Half a Million Hits!

 

Wow!  Yesterday, I had my 500,000th hit on my blog.  Again, I don’t know if it’s lots of bots hitting my blog or lots of real people.  Either way, it makes it easier for everyone to find.  Thanks to my readers, regular and intermittent.  You keep me writing reviews, even after twelve years.  

 I’m quasi-retired now, having been laid off for about a year and not having much luck getting past the AI application screening processes.  I can’t even get jobs that exactly match my previous job description.  It’s a game I’m tired of playing anyway.  That leads me to the decision to investigate monetizing my blog, i.e., adding ads.  Hopefully, they are not too obnoxious.  My intent is not to upset my regular human readers, but to capitalize on the possible bots hitting my blog, hoping they’ll click on ads and generate some side income for me.  Every little bit helps, right?  So bear with me as I redesign the blog a little and add the ads feature.  You don’t have to click on them, but by doing so, you’ll help me out a little bit.  

Keep reading folks!!  I hope you find inspiration to check out some of the authors and titles I’ve reviewed as you search for something to sink your teeth into.  Thanks again to everyone who visits.  I’m still in the midst of reading Hugo nominees and book club selections.  After August 8th, I’ll be back to the eclectic taste genre fiction we love so much. 

 

The West Passage

Jared Pechaček
Completed 7/12/2026, Reviewed 7/12/2026
3 stars

This was a very strange book.  I would put it under the subgenre of weird fantasy.  The author throws a multitude of strange characters at the reader, some very large, some small, some with rabbit ears, square heads, four arms, three legs, tentacles, many eyes, one eye, scales, feathers.  Needless to say, the world building is simply unbelievable, which leads me to my general feeling about the book.  It was overwhelming for me.  I couldn’t keep up with all the characters and their characteristics.  I had trouble visualizing the layout of the land.  And I never got the significance of the title location.  A lot of work and imagination went into this story and I can acknowledge that it was well written.  It was simply just too much for me.  This book has been nominated for the 2026 Mythopoeic Award, but I read it because the author is nominated for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, presented at the Hugo Awards ceremony.  Since I’ve already read three of the authors nominated, I decided I would finish out this category and vote on it this year.  

Winter comes suddenly out of order to the Grey Tower.  Mother Yarrow dies prematurely, leaving young Pell to assume the mantle.  Pell, the new Yarrow, is not trained in all the ways of the Grey Lady.  But she decides to go to the Black Tower to ask the Black Lady why this is happening.  Were the women in grey being punished for something?  At the same time, the Guardian of the West Passage, who is from the Grey Tower, dies prematurely as well, leaving her apprentice Kew unacknowledged as the new Hawthorn.  He decides to go to the Black Tower to be formally acknowledged so he can defend the West Passage from the Beast.  Kew is assigned a squire, Frin, and together, they journey to beg help from the Black Tower to defend the country from the Beast.    

This book is very complex and describing the plot and the characters is not straight forward.  There’s so much more to this book than what’s in my summary.  I have to say I enjoyed the travels of Kew and Frin because of their relationship.  At first, Kew doesn’t want help, but comes to appreciate Frin and the two become friends, a first for Kew.  There’s an implication that there may be more between them which is quite endearing, whether I was reading into it or not.  I have a soft spot for boyfriends on a journey to save the world.  Pell, on the other hand, who becomes Mother Yarrow, is less endearing.  I found her reticence a little tedious, although I do understand her plight as she was thrust into this position without enough training.  There are many, many other characters who come in and out of their lives, but few stay through the whole book.  

The prose is sumptuous as is the world building, but again, I was overwhelmed.  And the order of the storytelling made following the journeys of Kew and Frin and Yarrow tough to follow.  Rather than the chapters alternating between them, the chapters would follow Kew and Frin for a while, then switch to Yarrow.  It made it a little difficult to keep track of each.  There’s also interludes which explain the history and mythology of the five Ladies and their Towers.  Every now and then, there’s an interlude which tells a brief story about the common people in the midst of the chaos of the approaching destruction by the Beast.  I appreciated those even though I didn’t always see their relevance to advancing the plot.  

