Available online here. Really long title given that it’s a short story, but it’s a Murderbot story so I’ll take it. This one is from the point of view of Mensah, Murderbot’s favorite human, and I love her narrative voice; in her own way she’s very like Murderbot, aware of her own weaknesses but unwilling to face them. I loved seeing Murderbot through her eyes as well, the physical description colored by her feelings. Not too much action but great emotional punch.
Category: quick reaction
The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner
Book 2 of the Queen’s Thief series, following The Thief. This one is told with several viewpoint characters, and features Eugenides’ interactions with the Queen of Attolia, who had to learn to rule with an iron fist in order to secure her kingdom. Something pretty traumatic happens right off the bat to Eugenides, who (deservedly) spends a good part of the book coming to terms with it while politics in the world around him become increasingly fraught. I loved the thoughtful, detailed, and believable sketches of the political situation and the characters caught up in it; the eventual love story fit in like a perfect puzzle piece, allowing the characters to escape the tightening plot without sacrificing their essential natures. I did not, however, love the ending given the events that kicked off the story initially. Extremely mixed feelings about this one.
The Serpent Sea, by Martha Wells
Sequel to The Cloud Roads, this one follows Moon’s court as they try to find a home. Unfortunately, their ancestral dwelling has been robbed of its heart, sending them on a quest to retrieve it from unfriendly actors. The ecology of this universe just gets weirder and weirder; we meet trading “waterlings” whose entire bodies are seacraft, and enormous seagoing leviathans who have entire cities on their backs (and crazy macrobiomes in their bellies). Yet the heart of the novel is still Moon and his defensive independence, set against his desperate need for family and belonging. Love the focus on emotion amongst all the adventure and crazy worldbuilding, really good stuff.
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith
I cannot tell you how good this book was. Smith dives deeply into plantations, memorials, cemeteries, prisons, and his own family oral history; he gathers viewpoints directly from docents and other visitors, and lets their words stand next to what facts can be gleaned from the historical record. He talks with people who have set ideas on what their history is, and with those who are still open to learning more; he interrogates the stories that Americans tell themselves about their shared history, and where those stories originated (very often as propaganda). He wanders through the American landscape as if it’s a crime scene, which it very much is; not only were horrific crimes committed here against so many, but the crime against Black America is still unfolding, and the weight of it affects everything we do and defines who we are. The narration is often punctuated by piercing insights, and the prose is just beautiful. Truly amazing portrait of how far we’ve come, where we are now, and how far we have yet to go in reckoning with the impact of slavery in America.
The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner
The Queen’s Thief series has been highly recommended, so I put the first book on my list. It begins with Gen, the thief, languishing in the king’s prison; he’s stolen the king’s seal and publicly bragged about it, which landed him not only in prison but in multiple chains. The king’s magus (chief scholar) takes him out to help steal something else, something far away. The first half of the book is actually incredibly boring; it’s basically Gen complaining about having to ride horseback and the small party telling each other dueling tales of origin mythology. The story doesn’t kick into high gear until Gen actually does steal the MacGuffin and the gods turn out to be more than just stories. Nice twist at the end too. This basically functions as an extended prologue to a series that I’m definitely interested in reading, but in itself I’m not that impressed; it could have been sharper and tighter.
Zero Sum Game, by S.L. Huang
Cas Russell will do any job for pay, because it’s better than being alone in her own head. Her superpower is not casual violence (though there’s plenty of that) but sheer mathematical ability; she calculates vectors of people and bullets, and plots her way through fights, until she’s the only one left standing. (Huang has a math background, so the math is actually readable and not just gibberish.) A standard rescue starts to go wrong when Cas is suddenly being pursued by an enemy too big to handle; on top of that, her thoughts and emotions no longer seem like they are her own. Cas is a prickly, untrusting person who is nevertheless fiercely loyal to a certain few, and it’s a joy to watch her gradually opening up her circle. Between dodging bullets, of course. I thought that there was a bit too much new plot being introduced near the end, but then I found out it was the first of a series. What a delight! Bring on more Cas, I am looking forward to seeing where she’s going.
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, by Annalee Newitz
This was fantastic! Newitz studies four cities from previous civilizations (Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, Pompeii in Italy, Angkor in Cambodia, and Cahokia in the US) and uses archaeologists’ findings to bring them to life with incredibly vivid detail, describing both the inhabitants’ everyday existence as well as their social and cultural dynamics. She explores the rise and growth of the cities as well as their decline for various reasons; although all these cities now lie buried, she still finds lessons in their existence. I love how she finds both warning and celebration in the ruins: yes, communities can rise and fall, but look how beautifully we built something together.
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
SF, but the kind of soft-around-the-edges SF that creates a world for you without really needing to get into the details of how it works. The viewpoint character Klara is a solar-powered AF, an artificial intelligence designed to be a dedicated friend to some child wealthy and lonely enough to need one; that lonely child is Josie, whose parents have made choices that now define their lives and hers. Klara’s combination of innocence and fiercely detailed observational skills allow her to make piercing insights about the human characters, while also remaining childishly naïve about the humans’ motives. I particularly loved Ishiguro’s rendering of her understanding of the world, which brought items to the foreground of her attention depending on their urgency, and categorized actions into shifting area boxes; when she is disturbed, the boxes and priorities devolve into a colorful, shifting mess of meaningless geometries. Very well done.
Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Really short and focused compared to previous Tchaikovsky reads. It starts out feeling like a fantasy novel, with a princess running away to seek the help of an legendary wizard… but then you find out that the wizard is actually a hapless anthropologist, stranded when he came to study a far-flung space colony, and his fabled magics are really just Clarke’s third law in action. The characters were thoughtfully created and beautifully executed, and their internal, interpersonal, and external conflicts were all brilliantly woven together, with the narrative giving each time to develop and grow. Really solid piece.
Fevered Star, by Rebecca Roanhorse
It’s been long enough since I read the prequel (Black Sun) that I wasn’t sure I’d remember anything that led up to the climactic cliffhanger, but this one was really good at summing up the events of the first book without being boring. Even though this one was mostly about politicking, as opposed to the action that drove the prequel, it still felt dramatic and tense. Roanhorse takes a very show-don’t-tell approach to world establishment, letting the characters’ interactions with one another establish the salient features of each clan or gang or other organization, which is great but also confusing; there were many players with different affiliations, and I could have used a crib sheet. If I had to nitpick, it would be to say that this felt a bit characters-in-service-to-the-plot instead of the other way around; some previously forceful characters were weirdly passive as events shoved them about. Still, great reading; I’ll just have to remember to reread the prequels before the third one comes out.