Reviews and Comments

Overall, I love this novel's ideas but the genres it mixes together work against each other rather than being stronger for the combination.

(also please name your protagonist, it's so awkward, thank you)

I found the writing here to be surprisingly funny and engaging. The dialogue between the protagonist and Graham continually made me laugh, and the book is peppered with delightful drive-by analogies like "he looked oddly formal, as if he was the sole person in serif font" or "I lay in my own body like a wretched sandbank".

The strongest part of the book to me (and the part that I found the most engaging) was the relationship and dialogue between the protagonist and Graham. A 19th century sailor is a great foil for modern London life; however, it also does a good job of making both the protagonist and Graham real, fallible characters who each make incorrect assumptions about the other. One other way this relationship also works for me is that it lets the book delve into the parallels of being an expat forced into a new time versus a new place work really well, or of not being be able to go "back".

However, the construction seams of this novel show, and that's where it gets weak. The more "serious" time travel and time war shenanigans feel tacked on, and thematically don't really integrate with the rest of the story (tonally or thematically). As a time travel story, it's not doing anything particularly novel here, and these bits weaken the rest of the novel.

(This was the #SFFBookClub book for May 2025.)

I hate to review a book by comparing one book to the previous by the author, but I enjoyed this horror novel a good bit less than I enjoyed Ghost Station and I'm trying to pick apart why. Like Ghost Station, I really appreciated the way this book slowly reveals character backstory while what the protagonist is running away from catches up with her, both thematically and literally.

The initial pacing slowly ratcheted up the tension via mysteries, dreams (or was it?), and "jokes". However, after the moment when everything comes mask off, I felt that the tension disappeared (even in the moment it should have been the opposite) and then it ended a little too abruptly for me.

It's a mix of ages, genders, gender identities, and ethnicities.

incredibly minor pet peeve from a one-off line: differentiating "gender" and "gender identity"

This book is a follow-up novella to Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful which follows Nick Carraway after the events of the prior book (itself a retelling of The Great Gatsby).

Nghi Vo's writing (as always) is incredible here, and I love the horror-adjacent worldbuilding here of demons and wax women and paper soldiers on top of 1930's New York. This was a fun read, but in retrospect the story as a whole was too thin for me.

Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series is always a bit hit or miss for me. Usually the non-ensemble books are more to my taste, but this one just didn't hang together for me.

(Sorry for mostly negative review, I'll try to keep this brief.)

This one is backstory for Nadya (who we've met in earlier books) and we get to see her water world of Belryyka that she falls into. I love the wild worldbuilding in all of the portal worlds of this series and this one didn't disappoint. However, plot-wise, (and it's possible that I am misremembering), it felt like the book set out some rules about how this world and doors worked and then violated them.

Sadly, the writing here leans heavy-handed and didactic to me. Yes, we get it, we know that Nadya does not have a right hand, but this book takes such pains to elaborate how much that's ok, but also it's ok when she can choose to use a prosthetic, that it deeply overshadows any other character traits that Nadya has. (Insert some spoilery quibbles around the nature of choices here.) Additionally, sometimes the narrator sounds like the child she is, and other times she sounds like an adult with years of therapy who understands self-kindness and social models of disability. The combination is that it's hard to understand who Nadya is.

Mostly, it just doesn't feel thematically as tight as something like Lost in the Moment and Found where the protagonist, ideas, and plot all resonate together. Because Nadya doesn't really have much characterization past "helpful" and "curious", the narrative arc feels abrupt and unjustified.

This book was a potential book for the #SFFBookClub poll for a while, but I ended up reading anyway because it looked intriguing.

As a reader, it seems like a novella is a hard length to hit; it's hard to have the space for both pacing and sufficient worldbuilding, and it's also hard to have enough runway for the resolution to resonate and feel satisfying. The short of it is that I feel like this novella nailed it for me.

The worldbuilding here is brutal. The book kicks off with idyllic introduction of Raquel working for the Global Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Pocket Worlds. Pocket worlds are small offshoots of reality, much smaller than our own universe--maybe the size of a meadow or a room or a bag even--and they can run at different time rates to our own universe.

After the protagonist Raquel falls into a fast time pocket world and comes back forty years later (while only a few moments have passed relatively for herself), the world has changed for the worst. Her institute is no longer doing scientific studies, her daughter has died, and capitalism has moved in to colonize the new spaces of these pocket worlds. The implications for labor when corporations have access to nearly infinite time and space goes exactly where you think it might; people signing up for a decade of work to then come back before breakfast, extra dumping grounds for garbage, or even locking rioters into these worlds. These are just a couple examples, but woof this book captures the capitalist extraction of time and space from a new technology.

