Reviews and Comments

This is the second book in SA Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy. This is a strong book two for a fantasy trilogy, and I quite enjoyed it. Rather than just Nahri and Ali being the sole point of view characters, this book also brings in a third perspective that adds some more insight into outside events. I love that Ali gets some space to find new friends and discover a little more about what's important to him. Nahri really comes into her own as well.

The weakest part of this book for me are that the antagonists seem increasingly flat. I wish there had been some point of view chapters (even just one or two) from Ghassan the king to understand the incredibly horrific things that he both does and threatens to do.

If anything, I just wanted more from this book, although that's probably just a sign that I really enjoyed it.

It's definitely a weighty fantasy tome with a fairly small cast, but I still wanted to hear more about peripheral characters, especially Zaynab and Aqisa who are off page a good bit of the book. Honestly, my favorite (but also infuriating) non-pov character in this book was Muntadhir. He goes through such dramatic but believable shifts over the course of the book, not just in his relationship with Nahri but also with his sibling Ali. The tonal shift between Muntadhir's petty archery competition, the sibling argument in a closet afterwards, and then finally the heroism archery parallel at the end is just chef's kiss.

Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak is the second book in Charlie Jane Anders' Unstoppable YA sf trilogy. This is an incredibly solid second book of a trilogy. (This book is up for a 2023 Lodestar award as part of the Hugo awards.)

I think part of it is that Tina takes a backseat and Rachel and Elza get more of the spotlight. (Aside from the book covers sequentially being one, two, and then three headshots indicating which number of the book it is, this second book cover features Rachel and Elza vs the first book cover showing Tina, which I think is also an indication of the emphasis here.) This book has yet more uncomfortable feelings and processing and relationship renegotiation and grief and trauma.

I honestly enjoyed this book better than the first, because it's thematically very tight. It says it right on the tin, but dreams being bigger than heartbreak is woven through everything. There are so many dreams that are crushed (artist, pacifist, princess librarian(!), space diplomat) and everybody has to pick themselves up through heartbreak and keep on keepin' on. There's a large cast of characters and I love how much care and growth each of them get.

Other small points I loved: * princess librarian training had big Gail Carriger's Finishing School series vibes * a disasterous polyam-related conversation * "knowledge is pain" really hits home in the age of doomscrolling, along with "if you know the answer, it becomes your responsibility" feelings * Kez gets to be genderfluid and gets new pronouns every chapter

I'm continuing my reread of this series before I get to the new final book in the trilogy. This book has Lin getting square into politics, avoiding assassination attempts, and trying to wrangle all of the islands and stepping into more mysteries that her father has left her. The climax of the book manages to believably get ~all of the major characters together into the same place for a final battle with some murky sides and shifting loyalties. I definitely appreciated the slow dribble of lore and backstory through journal translations; we learn a lot more about the Sukais, the empire, and the Alanga and I am here for all of it.

That said, I forgot just how uncomfortable this book was for me to read. I think it mostly revolves around the way Jovis is being pulled in multiple directions. I think it's one thing for the first book to have Jovis trying to leave the Ioph Carn smugglers (he just wants to leave, they feel betrayed) and being pursued by them while he tries to chase down Emahla. This is fine to me, maybe because he's clear about what he wants and up front about what he's about the whole time, and maybe it's because the book does a good job of writing the Ioph Carn as the creepy smuggling mafia that it's acceptable to spurn.

However, the first book ends with Jovis in a very new position and sworn loyalties, while simultaneously still being in contact with the Shardless Few and also dangerously getting reinvolved with the Ioph Carn. As always, it's not clear to him what the right thing is to do, and so he tries to play it every way. Maybe it's just my own personal discomfort with "lying to people you care about" and "not talking to people you (should?) trust" as narrative tension. Or, maybe it's just super effective on me grimacing emoji.

The third book in this trilogy came out last month so I took the time to comfort reread the first two books before I read the third one for the first time.

Overall, this book was super enjoyable even on a reread. It has four point of view characters, but each of them had their own unique intrigue and appeal. Unlike some other fantasy series, I never felt impatience to "get back to the good character". There's Lin the secretive emperor's amnesiac daughter, in competition with her foster brother to be heir, trying to learn bone shard magic. There's Sand who lives in a haze on a thinly inhabited island who suddenly regains her memories of other places. There's Phalue the daughter of a corrupt governer, who is trying to woo somebody who challenges her liberal "just world" beliefs. Finally, there's Jovis, a navigator turned smuggler, who tried to get out of the smuggling game to chase after his stolen childhood sweetheart, who meets a strange creature and gets increasingly suckered into helping people.

