Reviews and Comments

Defiant is the final fourth book of Brandon Sanderson's Skyward YA series.

Things I Enjoyed: * brought the series back around full circle to moments from book one * superb Gran-Gran moments * maybe the real friends were the hyperslugs we met along the way

This book was ~ok for me, but the pacing here didn't quite work for me; this is a character-driven series and so the focus on Spensa's emotional journey makes sense, but plot-wise the final book involves an incursion or two by the main squad, some [spoiler] with Spensa, and then we're right at the last[*] battle to wrap up the Superiority and the Delvers all in one. It's all just tied up a little too quickly for a four book series.

If I had to rate the series, the first book was a lot of fun, the second book brought in larger worldbuilding that I enjoyed, the third book went off the rails in a way that didn't work for me, the novellas in the middle here told some stories that wouldn't have fit otherwise, and the fourth book didn't quite bring it all back together with the satisfying closure I wanted.

(Maybe I shouldn't be comparing books to each other in a review, but if I had to recommend one other YA science fiction series that ended this year about the power of friendship and the horrors of space war, I would recommend Charlie Jane Anders' Unstoppable instead on pretty much all fronts.)

[*] I wanted to make a "last and first battle" joke, but book two has some of a Superiority/Detritus fight at the end even if I remember it mostly being about Delvers

A City on Mars is an enjoyable and easy to read non-fiction book about the (non)feasibility of space habitation. It's got a comedic-but-serious tone, which is not unexpected as half of the authors are responsible for the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic strip. Lots of digressions and breadth, but all enjoyable and accessible.

Despite space being really cool, I am personally went into this (and left!) with extreme skepticism about the feasibility of humans living in space any time soon. (It just feels like billionaire escapism from real problems that they are disproportionately responsible for causing!) There's probably some confirmation bias in my enjoyment here, as a warning. This book also treats several billionaires with much more respect than they deserve, although it's not fawning over them either.

We're pretty good at shooting things into space at this point (even if it's expensive) but largely past that I think I was amazed at just how little we know. We haven't had people in space for very long periods of time at all. We don't really know how radiation in space affects people long term. We have no idea if/how birth could work in low/no gravity. We have extremely little understanding of creating successful closed ecosystems. We certainly aren't doing a good job keeping our own planet going well.

One unexpected neat part was how much it went into space law (with a lot of deep sea and Antarctica analogies). It's not a topic that I feel like a lot of similar books have talked about, but it's incredibly depressing how exploitation-heavy all countries seem to be leaning at the moment. (Space socialism when?)

But we have not moved beyond conflict. Our ability to harm ourselves vastly outweighs our ability to protect ourselves. Settling the solar system will likely increase the danger, and we will not be leaving for distant suns anytime soon.

Even with my space skepticism, I had previous thought of space exploration as value neutral (or at least competing for resources that could have been used for better things), but this book convincing me that putting more people in space (and competition over space resources) would probably be actively dangerous for earth itself, especially given the lack of agreements (and peace) we currently have on earth.

I enjoyed everything out of Small Wonders Issue 2. Usually magazines with a bunch of pieces are hit and miss for me, but Small Wonders continues to consistently resonate for me. This one was especially good.

Here are my three most favorites from this issue (with extra trans bias this time):

• Guttation, Transformation by Devin Miller

"I don't think it's weird to want your body to be different than it was before," Lex says, wry smile beautiful.

A story about support in changing your body to become something else, through the help of plants. Not a trans story, but big trans vibes.

• The Only Way Out by Louise Hughes

I shouldn't be the one who has to leave my life behind.

Annie drives a taxi and hears the call of people who need to escape; she brings them to a reverse Lethe bridge, where everybody else forgets about them once they've crossed over it through the fog.

• Thrifting With the Snow Queen by M.J. Pettit

Marnie seeks a return, to regain Paradise. For me, on Saturdays, we are already there.

The Snow Queen and her servant, trapped in another realm, go thrifting together to try to find what they need to get home.

