I read 12 novels/novellas. Some of the novels were rereads. These are not reviews, just half-baked reactions and may contain SPOILERS.
Started/Continued:
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2023 edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Chinaza Eziaghighala I read three of the stories this year. I realize I am not the audience for these stories. I know I’m missing some context because I’m not familiar with the mythology/folklore. I will need to look up the authors later, but for now, I just want to experience the stories cold knowing I will be confused and not understand. The first two stories are set in a space-faring society, binary star system. People have auras. There is a corporate / gang-style government. Mixtures of spirit world and physical world. Even robots are given the ability to interact with auras. Very interesting ideas. Strangemares. A death world of spirits seeking retribution for past atrocities. That I understood. Understanding a little about how governments work and don’t work in Africa, I can see how the stories are inspired. What I read about Nigeria, so much is not really governed by the central authority. I have to imagine parts of the US being run by white supremacist militias like parts of Idaho and Nevada are. The third story has virtual reality encroaching on the spirit world. It had a riddle battle between a god and a spirit, fun. I don’t know what the writer is making up and what they based on their culture’s folklore. It was a good story regardless.
Completed
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien, I read this with the Many Meetings substack. Partial reread. It reads like the Bible. This is why I stalled before. It is a collection of stories rather than a novel. The origin of the spirit world: Iluvator, Ainur, Maiar. The creation of Arda: Middle-Earth and Valinor. Creation of the races of people: Elves, Men, Dwarves. I learn of the variety of Elves divided by those who had been to Valinor and those who had not. I learned that Elves can be @ssholes with Feanor being the biggest. That Galadriel was very ambitious, not the mystic we see her in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is often criticized for lacking female characters, but The Silmarillion has several kick-@ass women. But also several who die of grief. I love the little tidbits of background to the characters we later meet in LotR. How Celeborn and Galadriel meet. Why the Elves and Dwarves are so suspicious of each other. That Cirdan the Shipwright was in Middle-earth from the beginning. If you are a fan of Lord of the Rings, it is worth reading. Warning, it will change your opinion of Elves. It will explain who the Eagles are, why they intervene sometimes and don't at other times. Also, the Valar are not particularly useful gods. It is not worthwhile venerating them. What I love most about Tolkien is the way he writes fantasy as history, including all the events that occurred in a place, the changes in the names of rivers that would happen in a real world even if it has no bearing on the plot. It makes the story "real".
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchiakovsky, 2024 Hugo novel finalist. The “dehydration” method for suspended animation for space flight is not plausible. How does the brain keep its information? How do you remain you? Otherwise interesting enough premise to read for the alien world/life forms/archeology. I liked his other books. Very brutal and violet. Political commentary. The political premise is chillingly current. Like RFK, Jr's HHS. Here’s the result we want, go do research to support that. Anything else is anti-government and seditious. The reveal of the aliens was cool. That they were made of amalgamations of simpler creatures, and reconfigured as needed. Humans were being absorbed into the biosphere. Service Model by Adrian Tchiakovsky, 2024 Hugo. Robot valet tries for find its place in the world after a robot uprising. A fun romp. But not plausible. Just a vehicle for political commentary.
One Man’s Treasure by Sarah Pinsker, novellette. A world where there is magic, but low level. People still have jobs and there is an economy with rich and poor. Trash collector solves an almost murder. I guess I should not be surprised by the lack of morals a rich person’s son would be raised with. But turning someone to stone then just putting him in the trash is very callous.
The Year without Sunshine by Naomi Kritzer, Novellette, Hugo finalist for 2024. Good post apocalytic story about a neighborhood organizing a suburban commune to survive a partial civilization collapse due to an unnamed environmental disaster . Very Appropriate for current times, only our collapse might be a politically caused disaster, but the same approach will get us through it.
