I think Hendrix started out with the concept of “wouldn’t it be cool if a book club of stereotypical housewives dedicated to reading horror novels actually encountered a for-reals vampire, and had to fight it using nothing but their wifely/womanly skills?” The resulting execution is at times hilarious and incisive, which lets you overlook the fact that none of the characters are likable. The women, for all their strength around one another, are terrified of crossing their men; those men are uniformly patronizing, dismissive, or controlling; the children that the women repeatedly say they would die to protect … give the audience zero reasons to care about them either. I did like the nod to the disparity of race outcomes, both in neighborhood development and as vampire pickings, but again it was brought up just for the white women to wring their hands over briefly, and for the men to ignore entirely. It’s kind of like this cider I tried yesterday that hit the palate right off the bat with lovely sweet notes, but then faded to bitter dryness on the tongue: after enjoying this book (and it was extremely enjoyable!), you’re left wondering whether these people should have been saved from vampires at all.
Category: quick reaction
Bee Sting Cake, by Victoria Goddard
Book 2 of Greenwing and Dart; this one delves into Jemis Greenwing’s clouded past and his trauma around it. This is a triumph of unreliable narration; Jemis is so closed off from his emotions that all we have to go by are his detached observations of how his friends are reacting to him. It’s so well done that you’re more concerned about Jemis than about everything else going on around him, which includes dragons, riddles, a haunted wood, an entire cursed village, inheritance shenanigans, and a high stakes county fair. Absolutely loved this one.
The Apollo Murders, by Chris Hadfield
I was looking forward to this because I figured that Hadfield, being an astronaut, would be great at dropping in very technical and accurate details about the mechanics and procedures of spaceflight, and in this I was not at all disappointed. (I love Hadfield, for the record; his nerdiness is infectious, as is his clear enthusiasm for public outreach. I still enjoy rewatching his videos from space.) I also figured that Hadfield’s forte was likely not character development or beautiful prose, and in this I was also correct. This is a Cold War what-if thriller, in which the Americans and Russians jockey for primacy with moon rovers, spy satellites, and competing space missions. Hadfield sprinkles in real people with his fictional characters, and although his characters have no real depth or growth, they serve the purpose of moving the plot along. I loved the very technical descriptions of everything, from helicopter mechanics to how a loose solder blob could cause severe damage (see, this is why you don’t skimp on shock testing) to how communications lags meant that you had to deliver and receive information at a remove; that palpable joy in the details made the overall awkwardness of the story easier to swallow.
The Empire of Gold, by S.A. Chakraborty
Non-stop tension, action, and angst for this conclusion to the Daevabad trilogy. Great character growth with all the main protagonists; Chakraborty did an amazing job painting complementary pictures of their views of themselves versus how others saw them. The environments were crafted beautifully, both in mundane Cairo and in the magical world, and although the carnage was intense, the characters’ outraged reactions meant that the book never quite hit grimdark in tone. The only annoying bit for me was the djinn Dara’s clinging to his old beliefs despite what was by now a GIANT mountain of evidence to the contrary, but even that I could see as a logical outcome of his character. Really nicely done overall.
The Sweetest Remedy, by Jane Igharo
This is a perfectly sweet and romantic story about finding one’s family, except one’s family turns out to be super rich in Nigeria. It actually felt so close to Crazy Rich Asians for me, with its fish-out-of-water American heroine, her total delight in native dishes, the aloof and snobbish natives, and their breathless name-dropping of brands and designers, that I kept imagining it all taking place in Singapore. The main character is a half-white, half-Nigerian girl who grew up with her mother in the US after her Nigerian father left them; when she gets word that he has passed away and has asked for her to be present for the will to be read, she reluctantly travels to Nigeria. There, she meets her ultra-rich, mostly-unimpressed family, falls in love with a super hot family friend, and they all have to learn to accept each other. So yeah, pretty much it’s the plot of Crazy Rich Asians, except with only a fraction of the sniping and backbiting. The characters have no depth; everyone is pretty much exactly who they say they are, and they also say exactly what they think at any given moment. Everyone emotes so much that you feel like you’re reading a telenovela. The writing wasn’t artful by any means, but it was simple and smooth, and there were no surprises.
Rogue Protocol, by Martha Wells
The Murderbot Diaries novellas just get better and better (this one is #3). Murderbot’s narrative voice is a work of art – it feels emotions but doesn’t want to admit to them, or talk about them, so we get beautiful, terse little notes like “I don’t know, everything was annoying right now and I had no idea why.” But we all know why; it’s because someone is trying to treat Murderbot as worthy of friendship and respect, and Murderbot absolutely cannot deal. The characterization was great, especially that of Miki, a friendly little bot whose sweetness would have been saccharine except for how it was presented through Murderbot’s annoyed eyes. Wonderfully condensed piece, where mystery and sci-fi action and those emotions that Murderbot hate so much combine and build towards a beautiful and poignant conclusion, propelling Murderbot unwillingly towards further character growth and plot development.
Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi
This book sits in an interesting spot, culturally. Basically when the main character Ada (or “the Ada” as the spirits inside call her) was born, the gate to the spirit world malfunctioned and the spirits inside her were never truly joined to her in a healthy way. As she experienced moments of trauma and isolation (sketched with beautiful language by Emezi), the spirits inside her took turns piloting her physical body; they took on aspects of strength and caring that helped her get through hard times, but also acted out in unhealthy ways. Because she moved from Nigeria to Virginia, from a world where she would have been considered god-touched to one where she was considered mentally ill, she sank further into dysfunction; after suicide attempts and panic attacks, she was only able to turn towards recovery by embracing her native culture. I found out later that this was autobiographical, which is… even more disturbing considering some of the stuff that went on in the book. If that’s true though, I’m glad Emezi has found a balance with their inner selves.
The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis
Lewis is a solid writer; he writes nonfiction like a thriller. We lived through the pandemic so when he starts describing the initial events, the rumors of illness, the blithe dismissal of the politicians, we know things are going south… but he still patiently lays the foundation: public health officers on shoestring budgets, with power on paper but very little in practice; government plans for pandemics drafted and discarded; politics and caution prized over effectiveness and rapid response. Reading this was an intensely frustrating exercise, punctuated by only brief moments of relief, especially since, let’s be real, we’re still in the middle of a public heath crisis, and now we know even more about how very few people are able (or willing) to do anything to manage it.
The Girl with All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey
Zombie story with a nice twist in perspective from the norm. I liked the character of the titular girl; child geniuses in stories often come across as super-unbelievable tiny versions of adults, but I thought her characterization was really well done, both when she was the POV character and when she was seen through the eyes of the other characters. I also like what Carey did with the characters of the tough soldier and the empathic teacher, who each began as flat stereotypes and who were slowly and smoothly developed into sympathetic wholes. Also, mild spoiler, but I’m a sucker for any universe that involves mycorrhizal spores.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark
Set in the steampunk Cairo of Clark’s Dead Djinn universe, in which hapless ministry officials try to regulate supernatural occurrences given shoestring budgets and an unsupportive bureaucracy, Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr and his new partner Agent Onsi investigate a haunted tram car. I loved Hamed’s weary competence in tackling the case, set against Onsi’s exuberance; I also liked the suffragettes and other women in the story who insisted that Hamed make room for their competence and independence, and how it all managed to tie together at the end. Really tight, well-written novella.