter, and the many-flavored abusive nature of Professor Grimes.

If I had complaints, I would like to never see the prisoner's dilemma ever again. I do think also the ending is just a little too pat for my tastes, but it's a satisfying final confrontation all the same. It felt like there needed to be a little bit more depth or a little bit less length to the book, but I wonder if the structure made it hard to edit out particular parts of the journey.

This was the key to flourishing in graduate school. You could do anything if you were delusional.

I especially love the idea that magic requires self-delusion and therefore magicians are quite good at it. And because of this, Alice also believes in many things that are not true, such as meritocracy and professors caring about you.

This was a fun and quick novella. The protagonist is an older autistic woman. She's only a community leader so that she can interact with other people through the structure of work (and not small talk).

It's fun to have previously read the short story Red_Bati from the Dominion collection, which has some similar explorations about the difference between spirits and code. It feels like this story is building on that one.

What I like the most here is the worldbuilding of a solarpunk federation of self-sufficient villages that have thrown off capitalism. I enjoyed the arguing and organizing, and the digression into how to handle broken social norms in a distributed yet highly connected world.

I don't think there's any answers for our world, as this is a science fiction story: the federation is predicated on magical 3d printing technology and the solution to the story's plot feels equally fantastic. All the same, it's refreshing to see the exploration of this kind of hopeful future.

Shroud is one of those books where I quite enjoyed it, but I wish it had a little bit more depth to it. It's a fun survival adventure on an alien planet story along with some capitalism dystopia on the side.

I was initially quite excited that the main character was not a scientist, and instead a conflict mediator. How refreshing! However, because their role is having to understand and represent everybody's work to the boss, they secretly are actually a hyper competent generalist across all disciplines. Hmm, ok I guess.

I'm not sure I feel about the alternating light and dark chapters. I think it's good to get the perspective of Shroud and to poke fun at how ill-fitting the humans at dealing with threats on the planet. However, having the alien perspective defuses some of the mystery and tension of the first contact elements here. (Funnily enough, Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace has somewhat adjacent aliens and also uses some similar alien point of view interludes. On top of that, they both also end on extremely similar notes. I might have enjoyed Shroud more had I not already read such a similar book before.)

In terms of Adrian Tchaikovsky books, I feel like Alien Clay is a much tighter book thematically. The alien biology there felt very intertwined with the story about a repressive regime. In Shroud's case, I'm not sure that the capitalism dystopia felt as connected and it left the novel feeling more thin.

Crossing a border creates an instance. Creating a border manifests the capability for instances.

Isabel J. Kim's Sublimation is a huge recommendation from me. It's about nostalgia, borders, and forks in our lives. The plot hook in this story is that crossing a border can leave a copy of yourself who stays behind. In this world, it's a natural phenomenon caused by the psychological effect of leaving a place you can't return.

Is there a word for a genre that's somewhere between a story about coming of age and a story about a middle aged crisis? If so, this is it: twenty year olds discovering what they want out of life, who they are, and confronting some of their childhood and family trauma.

Sublimation is also a novelization of the incredible short story Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self; the opening section of the novel and the short story are very close to each other. The novel also shares the writing style of historical and cultural asides interjected into a much more personal tale. I appreciate that the novel also introduces a pair of additional viewpoints that are instances of the same person. Although, it also makes the wild choice that both points of view use second person pronouns in their narration. I could argue a fifth season-esque textual reason for this choice, but mostly just mentioning it.

Unsurprisingly, a novel about borders is one that leans on plot points about immigration, H1Bs, threats of ICE, and government control. In a plot sense, it's also against pushing back against that control from government and tech over the choices that people can make. I think the resolution of the technology half of the plot felt a bit weak to me, but the personal half of the final section of the book is so strong. I love how Soyoung's grandfather's house is such a touch point, and the resolution for the characters just resonates so well.

Instances having to work together is a staple of modern media, although the trope only became codified outside of folktalk and myth after the advent of the rail system in the western world.

Apologies for the digression, but one refreshing part of this novel is how integrated instancing is into the world.