The world-building overall is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the bone shard magic idea a lot, where people inscribe (human) bones with commands on them and combine these shards (into dead animals) to form animated constructs. Big magical programming vibes. The flip side of this system is that these bones come from living humans to power these constructs, and requires all children to "tithe" parts of their skull. When the bones are in use, it drains the health of those people and causes them to waste away. It's a really neat way to think about "magical externalities" and especially who bears them.

When reading through recent Otherwise award winners, while I was looking for a copy of the novella Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon I asked my library to procure a copy of the anthology it came from. I found and read that novella earlier, but my library came through as they do and so I was excited to read through more from this anthology.

I quite enjoyed Marian Denise Moore's "A Mastery of German". This is a story about a project manager being handed a new project, which turns out to be monetizing human memory by transferring knowledge along genetic lines. It brings in how the narratives of past generations aren't recorded (especially in racially disparate ways) and how this project might rectify that, but also digs into some of the perilous ethics of such a thing. The last line of the story almost feels like the first line of some sequel story exploring a terrifyingly(?) changed world in which this technology is commonplace.

I thought Dilman Dila's "Red_Bati" story was a lot of fun; this is a story about Red_Bati, a robot "dog" with too much intelligence who refuses to be relegated to the scrap heap of a mining ship after its owner has died. There's some fun action, and I like the exploration of what the difference between spirits and code is, if humans imagine both into existence.

Finally, Dare Segun Falowo's "Convergence in Chorus Architecture" is a novelette that I would best describe as Yoruba mythology speculative fiction along with horror elements. It's a ride of a story about the village Osupa being invaded by a flying boneship of multidimensional thieves; most of the village is transported away into the sky against their will, and in the end are transformed unexpectedly into something else entirely. This summary elides quite a bit of detail, but reading this anthology was worth it for this gem.

It was interesting to read this book so soon after reading What Moves the Dead. I can see why Ursula Vernon wrote about it in her afterword as being a similar setup and recommended that everybody go read it immediately.

The book itself is immensely creepy and I found it very compelling. The plot setup is that socialite Noemí is asked by her powerful father to go investigate what's going on with her cousin Catalina's marriage in an isolated rural mansion. The creepy atmosphere is spectacularly well done: a decrepit remote mansion, very little electricity, locked windows, strange dreams, family secrets, suspicious local history, the overly strict housekeeper with too many rules (silence! no hot baths! no coffee!), also the household's obsession with eugenics and "superior races".

The book's pacing was excellent for me. There is a slow build of mystery and unexplainable occurrences. Backstory is slowly revealed, but there's more questions than answers and Noemí is not sure she can even trust her own experience. And then, suddenly, there's a gut punch reveal and the action shifts, leading into the climax of the book. The mystery reveal felt exceedingly well-crafted to me; rather than cheapening the spooky atmosphere, if anything everything got even creepier once the mask was off, and it fully justified all of the atmospheric details that led up to that point.

I read this novelette here: www.uncannymagazine.com/article/if-you-find-yourself-speaking-to-god-address-god-with-the-informal-you/

It takes a lot for me to care about a superhero story, but I quite enjoyed this one in which a Superman-esque character is a queer Asian-American weightlifter. This recasting lets the story reexamine some superhero tropes like monikers, how cops treat superheros, and alter-egos. With this as backdrop, I really enjoyed the foregrounded slow-building relationship, and the superhero/queer closet parallels.

Content warnings: racial slurs, police violence

I read this short flash story by John Wiswell here on Lightspeed: www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/so-you-want-to-kiss-your-nemesis/

A cute short story about Zsofia shopping for a sword in order to have a duel with her nemesis (and forbidden love). It has big Utena and I Have the High Ground vibes. I love sardonic shopkeeper Robin speaking for the reader and cutting directly to the point through Zsofia's blushes.

I read this short story here: www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/theres-magic-in-bread/

There's also an author interview linked on that page, which I also enjoyed: www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/non-fiction/author-spotlights/author-spotlight-effie-seiberg/

This short story has two parallel perspectives centered around baking bread, and about feelings of despair and helplessness; one half about struggling with that helplessness in this covid pandemic with home baking, and the other half running a bakery (and involving a bread golem!) in a more historic setting with antisemitic violence and policing.

