This is a kind of book I read a lot of back in the 90s: gritty urban fantasy with angsty warrior chicks. Except this urban fantasy takes place on a postapocalyptic Navajo nation, where gods and spirits roam freely; the angsty warrior chick on the front cover is often called in to defend the humans that find themselves caught in the middle of supernatural issues. Loved the action and the interesting take on indigenous mythology; did not love how warrior chick’s issues revolved completely around the men in her life.
Author: librarykat
The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
Reread for book club (again! But different book club!) which I welcomed since I rushed through the ending before. I loved this book the first time I read it and haven’t changed my opinion in the slightest; it presents uber nerdy space physics problems (with bonus computation engines!) alongside aftershocks from the Cultural Revolution. It’s also an alien encounter story, but like the best alien encounter stories, it’s really more about the humans and how they react to the aliens. I love the depth and ambition of the ideas in this book, but the characterization definitely suffers from lack of attention, and although the plot feels like it tries to be serious, the action occasionally borders on ridiculousness.
Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway
This guy has enough ideas crammed in here to write ten different books. He’s like Neal Stephenson, except that instead of having a hard SF premise underneath the shiny, this is shiny all the way down. Steampunk clockmaker, check. Fearless spy who’s retained her skills into old age, check. Zombie engineer clones, check. Literal world ending machinery masquerading as a hive of bees, check. The writing is slick and lovely and carries you along despite the extremely unlikely nature of, well, everything that is happening.
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson: Travel to alternate worlds is possible, but only if your doppelganger in the alternate world is dead; as a consequence, a corps of world-travelers is recruited from the poor and downtrodden, whose lives are constantly threatened by tragedy and whose life expectancy is poor. The class conflict between the travelers and their handlers is immediate and ongoing; the central character’s fight for relevance and growing sense of moral outrage provides a good backbone for the story.
Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado
I should have saved this for October. I’d read the first story in this collection, “The Husband Stitch,” before, and it was even more beautiful and creepy than I’d remembered. The rest of the stories don’t let up: women encounter horrors but maybe it’s in their heads; women focus on relationships even as the world is ending; women try to cling to reality as it dissolves around them; women carve their bodies into ideals and are haunted by what they’ve cut away. The more you read, the more ghosts seem to gather softly around you until you have to put the book down, before you get too deep in your head and start doubting yourself and what’s around you.
American War, by Omar El Akkad
Post-apocalyptic Civil War, in which Southern states including Texas refuse to give up their fossil fuels, and a fragmented Union fights them with drones and soldiers recruited from a working class desperate for opportunity. Meanwhile from across the ocean, the Red Crescent and the Chinese send charity aid and administer refugee camps. It’s told from the post-war future so you know how things end, but not how they got there; the main character, Sarat, travels an all-too-believable arc from child refugee to violent insurgent. Super intense book and quite frightening, particularly when you consider the tribalism that seems to be increasing today.
The Just City, by Jo Walton
This makes me want to actually read Plato’s Republic. Apollo and Athena decide that they’re going to experimentally create Plato’s hypothetical “just city” by using real people, and they put Platonic philosophers in charge of implementation, which goes about as well as one would expect. I liked the viewpoint characters and the differing life experiences that they brought from their various historical eras, but the novel really takes off when Athena brings in Socrates and under his influence, the residents of the city (mostly children raised, after all, by philosophers) immediately begin questioning everything, including how a city that relies on the purposeful creation of a laboring class can be considered “just”. Such a fun read.
On Fragile Waves, by E. Lily Yu
I had gotten on the wait list for this a while back and had completely forgotten what it was about, so it was a poignant surprise to find myself reading a book about Afghan refugees during the crisis in Kabul. Firuzeh and her family suffer terror, loss, and indignity trying to find asylum in Australia. Yu does an amazing job depicting their heartbreaking trials and small victories, their desperate love and petty cruelties, and reaches out to also occasionally share the viewpoints of those around them, with the emotions hinted at in conversation instead of sketched outright. I also liked the magical realism aspect, how Firuzeh’s losses turned into things that literally haunted her, but not in ways that you’d expect. Really beautiful book.
The Girl in the Tower, by Katherine Arden
Sequel to The Bear and the Nightingale, another adaptation of Russian fairy tales with acknowledgement of societal gender roles and limitations woven in, as well as the continuing tension between folk beliefs and Christianity. As in the previous book, the descriptive language is absolutely gorgeous; the author paints really vivid pictures of both landscapes and characters.
Ring Shout, by P. Djèlí Clark
In which some Ku Klux members are made literal monsters by their hate; in response, their quarry arm themselves with both spiritual and literal weapons to fight back. The ring shout is actually a musical call-and-response percussion-and-dance tradition from the Gullah-Geechee region, and plays a critical role in the book; likewise, the pace and language of the book is fast-moving, rhythmic, and energetic. I loved the characters, who had been through trauma but were not defined by it, and their absolute trust and support for one another.