There's so many delicious digressions about how the world works. There's discussions about how young people can instance. I love the academic analysis around Odysseus instancing but Telemachus (maybe) not. America's history is rewritten to be about accepting instanced immigrants. I especially love the rewriting of other myths, other stories, and webnovel and telenovela tropes around instancing.

A folk tale style story about an armored dragon slaying knight, using her mirrored armor as a mask for her gender and her family's origin. Yeva is tasked to go search out the truth around the rumors of a dragon for a greedy emperor.

There's a lot of good stuff here. I do appreciate how Lady Sookhee literally and metaphorically disrobes Yeva's protective armor. I like the tension of Yeva feeling like a foreigner in a land that she is airquotes from.

It's not that a plot needs to surprise me, but I also think there's a point where when I know all the story beats that are coming (and feel like I've read that kind of story before) that I need something else to make the story feel fresh. Even the queer relationship here isn't quite enough to make this novella really stand out for me.

An elevator pitch: unnamed robot and snarky cybernetic dog sidekick in post-apocalyptic, post-war New York get pushed out of isolation while confronting their past and figuring out who they are and who they choose to be

Despite being a story about war and destruction, this is a warm and hopeful story at its core. The protagonist accumulates a found family across the book. It's about folks helping each other and rebuilding where they can. It's about grief and coming to grips with your past.

If you've read Suzanne Palmer's The Secret Life of Bots, you'll have a sense of her delightful writing style around robots. The whole book feels incredibly quotable and it's hard for me not to post even more quotes than I already have.

I think what didn't work for me is that it was almost too cozy? It's not Monk and Robot, don't get me wrong. But new characters continue to show up and immediately join the party without much discussion or even internal contemplation. Also, despite (or because of) adding additional characters throughout, I felt like only the protagonist had real depth. The ending had some elements that felt a little bit too pat to me in a way that didn't leave me satisfied and similarly some of the dialogue made the hopefulness feel a little bit too much told rather than shown.

All that said, the vibes were really good and I enjoyed this a bunch. If you need a hopeful book about robots, would recommend.

Radiant Star feels most analogous to Provenance—a standalone novel in the Radch universe, with new characters and a new culture. Unfortunately, I just don't think this book holds together in the same way Provenance does: it doesn't have as strong a thematic through line; the climax of the book is weaker; largely, I just wasn't as intrigued by the characters.

There's plenty of intriguing pieces here like local religious politics and practices, food shortages and uncertainty, friction with Radchai culture, a little bit of gender spice, and a slightly unhinged Justice. Sadly, all of it is a bit too disconnected such that doesn't cohere into a satisfying whole.

I greatly fear that if I spent the next paragraphs detailing the operations of Ooioiaa's water treatment and reclamation facility (or, more accurately, facilities—there were of course three separate systems, one for each precinct), you would find it tedious. And even if you, specifically, were to say to me, "But no! I am fascinated by the water treatment systems and would in fact appreciate the information," I would strongly suspect that you were something of an outlier.

The tone of this book is set by a wry, omniscient narrator (historian?) who takes their time to poke fun and highlight hypocritical hierarchs and the naïve rich. It's such a personal tone, that I was honestly a little surprised that we don't really learn anything about them.

Ann Leckie is still an author on my "I will read everything they write" list, but that also means that my expectations for them are really high. I think this book is fine and I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's not one that resonated or will stick with me either.

Yoon Ha Lee blurbs this as a book about "linguistics and consequences" and it's hard to find a better phrase to describe this novella.

The brief plot setup: Ro is a linguist who is training to sync up and jump into the body of a Star Eater, the only biological beings that can harvest the meridian element used for interstellar travel. He manages to do it against all odds, but things are not quite as he expects in his new body.

"It gives you no hesitation, the theft of another's self?"

Ro paused. That was the part he tried not to think about. As far as anyone knew from reports of the jumped Linguists, the leap took over the original Star Eater completely. At least for the Ponto lifetime.

What's interesting to me is that this is a story about learning that you're partially complicit in larger atrocities that are now your responsibility, even if the source of them is not (entirely) your fault. It's about the lies you repeat enough until they become true. It's about language and colonialism. I also don't think the book has any easy or pat answers here.