I certainly have needed a lot of escapist literature in the past few years.  (Even as I write this my brain pops in to say...ok but what if we reread the entire Vorkosigan or Foreigner or Wayfarers series again????) But it's also deeply refreshing to read a piece that directly addresses the pandemic, as well as addressing my own feelings of helplessness when things are falling apart around me and I don't feel like I have any leverage to fix it.

I am not sure the message that even things that don't help still help sinks in for me; not in the sense that the story is ineffective but more I find myself coming up against a lot of internal friction and resistance. Some of this I think is continuing to come to terms with the fact that true solutions to big problems are slow communally-driven systemic changes, and that will rarely feel tangible on a personal level, even if I'm dealing with them as directly as is possible. Deep down, I too hunger for the empowerment of creating my own bread golem and making tangible change in the world.

I read the Beekeeper's Apprentice after seeing it on a list of Malka Older's comfort reads: www.tor.com/2023/03/22/malka-older-chooses-her-top-5-comfort-reads

It's a mystery book originally published way back in the ancient times of 1994. The plot could be roughly described as: what if Sherlock Holmes was a teenage girl and met up with aging half-retired actual Sherlock Holmes, who trains her until she grows over time to be an equal detective partner while they solve mysteries together.

Overall, this was a fun romp told in a style that felt reminiscent of a Sherlock mystery, and I enjoyed the mysteries large and small. I am a sucker for coming of age stories too. I think it's a more interesting pairing to have Sherlock with an equal in deduction to play off of. I also appreciated here that King deliberately posits in-universe this Holmes as being not the same as Doyle's fictionalized version, and so can portray her own (kinder) version.

Content warnings for mild violence, mild misogyny, suicide mentions, police violence, police portrayed sympathetically; there's also an extended romani disguise section with pejorative g-word and theft trope.

Also, this is a minor spoiler for the introduction of the book, but Mary Russell the protagonist and "author" signs it M.R.H. strongly implying that she marries Holmes at some point in later books which is...also a thing.  Look, I understand that they are the only two in their own world of deduction and so it's not implausible and I'm also certainly not here to police fictional age gaps. And yet. It is just a creepy vibe for me, personally speaking, and so I will stop after this first book so I can pretend they are just partners in detectivery forever and will find my own comfort reads somewhere else.

This is a direct sequel to Witness for the Dead (book two of a trilogy) and is another fantasy mystery set in the world of the Goblin Emperor.

Witness for the Dead feels more like a traditional mystery novel, in that the climax of the story is also the reveal of the mystery. On the other hand, this book's "stereo investigation" (in Disco Elysium terms) is roughly sorted out mid-book, and instead jumps into action and many repercussions from there. I think this works really well, but it gives it a different feel overall.

One thing I really liked about this book is how many story threads from the first book were picked up and were an integral part of this story. On its own, I felt like there were parts of the first book that went a bit far afield (even if they were interesting worldbuilding and character development!), but in the context of how they tie back into book two makes the two books together feel much more tightly crafted as a whole. It makes me excited to see where the third book goes.

Mostly, I continue to enjoy these books focused on Celehar as a main character; he has been through a lot and continues to go through a lot, and is carrying a lot of trauma and grief that he is coping with. It feels like he doesn't believe that he deserves nice things even while he constantly goes out of his way to serve others beyond the call of duty; it's just comforting to see so many characters caring for him in ways that he won't do for himself.

This was a fun novella. It's an "animal companion" story of sorts, where it focuses largely on Ester's relationship with her new roc Zahra. It's about dealing with grief, unrequited love and obsession with animals, and the awkwardness of what it means to "train" and "keep" a giant murderbird who could fly away at any time with your heart (metaphorically or literally).

There was just enough world-building and a hint of politics to keep me intrigued about the rest of the world, and the ending quite neatly brought a number of different story threads together to a satisfying finish.

I also enjoyed this conversation between Fonda Lee and Alex Harrow, including a bunch of details about this novella: www.tor.com/2023/04/27/author-interviews-conversation-with-fonda-lee-and-alix-e-harrow/

This book is the first in a new series of novels that Max Gladstone is writing to wrap up his Craft universe. My bias here is that I really enjoyed the previous Craft Sequence set of books, but most of those were one-off stories in a shared universe. This series is pitched as "a tight sequence of novels" and I think it hits that mark far more than any of his previous books. This book's plot stands on its own as a compelling action-filled story about coming home to a place that doesn't want you anymore, but it weaves in personal backstory and trauma (you thought Tara might have been done with) as well as larger existential threats (that are just such a perfect fit for the craft itself).

