Reviews and Comments

A conversation on Mastodon prompted me to read this novella. It's a coming of age story on some future flooded planet with a history of angels that used to exist, and is largely about disillusionment with religion (specifically one with Christian overtones).

(This story is also surprisingly accessible for Greg Egan; I think this is my own recency bias in reading several of his novels over the years. There's an escalation of the science aspects over narrative as the years go on (Clockwork Rocket was not for me), but Oceanic is more like what I expect from his earlier work.)

Just as women and men were made indistinguishable in the sight of God, so were Freelanders and Firmlanders. (Some commentators insisted that this was literally true: God chose to blind Herself to where we lived, and whether or not we’d been born with a penis.)

It's got a little bit of tangential gender stuff going on, but it also feels quite dated to me. Maybe I just forget what 1998 looked like. The main detail is that people's bodies in this universe transfer a penis from one body to another during piv sex. There's some social gender around this (e.g. "who brings a bridge to this marriage?", although this attitude is considered dated by some characters), but when this comes into play for the protagonist it feels more like a virginity metaphor than a gender one. This mechanic seems like it should have a larger social impact in terms of surrounding cultural context, but it functions more like fun unrelated worldbuilding in this story.

This body horror pregnancy trans dysphoria story was... a lot, but it was also raw and real and quite good.

Crane is part of a local cult, run by a hive of sentient flies and worms, and when he gets pregnant the hive insists he carries the child to his utter distress and terror. It's visceral and disturbing--full of trauma and abuse, self-loathing and self-injury, and shitty choices in a shittier world.

This review seems like a recapitulation of my feelings after Witch King: I was gripped by the world, have mixed feelings about the book as a whole, wish more characters had depth, and was disappointed by parts of the ending. It's not to say I didn't enjoy it (and maybe it's just that my expectations were too high) but overall it was "fine".

One thing I really enjoy here is that we get into some really good Martha Wells fantasy ruins. Witch King and Queen Demon both follow in the path of City of Bones (my favorite Martha Wells fantasy story) and some of the Raksura books as well. I'm not sure what makes these so appealing, but I think there's something about her use of dangerous and creepy structures full of unknown danger that she does a great job with.

This book continues with interleaved narratives from the past and present. (As an aside, I do wonder if this will be a trilogy and the past narrative will cover all the way up to the present narrative in the first book.) The first book interestingly had both narratives in the same Summer Palace location at different times, which echoed nicely. This book's present timeline foreshadows some of the dust witch history, but otherwise feels quite disconnected.

I continue to be somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness of this structure for this story; there's not much tension about what's missing in between the two parts and they are not particularly great foils for each other. If the book weren't committed to this structure, some flashbacks to more moments with Arn would have gone a long way to making some emotional moments feel more impactful.

But maybe that's a larger problem of feeling the book is a bit muddy. Both halves of the first book ended with wanting to unburn the world, but I don't know if I'd say that's the story here. Is working to destroy the Hierarchs truly unburning the world? If there's any consistent theme, it's coming together to resist authoritarian rule of any sort, but even that is maybe a stretch.

The characterization also continues to feel pretty shallow for everybody who is not Kai and Bashasa. Tenes and Sanja especially feel like they need more screen time and characterization or reason for being with the rest of the party. Nightjar and Highsun similarly feel like they're important characters but we hear and see quite little of them despite them being involved in pivotal moments.

The ending is my biggest disappointment. At least the present narrative carries the tension, but the past narrative just ... elides it? Maybe this is just a big editing decision here to just cut out action to keep the book at four hundred pages, but it feels like there could be such an emotional contrast to Kai's rescue in the Summer Halls and Kai's actions in Descar-Arik and all we get is a small concluding moment with Bashasa at the end. Additionally, there feels like there's some uh pretty momentous reveals at the end of the present narrative and they just get buried :drum: in the final moments of action and they're gone almost as soon as they appear. Both halves end unsatisfyingly, each in their own way.

I will almost certainly read the next book, but I really hope it can tie everything together in a more satisfying way.

I think time travel stories where the past can be rewritten ultimately feel like nothing matters and it makes me hard to care about it as a reader. On the positive side, I think it's always interesting to have a villain who can rewrite the past (hello, Saint of Bright Doors). I also think there are a lot of fun details about slightly alternate universes and the ending goes very Millenium Actress in a delightful way.

