Reviews and Comments

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picklish@books.theunseen.city

Joined 1 year ago

I read largely sff, some romance and mystery, very little non-fiction. I'm trying to write at least a little review of everything I'm reading this year, but it's a little bit of an experiment in progress.

I'm @picklish@weirder.earth elsewhere.

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Gosford Park meets Groundhog Day by way of Agatha Christie and Black Mirror – the …

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

4 stars

I heard about The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle because Stuart Turton has another mystery coming out this year that is on my book wishlist, and I thought I'd pick up an earlier book by him in the meantime.

The setup to this book is that Evelyn Hardcastle has been (and will be) murdered at 11pm, and the protagonist is living through the perspectives of various people at the manor house where it happens, and is tasked to figure out who is behind the murder. Oh, and there's also somebody trying to kill all of the various hosts he is seeing the world through.

It took me a little bit to get into this, as it's (understandably) a little bit disorienting with a lot of details. There were a number of "how did this weird thing happen" that got answered by "oh that was just ~time loop protagonist shenanigans", …

The dust may have just settled in the failed war of conquest between the Holy …

Splinter in the Sky

3 stars

Splinter in the Sky is an sf book about a tea-making political prisoner, caught between multiple factions all wanting to spy on each other. The book pitch here is "sapphically taking down an empire from within".

It's hard for me to not think of A Memory Called Empire while reading this. Mahit in that book felt very conflicted about the Teixcalaanli Empire; she both studied and dreamed about wanting to be a part of it (and knowing she couldn't ever truly be so), but also knew with eyes wide open how that empire consumed and absorbed everything it touched.

Here, it feels like Enitan has no such ambivalence. Her culture isn't appreciated; she's looked down on (at best); she certainly doesn't want to emulate said empire; her people aren't even seen as real people. She's traumatized by trying to find her sister, but I don't understand why she's not more …

Robert Jackson Bennett: The Tainted Cup (2024, Del Rey) 5 stars

An eccentric detective and her long-suffering assistant untangle a web of magic, deceit, and murder …

The Tainted Cup

5 stars

The Tainted Cup is an amazing fantasy mystery novel (first in a new series) from Robert Jackson Bennett. For what it's worth, I love love loved The Founders trilogy and quite enjoyed The Divine Cities trilogy so I'm coming into this with some bias.

I've seen this pitched as "Sherlock with kaiju", but I think the Sherlock moniker sells it short for me. The Sherlock / Watson dynamic to me is defined by one where Sherlock is the expert observer, deducer, and dilettante and Watson is the bumbling stand-in for the reader (or at best a medical expert). In The Tainted Cup, I think the sleuthing expertise is split between Kol (the assistant investigator) and Ana (the investigator in charge) and this changes the dynamic entirely in a way that makes the mystery more satisfying structurally. Also, I think personality-wise, they are also quite distinct.

Kol, the point of view …

Leslye Penelope: Monsters We Defy (2022, Orbit) 4 stars

The Monsters We Defy

4 stars

The Monsters We Defy is an all-black 1920's supernatural heist story. This book is a blend of both historical black Washington DC and supernatural elements like spirits, root work, and even some Soloman references. I found out afterwards that the main character Clara is a fictionalized version of Carrie Johnson from the 1919 DC race war. I just really appreciated all the historical detail that rooted this book into a particular time and place.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, and it hit all the notes of the heist genre that I enjoy: found family feelings, having to work with people you want to trust but might be working at cross purposes, and a good unseen twist (with a plot reason why the reader wouldn't know this). However it was the setting and great cast of characters that really made it all shine for me.

T. Kingfisher: What Feasts at Night (Hardcover, 2024, Tor Nightfire) 4 stars

The follow-up to T. Kingfisher’s bestselling gothic novella, What Moves the Dead .

Retired soldier …

What Feasts at Night

4 stars

This book is a sequel to What Moves the Dead. It was a little unexpected (to me at least!) that there'd be a sequel to something that was a riff on the Fall of the House of Usher--where do you even go from there? Apparently, another mystery! This time it follows the same set of characters (Easton, Angus, and Eugenia Potter), but instead is set at Easton's childhood lodge in Gallacia.

