Ignore that it’s basically April and I didn’t otherwise write a blurb for this.
I am in three book clubs lately:
- A fantasy bookclub that a friend and I accidentally hijacked from a passive organizer, who seems quietly devastated to have recruited a bunch of people who hate romantasy. I suspect she thought that the fantasy genre was romantasy, which is why she didn’t think to advertise the club as such, and all but dropped out after the rest of us demanded books that weren’t about smooching. I’m averaging a C+ on book completion in this club. And I dragged my wife into it, so that’s really fun, even if there’s no reality where she reads the book or speaks up at a meeting.
- My office’s bookclub. I feel obligated to participate in this for social reasons. Though my book completion in this club is a wretched 0%, I am off scot-free on account of superior spoiler research and bullshitting abilities. (To be fair, the last pick was The Bog Wife, and we all know how gothic fiction goes.)
- My FAVORITE bookclub: My friends decided to read! Hurrah!!! And they dragged my poor husband into it. That man’s interests are trains, tabletop gaming, scale modeling, Europa Universalis, and WWII. He is suffering. It’s delightful. Also, this club postpones meetings until everyone has read the book, so no time pressure ever yay!!! I’m batting at 100%.
Short stories, essays, and other
“The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells” by Seanan McGuire
Damn, this is pre-covid. It’s about villains, viruses, and the end of the world.
“How far back in time can you understand English?” by Colin Gorrie
Linguist Colin Gorrie here writes a story about a travel blogger and a wolfman. Every few paragraphs, Gorrie takes the language back in time by a hundred years, challenging the reader to decipher the historical conventions. At the end, he explains how the English language has changed and why. I thought this was super interesting. The cliff of comprehension at 1200 AD defeated me.
Jesse Jackson’s speech to the DNC, July 1988
Read in honor of his passing. Almost 40 years later, we’re still fighting these battles.
Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high; stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender!
So this is a wonderfully thematically coherent piece, about a neglected girl whose physical wounds heal instantly so long as she’s carrying the wounds emotionally. She embeds treasured trinkets—the tokens her broken family has given her—beneath her skin, where they will be safe. And that hits me right in my biggest phobia. I cannot deal with stuff embedded below skin. I’ve never had anything pierced; I don’t even like to think about other people’s piercings. Should I ever need an IV, I think I’d work myself into a panic attack.
All this is to say that this piece left me deeply unsettled. It was excellent.
“Six Sides of a Fairy Tale” by Audrey Zhou
A technically excellent, bittersweet fairy tale about lost love.
“Fraud Investigation is Believing Your Lying Eyes” by Patrick McKenzie
This is from the Bits about Money newsletter, which I quite enjoy. McKenzie is the guy behind VaccinateCA. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s government comprehensively failed to create a resource to help people find where they could get a shot. McKenzie coordinated a volunteer project over Discord and founded a nonprofit to create that resource. He’s got a background in tech and finance and is a wickedly smart writer with a great sense of humor. So far, the more I learn about him, the more I’m in awe.
An ornithologist is alerted to a pair of northern pipers, thought to be extinct. They’re nesting—at the site of a launchpad for rockets moving people offworld, fleeing a dying earth. And the site’s next launch will be in just two weeks.
“My Brain Finally Broke” by Jia Tolentino
An essay about post-covid brain fog, the internet sinkhole, vicarious trauma from the Gaza genocide, Trumpian fascism, memoryholing, and AI unreality. Basically, cognitive processing gets harder when what you’re processing is a kaleidoscope of horribleness. Like Tolentino, I am still disinterested in letting the Probable Word Pattern-Matching Program (marketed as a soothsayer/therapist/best friend/polymath problem solver!) take over thoughtfulness for me.
“The Doorkeepers” by A.T. Greenblatt
Our narrator, Wenda, works in the hospitality industry…for time travel. She and her colleagues usher ticketed tourists into one of six snapshots taken of the future. For just a few hours, the tourists can interrogate the what-could-have-beens in their chosen year, within the confines of a hotel lobby. The doorkeepers serve as babysitters. It’s a job that inspires drinking.
