A woman who gave up her career to raise a baby at home feels her thwarted ambition and rage building up inside her, until it gradually turns her into a literal werewolf. Hilariously, her newfound lycanthropy doesn’t actually change much about her relationship with her mostly-absent and cheerfully oblivious husband (“I’m sure you’re not growing a tail, how silly. Are you sure it isn’t some kind of cyst? Have you made an appointment with your doctor?”), or the other mothers that she sees at baby activities (“I love your new look, very boho, very Mother Earth”). Her worries are also very mundane, as she searches for her symptoms on Google and stresses over the possibility that activities like chasing squirrels and eating raw meat might have a negative impact on her son’s development. Yoder’s character is really good at detailing her resentment and stress caused by modern motherhood (so many personal flashbacks to raising young children!), while never reflecting that resentment onto the baby that put her in this position. The lycanthropy thing actually happens pretty early on in the story and then the book’s pacing kind of flounders around in the middle, before abruptly finding its way to a satisfying ending.
Category: quick reaction
Hummingbird Salamander, by Jeff VanderMeer
To be honest, I skimmed this pretty hard. The narrative voice, that of a person dreamily narrating past events that led to as yet-unspecified disaster, got old really quickly; plus it felt like the character’s super questionable decisions were based more on plot pressure than any kind of logic or rational thought. Cybersecurity analyst Jane, ripe for midlife crisis, is drawn to the taxidermied body of an endangered (extinct?) hummingbird, traces its ownership to a dead ecoterrorist, and abandons work and family to fall down a rabbit hole of threats and shadowy corporate wrongdoing in a near-future world of vaguely-hinted-at environmental gloom. The book never quite felt believable enough for me to buy into the urgency of the plot at any point, and the main character was too much in her own head to tell me much about the world around her. This is supposed to be a “thriller” but I’m not thrilled about marking it as such… I was not thrilled.
Declare, by Tim Powers
This book peers into the corners and shadows of established history and unfolds into an absolutely stunning and fantastical premise. It’s not the first time I’ve read a book about shadow intelligence agencies focused on the supernatural, but this is by far the most ambitious and dare I say successful insertion of magical weird (in this case, djinn with almost alien psychologies) into actual history. The characters, both real and imagined, are established beautifully; their interactions are layered and tense; the descriptive writing is gorgeous. I did find the plot development to be a bit confusing and the pacing uneven; for a while the book didn’t seem like it didn’t know where it was going (or didn’t bother to tell you) and basically let you flounder around for a while. The last quarter or so was the best though and it absolutely stuck the landing. Fantastically good finish.
The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik
Picks up exactly where A Deadly Education left off, with prickly main character El still trying to figure out how to survive graduation while preserving what is important to her (and figuring out what is important to her, which is also a moving target). I still love the nerdy explorations of the nitty-gritty behind a monster-haunted self-study magical school, the tragic way it traumatizes sweet kids and makes them into steely tacticians who prioritize politics and survival over friendship, and the continuing exploration of class differences and its generational benefits. I really liked how the school itself developed into a character over the course of the story, and the buildup and climax were super satisfying. Warning: absolutely argh ending, and of course the last book of the trilogy isn’t out yet.
Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao
Part mecha monster battles, part Chinese alt-history, part propaganda warfare, 100% unbridled feminist rage. Wu Zetian is being groomed by her family to follow in her sister’s footsteps, as a concubine for the mecha-pilot warriors that protect the population from the hordes of “Hundun” monsters beyond the Wall. Zetian, however, is resistant to the idea; not just because she already chafes at her assigned gender roles (foot binding, illiteracy, general submissiveness), but because the fate of concubines is to be the qi battery that the pilots use to power the mecha fighters… and when the battery is drained, the concubine is dead, hence the constant need for replacements. Zetian rampages through this book in a constant primal scream of fury at the unfairness of everything around her. There’s a lot of background politicking, a great nod to information warfare, and a truly unsettling reveal near the end. Unfortunately, the plot is at times confusing, the development uneven, the characterization flat or inconsistent; definitely a book that wants you to rush through without thinking too hard about the details. Mostly though, this book is Zetian taking out her righteous anger on the misogynist cruelty around her, and it’s hard not to enjoy that. Mad kudos for the love triangle aspect, the equal and opposite power balance providing a refreshing change from the norm. Warning: cliffhanger epilogue.
