lightreads

Swordcrossed by Freya Marske

I’ve really liked some of her other books, but this one (secondary world M/M fantasy) just did not click. I got it from the library three times and appreciated Marske’s writing (always a highlight) but the trope set and the relationships just did not get me. Probably better if you like the inveterate liar falls in love thing.

Heavenly Bodies by Imani Erriu

Booktube strikes again. Enemies to lovers romantasy about the princess of the shadow kingdom kidnapped by the sunlight kingdom to train to kill a god. I was told this had good banter. The first 15% did not demonstrate that, just a lot of ham-handed writing and some cartoon sketchy worldbuilding. Meh.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

I think his Underground Railroad is genius. Which is saying something, since I generally do not like when a book has a speculative twist but gets shelved as literary. This falls in the same camp – it’s a literary take on the post zombie apocalypse thing. Meh. Genre has done it better, with more interesting people (our main character here is deliberately a boring sad sack, but still), and at least the genre book wasn’t like “but what if capitalism was the zombie all along, huh, huh, huh? How about that?” Well, okay, some genre books do that, but we don’t have critics shouting about how brilliant and innovative that is.

Luminous by Silvia Park

Literary scifi about three siblings (two human, one robot) in a future unified Korea. I developed a near instant dislike for this book. I am told it is interesting and goes deep on the relationships between humans and robots. Robots in this future being property and commodities as a formal matter, but as a functional matter serving as everything from members of the family to romantic partners to servants to victims of horrendous abuse, often more than one of those. There was something about the prose style that was like sandpaper to my ear, and I could tell in just the quarter I read that there was going to be a certain emotional grotesquery here that left me nauseous. It’s supposed to, but meh, no thanks, life’s too short.

Stolen in Death

3/5. A nice entry that returns to the intimate murder mystery format, with a throwback (and hopefully a permanent conclusion) to an old storyline about Roarke’s past. There’s been something a bit tying-off-loose-ends feeling about the last few books. I mean . . . reasonable.

Mind Games

3/5. Standalone about the woman with largely undefined psychic powers who becomes mentally linked with the man who murdered her parents; also, a romance with a former rock star. This one is okay, by virtue of having only a soupcon of paranormal. She can’t handle any more than that. I will say, her general, IDK, emotional investment in prisons was on full display here. She’s just really, really interested in prison being absolutely and unlivably terrible, and wants you to know about that in the sort of sensual, loving detail she otherwise reserves for descriptions of home renovations. I have tried to unsee how deeply invested in this she is, but I can’t, and it honestly creeps/grosses me out in every book now.

Content notes: Murder, animal harm, the psychic equivalent of internet spamming someone and telling them to kill themselves.

Slow Gods

3/5. Science fiction about a guy who grows up in and gets crushed by a kleptocratic fascist state, and how he is transformed, and what happens when an alien arrives to tell the scattered worlds of humanity that a supernova is about to wipe half of them out.

Interesting. Lots of things to say here. First, to be clear, you won’t ever catch me arguing that North isn’t a talented and unusual writer. She’s a good stylist, too. This book is science fiction in set dressing, but that’s wrapped around an eldritch and fantastical core that she is too smart to ruin by explaining or caging. I won’t spoil it more than to say that a lesser writer would have made this book about the protagonist’s attempts to understand the weird and creepy thing that happened to him. Instead, the reader understands that, mostly implicitly, and the book can go on about its business of being about immigration and politics and cultural preservation and assimilation.

Also, this is a book about autism. An autism metaphor, specifically. North has said this was a result of her own recent diagnosis, and I’m not in the business of critiquing how a person processes that in fiction. I will say that I would be critiquing the substance of it if this were not own voices, because I think parts of the portrayal (the equivalent to autism meltdowns, in particular) lean into a kind of scary stereotype of the violently uncontrolled autistic person. But because it is own voices, I’ll sit here and defend North’s right to process as she sees fit, even if that means grappling with some stereotypes in a messy way that didn’t land, at least for me.

All in all it’s an interesting book and I’m glad I read it.