Raquel is an archeologist of pocket worlds, and believes the Quisqueyan Taino people might have escaped into a pocket world to avoid genocide and is looking for clues to their past. She is the descendant of the Taino but also of conquistadors, and in some ways is at the intersection of both. What really works for me in this book is how her personal history and struggle parallels the larger story about colonialism and capitalism--she has her own insatiable wants for knowledge and family, especially around grief about her archeological work and her lost daughter.

"Well now," Dieno said. "That's a finale."

Maybe it's childhood nostalgia, but every once in a while I get that urge to read a giant fantasy tome, and Brandon Sanderson's work always hits that mark for me. It's never going to be world shattering fiction for me, but it's fun to get lost in the adventure, intricate worldbuilding, and large cast of characters.

Overall, my feelings are that Wind and Truth is a quite solid final book for a five book fantasy series. It sticks the landing on major character arcs and themes, and hits quite satisfying expected (and unexpected) plot moments. One thing it does really well is touching back on previous moments to show new information, as plot points, or as a foil for character changes. On the negative side, this book is an incredibly hefty tome and while it feels like it had a lot of editing and the pacing is consistent (but arguably slow), it's hard not to wonder what else could have been trimmed.

That's the summary. Here's a lot more rambling if you need a jumble of other opinions:

This book may be book five in a five book series, but if we zoom out it's series one of two, and if you zoom out further there's a constellation :drum: of other series and series of series that interconnect in Sanderson's cosmere universe. Personally, I am neutral (at best) and often negative on the costs of these inter-book connections. Sure, your universe has magical world hoppers, but I don't need them showing up in a story that's not about that.

I value "tight" stories and closure, where pieces have a purpose towards the aim of the story at hand. Characters and concepts from different stories make the immediate story feel loose. They are literal loose ends, with characters that we don't know and who don't show up again. If you were writing this series to end conclusively and stand independently on its own, you would absolutely make drastic edits. In this book alone, you would hypothetically cut the Shattered Plains entirely, arguably Zahel and friend, Thaidaker and the Ghostbloods, the Iri people, the dawn shards. However, this additional constraint of plot hooks for other stories or to tease tiny world building details feel like a fundamental part of the structure of Sanderson's cosmere fiction. For some readers who read and wiki-ify every lore crumb, I'm sure these are exciting to puzzle or theorize about.

On the positive side, Ben Kelly makes a great point that Sanderson writes with "fractal detail", such that if you miss some or even all references you can still appreciate the larger thrust of the story. The flip side is that to make that fractal possible, these referential and out of band world building details necessarily can't be important to the story at hand. Even in rare cases where side characters get to be part of the plot (Wit mostly, Zahel sorta), there's no room for character development because it just ain't their story. At best, readers can go "hey, I remember that guy". It's a subset of the extended universe problem or "the gang's all here" problem where you have too many characters and can't focus on all of them (and so one might ask why are they there, and what purpose are they serving).

Length-wise, this book is quite the hefty tome, weighing in at some 1300 pages and a 300mb epub, and that's with no appendixes or extra story tacked on. I still think there were some good editing choices here, although I wonder if readers who want their power fantasy action scenes will be disappointed by the number of elided events and the focus on feelings. For example, to me it's a point in the story's favor that we only see Adolin's reaction to (spoiler elided) or how one chapter opens with a "so yeah we beat Yelig-nar again, aaanyways moving on". Neither of these action scenes would likely have furthered the themes of the story or added characterization (that couldn't have been done elsewhere).

Although there's many point of view characters, each book in this series prioritizes a different one to focus on their back story. In this one, we get to see Szeth's childhood and his path to becoming truthless. Sadly for me, the whole Szeth storyline past and present is probably the weakest point of view. Some of this is due to the delineated path his present self is on and the limited amount of revelations we get about his character or the world through his view. It's not that I didn't enjoy it or I thought it was bad, but it just felt a lot weaker in comparison to Dalinar or Shallan's back story. Thematically, the ideas around laws, oaths, and choices resonate well with the rest of the book, but the plot itself didn't capture me as much as I would have wanted in the final book in a series. I think some of this is also the heavy handedness of the language around Kaladin trying to literally be a therapist to Szeth. (Maybe also it's just jarring for me for books to use the word "therapist" and "boundaries" in a fantasy world.) This is not the only part of the book that feels heavy handed and moralizing, it's just the one that sticks out the most to me.

My memory is poor, but I think also that this is the first book that has had queer (or at least gay) characters. It feels a bit like Sanderson is trying to stretch a little bit as a writer (especially one who is very publicly Mormon). Some bits work less well for me, in that there is an aside about some trans Azish recruits that we never hear from again. I don't need every story where characters have some minority identity to revolve around that identity, but I think I'm a little sensitive as a reader to anything that feels adjacent to a diversity checkbox, where that fact isn't integrated into the rest of the story very well and feels tacked on. On the positive side, I think the major gay relationship in this book works really well, as those characters have plenty of other things going on such that they are not the "gay" characters. If anything, I'd say thematically them being gay adds to their feelings of being othered in different ways that really works.

