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Splinter in the Sky is an sf book about a tea-making political prisoner, caught between multiple factions all wanting to spy on each other. The book pitch here is "sapphically taking down an empire from within".

It's hard for me to not think of A Memory Called Empire while reading this. Mahit in that book felt very conflicted about the Teixcalaanli Empire; she both studied and dreamed about wanting to be a part of it (and knowing she couldn't ever truly be so), but also knew with eyes wide open how that empire consumed and absorbed everything it touched.

Here, it feels like Enitan has no such ambivalence. Her culture isn't appreciated; she's looked down on (at best); she certainly doesn't want to emulate said empire; her people aren't even seen as real people. She's traumatized by trying to find her sister, but I don't understand why she's not more angry, and can find forgiveness and trust so easily for her oppressors.

One major plot point is that the new imperator is seen as weak and so Enitan also tries to figure out who actually is in charge. It makes sense from a plot perspective why this is going on, but in practice it takes a lot of teeth away from the empire itself. Shouldn't meeting the god-imperator at the head of the empire be terrifying for a political hostage from a recently conquered planet? Why would said imperator trust Enitan so quickly?

It all just feels a bit thin. The political players are introduced often right before when they are needed for their plot points. People in the empire who have committed atrocities seem to be quickly forgiven because they feel bad about it. Trust feels like it happens far too quickly. The empire is told to be scary, historically and off page, but on page I only get brief glimpses of this, and few feelings.

Sorry for all the negative thoughts. I still thought this book was fun, but I just wish it was a bit deeper and had more of a bite.

The Tainted Cup is an amazing fantasy mystery novel (first in a new series) from Robert Jackson Bennett. For what it's worth, I love love loved The Founders trilogy and quite enjoyed The Divine Cities trilogy so I'm coming into this with some bias.

I've seen this pitched as "Sherlock with kaiju", but I think the Sherlock moniker sells it short for me. The Sherlock / Watson dynamic to me is defined by one where Sherlock is the expert observer, deducer, and dilettante and Watson is the bumbling stand-in for the reader (or at best a medical expert). In The Tainted Cup, I think the sleuthing expertise is split between Kol (the assistant investigator) and Ana (the investigator in charge) and this changes the dynamic entirely in a way that makes the mystery more satisfying structurally. Also, I think personality-wise, they are also quite distinct.

Kol, the point of view assistant investigator, has been biologically modified to have eidectic memory. As he can remember anything he sees, it's his job to be the eyes of the investigator (and also the reader)--viewing crime scenes, talking to witnesses, and poking around to try to dig up as much as he can. Ana, the investigator boss has Sherlockian deductive skill, but whose senses are overwhelmed by the world itself and so stays in her office, relying on Kol to see what's important and bring it back for her to synthesize. There's definitely a power and authority hierarchy here, but what works for me is that Kol's observational competence is strong, and it gives a perfect excuse for the reader to see all of the clues.

I felt like I had put together about half of the mystery myself by the end, but there were still quite a few surprises for me. The closure of the mystery is excellent, and is quite satisfying in the way it brings together every small detail that's been slowly spooled out over time (even, of course, the title). All of this places the book solidly in the mystery genre, rather than just "a fantasy with a murder mystery". It's even complete with a couple of "let me gather everybody to lay out my accusations" style scenes.

But it's the worldbuilding that adds color on top of the solid mystery. The fantasy here is that there this world has experts in biological augmentation, where people are changed to further their station in service of the Empire, often in ways that have negative consequences for them personally. Technologically, things feel like an industrial age that has pursued biological advances rather than gas, such as mushrooms for cooling or worms for lighting. The Empire itself comprises a series of ring walls, where every wet season gigantic titans attack from the sea and must be repelled.

I would have happily read either just a great mystery or a fantasy novel with such an interesting world, but having both together was a delight.

This book is a sequel to What Moves the Dead. It was a little unexpected (to me at least!) that there'd be a sequel to something that was a riff on the Fall of the House of Usher--where do you even go from there? Apparently, another mystery! This time it follows the same set of characters (Easton, Angus, and Eugenia Potter), but instead is set at Easton's childhood lodge in Gallacia.

What I liked about this book was the way it much more tightly wove together parallels of Easton's war-related PTSD and the horror of dreams. While What Moves the Dead felt more like several unrelated stories grafted together, this was a more cohesive novella.

(If I had any petty wishes, it would be to give Eugenia Potter more of a role here. She gets some good quotes, but is ultimately a background character that almost didn't need to be there. I also wish there had been a little bit more worldbuilding about Gallacia. Even for being set there, it felt like there was little elaboration on the fictional country past what we had already learned.)

When a post-human spacecraft and a human love each other very much...

Overall, I had mixed feelings about this book. The writing is from the third perspective of Jayanthi (the human) and Vaha (the post-human Alloy pilot/spacecraft), but is very much in each of their thoughts. Subjectively, it felt like a matter of fact writing style that just didn't quite grip me. I wish I could pin down more why I struggled here with this prose. That said, there were a bunch of things I enjoyed about it:

This book played with some neat ideas. One is that "all matter possesses some level of consciousness" and thus people are encouraged to change themselves rather than environments were possible (big To Be Taught, If Fortunate feelings). Jayanthi has sickle cell anemia, and the book uses this as a prime example of talking about how bodies are not good or bad but rather ones that are more or less suited to particular environments. Along these same lines, the Alloys can go through a process of "full rebirth" and totally change their bodies and genetics, although there's some limits there.

