Started: 6/1/19
Finished: 6/7/19
I’ve been meaning to read this one for a year, and then it got nominated for a Hugo and I got it in the voter’s packet, so yay for me! It’s a story about monsters and monsterslayers in a post-apocalyptic US, set on a Navajo reservation, and it’s pretty great.
Started: 8/16/18
Gave up: 8/17/18
Interesting premise: Victorian missionaries travel to the lands of the Fae to try to convert them to Christianity. Our protagonist’s brother never returned, so she heads there to try to find him. And then nothing happens. For a long time. So I gave up.
Started: 7/17/18
Finished: 7/21/18
I’m really not sure if I liked this. It was interesting, and there’s an open question about the abilities the kid had (Did he actually have them? Did those things really happen?), but aside from that, it’s about a teenager, his relationships, and his eating disorder.
Started: 7/12/18
Finished: 7/17/18
Entertaining, but not great. Superheroes are a thing, but the main character is the assistant to one of the heroes because she’s afraid of her own powers and blah blah blah. It wasn’t exactly gripping.
Started: 7/6/18
Finished: 7/12/18
It’s a Baba Yaga story, it’s an Alice in Wonderland story, and of course it’s neither of those, but it was really good, and I really enjoyed the characters.
Started: 7/5/18
Finished: 7/5/18
Cute story (novelette) about robots when people aren’t around.
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
I wanted to like this one more (because I really enjoyed her Hugo-nominated novella), but it was maybe a bit too “these kids today” for me.
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
One of my favorites of the Hugo-nominated novelettes (the other being the other robot one – it seems I like robots), this one was really sweet.
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
This novelette is set in the same universe as Ninefox Gambit, which I wasn’t crazy about. I did enjoy this story, very much, but I’m not sure I would have if I’d read it first.
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
I’m not sure I liked this novelette. The magic was odd, the setting was interesting, but I didn’t get enough background or explanation to get into the story.
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
Interesting novelette about a future where food is cloned/printed.
Started: 7/3/18
Finished: 7/3/18
Sad but really good short story about remaining true to and also exploiting Native American history.
Started: 7/1/18
Finished: 7/3/18
I loved this book. It’s fantasy – boy finds himself in a land with elves and mermaids and so on, which is always good for me – but the characters (all teenagers, followed from age 13 to 18) are written so realistically it’s easy to forget this is fantasy. (Fantasy novels don’t always do characters justice.)
Started: 6/27/18
Finished: 7/1/18
Slavery in space. Set on a generation ship so far from its beginnings that no one questions the structure, our main character is probably meant to be on the spectrum and has enough medical skill to have some freedom while still working within the system. It’s good, with a mystery at its center, and some interestingly misunderstood characters, but a pretty serious read.
Started: 6/24/18
Finished: 6/26/18
This version of Snow White is Native American and lives in the American West, around the Gold Rush period. It’s a neat way to look at the story, but I can’t say I really liked it. It’s more a style issue than a story issue for me.
Started: 6/16/18
Finished: 6/17/18
Second in the Binti series, Binti comes home on a visit from the university and finds trouble. Possibly better than the first one. SO GOOD.
Started: 6/15/18
Finished: 6/16/18
Young adult novella, set in a future with tech that looks like magic. A young woman belongs to an insular African village and leaves it (runs away?) to go to an interstellar university. The first in a trilogy. SO GOOD.
Started: 6/13/18
Finished: 6/15/18
This is silkpunk, which I believe is Asian steampunk, with some tech, some magic, a twin fated to die with the other determined to save them both. It’s an intro to the author’s novel-length series, but I’m not in a hurry to read those. Good, but not for me.
Started: 6/12/18
Finished: 6/13/18
Good novella, great premise. Sarah is invited to a convention where the only members are Sarahs from other universes. One of them turns up dead. Which one, when they’re all so much alike? And which one of the Sarahs is capable of murder?
Started: 5/2/18
Finished: 5/6/18
Set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series, it’s completely different. The plot hinges on whether or not someone is who they say they are (or rather, who they say they aren’t) and whether a certain artifact is real. Also, there’s some fun with proxies. It doesn’t sound riveting, but it kept my attention. I really need to read the other two books in the Ancillary series.