Jul 22 2024

Witch’s Business by Diana Wynne Jones

Also known in some markets as Wilkins’ Tooth.

I’m joining my pal Emily for A Year Of Diana Wynne Jones, a project she recently started where she and other interested readers go through the entire DWJ oeuvre over the course of a year. I decided to dip in and out as books were available to me: I own a handful, but am mostly relying on my public libraries to cover the rest. I am very lucky in being able to access both the DC and Montgomery Public Library systems, as they helped me get started here. That said, this is technically the second book in the project as the first, Changeover, is very much out of print (as well as out of her usual children’s fantasy oeuvre.)

Witch’s Business itself is the tale of Frank and Jess Pirie, whose pocket money has been suspended one summer. In an effort to make some money, the siblings decide to start a business. At first they offer to run errands for neighbors in exchange for cash, but when their father puts a stop to that, they decide to specialize in getting revenge. Awkwardly, their very first customer is Buster, the same bully that Frank owes money to. Buster is sore that Vernon Wilkins managed to knock out his tooth during a fight, so wants the Piries to get a tooth from the Wilkins boy in turn. If they can manage that, he’ll forgive Frank’s debt entirely.

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Jul 19 2024

The Mimicking Of Known Successes by Malka Older

On the plus side, with this I’ve finally read all the nominees for Best Novella for the 2024 Hugos! That said, what a strange set of entries for this year. As Doug has opined elsewhere, this was not a good year for the category Jo Walton considers an excellent barometer of the speculative fiction zeitgeist.

The Mimicking Of Known Successes is fine. The conceit is cute and the worldbuilding rather brilliant. Essentially, humanity has fled to a planet they call Giant (but which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be Jupiter) after having pretty much destroyed Earth. Society has reorganized itself around the literal platforms they’ve built to support humanity, far above Giant’s gaseous surface. Travel from platform to platform involves railway services which are free by necessity since overland travel is otherwise impossible.

It’s to one such platform, tho remote and scarcely trafficked, that Investigator Mossa is summoned. A gregarious if narcissistic visitor named Bolein has gone missing, with the fear being that he either jumped or was pushed off of the edge of the habitable area. When Mossa learns that Bolein was attached to Valdegeld, the platform where her former girlfriend Pleiti now works as a scholar at the renowned university, she doesn’t hesitate to show up on Pleiti’s doorstep to ask for help.

Pleiti does know Bolein, who had a reputation around campus as being something of a blowhard. He was always happy to talk about his own theories, but didn’t have any interest in listening to others, even to Pleiti’s own research into rebuilding Earth as an integrated ecosystem. He doesn’t strike Pleiti as being the kind of person who would suddenly kill himself in such a quiet, tidy manner, so she sets out to help Mossa figure out his last few days in hopes of solving the mystery of his disappearance. What they learn will lead them all over Giant as they uncover a criminal conspiracy that could very well jeopardize both their lives, just as they’re starting to reconnect once more.

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Jul 18 2024

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed

And with this I’ve completed the reading for the 2024 Hugos nominees for Best Graphic Story! And what a way to round out the category! It won’t topple Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons from the chokehold that book has on first place, but it sure comes close.

Shubeik Lubeik is the Arabic for, essentially, “your wish is my command”, the typical line said by genies about to grant a wish. This astonishingly thoughtful graphic novel examines what life would be like if wishes — of indeterminate origin, though likely from djinn — were real. Gradually but cleverly, Deena Mohamed unfolds her entirely plausible world over the course of three interconnected stories, with the occasional interstitial to explain more of the history and politics of wishes.

The first story, while good, was also the weakest of the three, IMO, and only because of its ending. Aziza is a Cairene who’s always lived in poverty, first while watching her parents die of terminal illnesses, then while living with the husband she’s secretly very fond of. Abdo was her neighbor growing up, and he’s always done his best to bring a smile to her habitually solemn face. After he dies, she’s devastated. When she discovers that Shokry, a nearby kiosk owner, is trying to get rid of three fully licensed first-class wishes, she saves up money to buy one. Before she can use the wish, however, she’s arrested by a government that clearly wants her to give the wish over to them. She refuses to be bullied, enduring long days that turn to years in prison.

