Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp is a YA thriller about a group of friends, a role-playing game, and a cabin in the woods (up a mountain). It has strong geeky sensibilities (they are, after all, playing an RPG), but is technically non-SFF, though I expect there's be a lot of SFF fans who would enjoy it regardless.

FIVE friends go to a cabin.
FOUR of them are hiding secrets.
THREE years of history bind them.
TWO are doomed from the start.
ONE person wants to end this.
NO ONE IS SAFE.


Are you ready to play?

In this novel, a group of friends go on a last getaway to mend bridges and play one last RPG campaign before some of them go off to college. The story is told through alternating points of view, cycling through all five characters. Aside from being geeky, Even if We Break also has very strong disability and trans representation, dealing with characters in a variety of circumstances.

Nijkamp excels at cramming a lot of action into a short space of time, as evidenced by This Is Where It Ends, which is called "54 Minutes" in some translations. Even if We Break is no different. Although the story starts relatively up-beat (aside from the lingering issues the characters are hoping to overcome over the weekend) but quickly become tense as things turn ugly. The five characters all have distinctive voices and I found it easy to keep the different characters straight in my mind.

I recommend Even If We Break to fans of YA thrillers and to people who wished Pretty Little Liars had disability representation and good trans representation. I expect fans of RPGs and LARPs, including readers who don't usually read non-SFF, will still find much to enjoy in reading about the friends' game and the way in which this is linked to the action. I will certainly continue to pick up Nijkamp's books as they come out.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: September 2020, Sourcebooks Fire
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

The Four Profound Weaves by RB Lemberg

The Four Profound Weaves by RB Lemberg is a novella set in the author’s Birdverse world. I have previously read at least one story, "Geometries of Belonging", which I quite enjoyed. The different stories stand alone and aside from exploring some similar themes, part of the magic system was what struck me as the main link with respect to world building.

The Surun' do not speak of the master weaver, Benesret, who creates the cloth of bone for assassins in the Great Burri Desert. But Uiziya now seeks her aunt Benesret in order to learn the final weave, although the price for knowledge may be far too dear to pay.

Among the Khana, women travel in caravans to trade, while men remain in the inner quarter as scholars. A nameless man struggles to embody Khana masculinity, after many years of performing the life of a woman, trader, wife, and grandmother.

As the past catches up to the nameless man, he must choose between the life he dreamed of and Uiziya, and Uiziya must discover how to challenge a tyrant, and weave from deaths that matter.

This is a poetically written story about two people searching for themselves in different ways. I'm not sure I can explain the plot any better than the blurb does (which makes for a nice change), so I suggest reading that if you haven't yet. The story alternates between the points of view of the two protagonists, Uiziya and nen-sasaïr, and carries the reader with them across desert and city.

Uiziya's story focuses a bit more on the magic she seeks and the meaning of her aunt's magic in the greater scheme of the world. From a more simplistic understanding, we watch Uiziya's knowledge deepen through the events of the story as she is guided by misapprehensions and revelations. Nen-sasaïr, on the other hand, is guided by a more personal quest. The two team up at first only because their goals partially overlap, though their relationship grows over the course of the story.

From "Geometries of Belonging" the world building thing that stuck in my head most was the concept of magic based on deepnames, unique to the practitioner, the concept of which makes a reappearance in The Four Profound Weaves. However, as the title suggests, the main magic here, which Uiziya is — loosely speaking — chasing, involves weaving and magic carpets. Carpets which can fly, yes, but also carpets which can sing or transform people into their true bodies. The latter being related to the strong trans narrative arc for nen-sasaïr.

Overall I quite enjoyed The Four Profound Weaves. It was a gorgeously written exploration of identity with a heady dose of magic to go with it. I am keen to read more stories set in the Birdverse and other stories by Lemberg as well. I would go seek them out immediately if I wasn't so behind on other review books. I highly recommend The Four Profound Weaves to readers looking for fantasy with any of: desert settings, weaving, or trans narratives.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: Tachyon Publications, September 2020
Series: Birdverse, but I think all the stories so far stand alone
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Short stories 11 to 17 are late and disorderly

This batch of stories is an unusual number because I feel bad for posting them so late. I had plans to do a proper Hugo round-up post as I did for novellas, but for various reasons that didn't happen. So here are some of the short stories and novelettes that were shortlisted for Hugo awards.