This book is not an easy read.  It took me ten days get through it because I was never completely taken with any of the plot lines.  When I read it, I enjoyed it, but the effort involved kept me from picking up the book more often than I did.  Gender is pretty fluid throughout the book.  When Kew becomes the new Hawthorn, he becomes a woman, which doesn’t affect their relationship with Frin.  Props to that, but considering that the people were mixed with animals and shapes and forms, gender wasn’t that significant.  I give this book three stars out of five.  I think the average person will either love this book or get lost in the complexity.  I’m in the latter, but I acknowledge the brilliance and effort that went into it.  Hence my rating.  I am definitely interested in seeing what else Pechaček will come up with next.  

2026 Hugos - Best Novelette Nominees

The 84th World Science Fiction Convention

August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim, California

Novelettes fall between short stories and novellas in size.  These ranged from 30 to 50 pages.  You get a little more world building than the short stories which have to get to the point more quickly.  Unlike the Short Stories, this category wasn’t as tight.  There was one standout, ironically from an author I haven’t enjoyed yet. The novelettes listed below have a brief plot summary with my reaction and are ordered by how I rank them.

“When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente – 5 stars – A woman verbally spars with a vampire named Jolene 😊 who wants to take her husband.  Jolene has been feeding on him for a while and the wife hasn’t known what to do, until now.  Valente credits Dolly Parton.  Yes, there are lines from the song in the story, but it works sooooo well.  And there are two twists.  I have to share a great line:  Jolene tells the wife, “I am sorry [for feeding on her husband].  It wasn’t personal.  It’s only nature.  Wolves hunt.”  The wife replies, “And people shoot wolves from fucking helicopters, lady.”

“Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch – 4 stars – Nixon still loses in this alternate history story.  Earth must battle a strange monster from the sea.  Planted by the galaxy-faring seed planters, the kaiju’s mission is to wreak destruction until the planet’s indigenous sentient beings refrain from using weapons of mass destruction.  The humans can’t figure that out, so the kaiju speaks directly to them, and gets a PR rep.  This book pokes fun at late-stage capitalism, fascist regimes, the Cold War, and Nixon, who could really represent any oppressive, dictatorial leader.  

“The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker – 4 stars - A girl in a magic troupe pretends to be a boy because audiences and critics don’t think women should be magicians.  Lottie falls for a new member of the troupe, Susanna, whose obsession with breaking into magic’s big time being herself rubs off a bit on her.  Susanna plays a ditsy female doing amazing magic, but gets no respect from the owner, Uncle Albert.  She goes off on her own, leaving Lottie who always remains on the lookout for her.  This is a good thinker story.  It keeps fresh what women had to do to break into a man’s world.  

“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak - 4 stars – A colony ship carries ten thousand people to settle and begin trade on a distant moon.  Under the eye of the ship’s AI, 95% of them die, leaving 500 to settle, people, and produce goods on the moon.  Because of this horrible accident, the AI, named NEV, as in Never Eaten Vegetables, is set to be shut down.  One settler, Luwa, tries to uncover what really happened that caused the AI to allow them to die.  This is a graphic, intense, and heartbreaking story.  I had to shake this one off before moving on to the next one.

“The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed – 3 stars – A trans woman was supposed to bear the clone of a huge corporate CEO but has three miscarriages.  Coleen, the CEO, finds Mira, another orphan, and tries again.  The trans woman is now in limbo.  She takes care of Mira and they eventually fall in love, possibly destroying the CEO succession of the corporation.  I thought this story was okay.  I didn’t find the story terribly engaging.  

“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells - 3 stars – This is a really good story if you’ve read enough of the Murderbot series.  In the story order, it is #2.5.  Even though I read the first seven books, I had trouble placing the characters.  And there’s no plot.  It’s really just a vignette to bridge a small gap to introduce Peri just as she tells the crew of the ship that she and Murderbot are having a relationship.  Not really remembering enough of the story and understanding the point of the book, I was lost until the very end.  I kept waiting for something to happen, but it didn’t.  I would have given it two stars, but the writing is seriously terrific.