What I liked about this book was the way it much more tightly wove together parallels of Easton's war-related PTSD and the horror of dreams. While What Moves the Dead felt more like several unrelated stories grafted together, this was a more cohesive novella.

(If I had any petty wishes, it would be to give Eugenia Potter more of a role here. She gets some good quotes, but is ultimately a background character that almost didn't need to …

reviewed Meru by S. B. Divya

S. B. Divya: Meru (2023, Amazon Publishing) 4 stars

One woman and her pilot are about to change the future of the species in …

Meru

3 stars

When a post-human spacecraft and a human love each other very much...

Overall, I had mixed feelings about this book. The writing is from the third perspective of Jayanthi (the human) and Vaha (the post-human Alloy pilot/spacecraft), but is very much in each of their thoughts. Subjectively, it felt like a matter of fact writing style that just didn't quite grip me. I wish I could pin down more why I struggled here with this prose. That said, there were a bunch of things I enjoyed about it:

This book played with some neat ideas. One is that "all matter possesses some level of consciousness" and thus people are encouraged to change themselves rather than environments were possible (big To Be Taught, If Fortunate feelings). Jayanthi has sickle cell anemia, and the book uses this as a prime example of talking about how bodies are not good or bad but …

Katherine Addison: The Angel of the Crows (Paperback, 2021, Tor Books) 3 stars

This is not the story you think it is. These are not the characters you …

The Angel of the Crows

2 stars

Don't get me wrong, I love Katherine Addison in general. I love a good novel that comes from the realm of fanfic (hello, Winter's Orbit!). I love mysteries and a Sherlock pastiche. I love gender stuff! With all of that, I enjoyed the writing itself, but the book tried to do too much structurally and it didn't come together for me.

The Angel of the Crows is a Sherlock story, but the setup here is that Crow (Sherlock) is an angel and Doyle (Watson) took an injury in Afghanistan from a fallen angel that left them partially a hell hound (in a werewolf sort of way). Crow here is awkward but also kind, and so the relationship between Crow and Doyle where they each help and care for each other in their own way works for me. (I personally am alienated by "jerk Sherlock" and don't quite understand why …

Seanan McGuire: Lost in the Moment and Found (Hardcover, 2023, Tordotcom) 5 stars

A young girl discovers an infinite variety of worlds in this standalone tale in the …

Lost in the Moment and Found

5 stars

I love the concept of the Wayward Children series as a whole, but individually a few of the books have been hit or miss for me. If I had to pick, In an Absent Dream and this book have been my favorites out of the whole series, largely in that they both focus on a single character and so the plot and theme can be a lot more tight in the short space of a novella.

Lost in the Moment and Found follows Antsy, who runs away from horrific step-dad, finds herself lost, and steps through a door into the Shop Where the Lost Things Goes. (I also deeply appreciated the Author's Note which precedes the book and content warns for grooming and adult gaslighting, but also gives the reassurance that "before anything can actually happen, Antsy runs.")

In this book, the reader gets teased with larger worldbuilding hints about …

Sentaro has failed. He has a criminal record, drinks too much, and his dream of …

Sweet Bean Paste

5 stars

This was a sweet little book about dorayaki and unlikely friendship. Thematically, it also deals with social stigma, being trapped, and listening more closely to the world around you. This was definitely on the sentimental side, but it was a breath of fresh hopeful air.

Julia Galef: The Scout Mindset (Hardcover, 2021, Portfolio) 4 stars

The Scout Mindset

4 stars

I saw this book get mentioned on fedi a while back, so got around to reading it. Its goal is to help people "see more clearly". The main metaphor of the book is to that we are often stuck in a "soldier mindset" (motivated reasoning to defend your beliefs, where being wrong feels like a mistake) and that we should try to have more of a "scout mindset" (finding the lay of the land and seeking truth, where being wrong means updating your map and is always a positive).

We use motivated reasoning not because we don't know any better, but because we're trying to protect things that are vitally important to us--our ability to feel good about our lives and ourselves, our motivation to try hard things and stick with them, our ability to look good and persuade, and our acceptance in our communities.