If you don't know this universe, I think this Max Gladstone interview with Sarah Gailey sums up what the Craft Sequence is all about: www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/sarah-gailey-yelling-books-max-gladstones-hugo-nominated-craft-sequence/

The story revolves around Tara coming back to her small town for her dad's funeral. Everybody in the town deeply distrusts her (she's dangerous and powerful, left them all behind before, but also she tried to raise the dead to help the town once sooo...). I don't think this is a queer story per se (although there are some queer characters), but it is certainly hard for me not to see a story of "community rejection" and "coming home unwanted" as not having a lot of queer narrative parallels (at least personally speaking).

This tension really serves the book well, as Tara works during the book to protect her small town who at times actively hates her. Tara struggles to do better than those around her, to not reenact her past traumas onto her student, and to not just solve problems through power by using other people as things. It feels a lot that this might be a larger theme that is going to run through this series.

There's been some running jokes about Max Gladstone not writing straight relationships well (sorry, Two Serpents Rise), but I feel like the straight relationship here works much better. I think it's a little bit of a relationship of convenience in some ways, but Tara talks about "liking his perspective" which, in a book about craftwork as a way of perceiving things differently, is a very believable value for Tara.

Finally, having read the craft sequence books at least twice, it's hard for me to come unbiased to a "how much do you need to know to enjoy this" perspective. I think if this book sounded interesting, you could start here and it would be more than fine. There's enough explanation of Tara backstory and how the craft works that you will not be lost. There's some mentions of Shale and Seril (only slightly on page), Tara being a priestess-not-really, and some other tiny references that reading Three Parts Dead and Four Roads Cross will fill you in on, but they're not necessary. I think this book would be a great place to start if you haven't already.

I really enjoyed Emily Tesh's Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country novellas, and so was excited to read this (very different) novel. In some ways this novel emits YA sf child warrior action dystopian vibes, but it's a lot heavier than I'd expect a YA book to be.

This is a book where aliens have destroyed earth, and there's a small space enclave of humans set on vengeance at all costs. But, the thrust of the story is that when the protagonist Kyr leaves this community, she discovers that these humans are largely a fascist cult, and this is extremely hard to swallow information for cult poster child Kyr, still set on vengeance for humanity.

It's a book about deprogramming from propaganda and the narratives you've grown up with. It's a book about burying queer feelings in unsafe environments even from yourself. Unsurprisingly, it's also a book with (at times) unlikeable main characters who do some awful things at every scale.

(I will also repeat the book's own content warnings here which are: "contains sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, and ableist attitudes; sexual assault, including discussion of forced pregnancy; violence; child abuse; radicalization as child abuse; genocide; suicidal ideation; and suicide". I really appreciate the trend of books providing their own content warnings these days!! It is nice to not be surprised by these things!)

It's always hard in any story to not to be sympathetic with the main character, but I think you need extend quite a bit of trust towards the author for the first part of the book. Moreover, I also wonder if your excitement about this book will likely parallel your desire to hear this sort of "white person unlearning shitty childhood beliefs" story. I personally think it's a pretty believable arc, especially because this book is more of an "unlearning" story than a "redemption for past actions" story. So, I mention all this not as an insult to the book, but rather a conditional on any recommendation.

(I don't know where else to put this thought but it's an extension of the above conditional and also a content warning of sorts; there's a scene at the end with Kyr and Yiso, an alien that Kyr has been xenophobic at and has misgendered for most of the book. They're having a poignant moment, and in that moment out of nowhere, Kyr asks to touch Yiso's alien hair-equivalent? This is incredibly creepy?? I'm sorry??? It's just that in a book dealing with being less space racist maybe a "touching" hair-touching scene could have gotten a second look. They already had an awkward hug scene earlier that would have made way more sense to revisit here!)

Finally, to put a few spoilery thoughts in a vague way, I did not at all expect the plot of the book to go the way it did. I appreciated the way the turn of the book provides Kyr with some much needed perspective that would have felt like implausible personal growth otherwise. I also appreciate the plot structure revisiting the events of the beginning of the book with a different perspective. It was a nice echo, especially with a character who begins the book herself obsessed with replaying past historical military events in VR.