(I would be incredibly curious to read a take from plural systems or autistic folks about representation in these books.)

That's all the non-spoilery thoughts I've got.

Overall feelings: the ideas were fun, the middle felt like it dragged on, and the politics often felt heavy handed

The part of this book that I enjoyed the most and felt like was the strongest was all of the interpersonal dynamics. The first book ends with waking up the legendary emperor Qin Zheng, who in this book takes control immediately. The triangle dynamics of Zetian, Shimin, and Yizhi from the first book are broken up, with Shimin hostaged, Yizhi becoming Qin Zheng's advisor, and Zetian becoming Qing Zheng's wife. There's a lot of good tension between the fact that Qin Zheng is an authoritarian tyrant that rules with violence, but also establishes some policies that try to address inequalities from the previous regime. Zetian loathes his controlling nature, but also finds that he listens and can be extremely reasonable when given policy advice. And, all in the background, the gods are manipulating everybody and everybody is trying to deceive each other and the gods. It adds up to a nuanced dynamic that was really intriguing to me.

Another thing I liked is that the ending of this book (like the ending of the first) is a great escalation. The first book ended with "oh wow, you're just going to reveal for free that [major spoiler]". The ending to this book likewise breaks up established dynamics, creates additional tensions, and remixes and stirs up interpersonal conflicts.

That said, I do think that it just took a while to get to this ending. The politics felt didactic and heavy handed to me, and the overall plot was much slower than the first book.

This book is off the #SFFBookClub backlog, and I saw it mentioned on Imperfect Speculation (a blog about disability in speculative fiction).

The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic near future world where most people have lost the ability to dream, and the only "cure" is through the exploitation of bone marrow from indigenous people who still can. The book follows Frenchie, a Métis boy who has lost everybody he cares about and travels with a found family trying to find safety and community. The metaphor here resonates directly with the horrors of Canada past, as armed "recruiters" capture anybody who looks indigenous to send them off to "schools" to extract their bone marrow.

I know this is a YA novel, but I wish some of the characters and the protagonist Frenchie had more depth. Maybe this would land better for somebody else, but I also don't have any room in my heart for jealousy subplots, and the one here did not create any extra characterization that could have made it interesting.

Even if some of the plot points felt a bit weak and unearned, the book still ended in a very emotionally resonant way that worked for me.

I enjoyed this recontextualization of the Count of Monte Cristo into a science fiction story of revenge against empire and colonialism. It riffs on many elements from the original, but ultimately takes them in a different direction. Here, Virika is still framed by one of her peers due to his career jealousy, but it's also because of rebuffed sexual advances. Instead of "wait and hope" from the original, this book has the much more modern "success or perish" mantra.

As both a personal and thematic moment, the final scenes of negotiation come satisfyingly full circle, but sadly there's not that much room for worldbuilding in this short novella. It makes the larger diplomatic picture feel shallow, and the end of the book feel abrupt.

#SFFBookClub

A delightful gay science fiction novella about a carefully planned revenge against an empire. I read this because it's a nominee for the Nebula best novella this year.

Enemies to lovers tropes aren't always my thing, but it works for me here. Both sides personally have reasons to be attracted to the other, but aren't betraying their values because they each feel like they're using the other to their own ends. Moreover, this dynamic feeds into the larger double-crosses and secret-keeping going on.

This book went from good to great right at the stinger at the end of chapter seven, when the layers of deception start to peel back. I won't spoil the line directly, but chef's kiss.

I gave this book a reread before getting to the sequel because it had been a bit.

I forgot how this book starts off with such a YA anime-esque tone. There's something about celebrity mecha pilots and media companies that rings a lot of hunger games-esque bells. But the world itself is almost too overly defined, where pilots have an objective "spirit pressure" for their piloting strength and there's both a mecha and enemy taxonomy that feel like something that could go into a wikipedia entry. In the end, these largely (thankfully) fall away and are more hook than truth.

One thing that's interesting to me is that Wu Zetian is a messy character who does unlikeable things at times. The plot is fundamentally a revenge plot that escalates, and she's willing to get her hands dirty to do what she feels is right.

The book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but it manages to be satisfying all the same. For a book where Zetian has literally smashed through everything holding her back, it's compelling to add some elements for the next book that can't be overpowered through ruthlessness.

These Fragile Graces is a fun trans noir murder mystery novella. It's a story that focuses much more on interpersonal and community relations than it does on a well-plotted mystery or detailed worldbuilding. That focus also sums up my feelings about what I felt worked and didn't in the story.

Mostly, I wish the mystery plot was a little bit more cohesive, and that there was more detail about the state of the world itself rather than being in a vague near-future urban decay. I loved the small detail of having memory implants to deal with trauma-based dissociation from childhood, but I wish the ideas around implants/augments and a rejection syndrome connected more to the plot.

