A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers
Completed 10/9/2024, Reviewed 10/9/2024
4 stars

This was a wonderful novella by the author of the Wayfarers series, the first of which is The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.  I loved that and the other three novels in that series.  I was a little hesitant about this one; I’m not sure why.  I think because I thought she couldn’t top the Wayfarers.  But she at least equaled it with this book.  It’s about life after the Factory Age, when the Robots became aware and left.  Humans recreated their industry without them, and focused on sustainable technology after returning from the brink of self-destruction.  The book is so heartwarming and life-affirming that I had a warm glow about me all the way to the end.  I’m hoping the second book in this series is equally wonderful.  The series was nominated for a 2024 Mythopoeic Award.

Dex is a monk.  They crave the sound of crickets, becoming obsessed with it.  They decide they need a change and become a Tea Monk, bringing hand-prepared teas specifically made for each customer.  They’re sort of a Tea therapist, traveling the land, setting up a booth, and preparing teas based on what each customer tells them is going on with them.  After two years as a Tea Monk, they get the itch again to hear crickets, becoming an obsession.  They decide to cancel their next city visit and go into the mountains in search of them.  On the way in, they come across a robot.  Robots haven’t been seen in about two hundred years.  Mosscap, the robot, tells Dex it is on a journey to meet and learn about humans, and what’s happened to them since they walked away, and what do they need.  Dex however wants to be alone on his own journey, begrudgingly taking Mosscap along.

There are really only two characters in this story, Dex and Mosscap.  Dex is searching for themselves and their purpose.  So when Mosscap appears and asks what does Dex need, they can’t answer because even they don’t know.  They don’t know why their on the journey, only that they’ve become obsessed with the crickets.  Dex is kind of an every person who just wants to find meaning in life.  Mosscap is kind of the opposite.  It is out exploring and researching, but doesn’t need meaning in life.  Life is its own meaning.  Needless to say, they get in some heated discussions.

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s like a warm hug, or should I say, a cup of tea designed especially for my needs.  While I’m not a tea drinker, I can relate to the feeling of having something so delicious, made for my palate, that I am sated with life.  That’s what this book was like for me.  It being a novella, I don’t want to go into more detail than I already have, hoping I haven’t given away any spoilers.  I just really look forward to the second novella.  

An Unkindness of Ghosts

Rivers Solomon
Completed 10/7/2024, Reviewed 10/7/2024
3 stars

This is the author’s first novel, published by a small publishing house.  I think both facts are evident in that the book tries to do too much.  I think it could have used a better editor.  However, Solomon is an important queer, black author with a lot to say.  Her second work, The Deep, was a brilliant collaboration with other writers and poets and walked away with the 2020 Lambda Literary Award.  This book just needed some help making sure the flow was better and some extraneous things were excised.

Aster is a black woman on the autism spectrum.  She lives on a colony ship called the Matilda.  The upper decks are for the white privileged people and the lower decks are for the poor, black abused workers.  Basically, they are slaves.  The separation is maintained by an adherence to a weird religious dogma that has evolved over the hundreds of years the ship has been travelling to the “Promised Land.”  Aster is the assistant to the gentle Theo, the Surgeon General who is also the nephew of the power-crazed second in command on the ship, Lieutenant.  The supreme ruler of the ship is dying of something that Aster’s mother may have died from.  Thus begins an investigation into her mother’s cryptic journals and the possibility of a ship-wide civil war against the abusive system that the Lieutenant has been upholding.

Yeah, there’s a lot in this book.  I had a lot of trouble getting through the first half of it.  It took me about that long to get that Aster was on the spectrum and experiencing things differently than the people around her.  Her relationships are quite confusing.  Theo has a deep fondness for her though she doesn’t see it.  She just tries to determine if they are friends.  Giselle, with whom she grew up, appears to have ADHD, which make their interactions very confusing in the beginning.  After a while, though, I started to get it and picked up on Aster interactions with Theo, Giselle, and others.  This is especially true of her interactions with guards, who clearly have no tolerance for someone who doesn’t communicate in a usual way.  Clearly, a lot of thought went into creation of Aster.  The characters were very well developed.  

I thought the world building was really good too.  But I had a hard time believing the ship was created as, or devolved into an antebellum South.  It came across a little too much like a parable to make a point than a futurist vision.  Perhaps I’ve read too many books that imply racial equality in the future.  This was just a little tough to suspend disbelief.  