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The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker — An enjoyable mystery-ish story about a mystery writing a in cabin in the woods. Things inevitably go wrong, but it wasn’t quite the horror scenario I was expecting. I enjoyed it. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-blur-in-the-corner-of-your-eye

The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim — A long story about interesting far-future alien tech which records history. People interacting with said tech while trying to work out what happened to a failed colony planet. Also a sad love story. It was OK, but it didn’t really grab me. Source: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-archronology-of-love/

Omphalos by Ted Chiang — An unexpected story told in an unusual way. Almost an epistolary story, but told through prayers rather than letters. Set in a world a bit less technologically developed than ours, and following a scientist who knows exactly how long ago the world was created. And that it was created by a divine being. I enjoyed it more than I expected. Source: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin — An entertaining read partially depicting a society sitting somewhere between Athos (Bujold, Ethan of Athos) and the alt-right. It’s also told in an unusual way, which works very efficiently to tell the story and highlight the horrors of that particular society. We actually only get half the story, but it’s more than enough. Source: Amazon Forward Collection

As the Last I May Know by SL Huang — An intriguing premise: weapons of mass destruction can only be set off if the president first murders a little girl. I enjoyed the story and was quite taken by both the power play and the moral questions raised. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/10/23/as-the-last-i-may-know-s-l-huang/

For He Can Creep by Siobhan Carroll — An amusing story about a cat fighting Satan for a poet’s soul. It was not what I expected from the title, and was certainly entertaining enough. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/07/10/for-he-can-creep-siobhan-carroll/

Blood is Another Word for Hunger by Rivers Solomon — A very weird story. Not sure what to make of it, to be honest. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it. I'm sorry that I have failed to adequately describe the weirdness of murder resulting in spontaneous births. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/07/24/blood-is-another-word-for-hunger-rivers-solomon/

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings

Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings is a novella from an Australian author whose short fiction I have previously enjoyed. She is, perhaps, most well-known for her artwork, including book covers such as the one for Flyaway, among others.

In a small Western Queensland town, a reserved young woman receives a note from one of her vanished brothers—a note that makes question her memories of their disappearance and her father’s departure.

A beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun, Flyaway introduces readers to Bettina Scott, whose search for the truth throws her into tales of eerie dogs, vanished schools, cursed monsters, and enchanted bottles.

In these pages Jennings assures you that gothic delights, uncanny family horror, and strange, unsettling prose can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun.

Going through the tags for this review, I couldn't not include "Australian gothic". This book is a tangle of fairytales brought by settlers into the unique Australian landscape, all of them twisted and variously creepy. Flyaway is, above all, a story composed of many other stories, told as flashbacks or asides. The layers are slowly peeled back as our unreliable narrator, Bettina Scott, slowly learns more of her recent past and starts to realise what she's forgotten.

The fact that part of the story is told as Bettina's memories unfurl means that we come at the main story — for lack of a better term, I mean the story most important to Bettina — from an oblique angle. We know something strange has happened, but the pieces don't come together until very close to the end. But in the meantime, Jennings keeps the reader entertained and/or horrified with the extra stories peppered throughout the narrative.

I recommend Flyaway to readers who like weird narratives and who don't mind feeling creeped out by the bush or western Queensland. I think non-Australian readers will also find much to connect with in this book, since a lot of the fairytales are recognisably based on European folklore, despite the strong presence of the Australian landscape in the book.

4 / 5 stars

First published: July 2020, Tor.com
Series: No, I don't think so
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

The Start of Rebuilding Tomorrow

[This post was cross-posted on a delay from the Defying Doomsday / Rebuilding Tomorrow blog.]

