I read largely sff, some romance and mystery, very little non-fiction. I'm trying to write at least a little review of everything I'm reading this year, but it's a little bit of an experiment in progress.
I'm @picklish@weirder.earth elsewhere.
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A nobleman's daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of …
I went back to read this book because I had really enjoyed the characters and relationships in the Jasmine Throne and Oleander Sword. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and the magic, but I personally struggled to enjoy the relationship between Mehr and Amun here that felt like it should have been the emotional backbone of the novel.
What would you give to win the world?
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding …
But if you were determined to want the impossible, there was a better way to get it. Zhu thought with amused defiance: Change the world, and make it possible.
— He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan (Page 7)
Content warning full spoilers for He Who Drowned the World
A couple of small things first:
Ouyang's rejection of Zhu after the scene with Fang makes so much sense. It was especially heartbreaking because I loved the two of them working together after being enemies for so long, but it also made logical sense that Ouyang's unchecked misogyny is not something that would so easily be resolved.
I worried a bit about the presence of Ma in most of the book. She shows up for a heist in the opening scene, but other than some brief moments she is mostly not around. I think it makes some logical plot sense (she's running things while Zhu is off stealing salt or fighting battles) but she comes back for the big emotional finale. Having Ma there at the end as the compassionate heart to Wang really makes the end of the book. It feels like Ma is always the one that pulls Zhu back from the brink of ruthless pragmatism, and having her there in the finale where Zhu and her ghost sword give Wang mercy adds a lot of weight to that moment. I still wish there was more of her around, but I am glad for what we got.
I had mixed feelings about Wang's point of view. It was certainly tough to read somebody so hell-bent on self-destruction, personally. In some ways, it's a similar bent as Ouyang, revenge against the people who have wronged him, but for Wang it's emotional revenge on the world at large, but more specifically Esen. I think what ended up working for me by the end was the parallels between Wang and Madame Zhang, where they both had larger goals that were interrupted by unexpected tenderness and truly caring for others that they thought they were using (the third prince, General Zhang), and that they both achieved what they wanted but only found ashes.
Larger things:
The emotional hinge of this book for me was the scene with Chen, Xu, and Zhu after the boat battle where Chen is threatening to maim and kill Xu unless Zhu surrenders. This is definitely the moment where I feel like Zhu falters the most; she is desperate to try to come up with some other plan, she doesn't want to surrender and she also doesn't want her best friend to be hurt.
In the end, the resolution is that Xu kills himself to end the standoff. In some ways this felt like an easy and unsatisfying answer to an impossible problem where Zhu is able to avoid making a hard decision. However, the more I thought about this, the resolution where we learn that Xu has done this (and many things) as a willing sacrifice for Zhu and the world she is trying to create; this to me makes all the difference emotionally. It's not Zhu choosing to sacrifice Xu for victory, but rather Xu's own choice. It's still heartbreaking, but it turns a moment of cold pragmatism into a moment of grief, and in retrospect I feel like this moment sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
Even with that tone set, the moment where Ma tells Wang that she is pregnant fully brought me back to the moments with the third prince. In the moment, the pregnancy reveal feels like a lie to cover up the murder of Jiang. It gave me some dread that this was a parallel of the previous fake pregnancy, of potentially the now-empress Zhang using the same medicine that killed the third prince on Ma to try to kill Ma's child (and instead kill Ma). That Ma, like Xu, would then sacrifice herself for Zhu and Zhu would pay the price of losing yet another person that she loved. FOOF. I think tonally this would have made for a very different ending, and yet I felt like it was still very possible here in the moment.
Finally, I love also that the four main characters all come together for the finale scene where Zhu takes Ouyang's ghost sword, Ma reveals herself as Zhu's wife to Wang, and Zhu gives Wang mercy if he gives up his mandate. It's just such a powerful scene to have all of these four characters who are all connected come together for that moment of mercy. Chef's kiss.
What would you give to win the world?
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding …
I deeply enjoyed the conclusion to this duology. At times it was bleak and dark, but I feel like my thoughts on the first book continued to ring true in this book more than I had expected.
It's hard to talk about this without spoilers, but the thing I liked the most about this book is when it brings two characters together that are ostensibly similar to each other to highlight their differences. Zhu and Ouyang (both not men in their own way) go on adventures. Chen and Zhu (both pragmatically pursuing greatness) face off against each other. Ouyang and Wang (both focused on revenge) have a showdown. I just love seeing all these characters be such foils for each other.
The finale especially was satisfying emotional closure that brought all these main characters together. Even through sacrifice and suffering, there was more hope than I thought there might be. …
I deeply enjoyed the conclusion to this duology. At times it was bleak and dark, but I feel like my thoughts on the first book continued to ring true in this book more than I had expected.