Just your usual post-apocalyptic, mushroom-infused, body horror dystopian tale that gets at abuses of power, gender, and community.

The book is a slow reveal from the perspective of Nicole who doesn't know all that much about the world, and has been sequestered for her whole life. It lets the reader assume things about the world, only to pull out the rug later. The pacing is dreamy and internal; I was pulled along by the writing and the small worldbuilding reveals, but I could see this not working for others.

I'm silent as all of this comes off me, as I am cut down to the size and shape of a wife. I watch my clippings roll into the drain in slippery trails, gathering streaks of ash.

The first two pages start off incredibly strong, with Nicole's mother cutting off all of her fungal growths and literally cutting her into the shape of a wife before her marriage. The language of the whole book is quite visceral, especially when talking about fungi of any variety. The cover art is incredible, and honestly feels quite representative of the writing itself.

Thematically, there are certainly some well-trodden dystopian paths here around the control of women, but the way mushrooms are literally and metaphorically incorporated makes this book feel quite fresh in its own way.

(I added the content warnings from the author's web page to the bookwyrm description, and they're worth looking at.)

This is an unexpected novel about disability and family and writing and fame and stories. Subjectively, I don't think it all cohered in the way I wanted. The story within a story felt particularly heavy-handed, and it weakened the impact of the titular theme's exploration. I can imagine it landing for other people, but it's all just a bit too loose for me.

There is a meta element near the end, which I think the reader can choose how to interpret, although the real answer feels besides the point. It feels there to reinforce the book's larger point about what death of the author means—Okorafor is stating here that "author, art, and audience [...] create a tissue, a web, a network". The fact that this is such a personal work for Okorafor along multiple dimensions only adds to this feeling, as they seem inseparable from the book itself.

There wasn’t another button to not accept. And if she didn’t tap it, maybe the doors wouldn’t open, and she’d end up talking to customer service for an hour. Besides, she was alive and the SUV had done its job. When one got into an autonomous vehicle, one knowingly accepted certain risks.

This is a minor point, but there is some wild techno-optimism on the page. It's hard to tell how much of this is a deliberate nod to science fiction's own default optimism, and thus is more of a storytelling device to embellish the "realistic" point of view. I could especially see this with a given reading of the meta element at the end.

There's just so much of this opinion woven throughout: early in the novel, Zelu uses an automated vehicle: "she could be like a robot with built-in wheels ready to carry her whenever she wanted." I thought the above quote about being forced to click accept to escape said automated vehicle might be the beginning of a more critical arc, but it was not to be. On top of that there's also ai robot exoskeletons, a (creepy to my eyes) billionaire with a private spacecraft company, and experimental space vaccinations (to add chromosomes for essential amino acids) that Zelu accepts without hesitation. This book isn't really a story about tech cynicism though, no matter how much of that I am bringing as a reader. If anything, this optimism ties into how Zelu's family continually denies her agency and respect and are always airquotes protecting her from the perceived dangers of the unknown and novel.

This tech optimism is so at odds with my own opinions that it's quite jarring. I can't read this unvarnished optimism abstractly—I am compelled think about the "tissue, web, and network" of capitalism and exploitation that these technologies are contextualized in, even as they create possibilities and accessibility.

I have such mixed feelings about Daughter of Crows. It's a GRIMDARK (imagine a heavy metal font and growly voice saying this) fantasy story that centers around a school for assassins.

This book is driven by carefully deployed character reveals. It's told from the perspectives of the aging woman Rue (hiding her assassin past), the childhood of Eldest (in a gaslighting abusive childhood manor), and the violent assassin academy via Bek (100 girls enter! three leave!). It's not clear to the reader who all these perspectives are, or if they're the same person, or how they might be connected. This uncertainty gives the author space for surprises and concealing information and connections from the reader until the right moment. It's nothing I haven't seen before, but I think it's quite effective.