Back in 2016, we launched Defying Doomsday, an anthology of apocalypse survival fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill characters. In the lead up to that, I wrote a bit about where the idea for Defying Doomsday came from over on Diversity in YA.

Rebuilding Tomorrow is the followup anthology to Defying Doomsday. In many ways it’s a sequel — in fact, some of the stories it contains are direct sequels to some of the stories in Defying Doomsday — but it’s also a book with an intentionally different focus. Before the pandemic, back in mid-2018, when I was first thinking about Rebuilding Tomorrow, I wanted to make a book that went a step further than just surviving the apocalypse. Feeling gloomy about the in-progress climate apocalypse, I decided I wanted to make a book about getting on with life after the world has irrevocably changed.

Since it was inspired by an apocalypse, it made sense for Rebuilding Tomorrow to be a sort of sequel to Defying Doomsday. But rather than doubling down on more doom-laden apocalypse fiction, I wanted to make an anthology of stories that served as a guide for how to rebuild, after. Because life goes on, to some degree, probably. And as with Defying Doomsday, it was important to me to make Rebuilding Tomorrow an inclusive collection of stories. That meant again focussing on disabled and chronically ill characters, the world’s largest minority.

So the stories in Rebuilding Tomorrow don’t depict apocalypses in progress. They show worlds and people who have survived the worst and are now moving beyond just survival into a more sustainable future. After all, one can’t raid supermarkets forever, after the end of the world.

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Rebuilding Tomorrow is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Back us to help make this anthology and lock in a pre-order to be one of the first people to read it.

Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu

Mooncakes written by Suzanne Walker and illustrated by Wendy Xu is the most adorable graphic novel/comic that I absolutely regret not reading sooner. I did not get around to the review copy I received of it last year, but its Hugo shortlisting (and presence in the voter packet) finally prompted me to pick it up.

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers' bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.

One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.

Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

I didn't actually realise, until I started reading, that this was a story about a witch who wears hearing aids and a non-binary werewolf. If I had known, I would have definitely read it sooner! Oh well, the important thing is that I've now read this adorable story and I have added all Xu's planned books to my Goodreads want list and Walker's stories to my Pocket list.

There was only one thing I didn't like about Mooncakes: the fact that this book is the entirety of the story and we won't be getting more. I really enjoyed reading about both characters and the utter charm of the art and worldbuilding (the forest spirits were so cute!) and would love to be able to spend more time with them. That said, the story was not lacking in any way. It was a complete story with a nice arc for the main characters, including cuteness and peril and a happy ending.

I highly recommend Mooncakes to anyone who likes cute graphic novels/comics, paranormal romance and the various representations I mentioned above. I enjoyed it a lot and I am going to be keeping an eye on future work by both of these creators.

5 / 5 stars

First published: 2019, Oni Press
Series: Seems not :-(
Format read: PDF
Source: Publisher via NetGalley and also Hugo Voter Packet

Riverland by Fran Wilde

Riverland by Fran Wilde is a portal fantasy book for children (aka middle grade). I first encountered it during a reading by the author at Dublin WorldCon last year. This year, I finally got around to picking up Riverland after it was shortlisted for the not-a-Hugo Lodestar Award and hence was included in the Hugo voter's packet.

When things go bad at home, sisters Eleanor and Mike hide in a secret place under Eleanor’s bed, telling monster stories. Often, it seems those stories and their mother’s house magic are all that keep them safe from both busybodies and their dad’s temper. But when their father breaks a family heirloom, a glass witch ball, a river suddenly appears beneath the bed, and Eleanor and Mike fall into a world where dreams are born, nightmares struggle to break into the real world, and secrets have big consequences. Full of both adventure and heart, Riverland is a story about the bond between two sisters and how they must make their own magic to protect each other and save the ones they love.

Riverland is not exactly an easy and relaxing read. It follows twelve-year-old Eleanor and her younger sister Mike, as they deal with an abusive family situation and periodically fall into a fantastical fantasy world made of the river and dreams. The abusive father is the hard part to read, of course, but there is not very much physical violence on the page. Wilde captures the fear, confusion and instability of an emotionally abusive household excellently. I absolutely felt Eleanor's stress as she strived to keep everything just right to avoid bad things happening, and I felt the way she was always kept off-balance by the house rules changing without warning.