I started typing out the core of the story, which I freaking loved. But that’d undermine the experience. What this story does expertly is weave its past and future context into present day action. This was so so so good. Marking it as a favorite for the year.
“Deathless” by Karina Steffens
About witchcraft, Baba Yaga, and becoming immortal.
A fascinating article about the history of soap in the United States. Actually, am I allowed to use the word ‘fascinating’ here, or am I just autistic? Whatever, I’m going for it. This was even more entertaining for me because my husband, like Dan Kois, is an Irish Spring devotee.
Translunar Travelers Lounge issue no. 14
I read this whole thing. TTL does “fun” science fiction and fantasy. Issue 14 was just published this month. Here’s the table of contents I made for the people in Book Club #1, who are weirdly apprehensive of short fiction:
| Story | Genre | Read if you want something… | Blurb |
| Borders by Maria Clara Klein | Contemporary fantasy | Funny! | Oopsie, you teleported into your ex’s bed. On another continent. Good morning? |
| The Cat’s Three Wishes by Michael M. Jones | Animal fantasy | Cute and short! | A genie has been summoned by a cat. |
| A Goat’s Tale by Arvee Fantilagan | Science fiction | Sweet! | A Hachikō story starring a robot goat. |
| Meet Cute at the Inter-Dimensional Cafe by Catherine Tavares | Science fiction/romance | Cozy and romantic! | A woman falls in love with the guy who runs the counterpart of her cafe in an alternate dimension. |
| I Spent A Year In Forced Labour In The Helium-3 Mines on Titan. Here’s What It Taught Me About Work Ethic by Dan Peacock | Science fiction – satire | HILARIOUS and short! | IT’S THAT GUY FROM LINKEDIN. You know him. Mr. Hustle Culture. This is one of my top favorites!!! |
| When the Land Speaks by Ikechukwu Henry | Fantasy | Poingant | A girl hears the voice of her people’s god. |
| Swimming in Sapphires by Morgana Clark | Science fiction – space opera | Adventurous | Indentured workers of a mining colony stage a bold escape to paradise. |
| Coat Check Girl by Adan Jerreat-Poole | Dark fantasy | Haunting and joyful | There is a circus where things can be found and people can be lost. Another top favorite of mine. |
| The Garden of Living Flowers by Tunvey Mou | Fantasy | Bittersweet, long | A thoroughly unmagical herbalist adopts a talking flower. |
| Above the Sand, Under the Skin by Ramiro Sanchiz and Monica Louzon | Science fantasy | Contemplative, dark, long | The people of Punta de Piedra find the fallen body of a mechanical giantess, setting future generations on a dark course. |
| The Wheelchair God of Ibadan by Bella Chacha | Contemporary fantasy | Adventurous, uplifting, humorous, long | An old man’s wheelchair reveals itself as the forgotten throne of a trickster god. Another favorite. |
| The Necromancer’s One Weakness by R. Lochlann | Dungeons and Dragons fantasy | Comedic | An adventuring agent tells the story of the time he recruited a violent bard to confront the dark lord. |
| We Dream of Sunrise in our Monochrome City by Uchechukwu Nwaka | Dystopian science fiction with romance | Contemplative and sweet | A sanitation worker falls in love with a woman way, way above his social station. She likes him back. But that’s not the problem. |
| “We Require an Engine,” Said the Testicle Collective by David Anaxagoras | Science fiction comedy | HILARIOUS and short | A retired engineer’s cow is stolen. By a sentient blob of runaway testicles. Who demand that he build them a spaceship engine. HUGE favorite. Sorry not sorry. |
Oh thank fucking god; the formatting and links copy-pasted over to WordPress on the first try. Rest assured that I don’t have a good reason for not getting my “Read in February” post out till March 29th. I was like, hanging curtains and working overtime and etc. Boring shit like that. And also I put 60 hours into Enshrouded.
Books
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
I seriously don’t know what’s wrong with me, that I failed to read a Discworld book before now. I knew I’d love Pratchett’s writing; I’ve been surrounded by quotes from his books for my whole life. I think my friends have about 15 Pratchett tattoos between them. I’ve written things that briefly, accidentally, go Pratchett-flavored—per my beta readers—and those Pratchetty bits are always my favorite bits.
