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Under here are reviews of:
Beneath the sugar sky
The black god's drums
Gods, monsters, and the lucky peach
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells – EPUB, MOBI, and PDF of full story
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire. I have the most amazing whiplash relationship with this series. I found the first instalment frustratingly grating: I wanted to love it so much! It's such a fantastic concept! But the writing came across as clunky and wooden, and the plot felt papered on. I adored the second one, the prequel, to the point where I think I placed it first on my ballot, even. The third one… is back to frustratingly grating. It's possible that she never sat a deeply inside these characters' heads enough (something I'm guilty of in my own writing), or I didn't understand the time/world travel paradox enough, but I just… wasn't feeling those emotional beats. At all. I do give her a thousand gold stars for a fat protagonist, and for pointing out that skinny /= healthy.
Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor – EPUB, MOBI, and PDF of full story
The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark. There was SO MUCH in here – alternate New Orleans /US civil war history, airships! So many WoC (basically everyone, bar a few minor characters) being all sorts of stripes of expert and vibrant, goddess-touched characters and magic and and *takes a breath* almost too much for a single novella, really, which is the only complaint I have about this one. It probably needed a novel's worth of pacing and space to breathe to be really spectacular, but this was still a good read.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach> by Kelly Robson. This is a weird mix of really fascinating worldbuilding – and deftly done worldbuilding – and really comparatively dry narrative. There's a lot going on here with augmented bodies and prostheses, a badly depleted Earth's surface, humanity going underground and then gradually re-emerging into surface habs, and the decades and decades that people put into revegetating and reflourishing the planet. Also TIME TRAVEL. I love time travel. All of this is so excellently and naturally woven in to the story. But the narrative (as of 50 pages in) is all about securing funding and grant applications and hating banks, and it's so dull. I'm confused, basically. Later, at about page 70, I started to recoil from the denouement set-up, and the team in-fighting etc, and I pulled back far enough that I actually skipped to the end of the story rather than wade through the last thirty pages. Having done that, I really don't think it needed to be 100 pages+. I might be willing to pick up more by this author to give them another chance, but I think I'm putting this particular work below no award, maybe even.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard. Really interesting set up. There's a tiny bit of *wiggles hand up and down* to get the characters into said set up, but a fifth of the way in, and it's got my interest.
Beneath the sugar sky
The black god's drums
Gods, monsters, and the lucky peach
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells – EPUB, MOBI, and PDF of full story
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire. I have the most amazing whiplash relationship with this series. I found the first instalment frustratingly grating: I wanted to love it so much! It's such a fantastic concept! But the writing came across as clunky and wooden, and the plot felt papered on. I adored the second one, the prequel, to the point where I think I placed it first on my ballot, even. The third one… is back to frustratingly grating. It's possible that she never sat a deeply inside these characters' heads enough (something I'm guilty of in my own writing), or I didn't understand the time/world travel paradox enough, but I just… wasn't feeling those emotional beats. At all. I do give her a thousand gold stars for a fat protagonist, and for pointing out that skinny /= healthy.
Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor – EPUB, MOBI, and PDF of full story
The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark. There was SO MUCH in here – alternate New Orleans /US civil war history, airships! So many WoC (basically everyone, bar a few minor characters) being all sorts of stripes of expert and vibrant, goddess-touched characters and magic and and *takes a breath* almost too much for a single novella, really, which is the only complaint I have about this one. It probably needed a novel's worth of pacing and space to breathe to be really spectacular, but this was still a good read.
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach> by Kelly Robson. This is a weird mix of really fascinating worldbuilding – and deftly done worldbuilding – and really comparatively dry narrative. There's a lot going on here with augmented bodies and prostheses, a badly depleted Earth's surface, humanity going underground and then gradually re-emerging into surface habs, and the decades and decades that people put into revegetating and reflourishing the planet. Also TIME TRAVEL. I love time travel. All of this is so excellently and naturally woven in to the story. But the narrative (as of 50 pages in) is all about securing funding and grant applications and hating banks, and it's so dull. I'm confused, basically. Later, at about page 70, I started to recoil from the denouement set-up, and the team in-fighting etc, and I pulled back far enough that I actually skipped to the end of the story rather than wade through the last thirty pages. Having done that, I really don't think it needed to be 100 pages+. I might be willing to pick up more by this author to give them another chance, but I think I'm putting this particular work below no award, maybe even.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard. Really interesting set up. There's a tiny bit of *wiggles hand up and down* to get the characters into said set up, but a fifth of the way in, and it's got my interest.