There is clear setup for future books here, but much of what was revealed explicitly felt already clearly foreshadowed (to me at least) and the bonus worldbuilding on top of the first book felt thin (or at least less interesting).

I will continue with this series for sure, but this was a little bit of a disappointing second book.

One sentence: loving couple does mystery investigation during a magic-driven industrial age

Things I enjoyed about the book:

• established caring relationship between two very different people, who understand each other's quirks and needs (reminds me some of MRK's Glamourist Histories)
• investigators who aren't cops (and are also anti-royalist)
• setup for future books, but not in a way that detracted from this one
• interesting magic system that also has social implications
• an industrial age powered by fuel from portals to a hell dimension (and requiring people to fight back monsters trying to come back through said portals)

I know "romp" is overused as a fiction description, but this is a romp if ever I've seen one. It's grippy action scenes and compelling characters, but more than that a romp for me is fiction that calvinballs its way to undiscussed locations or adding new worldbuilding details with very little foreshadowing. I think this can be done poorly in a way that feels shallow or disconnecting, but here I was entertained and compelled.

This may be my own categorization, but there sure have been a lot of books recently that are written in an interconnected mosaic structure. When reading one of these, my brain goes into a similar mode as a good mystery novel, but instead of pinning suspicious plot elements to my cork board, I'm instead sifting out small fragments of imagery and theme. It's not unlike the feeling when you see a lot of online posts talking indirectly about the same current event, while you are uninformed and trying to feel out the shape of the subject from only its subtooted outline.

I start with this context because I have read a lot of these mosaic books lately, and it's tricky for me to distill my feelings about this book without making direct comparisons. Primarily, Remember You Will Die suffers from coming in the immediate shadow of the emotional punches of Rakesfall and In Universes (both of which were winners of the 2024 Otherwise Award). How High We Go in the Dark from 2022 also sits in this mosaic space and casts its own long shadow, especially given that I think it is a stronger thematic treatment of adjacent ideas.

Remember You Will Die is a book told (largely) through obituaries ranging from a mildly speculative version of our past and into a very science fiction speculative future. However, it also has some additional texts from etymology and web searches. Broadly, it's about death, art, and meaning but it's also about AIs, invasive species, and parenthood.

Nerds of a Feather has a much better review that is an incomplete list of recurring motifs found in the novel. Its text is almost more of a compelling piece than the novel itself, and I highly recommend reading it instead of my own blabs.

What this book suffers the most from is its choice of form: the obituary format. To its credit, it is hard to imagine it doing better, and many bits are quite compelling little narratives. What doesn't work is that an obituary is largely detached observation of the legacy of a person's life. You get the shape of a person but at an emotional distance. It feels impersonal, and when the obituary quotes something the deceased has said, it often feels jarringly like the author trying to directly tell the reader something. This obituary structure thus becomes both too subtle and not subtle enough simultaneously.

There is an immediate story in the connective tissue of this novel about an overprotective parent and a child's escape from their smothering grasp. But, in the end I am left with only the outlines of these characters and very little of their heart; ultimately it makes the whole novel seem shallow and hollow when it feels like it should instead be the core.

The condition of living is eventually leaving.

Endings are an outline, a frame, a shape. An unfinished painting hangs nowhere.

A solid fairytale story of two sisters, songs, and a murder. Amal El-Mohtar's writing here is excellent as always, and the world and characters felt fresh.

(This is unrelated to the writing itself, but a general gripe about book length meta expectations and publishing choices. I would really prefer if half of this ebook was not filled with a preview of other works. The murderer in this story was unmasked """halfway""" through the book and I was suddenly wondering about the pacing and where the story was going to go from there, but it just ended instead. If anything, my expectations left me with some bonus disappointment. It would have been a worse story for sure had it not ended where it did, but I was intrigued by the possibility.)

The shtick: intelligent robots traumatized by war, capitalism, and oppression struggle together to establish a noodle shop in war-torn, separatist San Francisco.

