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An elevator pitch: unnamed robot and snarky cybernetic dog sidekick in post-apocalyptic, post-war New York get pushed out of isolation while confronting their past and figuring out who they are and who they choose to be

Despite being a story about war and destruction, this is a warm and hopeful story at its core. The protagonist accumulates a found family across the book. It's about folks helping each other and rebuilding where they can. It's about grief and coming to grips with your past.

If you've read Suzanne Palmer's The Secret Life of Bots, you'll have a sense of her delightful writing style around robots. The whole book feels incredibly quotable and it's hard for me not to post even more quotes than I already have.

I think what didn't work for me is that it was almost too cozy? It's not Monk and Robot, don't get me wrong. But new characters continue to show up and immediately join the party without much discussion or even internal contemplation. Also, despite (or because of) adding additional characters throughout, I felt like only the protagonist had real depth. The ending had some elements that felt a little bit too pat to me in a way that didn't leave me satisfied and similarly some of the dialogue made the hopefulness feel a little bit too much told rather than shown.

All that said, the vibes were really good and I enjoyed this a bunch. If you need a hopeful book about robots, would recommend.

Radiant Star feels most analogous to Provenance—a standalone novel in the Radch universe, with new characters and a new culture. Unfortunately, I just don't think this book holds together in the same way Provenance does: it doesn't have as strong a thematic through line; the climax of the book is weaker; largely, I just wasn't as intrigued by the characters.

There's plenty of intriguing pieces here like local religious politics and practices, food shortages and uncertainty, friction with Radchai culture, a little bit of gender spice, and a slightly unhinged Justice. Sadly, all of it is a bit too disconnected such that doesn't cohere into a satisfying whole.

I greatly fear that if I spent the next paragraphs detailing the operations of Ooioiaa's water treatment and reclamation facility (or, more accurately, facilities—there were of course three separate systems, one for each precinct), you would find it tedious. And even if you, specifically, were to say to me, "But no! I am fascinated by the water treatment systems and would in fact appreciate the information," I would strongly suspect that you were something of an outlier.

The tone of this book is set by a wry, omniscient narrator (historian?) who takes their time to poke fun and highlight hypocritical hierarchs and the naïve rich. It's such a personal tone, that I was honestly a little surprised that we don't really learn anything about them.

Ann Leckie is still an author on my "I will read everything they write" list, but that also means that my expectations for them are really high. I think this book is fine and I enjoyed it for what it was, but it's not one that resonated or will stick with me either.

Yoon Ha Lee blurbs this as a book about "linguistics and consequences" and it's hard to find a better phrase to describe this novella.

The brief plot setup: Ro is a linguist who is training to sync up and jump into the body of a Star Eater, the only biological beings that can harvest the meridian element used for interstellar travel. He manages to do it against all odds, but things are not quite as he expects in his new body.

"It gives you no hesitation, the theft of another's self?"

Ro paused. That was the part he tried not to think about. As far as anyone knew from reports of the jumped Linguists, the leap took over the original Star Eater completely. At least for the Ponto lifetime.

What's interesting to me is that this is a story about learning that you're partially complicit in larger atrocities that are now your responsibility, even if the source of them is not (entirely) your fault. It's about the lies you repeat enough until they become true. It's about language and colonialism. I also don't think the book has any easy or pat answers here.

Just your usual post-apocalyptic, mushroom-infused, body horror dystopian tale that gets at abuses of power, gender, and community.

The book is a slow reveal from the perspective of Nicole who doesn't know all that much about the world, and has been sequestered for her whole life. It lets the reader assume things about the world, only to pull out the rug later. The pacing is dreamy and internal; I was pulled along by the writing and the small worldbuilding reveals, but I could see this not working for others.

I'm silent as all of this comes off me, as I am cut down to the size and shape of a wife. I watch my clippings roll into the drain in slippery trails, gathering streaks of ash.

The first two pages start off incredibly strong, with Nicole's mother cutting off all of her fungal growths and literally cutting her into the shape of a wife before her marriage. The language of the whole book is quite visceral, especially when talking about fungi of any variety. The cover art is incredible, and honestly feels quite representative of the writing itself.

Thematically, there are certainly some well-trodden dystopian paths here around the control of women, but the way mushrooms are literally and metaphorically incorporated makes this book feel quite fresh in its own way.

(I added the content warnings from the author's web page to the bookwyrm description, and they're worth looking at.)

This is an unexpected novel about disability and family and writing and fame and stories. Subjectively, I don't think it all cohered in the way I wanted. The story within a story felt particularly heavy-handed, and it weakened the impact of the titular theme's exploration. I can imagine it landing for other people, but it's all just a bit too loose for me.

There is a meta element near the end, which I think the reader can choose how to interpret, although the real answer feels besides the point. It feels there to reinforce the book's larger point about what death of the author means—Okorafor is stating here that "author, art, and audience [...] create a tissue, a web, a network". The fact that this is such a personal work for Okorafor along multiple dimensions only adds to this feeling, as they seem inseparable from the book itself.

There wasn’t another button to not accept. And if she didn’t tap it, maybe the doors wouldn’t open, and she’d end up talking to customer service for an hour. Besides, she was alive and the SUV had done its job. When one got into an autonomous vehicle, one knowingly accepted certain risks.

This is a minor point, but there is some wild techno-optimism on the page. It's hard to tell how much of this is a deliberate nod to science fiction's own default optimism, and thus is more of a storytelling device to embellish the "realistic" point of view. I could especially see this with a given reading of the meta element at the end.

There's just so much of this opinion woven throughout: early in the novel, Zelu uses an automated vehicle: "she could be like a robot with built-in wheels ready to carry her whenever she wanted." I thought the above quote about being forced to click accept to escape said automated vehicle might be the beginning of a more critical arc, but it was not to be. On top of that there's also ai robot exoskeletons, a (creepy to my eyes) billionaire with a private spacecraft company, and experimental space vaccinations (to add chromosomes for essential amino acids) that Zelu accepts without hesitation. This book isn't really a story about tech cynicism though, no matter how much of that I am bringing as a reader. If anything, this optimism ties into how Zelu's family continually denies her agency and respect and are always airquotes protecting her from the perceived dangers of the unknown and novel.

This tech optimism is so at odds with my own opinions that it's quite jarring. I can't read this unvarnished optimism abstractly—I am compelled think about the "tissue, web, and network" of capitalism and exploitation that these technologies are contextualized in, even as they create possibilities and accessibility.