I had a deadish day at the office this month, so I got to knock back about eight stories in a row. Yay! Otherwise, bluh. Summer vacation is a mistake. Them kids should be in school all year round. Two days a week is more than enough time to spend getting into trouble; seven straight days, for months on end, is egregious.
Also, I have been writing. It’s just that any time I could use to yap about what I’m working on is better spent actually working. And my time remains pretty darn limited. Though it helps that my husband is now back from overseas, after spending almost all of June staying with his parents.
Short stories
“The Green Glass Paperweight” by Sarah Monette
This is from the author of The Goblin Emperor, which I have been meaning to read approximately forever. It’s an engaging story about a man who was once an abused ward, and the paperweight into which he channeled his hatred towards his cruel guardian.
This is in the Everfair universe?? HUH. Very much cyberpunk, contrasted with Everfair’s general alternate-history-with-fantastical-elements. Totally different feel in the narration too, with the story segmented into bite-sized scenes, sometimes delivered solely through dialogue or a text convo. Modern style for a modern subject.
“Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer
This one has been in my TBR pile since it won a Hugo last year. Quite well done. A sweet, near-future story about a wellness app that seems to actually work, and why.
“The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer
Actually, maybe this story was the one on my TBR for a year. Near-future, slice-of-life sci-fi stories seem to be Kritzer’s brand. I sped through this at the breakfast table. As society staggers in the wake of disaster, a neighborhood coalition forms to render mutual aid. Much of the narrative centers around an effort to keep a resident whose breathing must be assisted by a machine alive in the face of fuel shortages and power outages. I have an in-law who would be faced with the exact same plight; my husband installed her emergency generator (diesel) a few summers ago.
“So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
More Kritzer! I’m really enjoying her stuff. This story is a pandemic epistolary told in blog posts. Food blogger Natalie’s home becomes a safe haven for children whose families were disrupted by a pandemic. Each post features her efforts to keep them fed with irregular supplies. A very sweet story. Felt like a modern classic; like the kind of thing teachers should assign when covering the covid era.
I was a rabid Garth Nix fan when I was about nine years old. His prose has changed a lot in 20+ years, or else my memory’s terrible. I read this through, scrolled up, and went wait, I know that guy! Here, he introduces a man who’s haunted by a demon that brutally murders everybody who even slightly annoys him. Most of the worldbuilding is delivered in response to the loser protagonist being a total failure. Pretty funny.
“Human Resources” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tim Stock’s job is firing everybody else at his company. The era of machine intelligence means humans have become redundant. A solid take on a common fear.
“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
Beautiful, haunting, visceral, and deeply horny. Machado’s prose is brilliant. I was warned by my friends to not read this one where someone might be looking over my shoulder, and boy, do I appreciate that. This is a literary horror story about a woman who lets her husband engulf her body and life, safeguarding only the secret of her neck ribbon, much to his resentment.
“Before the Forest” by Kell Woods
I enjoyed this one a lot. It’s an origin story for the child-eating witch of Hansel & Gretel fame, serving as a prequel to Woods’s novel about a grown-up Gretel adopting gingerbread magic. The central events are an abusive marriage and a medieval siege, and the horrors of each are grimly depicted. Besides the gorgeous prose, what most drew me to this story how well it was grounded in the milieu.
“The Gulmohar of Mehranpur” by Amal Singh
A man tells a Nawab he can make a meal that gives eternal youth. The Nawab is the governor of Mehranpur, under the shah, and his most precious possession is a gulmohar tree. This is one of those stories where someone accidentally sabotages their shot at immortality.
“The Sack of Burley Cottage” by Rich Larson
I consistently like Rich Larson’s work. Here, an uncle-niece team execute a scuba heist of a brutalist mansion packed with living art. One of my favorites stories so far this year.