Other than thinking robots and tube delivery technology, the worldbuilding is a fever dream of the current moment despite being set in 2064: it's got crypto, LLMs, delivery apps, ghost kitchens, slang like "rizz". But it's unfair to take this aspect too seriously; it's not a hard sf novel trying to speculate about the future. At its heart, it's a comfy emotional novel about forming community around food in a ruined future.

It's fluffy, it's fun, it was something I needed right now.

This was a fun novella about 17th century London midwifery where there's a spate of babies being born with monstrous appearances and magical abilities. This is the September 2025 #SFFBookClub pick.

There's a fun angle of respectability politics, of not wanting to be publicly seen as queer so that Sarah can get better midwife clientele (and survive as a widowed woman), but also taking the angle of her having to cover the parts of herself that are uncanny. (Sure, sure, I am a sucker for the metaphor of queer as monstrous.) There's also a strong gendered metaphor of Sir Christopher Wren, creepily representing science and men cataloguing the world (and thinking they truly know it) versus the midwives having their own knowledge of other worlds and of magic.

Overall, this book met my expectations for exactly what I thought it was going to be in a good way. I love a solid novella that can fit in good worldbuilding and plot and some character development without leaving me feeling like there's elements missing or it's rushed. It feels like the kind of story that would make a good movie. (This is all especially in comparison to previous novellas we have read for #SFFBookClub, like Countess.)

I have some thoughts about the ending, which I will put in a separate spoilered post.

This is a short, pulpy sci-fi action novella about a trans scavenger who picks up a mask that contains the mind of a dead woman seeking revenge. It's the first in a duology.

The worldbuilding of this story is that everyone wears masks that can modify their physiology, communicate mentally with the wearer, and also run low level tasks. It's got sort of a YA over-explained vibe where these masks have names like "Mark I Rabbit" or "Mark V Chameleon", and yes they're all animal themed and yes they give stereotypical animal powers. Everybody, even scavengers, seem to use this one corporation's masks (who are obviously the bad guys). Honestly I just wanted to know more about the world. Where's the DIY culture? Why are the masks all animals? Do folks switch them out frequently? Do mental effects (such as prey animal masks) persist after using them? Where in this universe are the furries who are self-actualizing with masks? How did this culture start? Are there holdouts?

The ideas were fun and fluffy, but the writing and execution let me down. It's a plot driven story and I felt a lot of the chemistry between Wylla and Sable was told and not shown. Why are you so impressed by or attracted to each other, other than the fact that you're the main two characters in a story? Ace trans woman space scavenger with telepathic friend should be my cuppa.

It is weird for me to have a romance with a touch averse and desire averse trans woman culminate in desire for kissing and some virtually imagined bodies. Given that Sable only exists in the mind of Wylla, it felt like a missed opportunity for something more interesting here. Where is the chance for plural selves-love and Wylla learning to share in Sable's appreciation for their own body? Or an emotional moment that's not physical? The romance moments in the book just felt so out of character for who I had been told Wylla was. There's so much unexplored disappointing potential in the space between a trans woman who has worked hard to have a body she wants but who doesn't have desires, and a woman without a body who does have those desires.

(I would also love to hear any opinions from plural systems about how this book felt; it feels like it almost could be a story about choosing to adopt a headmate, but I'm not quite sure it is either.)

I read this book on a blind rec from a friend, and it turned out to be a delightful romance book.

It's about learning to find joy again after the grief of loss. It's about Feyi learning to believe her art (and herself) is good enough. It's about the different ways people can love each other and be friends with each other.

Also, it's a hashtag bi4bi age gap romance where Feyi falls for the sexy bisexual Michelin chef father of the guy friend she's not quite dating. Needless to say, it's messy, but it feels believably and justifiably so.

It was amazing how stupid teenagers could be, Walden thought, with enormous, grieving fondness. She knew she wouldn’t change them for the world.

The Incandescent is a fun novella about a magic boarding school and its demon summoning problems, but from the perspective of an older teacher.

This book could have been a "gosh those teenagers" story, but I love that the narrator Saffy herself is an adult who remembers her own teenage failures and is able to bring a lot of compassion as a result. And also, she makes the same mistakes her teenagers do--she internally comments on their relationships while she's having her own awkward romance; she also makes mistakes from the same place of hubris that they do.