I give this book three stars out of five, mainly because it’s a difficult read and I didn’t completely buy into the premise.  I’d like to read Solomon’s newer works to see what they are like, if she has evolved as a writer and if the editing of her books are better.  

Shorefall

Robert Jackson Bennett
Completed 9/29/2024, Reviewed 9/29/2024
3 stars

This is the second book in the Foundryside series.  It picks up 3 years after the events of the first book.  I read it for book club, only 3 months after the first book.  I remembered quite a bit, but I had trouble getting into it anyway.  It felt like it suffered from second book syndrome.  That is, the first book feels very tight, but the second book spends more time setting up the scenario for the third book.  The book is taut and fast-paced like the first one, but it just felt like it was missing something.  Perhaps it was the novelty of the magic system that was missing, or the familiarity with the characters.  It just never completely grabbed me.

The book picks up with the return of the first hierophant, Crasedes.  He’s been resurrected and he wants to control the world to stop humans from using their technology and magic for power over others.  He wants to become the supreme dictator that forces people to remain peaceful.  Sancia and her gang have allied with another immortal, Valeria, who wants to destroy Crasedes.  However, Sancia, Berenice, Orso, and Gregor have mixed feelings about Valeria.  Though she saved them in the first book, they’re uncertain about what she’s up to.  However, allying with Valeria seems to be the only way to destroy Crasedes and save humanity.

I thought the best part of the book was the relationship between Sancia and Berenice.  They twin with each other.  Twinning is not permitted with people.  It is usually saved for connecting magical devices together.  They do this on Valeria’s advice.  Once successful, they share everything, thoughts, memories, and so on, all the while being able to communicate with each other without anyone else hearing them.  Needless to say, it also enhances their romantic relationship.  However, that is put aside as the roller coaster plot keeps the danger ever-present.  

Like the first book, this one is quite grisly.  Perhaps a little more so, as the body count becomes astronomical.  There are pools of blood everywhere, and Sancia and Orso constantly seem to be spattered with it.  For Crasedes to manifest and work his magic, he needs sacrifices, and he gets lots of them.  But ultimately, it’s all a question of morality, and he wants to impose his on humanity.  He and Valeria seem to be set up as sort of god and devil, but it’s hard to tell who is really good.  Everyone seems basically evil, like there is no good or god.  And Sancia and crew must choose between the lesser of evils.

I give this book three stars out of five.  It’s a little less than the first book because I never felt completely sucked into it.  Yeah, parts were exciting, but overall, the sum was less than the parts.  If book club doesn’t pick the third book, I don’t know if I’ll read it on my own.  

Bookshops and Bonedust

Travis Baldree
Completed 9/18/2024, Reviewed 9/18/2024
4 stars

This is the second book in the Legends and Lattes series.  It is actually a prequel, taking place a while before Viv, the lesbian orc retires to open a coffee shop.  This book retains all the charm of the first, with wonderful characters, world building, and prose.  Its only fault is that the plot is not as much of a surprise as the first book.  Still, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was glad to spend a little more time in Viv’s world.  And it was great to have another cover by the same artist, who so captures the essence of Viv and her friends.  This book was nominated for a 2024 Mythopoeic Award.  

The story begins when Viv gets injured in a battle with her mercenary compatriots while searching for a terrible necromancer.  They take her to recover in an inn in the sleepy coastal town of Murck.  One day while hobbling along on her injured leg, she happens upon an old bookshop run by Fern, a cat-like creature with a pet gryphet.  Fern gives Viv a book to read and a new friendship begins.  Viv takes an interest in the shop, helping Fern infuse it with life and a few cans of paint.  She also meets the proprietor of a bakery with whom Viv begins to tentatively date.  This peaceful tableau is soon interrupted by a strange hooded figure who has some connection with the necromancer she was hunting initially.  Soon Viv and her new friends find themselves in the midst of a mystery with wights and a homunculus skeleton worthy of a story in the Fern’s bookshop.

What I liked most about this book is the same thing I liked about Lattes.  It’s a story of getting a business going with a mystery to accompany it.  In this case, the business is an existing but floundering bookshop that needs an infusion of life.  It illustrates different strategies for bringing in customers into a town whose inhabitants haven’t been reading for a while.  Being a guy who loves books, and having spent many hours in book stores of many different kinds, it was very fun reading about all the tricks proprietors use to bring in customers.  