I deeply enjoyed System Collapse--it was a nice followup book to the events of the previous one and I don't think could stand alone. Murderbot has certainly been through a lot, but the last book was particularly intense and it makes sense that there's lasting effects from it. It felt like a smaller and more internally-focused book with less snark and more trama, but I am here for that.

To me at least, Murderbot and its series feels like the embodiment of vulnerability avoidance: handwaving, the first few books seemed like Murderbot coping with learning it cared and people caring about it; Network Effect was about """relationships"" (with ART and 2 and 3); this book in particular explored the vulnerability of trauma and being partially human (or at the very least having some fleshy parts). I think it helps to better situate Murderbot as a construct--not a bot, not human, but somewhere in between with the problems of both.

On the surface, this certainly looks like a shift in Murderbot's competence. (It's certainly a shift in its self-perceived competence; Murderbot both seemingly does a good job while also beating itself up for not being perfect; it's hard to see past the narrative bias.)

Previous Murderbot dealt with situations and humans out of its control (still does but used to too), but in this book there's an extra struggle of coping with its own [redacted]. Given that it has people around it that care, it also has to deal with the shame of these people covering for it too. Dr. Mensah dealing with her own trauma during the last book felt like a nice foreshadowing here for what Murderbot is going through here.

Bonus joy moments: * the documentary! * ART being a jerk to both Iris and Murderbot * ART and Holism butting heads

Now this was the sort of pirate queen adventure I was expecting when I had read Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. (That book is historical pirate politics and internal musings about power and this book is more fantasy adventure; I liked them both, they're just different.)

Amina al-Sarafi is a middle-aged pirate queen who gets blackmailed out of retirement into "one last job", gets the criminal gang back together, and ultimately faces off against a sorcerer and his sea monster (as if the cover doesn't give you this hint). (Also, gender stuff! You love to see it.)

It's set in the same world as her Daevabad trilogy although you don't need to have read those books at all. (You might appreciate a single character briefly appearing as well as the lawyer parrots, but that's about the extent of it.) My opinion here is that this is a fantasy pirate heist book and so is a bit more accessible than a fantasy djinn politics book (even if here it means that the world feels more like a stage and the side characters get a little bit less air time).

All in all great fun, highly recommend especially if you liked SA Chakraborty's previous work.

It's extremely hard to only pick a couple of pieces of short fiction out of Small Wonders Issue 1, but I'm going to limit myself to my three most most favorites:

• CoverLetter_Version5 by Courtney Floyd

My advisor says it's perfectly normal--mage candidates pouring too much of themselves into job applications their first time on the market can lead to all kinds of grief.

"You're manifesting your own potential futures," she assured me when this all started, "They'll fade with time."

For me, applying for a jobs always feels like stretching yourself into the dream of some potential unrealized future you; this short story manifests that idea by having these future yous be literal.

• Sunnyside Daycare Employees' Chat Log, Post Alien Takeover by Amanda Helms

I don't have to listen to you tell me I should be happy for losing my job just because some other alien colonizer didn't eat me.

Continuing the through line from the previous issue of awkward alien invasions, this is a comedic short story about bad alien management who didn't know what they were getting into.

• Not Set in Stone by Gerri Leen

How long can you love me in this isolation?

This is a poem about a gorgon trying to cure themselves with the help of a dear friend; this line in particular hit me right in both the covid and the chronic health feelings.

Paladin's Faith is the fourth book in T. Kingfisher's sad paladin romance fantasy series. I really appreciate the genre mix: the fantasy adds interesting context to the world (and often some mystery being tracked down) as well as a compelling plot, while the romance bit adds the genre comfort of having a rough idea of the story arc that is likely ahead. The book's details aren't predictable other than at its broadest strokes of both romance and fantasy foreshadowing, but it's an echo of the coziness you get in rereading something you've read before but can't quite remember.

Overall, all of these books are just solid enjoyable reads for me and I'm excited for the rest of the series. I think specifically this book competes with the first one for being my most favorite so far.

I have been informed secondhand via birdsite that this is apparently book four in a seven book series which I hadn't known up until this point. It makes a lot of sense for this book in terms of the additional worldbuilding setup that it does for the future, as well as the slow spooling out of detail about the Saint of Steel.

