Welcome To Your Authentic Indian Experience by Rebecca Roanhorse
Started: 7/3/18
Finished: 7/3/18
Sad but really good short story about remaining true to and also exploiting Native American history.
Hugo nominee
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
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.)
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
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.
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.
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?
Provenance by Ann Leckie
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.
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
Started: 4/8/18
Finished: 4/10/18
The first in a new series by John Scalzi. Normally I love his stuff, but this one took a while for me to get into. The story is good (as usual), but the characters felt like a bit of a departure, one in particular. Usually his characters are all likable, and this one was decidedly not. That’s not a bad thing, actually, but it was unexpected and took me a bit to come around on.
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.
All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Started: 1/1/18
Finished: 1/2/18
First novella in The Murderbot Diaries series. Grabbed me from the first sentence and kept me interested the whole way through.