It's hard to talk about this without spoilers, but the thing I liked the most about this book is when it brings two characters together that are ostensibly similar to each other to highlight their differences. Zhu and Ouyang (both not men in their own way) go on adventures. Chen and Zhu (both pragmatically pursuing greatness) face off against each other. Ouyang and Wang (both focused on revenge) have a showdown. I just love seeing all these characters be such foils for each other.
The finale especially was satisfying emotional closure that brought all these main characters together. Even through sacrifice and suffering, there was more hope than I thought there might be.
(I wrote some longer thoughts with spoilers in this reply).
What would you give to win the world?
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding …
Ma's expression didn't seem fully like agreement. She said with some heat, "Please get us out, husband."
"We-elll," Zhu hedged.
"You don't have a key." Ma looked ready to weep with frustration.
Zhu corrected, "Yet."
— He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan (Page 46)
As is maybe obvious, I've been quite enjoying all of the Small Wonders issues. I don't get a chance to read a lot of short fiction, let alone flash fiction. It certainly looks like a tough job as a writer to squeeze an interesting story into such a small space. In the notes from the editors this time around, they say "flash fiction lives in the transition zone between poetry and story", which explains a lot about why they would create a magazine that covers both (and also why I sometimes misremember a story as being poetry as prose).
Here's a couple of my favorites again from this one:
Whoever gets to autopsy me, congratulations, this really will be a first in the literature if you're allowed to publish.
I really enjoyed this story about a scientist narrating their unexpected last moments. As …
As is maybe obvious, I've been quite enjoying all of the Small Wonders issues. I don't get a chance to read a lot of short fiction, let alone flash fiction. It certainly looks like a tough job as a writer to squeeze an interesting story into such a small space. In the notes from the editors this time around, they say "flash fiction lives in the transition zone between poetry and story", which explains a lot about why they would create a magazine that covers both (and also why I sometimes misremember a story as being poetry as prose).
Here's a couple of my favorites again from this one:
Whoever gets to autopsy me, congratulations, this really will be a first in the literature if you're allowed to publish.
I really enjoyed this story about a scientist narrating their unexpected last moments. As the title implies, it's one about taking pleasure in the small moments you have.
Every selfie will eventually be a picture / of a corpse
A poem about the burden of seeing the future through photos.
"When you wake up,” she says, “we’ll have 'gravity.'"
A fun story about a kid on a spaceship returning to earth; I like the adults in this story who are trying to share their nostalgic joy about gravity or birds or earth itself to a kid who really would just prefer to float forever and is trying to translate alien adult joy into something more relatable.
Take was the law of orphans like her, and take she had: power, money, safety. Born with none of these, she would build herself into a fortress that could not be felled, her armor impenetrable, her safety secure.
This was a fun novelette about a scheming empress caught out, full of politics and action. I'm always really impressed at really short fiction that can still manage to include a lot of details about the world and the characters.
Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and …
I read Olga Ravn's The Employees ("A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century"), and this book sure has some attributes.
The format of this book is ~entirely in disjointed and anonymous (confessional?/professional)? statements to an off-page undescribed committee.
Statement 015 I'm very happy with my add-on. I think you should let more of us have one. It's me and yet it's not me. I've had to change completely in order to assimilate this new part, which you say is also me.
Statement 011 The fragrance in the room has four hearts. None of these hearts is human, and that's why I'm drawn toward them. At the base of this fragrance is soil and oakmoss, incense, and the smell of an insect captured in amber.
I've included two partial statements here for flavor from adjacent pages, because this is the only way I feel like I can convey the Annihilation-esque vibes …
I read Olga Ravn's The Employees ("A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century"), and this book sure has some attributes.
The format of this book is ~entirely in disjointed and anonymous (confessional?/professional)? statements to an off-page undescribed committee.
Statement 015 I'm very happy with my add-on. I think you should let more of us have one. It's me and yet it's not me. I've had to change completely in order to assimilate this new part, which you say is also me.
Statement 011 The fragrance in the room has four hearts. None of these hearts is human, and that's why I'm drawn toward them. At the base of this fragrance is soil and oakmoss, incense, and the smell of an insect captured in amber.
I've included two partial statements here for flavor from adjacent pages, because this is the only way I feel like I can convey the Annihilation-esque vibes of this book.
The book opens with a preface that these statements are to help improve future workflows and prevent future deviation(!). There's a lot of creepy workplace language of productivity and add-ons and forced updates, but the book itself dwells more on employees struggling with uncertainty about what it means to be a human or a constructed humanoid.
I am still not sure what I think about this, but I am glad to have read it.
Small Wonders Issue 4 is another one full of really great stories. Here's a couple I especially enjoyed:
About most things in life you can be an agnostic; arrival day is the exception. Only our dreams deny the reality of where we are.