Aurora Rising, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
This book reads so much like a video game that I actually checked to see whether or not it was based on one. The action, characters, and dialogue feel like they would be right at home in a Final Fantasy game (ok, maybe the dialogue is a smidge better). The night before graduation, a space cadet decides to take a joyride, detours to rescue a cryogenically frozen damsel in distress, and misses the all-important, career-defining opportunity to choose his own team members, getting stuck instead with the dregs and interesting outcasts of the academy. Said team members even have character classes which map easily onto stats – “tanks” have max STR, “faces” have max CHA, also “brains” and “gearheads” etc – and each battle party, I mean “squad,” consists of exactly six members, one of each class. See, it’s totally an RPG! The rescued damsel turns out to be the key to unlocking dangerous secrets with galactic consequences – shocker! – and before you know it, the motley crew is off racing across the galaxy in search of answers and safe haven. Oh and did I mention that the “tank” in the squad is an alien that looks exactly like a Tolkien elf; one character even calls him “Legolas” (clearly some aspects of 21st century pop culture have improbably survived into the far future). It’s shallow reading, light and fun, especially enjoyable for those whose main goal in playing science fantasy video games is to get to the next gorgeous cutscene as quickly as possible.
The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo
This was amazing, a treatment of The Great Gatsby which recasts socialite Jordan Baker as a queer adoptee from Vietnam. As a visibly Asian person in white spaces, her character traits from the original — her avoidance of attachment, her blithe dismissal of others’ opinions — all make sense from someone preemptively protecting herself from racism. As if that weren’t enough, there is also magic, beautifully and lyrically presented: the weather responds to Daisy Buchanan’s emotions so that she moves through the world as literal pathetic fallacy; Jordan cuts paper dolls that come to life; Gatsby plies his guests with crystal glasses of literal demon’s blood. As for Nick Carraway… well, I won’t ruin it, but I will say this book had one of the best, most well-developed endings I’ve read in a while; it also contained delightful surprises, which was quite a feat considering that this book actually follows the original quite faithfully. Oh, and the writing was stunning.
She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker Chan
I do not have words for how awesome this book was. It’s about fate, and how you make your peace with it (or not). A girl from a rural village in China, so poor and unvalued that she was not even given a name, is told that her brother is fated for greatness. When he dies, she assumes his identity and goes on to doggedly pursue his glorious fate as well, disguising herself as a boy and getting admitted to a monastery. In time, she finds herself set against the Mongol conquerors that are ruling harshly over the land, one of whom is struggling to accept the fate that he has decided upon for himself. The book is just brilliant, full of piercing insights about gender, destiny, and self-determination, and characters who don’t let the other characters get away with anything. I loved every moment.
The Unbroken, by C.L. Clark
I really liked almost every concept in this book: downtrodden slave caste with a secret rebellion, a child raised by the colonizers struggles to find her place; warrior/princess romance with respect paid to power imbalance, hidden magic users wielding secret powers… but the characterization was flat, the villains were paper cutouts, the characters made weird and stupid unforced errors, the plot dragged and rushed by turns, and at the end I feel like nothing got resolved and more messes were made. I get that it’s the first in a series, but with this kind of pacing and development, I’m not in a hurry to see where it goes.
The Black Tides of Heaven, by Neon Yang
First in a series: magic, prophecy, family guilt trips. I really liked the concept of a race whose gender is literally undecided until around when puberty hits, at which point they can choose to be male or female (or perhaps neither?), and their body will adapt to their decision. A pair of powerful twins need to figure out a path forward through political unrest, their manipulative and cruel mother, and their bond with one another. I like show-don’t-tell worldbuilding but this one was a little too vague sometimes.