It is nice to see an anarchist commune in fiction (I feel like maybe I've only read this in Margaret Killjoy's work previously) and how the protagonist Dora wrestles with her relationship with the people in it, wishing she could keep them safe in ways that they don't want to be. And, the heart of this novel is a very trans story about how Dora deals with a (non-estrogenated) clone of herself who comes to murder her but she ultimately ends up protecting. From the moment her clone showed up and yelled traitor, I knew exactly where this story was going, but it was still satisfying to get there all the same.

#SFFBookClub

I love a mystery! I love an epistolary novel! However, The Examiner just did not work for me. This is largely going to be a negative review, so feel free to skip. If I wanted to pitch this book positively, I would say that it is a mystery novel about an art master's program told through the artifacts of its forum posts, class assignments, and group chats. An external examiner has been called in to make an accounting of the program, and becomes increasingly concerned that somebody may have died during the course of the class.

This is my first Janice Hallett book, and most of the way I bounced off of it is that the writing doesn't feel like text chat. Everybody capitalizes sentences and ends with full stops. There's very few sentence fragments. Characters have a largely similar writing style, even when they range from ages 20 to 60. The writing was so stilted that I almost set it down several times. I looked up some reviews (which were almost all hugely positive) that suggested there were interesting twists later, so I pushed through to a painful and bewildering end.

Honestly, the author really needs to go read Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet about the different ways people speak online, especially in generational senses. It'd also be great if only the emails and essays were business formal so that there could be different modalities of communication, but everybody sounds equally stilted in their private chats. There's a rare sprinkle of "OMG" and "FFS" thrown in (always capitalized) in a way that feels the author is trying too hard while holding a skateboard over their shoulder.

I am a huge sucker for telling a story through online artifacts, and so in my mind I compare this with other fiction that has done this much more effectively. I would recommend instead Sarah Pinsker's Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather short story or even the posts in Christine Love's don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story game or the text chat in Naomi Kritzer's Catfishing on CatNet novels. These all feel like real people writing online in ways that this novel did not.

I'm going to try to speedrun the rest of my grumps here.

The pacing is wild. It takes sixty percent of the book before you get any sense of what might be going on. To me, this doesn't feel like a proper mystery where the reader has any chance of understanding the whodunnit until it's brought directly to their attention with new details. There's often plenty of bread crumbs that make (some of) the reveals feel plausible, but there's just not enough here. Also, when the first half of the book is such low stakes academic squabbling, it's hard to care more deeply about it when you find out there's secret reasons behind some of it. Telling me for half the book that something more interesting has been going on secretly that I haven't seen yet is just not effective storytelling.

The descriptions of the way technology works big and small are ridiculous in ways that threw me off as a reader.

The politics are wild! This book has some discussion about environmentalism and ecology, and one might think there could be some good things to be concerned about, maybe around checks notes capitalism or global warming or oil pipelines or pollution. (spoilers but haha jk these are definitely not the environmental concerns of this story)

Sure, sure, there are some twists and reveals of things the reader may have guessed or in other cases had no way of knowing. I'll be kind and not spoil them here, but some of them are just wildly implausible and so disconnected from what the rest of the book is about that it makes the book feel scattered.

At any rate, not a fan, would not recommend.

This was the #SFFBookClub book for February 2025. I am honestly a little surprised that it got a sequel. While I enjoyed it, I think this book suffers a little from being in the shadow of such a strong first book. It brings back nearly every character, although rooted in one world rather than worldhopping, and as such you really need to have read the first book to enjoy this one. The pitch for this book read almost as a murder investigation, but with foreknowledge from book one, it seemed incredibly obvious what the cause could be. This could just be a case of incorrect expectations on my part that the book would have more of a mystery element.

Thematically, I'm here for this story about justice and tearing down borders that separate the hoarding and exploitative rich from the poor. Here for the anger about how these rich people will casually break promises and ignore consequences for undesirable people. This book ends up feeling extremely quotable, but in doing so sometimes come off as didactic and telling more than it shows, even while I am nodding my head in agreement.

One thing I think this book does really well is having the main character from the previous book show up here as a foil to the new main character Scales. We get to see ways in which Scales and Cara are very different people and the biases that Cara brought to the world. It also means that we get to see the runners and Nik Nik in a much different light than the first book too. Cara could have stolen the show, and the book manages to make it not about her.

This is the step some civilians don't understand, the step Cara rejects: We can only make good on our promise of protection if there's blood on our hands. We can't bluff. The city only speaks the language of power, and we have to speak it right back for them to listen.

A minor observation, but I feel like there's a psychological shift in recent fiction (or in me) from "violence is never the answer" to "existing power will only respect violence". Babel (and its explicit subtitle) is certainly example of this too.