The shifting perspectives also help with the pacing. Maybe I'm a bit exhausted by magical school stories, and over the course of five years of assassin school, we only see a couple of scenes per year, rather than this just being a school-driven story. Moreover, the other perspectives often provide immediate context for the next chapter of a different perspective, making me more invested in the different story arcs.

On the negative side, the worldbuilding is quite weird. Suffice it to say that all of humanity has been relegated (or chased?) to the two islands of Gog and Magog, and the rest of the world is unknown. In a religious sense both the furies and Morrigan exist, literally. There are also mentions of Yggdrasil and Christ and Saraswati. It's very big on the triple goddess idea. Oh yeah, there is also an afterlife ferryman.

There is a part of me that says that if you're going to riff on preexisting myth and stories, then you should pick one and do it well. This hodgepodge of stories feels quite weak. I think the best you can hope for is that this is some alternate/future/virtual world where there is some reveal or reasoning why all of this fits together. Overall, I find myself more skeptical than intrigued.

The other thing I think makes this book weaker is the existence of necromancy. Sure, there's a good moment early. However, despite loads of people dying in this book, the main character literally dies several times and is sometimes even chased into the afterlife by other characters. It feels a little too much like protagonist plot armor.

I think this all makes it tough to recommend, even if there are bits I really enjoyed.

I found out about this book because I saw mcc talking about it.

Slow Gods is a weird little book. It's about space politics, focusing around an impending supernova event that is going to wipe out many planets. It's from the perspective of Mawukana, who is just a pilot and seemingly exists more on the edges of the story, and yet is also ultimately at the heart of things.

I wonder whether it is possible to exist as a person at all without measuring yourself against others. I wish sometimes that I was strong enough to be myself in company without company turning me into something else. I wonder who that person would be, and am sometimes grateful never to find out.

Maw is also an odd, monstrous protagonist. He is not particularly driven, and is affected strongly by the expectations of others. It's not that he doesn't have feelings, but more that many times he needs to be gently nudged into action by the people around him.

As a narrator, Maw also likes to periodically intersperse some anthropological digressions on the nature of ritual, or arcspace pilots, or gender across various societies. It can be a blunt instrument for worldbuilding, but it's in character for Maw as a curious academic. It's also always just long and infrequent enough to fill in some details or whet my own curiosity, and this style works for me.

Ultimately, this is a story about grief and death and connection. It's a caricature of capitalism and the ineffectiveness of ways that countries (fail to) confront capitalist empires. I was gripped by it the whole way through and quite enjoyed it.

I will change, as everyone changes throughout life. We change when we learn new things, when we meet new people, when we move to a new place.

What We Are Seeking is an incredible book.

Let me pitch this to you by comparing it to other touchpoints. It's got a similar anthropological and gender focus to Left Hand of Darkness. There's alien biology, transforming yourself to meet it, and (some) humility about colonialism that feels reminiscent of To Be Taught if Fortunate. The protagonist comes from a planet without marriage nor social homophobia and gets into an Ethan of Athos-y situation when he is forced onto a planet where most people are married and have strict het gender roles.

It's also a story about being the only person carrying your own culture with you in a community. It's got first contact and linguistics. It's about queer solidarity in the face of oppression. It's about the meaning of vows. It's about religious trauma. It's a story about third genders and the cost of "driving a wedge into other people's heads to pry open a space to live". There's just so much going on. This is not even getting into the worldbuilding that spills over outside the immediate plot about other planets and earth and the ship culture and the aiyi and and and

It's a slow, meandering, interpersonal sort of book. It's prone to cultural monologues. Structurally, it's a story that weaves a number of self-reinforcing parallel threads that all come to a similar point. Thematically, this book centers on the idea of change, and each of these story threads ends with taking a step into a new and destabilizing future together. We see the friction and the feelings and the decision point, but the reader isn't handed any certainty about the future. It's a form that lands with deep emotional resonance (especially that exquisitely worded final sentence), but it's also one that doesn't end with the typical level of plot closure you might be expecting.

It's not perfect, it's sometimes clunky, and it's not for everybody, but this is a book that is just going to rattle around in my brain for a long while.