Small Wonders is a new sff flash fiction and poetry publication. It's hard to review any sort of magazine as a whole cohesively. Like a lot of publications they put up their work online later so you can go read this all now for free if you want. My overall feeling about issue 0 was that there were quite a few gems; here's a few of my favorites:

The Mirror Test is a story that sticks to your bones. It's ostensibly a story from the point of view of a dog getting a traumatic bath, but it's also a dissociative story about identity and perception and communication.

The Lumberjack's Guide to Dryad Spotting is a story about queer resilience and follows gay lumberjacks in a camp where people hunt reclusive dryads to kill and sell.

Finally, I also liked this metaphor in this snippet from this poem:

this is a place where she can finally be at ease in a body made resilient through years that've thickened her like a tree trunk

Jinn-Bot of Shantiport is an exuberant action-filled science fiction novel with Aladdin and ~Murderbot vibes[*]. The narrator here is Moku the flying bot, who in service to squabbling siblings Lina and Bador, the other two main characters. Bador is the monkey bot brother with dreams of escape to space and of bot liberation, while carrying a lot of anger at how his family treats him for not being human. Lina's the daughter of failed revolutionaries who works hard to avoid surveillance and has her own ideas of how to make the city better. And that's all before the lamp granting wishes shows up.

This book reminded me a lot of Suzanne Palmer's Finder book; both are set in a city with warring factions, there's some weird alien technology, and both are stories filled with banter and action. They are not the same story by any stretch, but there's a lot of parallel vibes and I think if you enjoyed one you'd probably enjoy the other.

Extremely minor asides: I appreciated that although the book focuses on Shantiport for the whole story, there's still a taste of politics in the larger universe. I also enjoyed the fact that this felt like a third person perspective book, and then halfway into the first chapter the book busts out a first person pronoun for Moku with no warning. Love that introduction.

My disappointment here, if anything, is that the denouement of the story let me down. Some bits were overexplained (Lina) and the story opened up too many loose ends that didn't get tied off. On top of that, several of the final chapter's developments felt surprising and out of place for both Bador and Moku. It just (subjectively, for me personally) didn't quite give me the closure and satisfaction that it felt like the book was leading up to. Maybe this would land differently for other folks.

(A few extra bonus spoilery thoughts in this post too.)

Overall, this was still great fun and I'm glad I read it.

[*] (Loooook, I hate always saying that any book where there's a non-human narrator who looks askance at human behavior and has a bit of a wry tone is "like Murderbot", but it's mildly true here? You can't really say "it's like Star Trek's Data" because that involves a lot of "but that's not logical, Captain" and that's not really the vibe; Murderbot, Emergent Properties, and this book all are about bots dealing with emotions while also being non-human. Murderbot definitely deals with its own trauma and emotional avoidance in a way that these other stories aren't really about at all, but there's just still some similar "wry non-human outsider" vibes here that I'm not sure how to gesture at non-referentially even as they're all very different stories.)

The Year Without Sunshine is a hopeful sf climate change short story/novelette from Naomi Kritzer. The premise is a small Minneapolis neighborhood bands together to try to take care of each other after an off page disaster that covers the sky in dust and ash.

I really appreciate how refreshingly optimistic Naomi Kritzer's science fiction is. I felt this way too about her short story Better Living Through Algorithms (or the CatNet stories), especially in terms of starting with something that is often a dystopic story idea and looking at it with a different light.

Nghi Vo's online short story On the Fox Roads was a delight. It's about Midwest bank robbers who acquire a stowaway, but also ultimately about found family and authentic selves.

At this point Nghi Vo is on my "will read anything and everything" author list.

The Hollow Places is a horror novel by T. Kingfisher. The premise is that newly divorced Kara goes back to live in her uncle's curio museum; when a mysterious hole in the wall appears and goes to what seems to be another dimension, she and her barista friend investigate. Overall, horror is not usually my cuppa but this was an enjoyable creepy ride (and I'll read anything by T. Kingfisher at this point).

But he groaned and stomped around the hall for a few minutes, then said, "Okay. But this is how people die in horror movies, you know."

"You're not the teensiest bit curious?