I’ve been missing out, is what I’m saying.
Guards! Guards! was an excellent choice as a first Discworld book. I enjoyed the hell out of it. That dry British humor really works for me. And who doesn’t love a good satire? (My book club, who largely didn’t get it.) Also, Lady Sybil Ramkin is a total DELIGHT. One of my favorite characters of all time.
As an aside, can we bring back omniscient narrators in adult fiction?? That’s my buddy! That’s the nongendered faceless storyteller who’s telling me the funny bits about all the characters!! I love them in their skybox, zooming the camera around to focus on the choicest action. I enjoy this way more than being under the skin of Mr/Ms/Mx Protagonist, boxed in by their limited perspective, drowning in sensory details. I enjoy omniscient narrators quadruply more than rotating POVs. Which are the worst and should be banished. (Seriously, if you need more than 3 perspective characters in 300 pages, consider that no you don’t. Go omniscient. I know it’s not trendy, but dear god, if you’re forcing yourself to rotate through all the frickin Power Rangers to solve the self-inflicted problem of ‘whose POV knows what,’ I’m walking out.)
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon
Hoooooo boy. This is a near-future, litficcy sci fi that received a Nebula back in 2003, and is notable for being teased as “Flowers for Algernon but with autism.” I read it because I’m going to make a second ‘autism in fiction’ post. (The last one was a million years ago.) So I have a LOT of thoughts that I’m saving for that.
Suffice to say that you can tell Moon isn’t autistic herself. And you can guess that she’s instead an autism mom, especially as the book barrels towards its conclusion. I’d say this started out at 4 stars and drops to a 1. The back third had me facepalming.
Also, Moon seems really pleased with her idea that the speed of dark must be faster than light, because “dark is already there.” She has the POV MC say it about five thousand times. But here’s Pratchett in Reaper Man, back in 1991: “Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” It’s unclear to me whether Moon had any idea someone beat her to it.
Comics
The Remarried Empress by SUMPUL, HereLee, and Alphatart
#problematic classism #dogshit pacing #FABULOUS outfits tho
A long, very popular Webtoon comic that just finished. Adapted from a webnovel.
The Remarried Empress is what I thought the romantasy genre was, before I was made to learn about ‘shadow daddies.’ Navier Trovi is empress of the Eastern Empire. When her husband divorces her for a mistress, she immediately remarries the young, playboy bachelor emperor of the Western Empire. The story then rewinds to explore how the mistress entered her ex-husband’s life and how Navier and her new husband became acquainted. Rather than being some kind of elf-vampire-fae whatever, the new husband’s magic thing is just that he can turn into a bird. I’m grateful that this isn’t meant to be sexy.
The pacing of the comic is nooooot the best, notably devolving when the extended ‘how did we get here?’ flashback catches up to the cold opening. But I really, really liked Navier as a heroine. She’s so reserved that she comes off as frigid, but she’s also compassionate and deeply principled. And I’m 1000% more inclined to like romance stories when they’re about characters who have mature motivations. As empress, Navier’s marriage was also her career, and she was completely dedicated to the role. I was invested in her bold reinvention of herself and the political fallout of her actions. The story is also more complex than you’re imagining—The emperor-mistress-Navier love triangle, which Navier breaks by walking out of, isn’t an animosity mélange. The mistress wasn’t trying to displace Navier, just live a life with guaranteed security. And Navier never bore the mistress ill will.
I think this Webtoon is most widely known for the mistress’s character. The hate for her is memetic. That just goes to show how compelling she is as an antagonist. She’s an excellent foil for Navier, as someone elevated into a role she’s unprepared for due to desperately selfish motivations. I really liked that the story didn’t set Navier and her up as fighting over the emperor; duty-driven, stoic Navier simply wouldn’t stoop to that level. In short, the story gives us a romantic rivals scenario where the heroine flatly will not participate, instead refocusing on her ambition and responsibilities. I eat that kind of thing up.