A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon).Hugo Finalist, Novel for 2025. Regency romance/ horror fantasy. I liked the characters. Interested in how the sorceress would be foiled. Since she was an abusive narcissist. The friend research into magic and found an incantation to break her spell on the horse demon and it killed her. The old couple married after 10 years of unrequited love and they adopted the orphaned sorceress’s daughter. Regency manners, murders and interesting take on ghosts.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. Finalist for Best Novel Hugo for 2025. This is her first novel. Not bad. I generally don’t like time travel stories. This one is more SF, future world with climate change. Secret British ministry. Time travel machine was stolen, not developed by the British. There are rules about how it operates to avoid paradoxes. Several people were abducted from the past using the machine, and are being studied by the Ministry. They all were just about to die in their timeline, so there were no effects on the future. Turns out there is another faction that is trying to shut down the time machine studies. Alternate timelines are revealed. I hate those. Now it is just confusing. The motivation of the other faction isn't clear other than "save the world" but the ending is satisfying and not cliche.
Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Bradlee. Viv the mercenary ogre was wounded and is left in the seaside town of Murk to recover. I guess this is before the first book. She is a newbie merc. She reads. Town is populated with many species of fantasy folk: goblins, dwarves, elves, orcs as well as men living more or less harmoniously. Viv ends up helping a bookshop owner, a rattkin named Fern, get her shop back in business. Has a romance with the dwarf bakery owner. Gets involved in sorcery. The enemy her crew had been attacking when she was wounded also had an agent in the town. Bonedust comes in when she finds a sack of enchanted bones that come to life when sprinkled with bonedust. The homoculus is also a reader, and is a genteel servant type that unwillingly serves the sorcerer Verine. He was stolen from her along with a book of portals. Fun. Reclusive elf author is fun, but doesn’t really add to the plot. She does help the bookshop improve business. Maybe a good side quest. (Travis writes games.) Viv and friends defeat the sorcerer and the homoculus is free. Fun characters and relationships. Orc porter is poet. Gyphet; owl-dog. Nice Epilogue set in Legends and Lattes time. This was a fun read. Character growth. Good can be accomplished by cooperating. Reading is good.
Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa - This is a Compton Crook award winner. I’m having trouble getting into it. Kinda clunky with the politics. World makes no sense. Starting to get interesting. Protag gets herself sent offworld. This will let her try to rescue her “brother”/”sibling” Not biological, more like a creche-sibling that she lives with. Her culture doesn’t have bio-parents raise their offspring. She encounters “pirates”/rebels who recruit her as a spy for the opponent of the Empire. It was an interesting read to see how she would handle the story. Colonized person learning the colonizer’s language perfectly. She is also a hobby tea expert. The God-Emperor ends up being a figurehead basically, tho appointed by the previous God-Emperor who abdicates after his daughter/heir is killed in battle. Protag becomes friend with the God-Emperor, who is a young military commander who is just as confused about why she’s the God-Emperor as everyone else is. Through unbelieveable twists the Protag, rescues her brother, and helps the God-Emperor kill the members of the behind the scenes puppet-masters who causes war for profits. She also bargains to get her world freed from colonization. The world building is interesting. There is a Homeworld in the distant past that is probably Earth and the people are humans. So the author’s use of vocabulary like “intel” can be excused, but it took me out of the world. How would Etetan, a native of a backwater moon know the concept of intelligence and spying let alone the abbreviation. The story structure was good. There is a false resolution, followed by the evil arising where you didn’t expect. More revelations Revelations about the God-Emperor’s past, she’s a commoner from a newly annexed territory, so not really even a citizen. There is no real peril. Protag and friends get knocked around, but recover quickly due to advanced medicine. There are synthetic humanoids, that can “fall in love”. Protag and God-Emperor have a love interest that isn’t quite consumated, fortunately because of the power imbalance would make that icky. Lots of talking about the evils of colonization and how to make amends. I did not like the sentinel/storm troopers cliché. The dissection gun that has a stun setting. Really. It either cuts you to pieces or stuns you. Not believeable. Very good for a first novel.