Because an elite education was an investment in power. Magic was the least of what you gained at Chetwood. What mattered was the power to walk the walk and talk the talk, to have your résumé picked out of the pile and the interviewer already speaking your language.

One component I liked about this book that I feel like gets skipped in a lot of stories like this is the worldbuilding around the privilege around attending a private magic school. Given that the narrator Saffy went to the school herself and then is now a teacher, I appreciate that we get the opposite of this in the marshal Laura Kenning who is shocked that kids can live in the postcard environment and feel like it's normal, all because they have rich parents.

(In the books about magic schools department, I think A Deadly Education does this really well too, although that book is more about how outside wealth and privilege reflect on standing inside the school and at graduation, but that also makes sense given its student point of view rather than the teacher perspective here.)

No sensible woman over the age of twenty-five felt anything but dubious in the face of a smiling posh chap with good cheekbones.

This book has a romance component, but it's pretty minor. Saffy is a workaholic and primarily the book is about her relationship with her work and her school and her past. If anything, I appreciate the romance more than a lot of other books. Saffy and Laura are staid and awkward in a way that feels authentic, and I will admit that I do like the progression of professionally butting heads to an eventual appreciation of each other's talents.

ALSO, let me repeat that the main character is nicknamed """Saffy"""; her two main love interests are: (1) butch lesbian with a motorcycle and a sword, and then (2) smarmy posh guy. We'll leave it to the romance experts to figure out where the cards fall on this one.

Just your average socialist vampire novella about climate change, featuring a comfortably cynical leftist podcaster discovering his own values and what he'll do for them.

(also, lots of drugs and a shitty narrator who thinks he's a nice guy to trans women)

I will go on the record and say that I generally dislike vampire stories. I watched Sinners recently with some friends and I hated how much it was like "hey it turns out it's vampires, thank goodness everybody has already internalized vampire tropes so we can immediately deal with them". Leaning on tropes is such a lost worldbuilding opportunity.

Needless to say, I was delighted about the ideas in this book around vampires being naturally long term thinkers, concerned about how the mass of humanity was treating the planet. But also about being vampires. In some ways, this reminds me of the setup of the Philip K. Dick short story Human Is, where a kind alien replaces an abusive husband and the wife knowingly pretends that he is still her husband. But, this story is also a larger authoritarian dream, of wishing powerful beings will show up and parentally take care of the irresponsible children of humanity who can't be bothered to care for each other or the planet.

It's very much a book of the current moment, and despite everything ends with some much needed, unexpected optimism about possibility and change.

Incredible.

We've read a number of books for #SFFBookClub that have a short story structure with interconnecting themes and worldbuilding (How High We Go in the Dark, and Under the Eye of the Big Bird) but In Universes is my clear favorite among all of these.

Structurally, this book is a series of short stories with a single point of view. Each story takes place in different adjacent-ish branching multiverses, some of which veer into more magical realism and externalized metaphors while others are more realistic. Thematically, this book is about dealing with internalized homophobia, trauma, depression and grief. But it's also about (queer) possibility and transformation and acceptance.

It's interesting to me just how many things I underlined (virtually) while reading this book. Delicious turns of phrase. Devastating sentences seemingly directly targeted at my feelings. Interconnecting thematic ideas everywhere. I found myself utterly engaged in its writing and imagery.

What is most striking about In Universes is that even when some chapters veer off in fantastical directions ("my mother is a horde of bees", "I am pregnant with an octopus", horse telepathy), there is such a coherent emotional progression for Raffi across the entire book. A lot of similarly structured books suffer from meandering too far afield with their ideas that they fail to come together, but In Universes feels so intentional with how it deploys its imagery and pacing. If anything, the final part of the book, consisting of a single chapter, resonates the strongest of all of them and I love the way it reprises the previous stories to bring everything together.

My general feeling was that this book was ok but not great. The plot hook here is that Annie Adam's great aunt Frances suspects she's going to be murdered and leaves the estate to whomever can solve the mystery first.

I enjoyed the multiple perspectives of the past (through Frances' journal) and the present mysteries coming together. That said, I'm never a huge fan of foretold prophecies driving parts of the plot, or the flirting with the police. I'll probably stop here and not read the sequels.