2026 Hugos - Best Short Story Nominees

The 84th World Science Fiction Convention

August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim, California

It’s that time of year again, as you’ve seen in my previous posts of novels and novellas.  This post is dedicated to the six nominees for Short Story.  It’s a tight race, and even though there is a difference between the ratings (4 stars versus 5), I liked them all very much.  They are all pretty dark and they comment on problems in our culture.   The stories listed below have a brief plot summary with my reaction and are ordered by how I rank them.  

“Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg – 5 stars – This was awesome!  The Main Character is a wheelchair-bound superabled woman named RazorBeam.  She’s a paraplegic with laser vision.  She joins the Super-Abled 501 Union and finds it’s not ADA compliant.  She tries to get them to add a ramp and change intersections to make them safer.  The Union members don’t listen to her ideas or needs, nor have they been able to stop the rampaging Doctor Croc.  RazorBeam confronts Doc Croc herself when the 501 doesn’t show up during an attack.  Their conversation is a revealing look into the state of superabled affairs.  This book was smart and effective in conveying a message about how the system fails the disabled community.  Hits all the right buttons.

“Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim – 5 stars – Cassie hates that 2/3 of the human population is digital, including her mother.  In fact, most humans have virtual partners and use professional companions/hired humans with a digital overlay for tactile needs.  Not being able to convince her father of her issues with her mother, she finds friendship with another human about her age at the community center, a computer whiz with a penchant for cruelty.  

“Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson – 4 stars – A queer woman has been in therapy forever, dealing with interpersonal issues as well as gender identity.  There’s a new procedure called Revision which will change her, though it doesn’t exactly say how.  To do it, she needs statements from six people about what they would change in her.  The process of obtaining them is intense, but not as much as bringing it up with her wife.  A powerful story of self-awareness and self-care.

“In My Country” by Thomas Ha – 4 stars – An intense tale of living in a controlled society.  Main character’s son becomes a subversive writer, threatening the stability that the MC has lived with all these years.  His daughter and son see through the BS of the regime in power and try to make their father see the truth in the stories’ ambiguities.  Powerful novel.  A difficult read because of the frustration you develop listening to the father lie to himself about what’s happening around him and to his family. 

“Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro – 4 stars – Well written story about a woman whose husband leaves her for her clone.  So she attempts to meet her to explain that she sold her cloning rights away because she needed the money when she ran away from home as a teen.  She doesn’t know what to expect, but hopes to ease the pain of the divorce.  The kicker in this book is that it’s told in second person and the wife is the “you” in the story.  The ending had WOW factor.  

“10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” by Samantha Mills – 4 stars – A woman has an Amazon-bought crystal ball in which she sees many different futures, all of them apocalyptic.  In each one, she and her husband find little moments of joy amidst the end times.  It really made me smile, with little jokes and with her final conclusion.  

The Iron Garden Sutra

A.D. Sui
Completed 6/23/2026, Reviewed 6/24/2026
3 stars

Don’t believe the online blurb about this book.  This is not cozy in any way.  It’s a Sci Fi-Horror novel that uses many tropes that are popular right now.  It’s similar to the Alien franchise as people are killed one by one by something in a spaceship.  There’s a lot of body horror here.  There is a monk, but unlike Becky Chamber’s placid monk, this one is miserably self-loathing.  However, after I got about 50% of the way through, I started to really enjoy it.  I like reading horror.  And I liked the enemies-to-lovers romance-in-a-horrible-situation-movie that very slowly evolved.  This book was for online book club, so it was a quick break from the Hugo nominees.  

A generations ship has returned to a human docking station after a thousand years in space.  Everyone aboard is dead.  The Starlit monastery sends Vessel Iris to the ship to perform the soul releasing ritual for the thousands of dead.  He has an AI implant which helps him remember things, like breathing calmly and recalling the hundreds of years of sutras he studied at the monastery.  When he arrives at the ship, he finds a research team already there and it is full of moss, vines, trees, and other plant life.  He tries to avoid the team but inevitably, they interact---a lot.  Some are friendly, but some hate him for having the implant or simply because he’s a monk for the dead.  Vessel Iris senses beats on the ship, like a pulse or heartbeat, that no one else mentions.  So he keeps it a secret, the first of many.  As people die one by one, he keeps his theories to himself because the others aren’t receptive to him.  But his secrets may hold the key to the mysteries of the ship and the reasons for the deaths.