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Jul 17 2024

Life Does Not Allow Us To Meet by He Xi

translated into English by Alex Woodward.

I guess I should start by attempting to summarize this story, but it’s just so weirdly — if not outright poorly — written (or perhaps translated? I’m sorry for throwing you under the bus here Mr Woodward but this story was just so bafflingly not good) that I don’t even know if I can do that with any level of professionalism. It starts out oddly, with what sounds like two people breaking into an astronaut-training facility. But then another astronaut who happens to have the same name as the author (eyeroll) shows up to take charge of their little mission, to explore a colony called Caspian Sea after his own return from another successful colony some light years away.

Space travel in the future has been greatly expedited by the discovery of wormhole travel, tho it’s still not entirely without its risks. The last mission to Caspian Sea, a primarily water planet, was thought to have failed due to the final transmissions sent by the astronauts sent there some decades ago. One of those astronauts, Yu Lan, was actually the love of He Xi’s life, the two having met in training and falling in love after her oxygen tank failed and he shared his breathing equipment with her (like that’s some sort of heroism and not, you know, basic shit you do when buddy diving.)

Anyway, He Xi leads Yelena and Fan Zhe through the wormhole to Caspian Sea, where they discover that the colony has not only survived but thrived. The genetically modified people that humans created to colonize the planet are flourishing, despite the lack of adherence to protocol. A suspicious He Xi quickly ferrets out that Yu Lan is still alive, and that she harbors a devastating secret that could destroy any connection between them for good.

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Jul 16 2024

The Three-Body Problem, Part One by Cai Jin, Ge Wendi, BO MU & Caojijiuridong

a graphic adaptation of Liu Cixin’s bestselling sci-fi novel of the same name, which I adored. This, tho… I very much did not love this.

A large part of the problem with this adaptation of The Three-Body Problem is the fact that it strips out much of Mr Liu’s writing save the dialog, which was never the strong point of the books to begin with. I’m not sure who did the translations for this into English, but it feels very workmanlike in comparison with Ken Liu’s thoughtful prose translation of the original. Shorn of much of its language, the weaknesses of the source text stand out far more starkly.

I desperately loved the original T3BP when I first read it because it’s very much a novel of ideas. The application of science to extraterrestrial life was mind bending. Perhaps I’m not recollecting how long it took for the original to get to that point, but I can safely say that this graphic adaptation gets to over 300 pages without a word of alien life even being suspected. In fact, this book basically seems to be about a bunch of scientists, cops and military personnel in China, running around having mysterious encounters and eventually playing video games. It’s a lot of pages to convey very little story, and not very well at that.

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Jul 15 2024

Thornhedge by T Kingfisher

God, reading this book was such a relief. After struggling through three of the other Best Novella nominees for the Hugo Awards 2024, it was nice to finally read a book that felt like it was written by a professional who gives a shit about her audience.

Now I’m a sucker for fairytale retellings, so I was going to be inclined to like this book regardless. Thornhedge reworks the idea of Sleeping Beauty by asking the question: do you need a hedge of thorns to keep trespassers out, or to keep a terrible monster in?

The story is told from the perspective of the guardian of the hedge and what lies within, a creature known as Toadling. Centuries ago, Toadling was stolen from her cradle and whisked away to Fairyland, where she was raised by the monstrous greenteeth as one of their own. After nine years of growing, another fairy comes to take her home, to serve as godmother to the terrible little changeling that was left in her stead. But only five days have passed in the mortal realm, and the king and queen fear that Toadling has come bearing a curse and not a gift. Toadling was, in fact, brought back to restore a balance dangerously undermined by the mischievous placement of the changeling. Alas that she messes up the bestowal of the gift — or rather the fairy price is too exacting for a little girl, even one as exposed to magic as she has been. Instead of being allowed to return to Fairy and her beloved adoptive family after completing her mission, she finds herself tied to this estate and to the little girl who usurped her place.