Manseed by Jack Williamson, 1982. Reading it before recommending it to my son. I do not recommend it.. Interesting premise, but so misogynistic. The only woman, Megan Drake, has gathered 6 top men in various fields. Would it have hurt to include some top women? I guess the dynamic needed the men competing for her approval? Big deal that she is a virgin, making her untouchable to some. And of course all the men think about her in terms of whether her would be his lover. Ugh. Source of her focus for her brother’s idea. Not her own. I got sick of the man as his robot version mentioning his bare crotch. Do men think about their genitals all the time? Or only when they think of their lost lover. All the men were attracted to Megan. Her robot counterpart had breasts for Pete’s Sake! No mention of vulva, tho. The romance is ick. Is the premise interesting enough? First, the planet scans showed no settlements, but later they find ruins and roads and spherical technology centers, just not active. One typo, I noticed. Sight instead of site. Seed ships that reproduce Earth life at the destination from templates, rather than sending frozen specimens. Only on planets w/o civilization. However, this planet has an alien spacestation in orbit. Somewhat inactive except for a disk-shaped robot. It does have some interesting twists. After the Defender goes in search of feed stock on the planet, finds ruins of a humanoid civilization (that they didn’t detect from space) then a ground station build by these aliens. Uh-oh. They must have wiped out the last settlement. Defender bluffs the station into given him feed stock in the form of aircraft fuel along with an aircraft. When it returns, it finds the ship has birthed another Defender who has already found an organic feed stock source and moved the seedship out of danger. Tells Defender 1 it is not needed for now, stand by. Also a third even better Defender is hatching. Turns out Defender 2 has Megan’s form including breasts! FFS. She is happy to see Defender 1 who she identifies as the mercenary. And reveals that Megan did love his human counterpart. She kisses him. Really? So, I am interested to see what happens with the aliens and the new earth colony, so I’ll finish it. I’d rather have a book with no women that one with a sappy woman. Human male 1 and Human female 2 end of being defective and part of the story is how they die. Too stupid. Defender 3 is hatched. He is mainly the pilot and it has a penis, why? More humans are born and they are even tempered. Def 2 and 3 go off to find the base, leaving Defender 1 to raise the human colony. Years pass and they don’t return. Def 1 walks up to the base because the 6 remaining landing ships were launched from the spacestation. It hitches a ride on one as its cabin is taken inside the base. There are dead humanoids inside. The humanoids are alive when they exit the cabins, but die quickly. Def 1 climbs to another floor and finds Def 2 and 3 unconsious. They are out of power because they on inside with no sun. It also discovers the gas that the aliens had used to kill the previous inhabitants, and the Defenders had released it to kill the aliens. WTF? Def 1 carries each of the other defenders outside. They recharge. They tell him what happened. Basically, they fucked the whole time when they weren’t figuring out how the base worked and how the previous colony had died. Only sea life survived. None of it makes sense, so I can’t remember it all. Def 2 and 3 are so wrapped up in each other that they are not interested in helping with the human colony, but will stay at the base and continue research and fucking. Defender 1 flies back, I think. It’s all pretty pointless.
Navigational Entanglements, by Aliette Dr Bodard. novelette, Hugo finalist. I usually like her stories set in future space civilization with a Vietnamese culture-base. The friction between the characters and the unfamiliar names with the diacriticals make it hard for me to identify people. It turned from an investigation into a space monster phenomenom, called a tangler, to a murder investigation. I’m having trouble getting into it. Too much time on the romance. Ah, it seems the powers that be are unleashing the tangler on purpose on another Clan. The tangler seems to be jellyfish-like with an umbrella , tendrils, and stingers. Description of the tangle and how the team subdues it with “chi” is interesting. The civilization and technology is interesting. Nhi is trying to divert the tangler from an occupied settlement,. Some Clan is trying to start a power shift because they feel left out or something. One of the group can talk to the tangler, I forgot how she learned this. The team manages to send the tangler into hyperspace, which is where it prefers to be. This gets them in trouble with the Clan that was maniplulating it as well as the entire hierarchy. So their careers are ruined by foiling this plot. They each grow personally due to the ordeal and one romance forms. I like the complex culture that is not based on European history. All strong female protagonists. I could have done without “the feelings” breaking up the flow of the plot. I still don’t know why their mentor was murdered. Maybe part of the plot to disrupt the politics. Maybe, I’ll need a reread in one sitting and skip the romance/angst stuff.
