The Unkindness of Ravens by Abra Staffin-Wiebe
Started: 5/7/19
Finished: 5/10/19
A good novella, interesting magic. The story is the member-of-nobility-hides-with-the-common-people-and-learns-a-lesson type, but it’s done well.
novella
The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
Started: 4/7/19
Finished: 4/9/19
Steampunk fantasy novella set in post-Civil War New Orleans. I’m not always a fan of stories that use gods to fuel the magic system (capricious gods that act like children annoy me), but I liked it this time. Details built an alternate New Orleans without a lot of exposition, and the characters were well done.
The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
Started: 3/23/19
Finished: 3/23/19
Really good novella set in the near-enough future about a super-messed up citizenship test. Good and disturbing – the good kind of disturbing.
Galactic Mandate: The Scream by M.R. Richardson
Started: 1/30/19
Gave up: 1/30/19
I gave up on this one almost immediately. The writing was bad. Very bad. I couldn’t make myself continue, even for a clone story.
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
Started: 12/1/18
Finished: 12/2/18
Third in the Wayward Children series. The first book set up the premise (which is great). The second and third explore some of the worlds and follow some of the first book’s characters. I still love these books, both for the ideas and the characters. These are some real teenagers going through some real emotional issues.
Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
Started: 6/26/18
Finished: 6/27/18
Third (last) in the Binti series, it’s an immediate sequel to the second one and doesn’t stand as well on its own, but it wraps up the trilogy nicely (and is still very good).
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente
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.
Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Started: 6/23/18
Finished: 6/24/18
Alternate history where the World Wars ended with the corporate takeover of countries and militaries, and a soldier is sent off to recover the son of a ruling businessman who was taken prisoner. Good idea, but the pacing and the writing didn’t do it for me.
Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor
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.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
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.
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
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.
And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker
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?
We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory
Started: 6/2/18
Finished: 6/3/18
SO strange. The characters all belong to a support group for survivors of events that only happen in horror stories. They don’t like or trust each other, they don’t share their stories easily (or equally), and why were they brought together in the first place?
In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle
Started: 5/28/18
Finished: 5/29/18
A crotchety old man with a farm in Italy finds a unicorn. It’s a lovely story.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
Started: 4/13/18
Finished: 4/15/18
Another Holmes and Watson take, but this time the Holmes character is an unstable Vietnamese woman and Watson is a sentient spaceship. It’s a novella, just long enough to solve one mystery, but while I liked the characters, I found the mystery (so basically, the story) a little…not hard to understand exactly, because I followed the plot, but hard to explain, maybe? Like, I read it, but I don’t think I could describe what happened.
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages
Started: 2/17/18
Finished: 2/18/18
Lovely novella about lesbians in 1940s San Francisco with a little bit of magic.
Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
Started: 1/28/18
Finished: 1/28/18
Another novella, also good, but not as gripping as the previous two. Felt more psychological thriller than science fiction.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Started: 1/27/18
Finished: 1/28/18
Another novella, the second in the Wayward Children series. Very good, maybe not as good as the first one, but still really nice to dig into the actual through-the-looking-glass story of two of the characters.
The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson
Started: 1/26/18
Finished: 1/27/18
REALLY good novella. It was creepy and fascinating and I don’t want to tell you anything about it because I don’t want to give it away but I want MORE. What is WRONG with her? How did she get that way? What’s up with her parents? WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!? More, please.
The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne Valente
Started: 1/21/18
Finished: 1/23/18
There’s a trope in comics, movies, TV, books, everything, about how the hero’s love interest has to die or be raped or whatever in order to give the hero a reason to go be heroic. The love interest is an object, a plot device, not a character. The trope (and there’s a website) is called Women in Refrigerators because a particularly egregious example involved a Green Lantern comic where the girlfriend was killed and actually stuffed into a fridge for the hero to find. This novella, focused on the comics aspect, is about turning those women into characters. Pretty darn good, too.