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Jul 12 2024

Tantalizing Tales — July 2024 — Part One

I honestly can’t believe that it’s the second Friday of July already! I feel like the start of this year absolutely dragged, but no time at all has passed since March. What’s up with that?

As usual, I’m behind with my work reading and am frantically going through what Hugo nominees I can before the voting deadline on Friday the 19th. I also had the misfortune of being afflicted with a migraine partway through the half day I took off yesterday to take my kids out for general enrichment. Luckily, it was Free Slurpee Day — as my kids would not stop reminding me — and the brain freeze from the frozen beverage (as well as the Excedrin Migraine the sympathetic store clerk sold me) really helped me get through the pain so that I could get the kids through their list of promised activities: sushi, a matinee screening of Inside Out 2, then trips to 7-11, the park and the library, phew! But it did put a significant crimp in my productivity otherwise, which always makes me feel like I’m floundering. Did I 100% identify and cry with Anxiety during yesterday’s movie? You absolutely betcha.

But at least I have this column to help round up the terrific titles that have just come out that I don’t yet have the time to read! First up, we have Lo Patrick’s The Night The River Wept. After months of mourning her miscarriage, puttering around and becoming increasingly irked by her husband (relatable, tbh,) Arlene seizes the change of pace that comes with accepting a job at her local police precinct. When she takes to poking around old case files, she unearths the cold case known as the Deck River Tragedy. Three children were murdered, with the prime suspect committing suicide days later. Arlene recruits the suspect’s prickly, investigative-minded aunt and the station’s straight-laced, tight-lipped receptionist to help her as she reopens the case. This one came to me highly recommended, and I’m super eager to find time to dive in.

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Jul 11 2024

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

Once upon a time, I used to give authors 900 pages before I decided whether I was done with them, probably forever. That, ofc, was before I became a professional book critic and found myself inundated with more books than I have time for. In the before times, I might have extended that courtesy towards Arkady Martine. I really enjoyed the worldbuilding and cultural themes of her debut novel, A Memory Called Empire, but my God the writing. As memories (heh) of her fictional empire fade, I’m mostly left with the feeling of how deeply irritating her writing style was, with its overuse of italics and em dashes. And that’s even before thinking about the incredibly pedestrian mystery element of that novel.

So when I saw that she had a sci-fi noir nominated in the category of Best Novella for the 2024 Hugos, I girded my loins before diving in. I had no doubt that her strengths would remain strengths, but I worried that, without the rigor of an editor working over a debut, her faults would only grow harder to ignore.

Fortunately for me, the writing wasn’t even that bad here. There were a lot fewer italics than in AMCE, for a start, and while there were several pretentious paragraph breakages, it was nothing I couldn’t overcome with a grimace and an eye roll. The sci-fi wasn’t bad either, even if I did feel that this novella felt like an excuse for a recent monomania for architecture. And I get it, I love good construction, too. I enjoyed reading a lot of the philosophy of building design included in this novella, and even tho I absolutely think that the bedroom over a chasm is a wildly impractical construct that appeals only to certain types of people — and not necessarily the ones who share the protagonist’s point of view on it — I mostly agreed with Dr Selene Gisil on the utility of her chosen field.

But I also felt like the book fails from the very first conceit of having Selene tied to Rose House to begin with. Here’s the deal: years ago, Selene denounced her famous mentor, architect Basit Deniau, and moved half the world away from him to open her own practice. Basit was renowned for designing and constructing buildings infused with Artificial Intelligence, the most famous of which is Rose House, out in the Mojave Desert. When he died, he willed the house and its contents, which include pretty much his entire repository of knowledge, to Selene. She views the bequest as an anvil, as a twisted way to keep her entangled with him even in death.