I just love Viv.  Yes, she’s a badass mercenary orc, but she also loves the things in life that are magical, like books, coffee, and pastries.  And the way she stumbles over her summer romance with the bakery shop owner is just adorable.  She’s the kind of orc who is a true and lovable friend.  The tie-in back to Lattes in the epilogue will just melt your heart.  

It will be interesting to see what else Baldree can do.  Will he pull another winner out of this universe he’s created, or will he move on to something else?  I’d love to spend more time with Viv, but don’t want the world to get tired.  These books are some kind of special and I want them to live on as wonderful pieces of imagination.  I give this book four stars, just missing five stars because the formula was new and exciting in the first book, and in this one, it was more familiar.  It is still tremendous, and my only regret is that I waiting so long in reading it.  

Translation State

Ann Leckie
Completed 9/10/2024, Reviewed 9/11/2024
4 stars

This book wasn’t as bad as it started out to be.  Honestly, I was predisposed to not liking this book.  I really disliked Ancillary Justice and hadn’t read anything else by Leckie since.  This book started out tough, with three points of view alternating every three chapters.  It was hard keeping up with who was who and what the point of their existences were.  I kept one foot out of the water as I was expecting this supposedly standalone book to require a lot of background from the original trilogy.  To my surprise It came together after about a hundred pages or so.  And by the end, I actually cared what would happen to the main characters.  This book was nominated for the 2023 Nebula and the 2024 Hugo and Locus SF Awards.  I dare say that maybe it deserved these noms.  

The book begins with Enae, whose grandmaman has just died.  Instead of money or property She lives hir the task to find fugitive whose been missing for over 200 years.  When she arrives at her destination, she meets Reet, a liaison/body guard with his own mystery.  He’s searching for birth parents to explain a genetic anomaly.  Finally, there’s Qven, a Presger translator.  As a translator, they will merge with a human to create a link between the humans and the very dangerous Presgers, a relationship defined by an all encompassing but fragile treaty.  These three come together in their quests and to find their true selves while keeping the treaty from exploding into all out war.

All three characters are pretty interesting.  While I didn’t like any of them in the beginning, they each grew on me.  But the real star of this story is Qven.  They want to rebel against the expectations their society has for them.  As they get to know Enae and Reet, they desire to be human, not the cannibalistic, merging creature that’s expected of them.  As Qven navigates the journey to declare themselves human, they have a lot of awkward, dare say humorous, moments.  But it is also very serious as the integrity of the treaty must hold.

In the over ten years since the first novel, the multi-gendered characters with their myriad of pronouns has become a lot less shocking.  In fact, I took it in stride and was not flustered at all by the relationships that developed between the all the non-binary genders.  I was able to focus more on the story, which initially was difficult to keep up with.  It was not easy reading about Qven before they meet Reet.  The otherness of his character was an irritating unanswered question.  But stick with it, as it comes together eventually.

I give this book four stars.  I was going to give it three, but it really is pretty well done how Qven, Enae, and Reet come together and interact.  I definitely changed my mind about Leckie, although I don’t think I’ll go back and read the other two of the initial trilogy.  Suffice it to say that this book is very good and I am now interested in reading her foray into fantasy, The Raven Tower, which I picked up on sale several years ago.  

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Wole Talabi
Completed 8/31/2024, Reviewed 9/1/2024
4 stars

This was an interesting book.  It is based in Nigerian mythology as well as a sprinkling of other myths and religions.  The story is basically a heist tale, but with lots of world building around the mythology.  It made for generally fun book, although, the jumping around of the timelines was a little confusing.  And, as usual, it is always fun to get out of Euro-based fantasy.  Overall, I really liked the book.  It was nominated for 2023 Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards and won the Nommo Award, which is for African Science Fiction and Fantasy.  

The story is about Shigidi, a nightmare orisha who works for the Orisha Spirit company.  He meets a succubus named Nneoma on one particular assignment.  She convinces him to leave the company and join her in eating souls outside of its soul feed distribution.    However, the elder gods will have none of that and pursue the two renegades.  Then, a high god asks the two of them to steal a Nigerian artifact from the British Museum, via both the natural world and the spirit world. 

