Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin
Started: 7/20/20
Finished: 7/20/20
She’s writing in the second person POV again, and it’s SO effective. I love how this played out.
What I’ve Been Reading
The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker
Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20
Sarah Pinsker can do no wrong. This story was a roller coaster, speeding downhill, all fun and great, and then BAM we ran into a wall and fell into pieces and then what? And no. No! Oh god no! It’s fantastic and you should read it. Except not you, Mom. Or Margaret.
The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim
Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20
I don’t think I fully understood this story. I mean, I get the overall plot and everything, I understand what happened and what the characters learned, but the details of the big tech thing and how (or why) things get erased…I spent too much time (for a novelette I finished in less than an hour) puzzling over it. Don’t dazzle me – just tell the story.
Omphalos by Ted Chiang
Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20
I liked the style of this story more than the content, I think. It’s about an archaeologist who reads about an astronomical discovery that upends her views on everything. The setting is an alternate reality where the science really does uphold the beliefs of the young-earth creationists, so that’s the accepted view of the world and physics and everything. The story is told from her perspective as she relates her days and thoughts to God, via prayers that feel like letters or diary entries.
Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang
Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20
Fascinating near-future story with tech that allows you to communicate with yourself in a parallel universe, which is really cool, but it’s about free will and how people use that tech to make decisions, to justify their actions. The tech is just the next thing (but it’s a very cool next thing to consider).
The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes
Started: 7/18/20
Finished: 7/19/20
This novella was inspired by the song The Deep (by clipping.), which I haven’t listened to yet. The premise is that the pregnant and going-into-labor slaves who were thrown overboard midocean (true) gave birth to mer-people (probably not true) who built a whole civilization and society around a historian who remembers everything so that the rest of them don’t have to. The story is mostly about the current historian who is having difficulties with this burden, but it also goes back into the memories. It’s very good.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djeli Clark
Started: 7/16/20
Finished: 7/18/20
Supernatural detectives in a supernatural version of 1912 Cairo with sky trams and djinn and women’s suffrage as a backdrop. I would read a whole series about this.
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Started: 7/12/20
Finished: 7/15/20
I had heard nothing but wonderful things about this one, but the one time I tried a Max Gladstone book, I couldn’t get into it. That turned out to apply to this novella, too, even though he had a co-author. The premise is really cool, but I seriously considered just putting it down and walking away. The writing was not working for me. I got involved eventually, and I think I liked it…? Interesting, but not really my speed.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Started: 7/8/20
Finished: 7/12/20
Astronauts doing science! Science fiction, but heavy on the science, and oh so optimistic.
In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
Started: 7/5/20
Finished: 7/8/20
Fourth in the Wayward Children series, this one takes one of our characters back in time to when she found her door. It’s so good, and the ending is so sad. It felt sadder than the others, but I’m not sure why – they’re all sad stories because they can’t find their way back to where they feel they belong. I should re-read the first one, at least.
City of Lies by Sam Hawke
Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20
First in a new series that could be really good, but again, I had formatting issues I can’t get past. It’s a PDF with a watermark across every page that says something like “DO NOT REPRODUCE OR WE WILL COME AFTER YOU”. The watermark is okay, but a PDF on a Kindle is annoying because I have to keep resizing the pages. I tried to convert it to a readable Kindle format (Amazon tells you how), and that process put the words from the watermark into the text of the book. But not in one sentence on each page, no. No, it broke up the watermark sentence and inserted the individual words into the text, making the actual book unreadable because it made no sense. I would like to read this book, but I’ll get it from the library or something. I’m not going to get it done in time for Hugo voting.
Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20
13-year-old goes to space to rescue her older brother, and I am not in the mood. The writing is good, the premise is good, but the formatting on my Kindle is atrocious (it’s a converted PDF), and the mind of this 13-year-old is not as comfortable to live in as the mind of the 12-year-old wizard was (from my last book). I’d like to come back to this later, but I’m not going to finish it in time for Hugo voting.
Minor Mage by Ursula Vernon
Started: 7/2/20
Finished: 7/5/20
Young wizard goes on an adventure! Light, quick read, good characters.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Started: 6/25/20
Finished: 7/2/20
Seanan McGuire is amazing. She writes SO many books, in SO many different universes, and they’re all fascinating and DIFFERENT. This one is weird but not hard to read, compelling while also making my brain work, and I really really really liked it.
Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
Started: 6/23/20
Gave up: 6/25/20
YA, possibly Lovecraftian (at least insofar as it includes monsters in the ocean deeps), with an Artful Dodger-like main character, but it didn’t grab me. It seems perfectly readable, and maybe I’ll go back to it, but I have a limited amount of time to read Hugo-nominated books, and I don’t want to spend time on this one.
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Started: 6/10/20
Finished: 6/23/20
The setting here is immediately weird and a little hard to understand, but fascinating, and I really want to know what’s going on and how it works. I still feel that way having finished the book. Good? Yes. Easy? No.
The Winter of the Witch
Started: 6/5/20
Finished: 6/10/20
Last in the Winternight trilogy, with a really satisfying ending. I LOVED this trilogy.
The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
Started: 5/29/20
Finished: 6/4/20
Sequel to The Bear and the Nightingale, which I raved about two years ago. It came out last year, and I have the third book already, so I am behind. I flew (using my current definition of “flew”) through this – it’s so good.
Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey
Started: 5/23/20
Finished: 5/29/20
I love Sarah Gailey (they are responsible for my hippo cowboy stories), so I am so glad to say I REALLY enjoyed their first novel. Magic noir!
Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer
Started: 5/19/20
Finished: 5/23/20
LOVE the author, so excited about this book, and it was good! Young adult, but with realistic teenagers (thank goodness), near-future tech, but not about the tech. It’s a thriller, and a good one.