March always sucks; it’s the busiest month for my day job. If you count emails, I wrote something like 70,000 words. If you don’t, I wrote approximately jack and squat. Similarly, I read a zillion pages of procedure manuals, but no actual book-books.
However, I did squeeze in more than a few short stories and comics, in places like the lobby of the DMV and the checkout line at the grocery store. As follows:
Short stories
“Rude Litterbox Space” by Mary Robinette Kowal
A hyperintelligent cat saves a spaceship from spaghettifying itself in a poorly calculated wormhole jump.
“Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience ™” by Rebecca Roanhorse
A very thematically coherent story about cultural appropriation.
“You Don’t Belong Where You Don’t Belong” by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
A con artist, an occupation, a conquered homeworld, and aliens.
“A Heart Between Teeth” by Kerstin Hall
My favorite short story this month. A grieving widow endures torturous trials at the behest of her wife’s murderer, a malicious and petty god-king, to save her people. Beautiful prose, gripping characters, and inventive worldbuilding. It’s part of a fictional universe featured in a couple of novels that I’ll definitely pick up now. Kill Six Billion Demons has some similar tropes, but otherwise, I can’t think of anything that shares DNA.
A teenage princess who can control birds teams up with an actress to uncover industrial sabotage. This one dragged for me. I think a lack of familiarity with the world hurt here; the story meanders before the actress, who was my favorite character, arrives on the scene.
“The Man with the Watches” by Arthur Conan Doyle
Not really a Sherlock Holmes story. But it’s about a murder and a mystery, of course.
“Leave it to Jeeves,” “The Aunt and the Sluggard,” “Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest,” and “Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg,” by P.G. Woodhouse
More classic comedy. These come to my email inbox, so I read them during lunch at work.
“The Ides of March” and “A Costume Piece” by E. W. Hornung
A couple of short stories about the gentleman thief Raffles, narrated by Bunny Manders. They’re kind of like the evil twins of Holmes and Watson— In fact, they were inspired by Holmes and Watson, and Hornung was Doyle’s brother-in-law. Hornung has a good sense for slapstick and I really appreciate his tactics for shoving the protagonists into the deep end as they go about their criminal schemes. Their adventures are pretty fun reads. However, there’s more than a little racism in some of these stories, which may have something to do with their lack of popularity. It’s hard to recommend something that casually uses cruel stereotypes.
As an aside, Bunny is canonically “Raffles’s fag”, which is a statement I accepted without clarification until reading the Wikipedia article just now. Apparently this means that Bunny acted as Raffles’s servant while they were students. I had thought that whatever “fag” meant here probably wasn’t gay at all, but ngl, they make their “mastermind and accomplice” relationship at least a little gay.
Comics!
Heavenly Eats by Myoung Rang and Albba
This comic was a ton of fun. The lazy son of god is kicked out of heaven to go learn how to make humans happy. To this end, he and his angel and demon friends start a food delivery service. A story that’s a love letter to shared meals and nostalgia. It uses a framing device I’m a sucker for, where the narrative follows side characters on separate journeys, having them intersect meaningfully to add context. Featuring luscious descriptions of Korean food, so read if you want to be hungry.
A woman who works as a matchmaker enters into a relationship of convenience with an arrogant client, for the sake of crashing her cheating ex’s wedding. It doesn’t sound like it’d be my thing, but the smart writing, flawed protagonists, and on-point pacing kept me hooked. Webtoons categorizes this story as a romance, and it does have a happily ever after, but it doesn’t lose sight of the very real problems with the protagonists’ relationship, nor does it let love fix everything— Or anything, really. Most of the heroine’s journey focuses on her career and family issues. I actually wouldn’t call this a romance, because the central relationship is very much secondary to Ideum’s arc, and she achieves her happily ever after before she gets together with her love interest. In fact, Ideum declines entering a real relationship until after she and her love interest work on themselves, which I thought was a mature and refreshing take. Stories where the power of romantic love solves someone’s problems don’t resonate with me.
Kill 6 Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson-Morgan
This was a reread. I looove this comic. A gory, inventive swords-and-sorcery fantasy about Allison Ruth, a Californian barista with self-esteem issues. She’s a Sailor Moon fan, her favorite lipstick is Palmer Crimson #2, and, after a skeleton key to the multiverse is embedded in her forehead, she becomes the accidental understudy for the prophesied heir of a dead god-king. Gorgeous art, bloodslick worldbuilding, incredible character designs, and an ascension to power arc done very right. This story knows exactly what it wants to say and nails every beat.