Content notes: Fascist hellscapes – debt slavery, violence, imprisonment, medical experimentation, mass death and genocide through negligence.

Kill the Beast

3/5. Standalone fantasy about a very angry young woman who gets hired to kill the dangerous beast that killed her brother.

This is just okay. Points for having the relationship that develops between protag and her employer be a friendship rather than a romance. Otherwise, this telegraphs its twists so hard that I spotted the one that drops around the 75% mark when I was only 15% in. Yikes. And it’s not just about wanting to be surprised, either – the emotional arc of this book probably only works decently well if you don’t see everything coming. Because the protag doesn’t, and she does need a few hard kicks to get her head on straight. But when you do see everything coming, it all just takes too long to play out.

Content notes: A lot of violence, references to parental death and abandonment, alcoholism.

At the Back of the North Wind

1/5. 1870’s children’s christian fiction about the son of a coachman who makes friends with the north wind.

It would be reasonable to ask why I read 1870’s children’s christian fiction. The answer is that I read this as a child, but remembered nothing about it other than the title and the sound of the narrator’s voice saying it. I recently found the digitized version of that old cassette audiobook (thank you, National Library Service – in general, I mean, not for this in particular) and I got curious.

Woof, I am allergic to this book. Its preaching, its sanctimony, its moralism. On the one hand, it could be worse. The author was a christian-socialist who was definitely not wrong that, say, drinking and smacking your wife around is bad. His opinions were apparently very unpopular at the time. But it doesn’t ultimately matter what stripe of preaching this is when you are allergic to the whole project. Philosophically, I mean. The thematic statement of this book is, as one character says, “kindness is but justice,” and bleh, fuck right off with that. It’s a view of the world and who gets what and who deserves what that I violently disagree with.

Also, not for nothing, I said “are you fucking joking” out loud when I realized where this book was going. I’m pretty sure I don’t remember this book well because I didn’t understand or like it as a child. I do remember his Princess and the Goblin, which I think I reread quite a bit, but I think I’m good now. The offensive ending, by the way, is literally ( spoilers I guess? ).

I think I would be less annoyed by this if it didn’t have these flickers of good fantasy in it. Something wild and creative and extremely weird. But whenever he started down that road he would pull abruptly back and suddenly re-christian everything.

Content notes: *gestures upward*

This Brutal moon

3/5. Third book in this scifi trilogy, really do not start here.

Damn, it didn’t land it. It didn’t terribly fumble it either, but.

Let’s back up. I really liked the first book in this trilogy, which you should absolutely go into unspoiled because the ride is worth it. But she had to do different modes with the next books for plot and structure and not repeating herself reasons. Unfortunately, I was glad to see these people again, but I think this whole series lost momentum and vitality. And the deeper this series got into the story of a remnant population barely clinging on after a genocide several decades ago, well. She says they aren’t supposed to be space Jews, but, like, girl. These books are doing that thing where they valorize an oppressed population and an oppressed culture in a way that is both satisfying and also uncomfortable, if you get me. Satisfying in the way a reductive viewpoint is satisfying. Uncomfortable in the way a reductive viewpoint is uncomfortable.

Also, I am not at all qualified to opine on this, but I’ve caught the edges of conversations from people who think she has valorized her space Jews right over the border into weird antisemitic trope land, which did jump out at me when ( spoilers for the end of the first book ). Anyway, do with that what you will.

Look, I’m complaining about this a lot, but I genuinely think the first book is doing cool stuff, and I genuinely think the whole series is thinking about identity and refugees and cultural violence and retribution and repair. All chewy, important stuff. Also, the way women and nonbinary people are allowed to be intense and obsessed with each other and over-the-top in the first book is the good shit. I’m glad I read it, even though the last book had serious POV bloat (way too many) and didn’t land with the force I wanted it to.

Content notes: Torture, violence, discussions of genocide, child loss.

Salvage Crew and Pilgrim Machines

4/5. A pair of related scifi novels largely narrated by sentient ships in a plausible corporatist space future. The first book is a sort of survival horror first contact situation, and the second is philosophical space exploration and consideration of mortality on the personal and galactic scale.