There's a surprising amount of disability topics here too. Jayanthi declines at several points to change her biology to remove ways in which its perceived as hindering her (as well as declining to edit her mind to remove unwanted desires [!!!]). There's also some bits about Vaha's relationship with prostheses and relearning to fly that I think were really well done. All in all, it's more disability politics than I expected even if it feels like a number of perspectives lean on some pragmatic reasoning that "biodiversity is important" and "your lifestyle adaptations may provide useful knowledge to others". (And, these also seem like Jayanthi's own biased perspective as well.)

This is a very different story than a A Half-Built Garden but there's some echoes of it regarding the parentalism towards humans and the climax of the book focusing on legal arguments. In this book, I feel like the Alloys have a more well-trodden "can't trust these humans based on their past behavior" bent (vs the Ringers more novel "our own vast experience tells you you're wrong"), but I feel like this book takes it to new places, where it tries to ask questions about how to determine when a group of people have changed enough to be owed self-determination.

Don't get me wrong, I love Katherine Addison in general. I love a good novel that comes from the realm of fanfic (hello, Winter's Orbit!). I love mysteries and a Sherlock pastiche. I love gender stuff! With all of that, I enjoyed the writing itself, but the book tried to do too much structurally and it didn't come together for me.

The Angel of the Crows is a Sherlock story, but the setup here is that Crow (Sherlock) is an angel and Doyle (Watson) took an injury in Afghanistan from a fallen angel that left them partially a hell hound (in a werewolf sort of way). Crow here is awkward but also kind, and so the relationship between Crow and Doyle where they each help and care for each other in their own way works for me. (I personally am alienated by "jerk Sherlock" and don't quite understand why anybody would ever like him.)

This book is also a direct retelling of a Study in Scarlet, the Sign of Four, part of the Adventure of the Yellow Face, and Hound of the Baskervilles. My Sherlock knowledge is not the best, and so it's possible there's other references I missed too.

For me, these Sherlock stories hewed too close to the source material. It's not that there aren't minor shifts around in the story to accommodate for the more supernatural elements in the world or of Crow and Doyle, but it's not quite enough to make a compelling story for me. When I already know what the Barrymores are up to in the Baskerville estate or about the treasure in the Sign of Four, I need something more: either something much more unexpected to happen, or for it to stretch the worldbuilding, or for it to highlight character dynamics in some fresh way. It just wasn't enough change in most of these cases to feel like all this merited a novel-length retelling with so many of the same details.

(I will say that the most fun twist was the nicely foreshadowed subversion of Mary Morstan at the end of the Sign of Four.)

The worldbuilding is a bit wild: airships, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, clairvoyance, angels, but also at the same time (somehow?)! a largely unchanged Victorian England. I have so many questions about "alternate history with magic" style changes where the magic and supernatural elements haven't deeply transformed society. There's also no indication of when or where all these things started existing or being possible; just that they're there and are largely accepted parts of society.

I was hoping that the reveal of worldbuilding was leading up to something like a supernatural mystery, or a case that more closely involved Crow and the angel consensus, or something with the vampire Moriarty plot, or even something to reveal deeper information about what angels actually are. In the end, we get a moment of connection between Crow and Doyle, but unsatisfyingly are left with nothing to tie together any of the disparate Sherlock stories, the supernatural worldbuilding, or the many loose plot threads.

I love the concept of the Wayward Children series as a whole, but individually a few of the books have been hit or miss for me. If I had to pick, In an Absent Dream and this book have been my favorites out of the whole series, largely in that they both focus on a single character and so the plot and theme can be a lot more tight in the short space of a novella.

Lost in the Moment and Found follows Antsy, who runs away from horrific step-dad, finds herself lost, and steps through a door into the Shop Where the Lost Things Goes. (I also deeply appreciated the Author's Note which precedes the book and content warns for grooming and adult gaslighting, but also gives the reassurance that "before anything can actually happen, Antsy runs.")

In this book, the reader gets teased with larger worldbuilding hints about the Doors and how they operate, but thematically for Antsy it's all about abuse and loss. She's literally lost and in a shop that collects lost things; she has lost trust in adults and the safety of the world; by the end, everything she's lost all ties together really satisfyingly. Some more spoilery thoughts.

Six months after Abby was born, her mother sat her down in the living room and took her hands, as she'd done twice before. Antsy sat rigid, having learned that these were the moments where her life changed for the worse, where things she didn't even know could be lost were ripped away from her and thrown aside.

This is a minor detail, and I certainly differ a lot from Antsy on many points, but boy howdy did this quote hit me right in the psychologically unsafe "serious conversations" feelings.

I saw this book get mentioned on fedi a while back, so got around to reading it. Its goal is to help people "see more clearly". The main metaphor of the book is to that we are often stuck in a "soldier mindset" (motivated reasoning to defend your beliefs, where being wrong feels like a mistake) and that we should try to have more of a "scout mindset" (finding the lay of the land and seeking truth, where being wrong means updating your map and is always a positive).

We use motivated reasoning not because we don't know any better, but because we're trying to protect things that are vitally important to us--our ability to feel good about our lives and ourselves, our motivation to try hard things and stick with them, our ability to look good and persuade, and our acceptance in our communities.

Some of this I'd heard before, but I learned a good bit too; this was a surprisingly practical book and a quick read.

Bits I enjoyed and that stuck with me:

• gives practical strategies for ways to catch yourself in the act of motivated reasoning
• says that knowing about biases (like we all do) is not enough to convince yourself you are not falling prey to them
• dismissing the idea of "filter bubbles", in that if you want to learn from disagreement, it has to be with somebody you like or respect
• gives several tricks for ways to more accurately estimate your level of confidence
• has an analysis of every time Spock made probability claims and how accurate he was