Vessel Iris is a miserable person.  He had a horrible childhood, being orphaned and taken to the monastery.  He believes he is a failure in everything he does.  However, between his senses, the AI (called VIFAI), and the discoveries made by the team, he is the only one who figures out what’s going on the ship.  You expect him to be a hero, but he’s not.  He’s a horribly insecure person.  That made reading through the first half tough.  It’s hard to develop empathy for him because of these personality traits.  Fortunately, the pace picks up and annoyance of Iris must compete with the accumulating body count.  

The character of the VIFAI was strange.  I felt like he was on the verge of having a robust personality, but it mostly seemed one-dimensional.  It’s sort of like a slave/guardian angel but he treats it as an equal.  I didn’t develop any empathy for VIFAI either.

Of the other characters, Riyu Alo was the nicest.  She’s the exobiologist.  Ishtan Ora was cute as the bumbling older archeologist, specializing in ancient, returned generation ships.  Tev and Jesi, the engineer’s interns didn’t seem multi-dimensional until near the end.  There are two guards we don’t know much about, but Iris feels guilty about not knowing their names.  Finally, there’s engineer Yan Fukui who is brash and downright mean to Iris (I just got that his last name might be a self-referential joke).  Because of this animosity, we get a better sense of who he is.  We also get background information about him, providing much needed insight into this belligerent character.  Probably the best developed character, but not the easiest to empathize with for quite a while.  But to me he was the most authentic and realistic human in the group.  He also played practical engineer devil’s advocate to Iris’ theories about the ship.  

I thought the prose was fine, but the world building was not detailed regarding the science.  There was a lot of hand-waving about the mycelium network and generations ship engineering.  During book club discussion, there was a lot of “What was that about?” i.e., vague science.  Despite all this, I was very engaged in the last hundred pages or so.  I liked the climax, but I somehow missed the “Book 1” on the top of every page, ending up shocked that it left some pretty huge loose ends.  It’s not a cliffhanger, but there’s a lot to be resolved.  And it seems to me that the resolutions will come in the form of going back to the ship with the remaining characters, the tired trope used by Alien and Aliens and countless other horror flicks.  When it came to rating this, I wavered between a 3 and a 4 because, by the end, I really liked it, but I also recognized that it had the above flaws.  So I settled on three stars out of five.  But I liked it enough that I will probably read the sequel.

The Summer War

Naomi Novik
Completed 6/17/2026, Reviewed 6/17/2026
4 stars

This novella felt overly long, despite being under 150 pages.  It’s about interactions with faeries: their vengeance, their oaths, and complicated stratagems to bring peace between the two worlds.  This felt like a common fae trope: faeries take a human and the human escapes by convoluting the fae logic.  Novik made it more complex than that, in a good way, but the prose felt bloated and there was too much exposition to catch the reader up on the history of the situation.  This 2026 Hugo nominee for Novella is probably my least favorite of the list.  While I felt like it was a great turn on the trope, all the filler and background kept me from feeling like this book was up there with my other favorite nominees.

Celia is a young girl, a daughter of a powerful nobleman, just about to reach her sexual maturity and come into her burgeoning sorcery gifts.  Their kingdom lies on the border with the fae world, called The Summer Lands.  She was very close to her oldest brother Argent, a highly decorated knight and hero.  When he tells his father he is disowning the family and going to live with the fae, young Celia panics.  She knows he keeps being gay a secret and that that is the reason for him leaving.  She inadvertently curses him by wishing he never find love again.  As time goes on, she regrets the curse more and more and is determined to go after him to break the curse.  However, the prince of their kingdom delivers the message that she fulfills the prophecy of the treaty at the end of the Summer Wars and must marry the prince.  However, the prince is in cahoots with the fae and it looks like another war may break out.  And Celia is at the center of this mess.