The plot is pretty simple.  What makes the book complex and interesting is becoming familiar with the Orisha pantheon.  Some of the gods overlapped form me.  Many of them began with the letter O.  But their interactions with the main characters were fascinating.  The book also jumps around in its timeline.  From the activities of the heist, to the making of Shigidi, to the development of the relationship between he and Nneoma, and even a meeting between Alastair Crowley and Nneoma back at the turn of the 20th century.  It’s a little confusing at times, but all works together to get you to understand the reason for the heist and what transpires afterwards.  

I really liked Shigidi, for the most part.  I wasn’t always immersed in his character, empathizing with his situation.  I think part of it was the jumping around of the timeline.  The POV also changes a lot, between him and Nneoma, as well as the high god who runs a board meeting of the Orisha company.  But overall, I found him fascinating, especially when Nneoma teaches him to manipulate the clay from which he’s made.  I also like Nneoma.  Despite the misogynistic connotations of the succubus motif, she was a very well-developed character that had purpose and self-respect.  

I can see why this book was nominated for awards.  The prose was terrific and the world building phenomenal for a mythology that’s not very well known.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I also give props to the author for being able to describe a massively supernatural ending well enough that I followed the wonder of the scene easily despite the noise of reading in airports and on airplanes.  It kept me engaged and intrigued.

The Children of Gods and Fighting Men

Shauna Lawless
Completed 8/24/2024 Reviewed 8/24/24
3 Stars

I haven’t read any of the Game of Thrones books, but I have a feeling that I got a mild taste of what it would be like.  This book is a mix of Irish mythology and historical facts, creating an epic tale of the power struggle between the Kings of the different parts of Ireland for the title of High King.  When we were voting for this book in online book club, I was hoping for a little more god-human interaction.  Instead, the mythology is about two races of immortals playing politics with the crown.  It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.  I found it rather tedious at times, though I did pretty good remembering who was who amongst the myriad of characters.  

Gormflaith is the widow of the Viking King of Dublin.  She is trying to position her son Sitric as the next king as well as the High King of Ireland.  She marries off her stepdaughter to the future King of Norway for ally support.  She also belongs to a race of immortals called Fomorians who have fire magic. There is a race of indigenous immortals called the Tuatha De Dannan who are sworn enemies of the Fomorians and are tasked with killing them, although they don’t live among the humans.  One such immortal, Fodla, is released to live with the humans as a spy on King Brian.  Disguised as a disfigured healer, she finds King Brian and his family to be less warmongering than she was led to believe.  Between these two camps is another king and the rise of Christianity to complicate matters.  

One of the things I both liked and didn’t like about the book was that there are no clear good guys and bad guys.  While one might say the Vikings are the bad guys, the indigenous Irish Kings are generally no better.  All have strange views of what peace is and of course they require power to secure it.  What I like about this is that the tale is told from both the Fomorian and the Tuatha De Dannan POV.  This gives you a taste of the morality of both sides with less judgement than a straightforward good vs. evil story.  The downside for me is that I feel rather ambiguous about both sides as well.  I don’t feel like I have anyone to cheer for.  However, towards the end, I was starting to like King Brian’s clan better.  But who knows if this is a ruse that will be revealed in the next book.

I do have to say Gormflaith is kind of a baddie, mostly because all her frustrations and tragedy in life is now vented toward getting Sitric on the High Throne.  But she is not just an evil Borg Queen of a baddie.  With the book being half told from her POV, it’s easier to empathize with her.  Fodla comes off as less of a baddie, mostly because of her realizations that all human men aren’t warmongering imbeciles.  Her task to spy is interesting because she is a healer posing as a human healer.  She is not supposed to use her supernatural powers to heal anyone.  However, this becomes more and more of a struggle as she becomes closer to the clan she was sent to spy on.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  While it is well constructed and well researched, I felt it dragged often.  I found it tough to get into in the first third, and then once I got into the book, I found it tough to stay in it.  I just didn’t find it all that interesting.  I got more engrossed in the last third, wanting to see which king was going to take a leading role.  But knowing this is a trilogy, I was prepared to be only partly satisfied.  I don’t think I’ll read more of this trilogy unless book club votes for the rest of the series.  It’s just a little too much fantasy politics for me.