A story about the struggles of a Martian colony celebrating the day their ancestors arrived. This was a fun read especially after recently finishing A City on Mars, but I think thematically the idea of carrying hope for the future just through continuing to struggle towards it day by day resonated a lot.
a secret passenger the ship’s manifest would never recognize, tucked, painfully, into the hollows of my skull.
I love love the idea of this poem about the narrator's relationship with the alien that bursts out of them.
Small Wonders Issue 4 is another one full of really great stories. Here's a couple I especially enjoyed:
About most things in life you can be an agnostic; arrival day is the exception. Only our dreams deny the reality of where we are.
A story about the struggles of a Martian colony celebrating the day their ancestors arrived. This was a fun read especially after recently finishing A City on Mars, but I think thematically the idea of carrying hope for the future just through continuing to struggle towards it day by day resonated a lot.
a secret passenger the ship’s manifest would never recognize, tucked, painfully, into the hollows of my skull.
I love love the idea of this poem about the narrator's relationship with the alien that bursts out of them.
One thing your great-aunt forgot to mention: bionosaurs imprint for life.
An endearing story about our relationships with pets, in this case a robotic dinosaur.
An absorbing historical fantasy, She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan reimagines the rise …
She was grieving her life as she never had before, and it was all this monk's fault for having conjured the impossible fantasy of a world in which she was free to desire.
— She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan (Page 226)
This novelette by SB Divya is a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin with a side of King Midas. This was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed the characters and worldbuilding.
One small note is that this got nominated for the 2023 Hugo Awards and they chose to withdraw it. There's also an interview with them in the same issue of Uncanny that this story was released in that talks a little bit more about this story.
An absorbing historical fantasy, She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan reimagines the rise …
She Who Became the Sun is a historical fantasy duology, retelling the rise of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. This is a reread for me before I get to the sequel for a belated #SFFBookClub sequel month.
My favorite part of this first book is the ways that the major characters all uniquely grapple with their own gendered otherness:
Ouyang is an enslaved warrior eunuch working for the Mongol prince of Henan's son, Esen. Ouyang is the most masculine of characters, but copes with his otherness through anger and shame. He so strongly denies the femininity that other people project onto him that he extrudes that rejection into misogyny. His relationship with men is similarly uneasy and hits a classic trans refrain: "he had no idea if it was a yearning for or a yearning to be, and the equal impossibility of each of those hurt …
She Who Became the Sun is a historical fantasy duology, retelling the rise of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. This is a reread for me before I get to the sequel for a belated #SFFBookClub sequel month.
My favorite part of this first book is the ways that the major characters all uniquely grapple with their own gendered otherness:
Ouyang is an enslaved warrior eunuch working for the Mongol prince of Henan's son, Esen. Ouyang is the most masculine of characters, but copes with his otherness through anger and shame. He so strongly denies the femininity that other people project onto him that he extrudes that rejection into misogyny. His relationship with men is similarly uneasy and hits a classic trans refrain: "he had no idea if it was a yearning for or a yearning to be, and the equal impossibility of each of those hurt beyond belief". For Ouyang, "the worst punishment is being left alive".
Zhu (the titular sun-becomer) is a famine survivor who decides to claim the great fate of her dead brother by becoming him. Her burning desire for greatness forces her to overcome impossibility through ingenuity. To Zhu, gender and otherness are not a source of shame or a limitation, they are merely tools to work towards greatness or obstacles to work around. She's a delightful contrast with both Ma and Ouyang; her direct contradiction of Ouyang is such a good character and plot moment: "However tired I am, however hard it is: I know I can keep going, because I'm alive."
Wang is the half-Mongolian, adopted brother of Esen. Wang is a scholar out of time, reviled for his effeminate behaviors and unmasculine administrative and accounting interests. Unlike Ouyang, he has no denial or shame about this and accepts ongoing humiliation bitterly; however like Ouyang, he turns this humiliation inward into anger and desire for revenge. Wang is the petty bureaucrat working behind the scenes; even as his work is dismissed, he guides the efforts of his brother Esen from the shadows through funding, diplomacy, and assassination. "In having told yourself so often that I'm worthless, have you forgotten what my domain actually is? I'm an administrator."
Ma is the precious cinnamon roll who keenly feels her own emotions and continually extends love out into the universe to those who don't deserve it, even as it is only returned with suffering. Other than being an extremely endearing character and the caring heart of a novel otherwise filled with selfish desire and denial, she feels like the epitome of self-limited excellence; she is extremely capable but simultaneously trapped by her own inevitable circumstances of being a woman.. "She was a woman and [..]. everything that could be wanted was all equally impossible".
She recognized pragmatism taken to its natural endpoint: the person who climbed according to his desire, with no regard to what he did to get there. Zhu was surprised to feel, instead of sympathetic attraction, a tinge of repulsion.