Comics
The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K. Garrity and Christopher Baldwin
I don’t know why I didn’t expect this to be sci-fi, going in. The whole reason I bought it was because I really enjoy Garrity and Baldwin’s sci-fi works. Anyway, the story was delightful: A gothic romance fangirl falls into the pocket universe of Willowweep Manor, where her trope savviness will help her save reality—and three hapless brothers—from a universe-destroying monster. I am wracking my brain to remember if I have friends who are fans of both gothic romances and sci-fi comics, so I can recommend this to them.
I Stole the First Ranker’s Soul by Lee Jung and Eudam
Finished comic. There are approximately nine million stories like this one: a progression fantasy where videogame dungeons and monsters besiege the real world. The protagonist, of course, is endowed with special abilities that can be leveled, gaining experience to become all-powerful. Typically, it’s a guy with black hair who’s some combo of geeky and brooding, and he has mad sword skills or whatever.
The twists here are in the title. The overpowered bad-boy protagonist dies. Moa Son, an unassuming office worker with no combat abilities, loots his corpse and gains custody of his ghost. The rest of the story features Moa’s ascension to become the heroine who saves earth, while the ghost guy functions as her familiar and love interest. A cute power fantasy with appealing side characters.
Apparently this one went viral due to the “Queen” antagonist. The main character is actually the spooky girl in the picture up there. Jenny Ki is the youngest of four strange sisters—think Adams family—and she’s enrolling in public high school to stalk her crush find true love. This series is short, sweet, complete, and consistently funny.
Books
Empire of Exiles by Erin M. Evans
A book that I once foolishly comped based on beta reader recommendation. Now that I’ve finally finished it—10 months!!—I know that I do not craft stories like this, nor do I want to. This is one of those lavish, DnD-adjacent fantasies where the author could write textbooks about their world. There’s an elaborate map, history, cultures, religions, different species, magic system, etc.
Now, I like learning. I gobble nonfiction essays all day; I’ll read about history. But, for my interest levels, this book had two things working against it: 1) a very details-forward presentation of the world, centering what, when, and especially who, as opposed to leading with the big picture; 2) it’s all made up, so I care less. When I worldbuild, I crib heavily from real life, because I’m just one person, and whatever I come up with isn’t going to be as wild and real as what all of everyone has been getting up to since time immemorial.
E of E is basically a character-driven story centered on a murder mystery. That’s great. However, we can’t go more than a page without learning fantasy world trivia, and seldom is that trivia truly consequential for understanding what the characters are doing. Like, this is a multi-POV book, but we’re not usually learning character-specific information, which also serves to same-ify the voices. Everybody’s POV is regurgitating the sourcebook.
There are so many darn saints who have names. And the murder took place at a big dinner with a bunch of political figures, and they and their families pop in and out of the narrative. There is a glossary of like 70-plus—I’m not kidding—characters at the front of the book, and boy, you’ll need to make use of it. Reading this novel felt like studying for a history exam. That’s its own kind of fun, but not the kind of fun I want to have at the end of a ten-hour workday, when my brain has been rendered pulp.
After opening with a prologue featuring two noble brothers, with one now imprisoned since leading an unsuccessful coup, the story proper picks up years later, and is primarily told through four additional POVs: a scribe of law, a nonhuman magic user, an archivist who wrangles magic users (who’s also a deposed secret princess, or at least someone who was once an imposter in that role), and a detective. The secret princess archivist’s POV had the most solid voice. Otherwise, since the prose was seldom visceral and I hate POV swaps, I just wished the book was in third person omniscient. There was a particularly egregious sequence in the final battle where the POV was rapid-swapping between the four MCs, while rewinding time so we’d see the same event from more than one perspective. That’s one of my big pet peeves. Six of Crows did this too and I never forgave the book for it.
Overall, E of E achieved exactly what it set out to do. If you’re the kind of person who reads TTRPG sourcebooks, remembers what your DM names the NPCs, and you get excited when you pick up a book with a spine that takes up your whole palm, you’ll be into this. The prose is competent, the descriptions aren’t sparing, and the characters are well-crafted, with clear motivations, emotions, and consequential relationships. This stands head and shoulders above other books in its genre. However, I will not be picking up the sequels. One of these met my quota for the decade.