Some of this I'd heard …

Neon Yang, Neon Yang: The Genesis of Misery (Hardcover, 2022, Tor) 4 stars

An immersive, electrifying space-fantasy from Neon Yang, author of The Black Tides of Heaven, full …

The Genesis of Misery

4 stars

"Is there one among us who has not behaved badly in this tale?"

I would pitch this book as Gundam Joan of Arc. It follows the course of the life of Misery Nomaki :drum: who believes they are sick with the same void madness that claimed the life of their mother and causes them to hear the voice of an angel telling them what to do. They lie their way into being the foretold ninth messiah to try to get themselves out of larger trouble, but everybody believes them (and eventually they begin to wonder if maybe they're not lying to themselves after all).

I love Neon Yang's worldbuilding and characters. This book is set in the far future where humanity's exodus into the stars took them into a realm where a "nullvoid" epidemic warped people's bodies; they were saved by the Larex Forge who teaches them how to use …

Sonia Nimr, Marcia Lynx Qualey: Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands (Paperback, 2020, Interlink) 3 stars

Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award.

In a tent …

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands

3 stars

This is a belated #SFFBookClub read for me, as I finally was able to get my library's only copy of this book.

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands reads like a set of short stories in a travelogue, where each chapter in this book felt like its own self-contained adventure. Most loose ends for each story get (almost too) neatly tied off before the next, and Qamar felt to me emotionally as almost a different character each time around. All of this together made the book feel a little shallow to me, as most of what I got out of it thematically was just a desire for travel.

The in-world "Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands" book connects both Qamar's parents as well as Qamar with other characters, especially given that we find out that there's only a half-dozen copies of it made, but it felt underused. By the end, it seemed …

Travis Baldree: Bookshops & Bonedust (2023, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned.

Wounded during …

Bookshops & Bonedust

4 stars

This was a fun prequel to Legends & Lattes. It was a much stronger book for me with much more depth; Viv is stuck injured in a small seaside town and has to figure out what to do with herself while she's recovering. It's a cozy book about finding new directions, supporting friends who are stuck, and connections even when they're temporary. These are very different books, but it made me want to go reread Bujold's Memory, which is also a book centered on sorting out your life when its expected trajectory has been suddenly altered.

It's also a book about loving books and caring for a bookstore, which immediately endeared itself to me. Fern (the foul-mouthed rattkin who owns said bookstore) recommends Viv a series of books from different (in-world fantasy takes on) genres. The snippets from these books are entertaining but each one ties implicitly and explicitly …

Bethany Jacobs: These Burning Stars (2023, Orbit) 4 stars

On a dusty backwater planet, occasional thief Jun Ironway has gotten her hands on the …

These Burning Stars

4 stars

A debut science fiction novel about secrets, genocide, and revenge.

I enjoyed all three point of view characters. Jun is a hacker with a secret past on the run. Esek is selfish, violent, and literally terrible, and yet she manages to be a captivating character. Chono is good-hearted and looks like a rule-following institutionalist, but her conflicting loyalties to people overrule her lawful tendencies. Chono and Esek are tied together by their relationships with Six, a mysterious figure who used to be a student with Chono; Esek spurning Six in the opening scene creates a feud that escalates out of control. I enjoyed the worldbuilding, but as you can see from this description, the heart of this book was in the relationships.

A content warning especially for genocide here. A good bit of the plot revolves around the Jeveni people; they were mostly killed on a small moon and the …

Sequoia Nagamatsu: How High We Go in the Dark (Hardcover, 2022, William Morrow) 4 stars

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …

How High We Go in the Dark

5 stars

I read this for the #SFFBookClub January book pick. How High We Go in the Dark is a collection of interconnected short stories dealing with death, grief, and remembrance in the face of overwhelming death and a pandemic. Despite getting very dark, I was surprised at the amount of hopefulness to be found in the face of all of this.

It was interesting to me that this collection had been started much earlier and the Arctic plague was a later detail to tie everything together. Personally, I feel really appreciative of authors exploring their own pandemic-related feelings like this; they're certainly not often comfortable feelings, but it certainly helps me personally, much more than the avoidance and blinders song and dance that feels on repeat everywhere else in my life.

It's hard for me to evaluate this book as a whole. I deeply enjoyed the structural setup, and seeing background …