Parts of this book remind me of The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in particular the resource management of Wang, the political struggles, and the pragmatic way that all of these characters do some occasional horrible things to work towards their own desires (loyalty, revenge, power, greatness).
Both books posit that these desires create suffering (and in an explicitly Buddhist sense here). However, I think Baru is a brutal gutpunch of a book that wants you to believe that sacrifice and suffering is always required (both of the characters and the reader); this book seems to believe in Zhu who can (sometimes) find another path when confronted with an impossibility. Ma also explicitly balances out Zhu's monomaniacal pursuit of greatness and helps Zhu feel some level of revulsion towards pure pragmatism. Together, they are a source of queer joy that creates hope and possibility. These things together make this book work for me and make me able to find love for these complicated characters, while reading Baru left me cold.
This didn't quite resonate as the whole of issue 2, but there were still a lot of fun moments in Small Wonders Issue 3. If anything, I'd say this one leans more lighthearted overall than previous issues. These were my favorite stories:
I knock on Lila’s bedroom door and catch her red-handed (literally; her hands are coated in blood) before a brand-new portal as a Vampire Queen and her familiar step out.
Despite my own reservations about the use of the word "quarantine" or "lockdown" for people's early covid experiences, I find myself deeply enjoying seeing how people process their own covid experiences through writing. This in particular is a fun fluff story about necromantic summoning in confined spaces.
The diffuse awareness of the Moonmind comes to an agreement: …
This didn't quite resonate as the whole of issue 2, but there were still a lot of fun moments in Small Wonders Issue 3. If anything, I'd say this one leans more lighthearted overall than previous issues. These were my favorite stories:
I knock on Lila’s bedroom door and catch her red-handed (literally; her hands are coated in blood) before a brand-new portal as a Vampire Queen and her familiar step out.
Despite my own reservations about the use of the word "quarantine" or "lockdown" for people's early covid experiences, I find myself deeply enjoying seeing how people process their own covid experiences through writing. This in particular is a fun fluff story about necromantic summoning in confined spaces.
The diffuse awareness of the Moonmind comes to an agreement: Soon. Cross-currents of debate run through the Consensus as analyst colony-lobes suggest: next-day or two-day, three-day, six-day. One stubborn early-generation lobe insists no-day, never-day, distance, separation.
This is the kind of fun idea that only works as a short story.
The Vindeans are sailors. These rituals bring them comfort. Three days to mark the solstice; three days to lighten one’s heart. A slip of paper, a handful of words, a lantern to carry them up and away: regrets, promises, wishes.
A story of queer regrets told in the interstices of a description of the narrator's traditional festival.
Spensa made it out of the Nowhere, but what she saw in the space between …
Defiant is the final fourth book of Brandon Sanderson's Skyward YA series.
Things I Enjoyed: * brought the series back around full circle to moments from book one * superb Gran-Gran moments * maybe the real friends were the hyperslugs we met along the way
This book was ~ok for me, but the pacing here didn't quite work for me; this is a character-driven series and so the focus on Spensa's emotional journey makes sense, but plot-wise the final book involves an incursion or two by the main squad, some [spoiler] with Spensa, and then we're right at the last[*] battle to wrap up the Superiority and the Delvers all in one. It's all just tied up a little too quickly for a four book series.
If I had to rate the series, the first book was a lot of fun, the second book brought in larger worldbuilding that I …
Defiant is the final fourth book of Brandon Sanderson's Skyward YA series.
Things I Enjoyed: * brought the series back around full circle to moments from book one * superb Gran-Gran moments * maybe the real friends were the hyperslugs we met along the way
This book was ~ok for me, but the pacing here didn't quite work for me; this is a character-driven series and so the focus on Spensa's emotional journey makes sense, but plot-wise the final book involves an incursion or two by the main squad, some [spoiler] with Spensa, and then we're right at the last[*] battle to wrap up the Superiority and the Delvers all in one. It's all just tied up a little too quickly for a four book series.
If I had to rate the series, the first book was a lot of fun, the second book brought in larger worldbuilding that I enjoyed, the third book went off the rails in a way that didn't work for me, the novellas in the middle here told some stories that wouldn't have fit otherwise, and the fourth book didn't quite bring it all back together with the satisfying closure I wanted.
(Maybe I shouldn't be comparing books to each other in a review, but if I had to recommend one other YA science fiction series that ended this year about the power of friendship and the horrors of space war, I would recommend Charlie Jane Anders' Unstoppable instead on pretty much all fronts.)
[*] I wanted to make a "last and first battle" joke, but book two has some of a Superiority/Detritus fight at the end even if I remember it mostly being about Delvers
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away - …
One of the most common arguments we hear is that all law is pointless because if Elon Musk has a Mars settlement, who's going to stop him? One of your authors has a brother who makes this argument. His name is Marty and he is wrong.