"I'm incredibly curious! I've just also seen horror movies!"

This book is intensely creepy at times, and the horror elements all the more unsettling for being fuzzy and unseen and unknowable. I wish a little that there was a little bit more character development or reveal (such as a more tight thematic coupling of Kara's backstory or marriage with the present events). However, I really enjoyed both the banter and also the centering of the museum as a welcoming and protective home rather than playing it just for creeps.

The author's note said that this was based on the 1907 short story The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood and I wish I had read that first so that I could understand some references that would have passed me by otherwise.

Feed Them Silence is the best fiction I have read all year.

It's a near-future sf novella about a researcher who is using new technology to neurologically interface with a near-extinct wolf pack, in order to "become in kind" with them and understand how they make their way in a tough world. Thematically, this novella is dense and chewy and interleaves so much into such a short length. It's about relationships and power dynamics, the fantasy of truly understanding animals (and other humans [and ourselves]), but also about global warming and the objectivity of research.

For me, this is science fiction at its best, using a what-if future science to ask troubling and incisive questions. Even as it presents its own conflicting opinions, it asks far more questions than it has answers for. The novella also walks a tight line in generating compassion and understanding for the protagonist Sean, even while she makes poor decisions and even while she is being (justifiably) emotionally eviscerated by her wife.

This TOR interview with Lee Mandelo was extremely worth reading and added a lot of context for me about how the author thinks and the book's background. I think it has some minor expectation spoilers, but can be read independently. That interview itself quotes from this interview with Donna Haraway which was also worth reading and gets more into the communication fantasy of understanding animals.

River of Silver is a companion book to the Daevabad trilogy with a number of short stories from alternative perspectives (or alternate versions of the novel) that didn't make sense to include in the main trilogy. I don't think it makes any sense to read if you haven't finished the trilogy, but it's a nice side piece to the series to flesh out the world without diluting the (already long) trilogy.

And while I wanted to set them in a fully realized world among a rich constellation of friends and family, lovers and enemies, all with their own histories, quirks, and agendas, I did decide early on that this particular story would focus on Nahri and Ali, and later Dara.

I have a great affection for my side characters, however, and a firm belief that writing things out is the most organic way to let stories grow and breathe.

It's interesting to read this perspective from the author after my own previous comments of "wanting to see more from the side characters". This series did an exceptional job of having all of its characters feel very fleshed out and real (even if you don't see what they're up to off page). Part of the reason for that clearly is that SA Chakraborty took the time to write these stories even if they didn't make it into the book at the end.

I won't list everything, but I think my favorite stories here are: * Jamshid and Muntadhir!!! * a better conclusion to the Nahri/Ali romance plot * perspectives from Manizheh and Ghassan that give their characters a little more depth than the series has room for

This third book was a great send-off to the Daevabad series. The ending did a good job of coming all the way back around (in several ways) to how the whole book started. It filled in historical details that previous books been teasing. Mostly though, it was an emotionally satisfying ending that neatly wrapped up the stories of the major characters. I think a lot of the politics I enjoyed from the earlier books fell away into more personal dynamics and larger plot happenings, but I think that shift worked here for a final third climactic book.

My single favorite part of this book were some of the new side characters. Fiza!!! Sobek!!! Mishmish!!! Fiza deserves her own book, just sayin'.

Overall, this series is not some Sandersonian book where details about the world and magic are eventually explained to a wikiable degree. At the end, there's still quite a few unanswered questions about history, the world, and especially around magic itself: the ring, the nature of several resurrections spoilery handwave, the lawyer parrots. In the end, these elements are ultimately not the focus of this story (in the way the three major characters are) and ultimately the ambiguity and uncertainty don't get in the way of the story that's being told here. (Although, folks who want these kinds of details might be disappointed.)

I wrote about the last book that I wanted more Aqisa and Zaynab and so I was delighted that my ebook had some extra bonus scenes with them that were edited out of the book. It makes me excited to go read River of Silver and get a little bit more taste of this world and the characters before I'm done with it.

I have some additional comments that have mild spoilers, which I will put in this reply.

cc #SFFBookClub for November sequel month