User Profile

Love the premise: a young girl realizes she’s an alien and reports on humanity via fax to her people on Planet Cricket Rice. But for this twist, it’s a Bildungsroman that’s much more enjoyable during her childhood vs. adult years. Two passages from the former, one involving her misophonia, truly made me cackle. There’s never a direct confirmation of her origins but her adulthood disappointed for me. Oh well.

A wholly original way of exploring grief that wasn’t depressing. Coral is a lesbian author who finds her brother dead by suicide, and begins responding to texts on his phone as him. Intercut with excerpts from her own dystopian novel and flashbacks from their family’s lives, this was hard to follow at times but always beautifully written. One of those I-love-how-your-mind-works authors, I-could-never.

Really great premise that’s marred by a largely uninterrogated colonialist worldview: Arcane Taxonomy grants a portion of the magic from the thing that’s named. Primarily birds. Vaughn isn’t ignorant of the dynamics this creates for queers, women, and POC (our main characters), or that Western ways of knowing and naming aren’t the end-all, be-all. But the engine driving everything remains the will to conquer.

I enjoyed Book 1 of this duology more. The gay relationship isn’t where we left it, and the typical chopping up of a linear recounting of how it got there was jarring. I just wanted to enjoy them being together. The world continues to be interesting though, and the characters are still likable.

A single day aboard the space station is 16 orbits of the Earth. A lovely book that takes a different approach to being in space: humanist, tenderness for all we are. Rare in the softness it treats the cold darkness of space, mainly stemming from its point of view above the Earth. Inhabiting a place of extreme contradictions, Harvey draws a circle around our hearts.

Yay, we’re not in Three Pines for this one. Kind of a relief actually. But my fatigue with Penny’s formula in this series continues: Gamache’s brown eyes, his quiet, still manner, the corny quips with Beauvoir. 🙄 And the constant questions posed by the narrator that indicate: You are reading a mystery. Just ICYMI. We get it, girl. The larger story creeps along, though, and I’m here for it. The monks too.

Incredible. Gladstone has this ability to write palpably and ephemerally so you catch the meaning even as it slips away. But leaving you with enough so you’re not frustrated or confused. He takes something as grounded as community organizing for housing, the pressures of development and business interests, and wraps it in Craft (magic), wars with gods, and so much more. I’m re-reading this whole series.

Great portrayal of a gay relationship in a future where memories can be edited. Ironically, Tavares needs an editor himself. Way too many ideas, overly complex with pacing issues.

There’s some larger plot to save the whole world that isn’t needed; just focusing on these men and how they keep coming back to each other no matter the amount of editing is enough. Much better than Tavares’ first novel.