The Humanoids Touch by Jack Williamson – It is better than Manseed. A sequel to The Humanoids written 30 years later, perhaps at the urging of Fred Pohl. Humanoids are robots whose mission is to protect humans from harm, even if it means restricting their lives. Humans fled from the Humanoids and settled on a double planet system that orbits a double star. It is not a pleasant environment. An expedition left to find a more pleasant home, but they lost contact. A survivor, Bosun Brong returned with a story of contact with Humanoids who took over and built a habitat for the settlers and wouldn’t let them do anything dangerous, leading to a regulated life. The Bosun is a friend of the family. He knew Keth’s mother, and had worked with her and his dad, Ryn, in the Zone on the moon Malili. The main story follows the coming of age of Keth in a co-ed military school. He meets and becomes friends with Chelni, the daughter of an influential man. Later he is seduced by a Leleyo, a mutant human race native to the moon, unclear when they arrived. They can live on the non-terraformed area outside the Zone. The native area has bacteria that eats iron, so it is bad for machines and human biology because blood has iron. They can interbreed with humans, so unsure of their heritage. The Bosun is a child of human and leleyo pairing. Keth’s dad, his new wife, Cyrn, who is a scientist/engineer, work to develop a weapon against the humanoids with little help from authorities because they don’t believe the humanoids are a threat. Keth tries to help them using the influence he has being a friend of Chelni’s. They develop a detector and discover the humanoids are in the system. Through various adventures Keth discovers that all humans must submit to the care of the humanoids willingly, or they are drugged with a euphoric. Humanoids can detect lies and great big fat liars themselves. They can assume the shape of humans to fool the populace. Keth is captured by the humanoids and interrogated to find out the where about of forbidden technology and his parents. He is rescued by the Bosun, who can teleport. We find out this is a leleyo ability. They go to the moon to warn the friendly authorities there and see if Keth’s dad had finished the weapon/shield. Turns out they had been replaced with humanoids in disguise. The Bosun and Keth escape in a vehicle designed to go outside of the zone. They are eventually found by the humanoids, in the fire fight both vehicles are damaged and begin to erode under the rock-rust bacteria. The humanoids that leave their vehicle to persue them also erode. Bosun and Keth walk in their excursion suits for a while and make is almost to the “braintree” a source of a special type of energy. They attempt to cross a river on a raft, but are dumped and their suits ruined. Keth expects to die a horrible death from the blood-rot, the Bosun might have immunity because he’s half Leleyian. Then he tells Keth, well, you’re my kid actually. So you’re a quarter leleyian. Might be immune, or just take longer to die. They teleport to the braintree. Naked Leleyo are there doing a ceremony and drinking “sap” from the branches. Keth and the bosun drink too. Maybe this completely protects them from the bacteria, or just inducts them into the clan. After he drinks Keth knows everyone’s names. And the bosun’s father welcomes them. Keth’s lover, Nyin, has gone to the Zone to speak with the humanoids to explain why they don’t need “care” and the humanoids will leave them alone. Keth does to check on Ryn and Cyrn, since they were such enemies of the humanoids. They living peacefully under the care of a humanoids, believing they are doing important work. They are acting delusional and a little psychotic, so I think they were given more than just the euphoric. Keth goes back/teleports to Malili and reunites with his lost love. I thought this story is a lot like “With Folded Hands”, yes, because he wrote it. It’s a novellette he wrote in 1947. Later combined with another story and published as The Humanoids. 1949 ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