The fantastical river world under her bed was where dreams come from and was also caught in a battle to maintain the delicate balance between dreams and nightmares. As well as Eleanor's responsibilities at home — to always do the right thing, to look after her sister and keep her parents happy — she finds herself tasked with fixing the leaks in Riverland; yet another burden. We watch Eleanor try to juggle more balls than a twelve-year-old should ever be expected to, and Wilde transfers some of her fear and tension to the reader.

So as I said, it wasn't a fun, light read, but it was interesting. I liked the fantasy world and I liked the fact that it was somewhere the girls kept revisiting rather than a place they went to and stayed in to have adventures, à la Narnia. And for all that I've emphasised the difficult parts of the book, there were also plenty of hopeful moments, though I don't want to spoil them. The ending was also a good one (though, again, not spoiling).

I highly recommend Riverland to anyone looking for a crunchy children's fantasy book I would probably hand it to slightly older children, because it does deal with some heavy issues. But I expect younger children in similar situation may benefit seeing themselves in the narrative.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2019, Amulet Books
Series: No
Format read: PDF
Source: Hugo Voter Packet

Rebuilding Tomorrow — now on Kickstarter!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have already seen that my new anthology, Rebuilding Tomorrow, has just gone live on Kickstarter. Actually, it went live a day ago and I was so caught up in organising things for the Kickstarter that I completely forgot to blog about it until now.

Rebuilding Tomorrow is a follow-up anthology to Defying Doomsday, which came out back in 2016. This new anthology still has a strong focus on disabled and/or chronically ill protagonists, but this time the setting is a substantial amount of time after the some sort of apocalyptic event. The world has ended but some life goes on. The stories in Rebuilding Tomorrow show survivors that have moved past subsistence-level existence to a more sustainable new normal. What does that future look like? You'll have to read Rebuilding Tomorrow to find out.

You won't have to wait too long though, since we're aiming for a November release. So head over to Kickstarter to help us get this book made and to make sure you get one of the earliest possible copies once it's out. As well as pre-ordering Rebuilding Tomorrow as an ebook, paperback or Kickstarter-exclusive hardcover, you can grab an enamel pin or two, a mug, a print of our gorgeous cover art by Geneva B, or a copy of Defying Doomsday.

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal is the third novel in the Lady Astronaut universe. I have previously read, reviewed and enjoyed the first two books: The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky. The Relentless Moon takes place chronologically after the first two books, but follows a different character, so it almost stands alone, aside from spoiling a lot of what went before it.

The Earth is coming to the boiling point as the climate disaster of the Meteor strike becomes more and more clear, but the political situation is already overheated. Riots and sabotage plague the space program. The IAC's goal of getting as many people as possible off Earth before it becomes uninhabitable is being threatened.

Elma York is on her way to Mars, but the Moon colony is still being established. Her friend and fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is thrilled to be one of those pioneer settlers, using her considerable flight and political skills to keep the program on track. But she is less happy that her husband, the Governor of Kansas, is considering a run for President. 

I really enjoyed this book. The protagonist is Nicole, who I only vague remember from the earlier books, but that vagueness was not at all a problem in picking up and following this new story. There were also several recurring characters who I had stronger memories of, like Nathaniel (Elma's husband), Eugene and Myrtle, and Helen. We actually got to learn a lot more about the latter three as they became increasingly central to the plot. My absolutely favourite part of the whole book was actually the epilogue, for what it sets up for future books, but of course it is a massive spoiler so I won't say any more about it.

The story follows Nicole, one of the original lady astronauts and now governor's wife as she prepares for and then goes on another mission to the moon. But recently the astronaut programme has been experiencing more failures than usual, even though their various failsafes are keeping people safe. Given reason to believe that sabotage is afoot, Nicole spends a lot of the book investigating, while hampered by a lot of things.