In general, the characterization was very good.  However, I did not really like Celia and couldn’t empathize with her.  Yeah, the twists and switcheroos of the fae was wonderfully complex, but I couldn’t empathize with any of her feelings through it all.  On the other hand, I liked Argent and her other brother Roric.  Argent stood his ground when it came to being true to himself.  Roric, the forgotten brother, was kind and forgiving despite being treated like he was invisible his whole life.  But the story centered on Celia, and that made it feel very long.  

The world building was great, though.  Novik did a great job of describing the differences between time in the Summer Lands versus human time.  And even though she used summerfolk instead of faeries, she stuck to much of the general faerie mythology while making it feel like her own.  

The biggest reason for taking off a star is the prosy exposition.  I didn’t like how the history of the war and the truce was replayed to bring us up to speed.  It was too chock full of complexity.  And it felt more like it was telling me about it instead of showing me.  It took me until finishing the book that I figured out the difference between the princes, even though their names were very different.  It was part of the fae’s game, but I didn’t like it.  And without empathy for the main character, it was hard to wade through it all to see what happened to her next.  I came close to giving this book three stars, but I settled on four out of five because of the brothers and the exciting twist upon twist of an ending.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to review this book for voting in the 2026 Hugo Awards.  The content of this review is my honest opinion.

The River Has Roots

Amal El-Mohtar
Completed 6/16/2026, Reviewed 6/17/2026
5 stars

This book was so much better than El-Mohtar’s This is How You Lose the Time War.  The prose is sumptuous like in Time War, but it doesn’t distract from the plot.  The story is devastating and beautiful.  It’s about the bond between two sisters whose job is to sing to the Willows along the river to maintain the portal between the human and fae worlds.  The magic system is bizarre; it is called the Grammer.  And the ending is sad, but hopeful.  This book has already won the 2025 Nebula for Novella and is a 2026 Hugo nominee for the same.  This is turning out to be a tough year for this category as the stories are all marvelous.

Esther and Ysabel have a very tight bond.  Their family, the Hawthornes, have been singing the Willows for generations, a job which now falls on the sisters.  Their voices are unmatched, particularly when they sing together.  Esther, being the older, has a local man interested in marrying her.  He owns the next property over and thinks the match would strengthen the claim on the keeping of the Willows and the portal.  However, Esther does not like Samuel Pollard at all.  She is in love with Rin, a faerie that she and Ysabel met when they accidently wandered through the Willows.  They were saved by Agnes Crow, a grammarian who was wandering through the fae lands.  Just when Esther convinces Rin to live with Esther and her family as her lover, Pollard shows up full of anger and resentment.  The ensuing chaos from that encounter ends tragically, but that is not the end of the story. (But no spoilers so I’ll leave you hanging 😊)

This is one of those books filled with tragic events, but still has a heartwarming feel to it.  It emphasizes the bond between Esther and Ysabel, but also supports the bringing of Rin into the mix.  The relationships are very strong, although they were just short of being problematic and maybe too co-dependent.  But it makes Pollard’s actions all the more devastating.  While the magic is very esoteric, the author has it developed enough that it makes sense, even if you don’t understand it.

The character I liked most was Agnes Crow.  She is another grammarian, someone who wields the speaking and singing magic.  She reminded me a bit of Tom Bombadil from Tolkien.  She also reminded me of a rune reader I know here in Portland, so I pictured her with a wild grey perm, soft flowy black fabrics, and a mischievous smile.  She is funny, whimsical, and very serious when needed.  

This is another novella on the shorter side, so I can’t discuss too much without spoilers.  Suffice it to say, the book was gripping.  Everything happens so fast, but it flows very well.  I read this book in a short day, although it took me a few days to get the review written up.  I can’t tell you how much of a difference it was from Time War.  It’s like night and day.  This book made me feel all cozy in the end, my favorite feeling.  But this isn’t a cozy read as the events in the middle are tragic, indeed.  It hit all the right emotional buttons for me to give it a five star rating.