So, why, I wondered, did she just not give the place up?

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Jul 10 2024

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons Vol 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha & Nicola Scott

OKAY, I am still inordinately pissed at the absurd, regressive, anti-feminist retcon that DC Comics gave Wonder Woman’s origins with the New 52. I know that people say that comic book back stories are like changeable weather: if you don’t like it, wait a short period of time and it’ll change again. But between the increasingly more ridiculous attempts at codifying Emma Frost’s back story over at Marvel, and the fact that the Kuberts’ boring ass mini series is STILL the accepted origin story for Wolverine, I had no hope of the Distinguished Competition returning one of my favorite comic book characters to her sui generis roots.

But then I read this volume and holy shit, y’all! HOLY SHIT! Idk if this is canon but this is 100% a step back in the correct direction, a return to George Perez’ excellent interpretation. In fact, Wonder Woman Historia gives one of the best comic book characters of all time the kind of 21st century update that would never have passed the restrictions of the Comics Code era in which Mr Perez worked. Honestly, I hope this book would make him proud. It certainly made my heart beat faster, and my soul sing with both recognition and glee.

Wonder Woman herself only shows up in the very last pages of this book, but to a very large extent, learning about the origins of the Amazons is very much an important part of learning about the heroic character. Insofar as Diana is the manifestation of a long chain of mythology brought into the modern world, it seems only right that the women who birthed (after a fashion) and parented her should also have their stories told.

This storytelling team — and I deliberately use that term here for reasons I’ll explain later in this review — begins with a tale of the goddesses of Olympus rebelling against their male counterparts, demanding satisfaction for the myriad ways in which their female and not-male worshippers are being continually abused by the male. Zeus, unsurprisingly, laughs off their concerns. The six goddesses, minus watchful Hera, decide to take matters into their own hands, and create a line of women who will avenge the wrongs done against the innocent by cruel, selfish men who are secure in their privilege from any prosecution, worldly or divine.

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Jul 09 2024

Mammoths At The Gates by Nghi Vo

For all that each novella in this series is touted as a standalone, I do very much think that readers would benefit from reading at least a few of the earlier books first. I was struck with Nghi Vo’s propensity for giving almost no backstory to readers in Book One, preferring to immerse us directly in the action instead. That’s forgivable in a first book, but by Book Four, it feels less intentional than lazy, especially given the assurances that each book can be read on its own. I wonder if critical eyes that were fresh to this series were ever applied to this novella: that would definitely help with the standalone claim.

Anyway, Mammoths At The Gates starts with series protagonist Cleric Chih finally making it home to the Singing Hills Abbey, to find a literal pair of mammoths at the gates. A straitlaced, pissed off advocate is camped out by the abbey walls, while her younger sister, the actual commander of the battle steeds, is trying to keep her calm. They don’t attempt to block Chih’s entry into the abbey compound but do warn the returning cleric that they won’t leave without what they came for.

Chih enters the compound to discover that their beloved mentor Cleric Thien has recently died. The sisters camped outside are Thien’s granddaughters, who insist on taking their body home to be buried with the honors due to Thien’s prior existence as a renowned advocate from a prominent family. The few clerics in the abbey are aghast: to give up Thien’s body would be the equivalent of disrespecting their choice to forsake their old life in order to embrace the simpler ways of the Singing Hills. The abbey is thus trapped in an uncomfortable detente with the sisters, who refuse to take no for an answer.

As Chih and the acting Abbot attempt a delicate negotiation with the sisters, the neixin — the sentient, talking hoopoes with perfect recall who serve as each cleric’s companion in recording everything they come across without fear or favor — are enduring turmoil of their own. Myriad Virtues, Thien’s neixin, is in grievous mourning, and demands a place at Thien’s upcoming memorial service. With disaster looming on the doorstep, the acting Abbot doesn’t have time for this disruption of etiquette. Will Chih be able to smoothe everything over before the unthinkable happens?

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