It was a bit sad to see that, still, even 20 years after the first book in the series, a lot of sexist jerks remain, as well as some racist jerks, which are highlighted thanks to the diverse cast in the story. That said, it was also probably fairly realistic, as were the science deniers who don't believe in the future consequences of the meteor from book one. To counteract that, some random little things that I enjoyed about the book: Nicole living anorexia was depicted very sensitively; spies and harking back to the war; a couple of minor background characters called Armstrong and Aldrin; the general scientific/engineering rigour Kowal applies to her worldbuilding.

Overall this was an excellent read and I highly recommend it to fans of the Lady Astronaut books. Especially anyone that was hesitant to pick up a book with a new protagonist, I found Nicole to be just as compelling as Elma. To new readers, I suggest starting with The Calculating Stars to better enjoy the worldbuilding and the deviations from our real-world historical timeline. I am excitedly looking forward to the next book in the series.

5 / 5 stars

First published: July 2020, Tor
Series: Lady Astronaut, book 3 of 3 so far
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Hugo Novella Round-up, 2020

I'm a bit late in posting this, even though I finished reading all the Hugo novellas weeks ago. As for many people, I'm sure, life has been a bit exhausting lately.

Anyway, below are brief summaries links to my full reviews of the Hugo novellas. The only exception is for the Ted Chiang because that's in a collection that I haven't finished reading, so I've included my full (not especially long) review in this post. Order is that used by  , out of laziness.

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Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)

I really enjoyed this novella. It is possibly my favourite take on the manyworlds hypothesis/parallel timelines. The story follows a few different people as they interact with a new technology that allows them to communicate (via digital information only) with parallel timelines. The character driven story is interspersed with explanations of the technology, which I thought worked well and were not at all boring infodumps (though others might disagree). Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable read.

The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes

A key idea explored in The Deep is that if societal memory and specifically memory of trauma. The situation when the story opens is like this: one member of the wajinru people is the historian and only that person holds all the memories of past wajinru and events. ... As well as exploring how intergenerational trauma should be remembered, and by whom, The Deep questions whether it should be remembered at all, as Yetu grapples with some of these issues.

The Deep was a good read, though I found it was a little slow to start and not the sort of book I could read quickly. I recommend it to people interested in the premise and, perhaps, to fans of merpeople.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark

In this story, a couple of public servants are tasked with fixing the problem of a haunted tram car in an alternate-world Cairo. Hijinks ensue. In this world, djinn exist and have helped cement Cairo and Egypt's significance on the world stage, including from a technological standpoint. (The steampunky cover is a pretty good representation of the setting, in my opinion.) Our put-upon agents have to contend with identifying the possibly dangerous being possessing the tram and then have to safely remove it. And all this is set against the backdrop of a Cairo-centred campaign to give women the vote.

In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire

Lundy was a mildly unhappy child before she found her door and her particular fairyland wasn't everyone's idea of a good time. But she liked it and she made friends and she felt like she belonged. She even made several trips between the two worlds, which isn't something we've seen close up before. The story spans years as Lundy goes back and forth and is more the story of her transitions than the story of adventures had on the other side of a door. It's the story of choices made, of fair value — because that's what the Goblin Market is all about — and of family.

This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

This is a remarkable book, told in a very poetic style, with chapters alternating between snippets of our characters’ lives and the letters they send each other. Although it is written as prose, one feels as though one is reading poetry. The use of imagery and metaphor is strong and frequent and the relationship between the characters shifts as they become more obsessed with each other as they learn more about the other.

... It is the kind of book that demands your full attention to properly take in its words and worlds.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers

The premise of To Be Taught, If Fortunate is quite straightforward: a small group of scientist-astronauts are on a multi-year mission to investigate four habitable planets and catalogue whatever lifeforms and other interesting things they find. The novella is basically a chronicle of their journey and the main interest in the book is the explanations of science and discovery. ... 

I wouldn't call it fast-paced, by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked for me.