This was a really neat collection. Each short story is followed by an explanation of the myth or legend that inspired it. Some authors retell a story but in a different time and place (“The Land of the Morning Calm” by E.C. Myers, which injects Korean ghosts into an MMORPG), while others latch onto a tiny detail and expand it (“Spear Carrier” by Rahul Kanakia, which imagines an entire life for a battlefield redshirt). I don’t know a lot of the stories in Asian mythologies, and really enjoyed reading both the stories and the background segments that explained the original myths.
Category: quick reaction
Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food and Love, ed. Elsie Chapman and Caroline Tung Richmond
The connection between these short stories is that they all take place on Hungry Hearts Row, a neighborhood of restaurants featuring very different cuisines and very different stories. There’s some interplay between characters but only enough to unify the scene. Only a couple of the stories take the prompt literally and use food to bring characters together romantically; others were about relating to estranged family through food, or using food as a way to make peace with one’s past. I particularly liked the ones that were more out of left field, like the one where the Chinese restaurant was actually an integral part of a gang war, or the one where the Muslim superhero literally fell out of the sky in front of a food cart. Some duds, but a strong collection overall; I appreciated the wide variety of ethnicities and cultures represented in both the foods and the stories.
The Alchemist and an Amaretto, by Annette Marie, read by Cris Dukehart
Oh man after four books of comparatively lighthearted urban fantasy, and then after 75% of a book being spent mainly on trivia like Tori trying hard not to be impressed by her friend’s parents’ magic school (basically Hogwarts, but for privileged combat sorcerors), and doing a little bit of werewolf hunting, the plot suddenly hammers Tori (and the poor reader) with a huge emotional bomb. Over the preceding books Marie had been dropping hints and gradually ramping up the tension and urgency around this issue, but the revelation at the end of this book abruptly turns things up to 11. Dukehart does such a great job with the narration too, her Tori switching between indignation and vulnerability. I’ve been trying to pace myself with this series, and it was a fight for me not to instantly run off and download the next. (This is why I dislike rating individual books – the plot of this particular book was pretty standard, but its effect on the overall series is huge.)
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
I grew to hate this book and seriously considered abandoning it several times, but I somehow made it to the end anyway. The book begins with narrator Theo feverish and afraid, mysteriously unable to leave his Amsterdam hotel. We flash back to when the Theo was a child, caught in a museum bombing whose effects would skew the course of his life; we then follow Theo through an unstable childhood and adolescence defined by substance abuse and bad choices, then into a young adulthood in which he continues to suffer from the same issues, and finally (hundreds of pages and very little character development later) into the frankly ridiculous and chaotic sequence of events that take him to the hotel where we began. Theo is extremely frustrating to read, a character whose musings are occasionally incisive and delightful, but inevitably become self-indulgent and whiny. The only characters I consistently enjoyed reading about were his mentor in furniture restoration (a flawed character but a stable one at least) and his friend, the unbelievable but hugely entertaining Boris, whose life choices are just as bad as Theo’s but who manages not to be a complete drip about everything. Tartt can put words together well but this book is a mess; I am so glad to be done with it.
The Blade Between, by Sam J. Miller
This is a dark ghost story about the gentrification of a small town, the lives of those negatively affected by it, and how the spirits of the town start fighting back. Ronan Szepessy finds himself returning to Hudson despite the terrible experience of growing up gay and artistic in the small, closed-minded town; when he sees his old neighbors evicted from their homes and developers closing in like sharks, the depth of his hate allows the ghosts of the town to sink their hooks into the citizens, spreading horror and violence. It’s a tough book to read; Ronan is bitter and angry, as are all his fellow citizens both corporeal and not, and there’s not really any light moment to ease the tension. I think this book had urgent things to say about gentrification and how it can kill the spirit of a small town, but it gets drowned in all the violence and weirdness.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
I began this book and immediately fell into the mental equivalent of a defensive crouch – something along the lines of “oh please don’t be Ready Player One, don’t think to buy my favor with 80s nostalgia while turning a hyper-competent female character into nothing more than a male’s sidekick,” but fortunately the book proved better than that. Yes, Zevin delivers all the lovely 80s nostalgia, but also all the 80s (and 90s, and onward) problems with prioritizing profit over art, rampant misogyny and racism in tech and gaming, etc. Protagonists Sam and Sadie are both intensely flawed creatures whose uncompromising personalities clash constantly with one another, even as their creative geniuses come together to create videogame magic. Both of them make cringingly awful life choices, yet manage to learn and grow without escaping the consequences of their actions. I started out merely tolerating this book but grew to really enjoy it, both for the characters’ journey and the very familiar (to me) details that underpinned it.
Hellbound Guilds and Other Misdirections, by Annette Marie and Rob Jacobsen, read by Iggy Toma
This is the second book from the perspective of Kit Morris, the reformed criminal, police officer in training, and nonstop snark factory. This time Kit finds himself going up against actual demons, who are immune to his psychic magic; he’s also getting nowhere trying to get closer to his partner, the incredibly kickass and unimpressed Agent Lienna Shen. Both Kit and Lienna suffer from a bad case of “won’t ask for help when they really should,” which is annoying to me as a reader; Kit is a loner but Lienna should know better. Toma’s narration remains light and sardonic throughout, which works really well, and his falsetto rendition of Lienna is much less annoying than before.
The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal
In 1952 a huge meteorite obliterates much of the East Coast of the US, forcing the country and the world into an accelerated space race in order to escape the increasingly hostile planet. Elma York, genius mathematician and pilot, gets hired on as a “calculator” but her dream is to be included in the astronaut cadre. Standing in her way: extreme amounts of 1950s misogyny, as well as severe stage fright and imposter syndrome from years of being talked down to by men in technical fields; despite the unceasing support of her husband, it’s an uphill battle. Elma also gets to see little snippets of how racism complicates life even further for women who aren’t as white and privileged as she is. Despite the apocalyptic nature of the situation, the tone of the book is weirdly light; the real conflict is Elma’s battle to get to space. Most of the book is spent on her inner turmoil while precious little attention is paid to the rest of the post-cataclysm world, a balance that didn’t sit well with me.
Jovah’s Angel, by Sharon Shinn
Set 150 years after the first book, Shinn’s Samaria now features da Vinci-esque engineers trying to figure out the secrets of flight (for non-winged non-angels) and transportation. Archangel Alleluia, raised abruptly to the position after her predecessor Delilah suffers an injury, finds herself learning more than she cares to know about the actual mechanics behind the entity they know as Jovah. Soft-spoken Alleluia and her easygoing engineer friend are a pleasure to read; their circumstances are tense but they treat one another with kindness and mutual respect, which is utterly refreshing. A very satisfying conclusion as well, though Shinn leaves the door open for further development.
Critical Point, by S.L. Huang
Next in Huang’s series about Cas Russell, amoral heroine who uses math to kick ass. Although the action is frenetic, with Cas lurching from kidnapping to bombing to fighting off bioengineered guard dogs, the overall pace of the plot is actually almost too leisurely; hints about the shadowy organizations which may or may not be controlling her life remain just hints, and her moral and emotional development is also frustratingly slow. The other characters are refreshing, accepting her strangenesses and allowing her to develop at her own (very slow!) pace, without allowing her to get away with bad behavior.