I like these. They manage that trick of feeling old-fashioned in the best way. Particularly the big ideas exploration book – it’s giving Niven or Vinge or Baxter or similar, except, you know, not variously phobic and -ist. Actually, several of the characters are Buddhist, which offers a really interesting lens on some more classic science fictional topics.

I’m a little suspicious about why these books didn’t take off, TBH. He got buzz early on, then seemed to fall off the map. I’m pretty plugged into new and interesting SFF, and I’ve only heard about him from one person. I have a suspicion this is because he openly talks about how he uses AI. E.g., in the first book here, he had AI generate hundreds of short poems on various themes, and he picked several for his AI ship to “write.” He is transparent about how he prompted and why he did it that way. I suspect this got some sort of AI stink on him, professionally, which is a real shame.

I will also add, they got Nathan Fillion to read the first audiobook. Normally I do not like these celebrity narrators, but actually, it’s kind of brilliant? He has this bro-y cynical depressive emotionalism that hit just right for the ship narrator of that book.

Content notes: Corporate hellscape stuff, body horror.

At Midnight Comes the Cry

3/5. Tenth in this series of mysteries about the episcopal priest and the police chief (they are married with baby at this point).

I’m always happy to spend more time with these characters, but I’m gonna be honest here: I come to this series for small town stuff and mysteries and a light but intense approach to relationships. I do not come for white nationalist terrorism or action movie stuff. And yet, guess what I got here.

This also feels like a final book, with a weirdly pasted on ‘five years later’ epilogue. Which is fine if that’s how it is, but I was disappointed in the treatment that a secondary couple got. She is so good at relationships that shouldn’t work but do. In this case, a divorced woman in her thirties with young kids and a history in the porn industry, and an early twenties rookie on the police force. She does messy but magnetic so well, and she let them develop over many books. So I found the conclusion(?) to their story here, and how little attention was paid to the thorny emotional stuff between them, to be uncharacteristic and disappointing. Same take on the resolution(?) of the addiction plotline.

Content notes: White nationalism of several flavors, violence (domestic and otherwise)

All That We See or Seem

3/5. Marketed as scifi, but it’s actually a near future AI tech thriller about the loner hacker who gets tangled up in the search for a missing woman whose job is weaving AI-enhanced mass dream experiences.

Meh. A lot of the AI speculation here is really interesting. It’s all extremely plausible – the internet mostly just bots shouting at each other, everyone with means having a personal AI assistant who is trained to think specifically like them, what new kinds of art really draw people in as authentic, etc. – but speculates about these things while touching lightly on how they are bad and how they are good. Letting it be complicated with AI, can you imagine? Is that even allowed? In the era where I have been told that I’m a “traitor to humanity” for occasionally finding a particular AI powered accessibility tool to be extremely helpful in ways no prior tool has ever come remotely close to? Oh but surely we can’t have nuance in these conversations, oh no.

Unfortunately, everything else about this book is meh. The villain POV (please stop), the weirdly flat delivery of events that are supposed to be tense or upsetting, the main character and the shallow thriller treatment of her trauma, the “twist” in the epilogue.

This makes me not want to read his fantasy, actually. Does it have the same problems, or is he trying too hard to write like a thriller guy?

Content notes: Violence, slavery.

Brown Girl in the Ring

4/5. A story of family and crime and survival in a sort of post apocalypse Toronto, all flavored with afro-caribbean mythology.

Of course I’d heard about this book for years and years before reading it. What I heard: great writing, rich own voices fantasy, just plain good. Correct, correct, and correct. But I spent most of this book occupied by its exploration of intergenerational trauma. Four generations, from an infant to an old matriarch, and how they fail their children and how they don’t and how useless men are. This book lets it all be terribly messy and textured and real, in that way where mothers are incredibly sympathetic and deeply unsympathetic at the same time. That’s good stuff.

I am worried about the quality of the audiobook narration on other books of hers, though, which I hear lean even more heavily into the dialect.

Content notes: Violence, torture, possession, organ harvesting.