Aug 23 2022

Around The World In 80 Birds by Mike Unwin & Ryuto Miyake

Genuinely unsure how I’ve become some sort of go-to reviewer for books about birds, but I 100% love it, especially when it brings gorgeous, informative books like these into my inbox!

Around The World In 80 Birds is a delightful travelogue that uses birds as its focus. Charting the world by discussing eighty of the most distinctive birds found regionally — or, in some cases, in extremely small, protected areas — Mike Unwin discusses the scientific backgrounds, colorful histories and current realities of these remarkable avian creatures. The prose is wonderfully conversational, perfect for the amateur birder or naturalist (such as myself!) and accessible for a wide range of ages.

I really enjoyed the expansive variety of birds chosen here, with each entry bringing up fascinating new information about its subject, even when said subject was something I thought I already knew quite a bit of popular information about. From the bald eagle of Northern America to the jungle fowl of Southeast Asia, Mr Unwin always has something interesting to share regarding birds I thought was already well familiar with. And the entries on birds that were very much unfamiliar to me were absolute cornucopias of information. I’d never heard of the oilbird or the purple-crested turaco before but my world is much the richer for having learned about them here.

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Aug 19 2022

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

A few chapters into Light From Uncommon Stars, after it was clear that the violin teacher had made a pact with a demon and was under tight deadline to collect one more soul or else the usual penalties would apply and also that the local landmark donut shop was run by space aliens pretending to be human and biding their time for a couple of centuries until a galactic conflagration had passed and they could safely return to civilization by turning the solar system into a tourist destination, I was worried, concerned that Aoki would try to shoehorn all that strange into some semi-plausible systemic worldbuilding. I needn’t have fretted. Aoki has faith in her art, faith in her readers. She doesn’t try to explain why an apparently normal earth of the early 21st century has demons and aliens, has had at least one of them for quite some time, with most people are none the wiser. She leans in to her weirdness, and I love it.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Another great thing about Light From Uncommon Stars is that all of the characters I can think of are having their own stories, with themselves at the center of those stories. The book isn’t about all of them equally — it would be unreadable cacophony if it were — but they are not there just to support things that the author and her chosen narrative want to happen to the protagonists. They are living their own tales, with themselves as the good people at the center, and they just happen to intersect for a while with the story that Aoki is telling. The character who creates greater problems through inappropriate violence absolutely thinks he is doing the right thing; the characters who fall victim to that violence are at worst heedless folk who mostly want to have fun, and who wasn’t like that at some point or another? The demon wouldn’t say that he’s good, exactly, more that he’s fulfilling his nature of taking souls off to eternal torment, and he’s good at that, he’s practically an artiste of the diabolical contract, and the six souls the violin teacher has delivered up were so very exquisite. The violin maker from a distinguished family who thinks her gender bars her from that legacy, the aunty who figures out why the donut business is declining, other aspiring violinists who are willing to do anything for fame and fortune. Each has their story, and Aoki tells part of it while leaving no doubt that it continues beyond the confines of this book.

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Aug 18 2022

Squirrel Girl: Universe by Tristan Palmgren

Y’all know I’m all in for any Marvel superheroine named Doreen (even if I don’t like squirrels. Shocking, I know, but my brother and I have stories.)

Animal-animosity regardless, the best part of the Squirrel Girl titles has always been, for me, how Doreen Green’s positive attitude ensures that she truly is unbeatable. This novel does an amazing job of illustrating that despite being entirely prose, and I loved it so much.

We open in New York City, home to Squirrel Girl as well as her superpowered friends (and college classmates) Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boy, as strange things start happening to the city. Every supe is on high alert, but it’s SG and co (and their closest companions, including the adorable squirrel Tippy Toes, SG’s roommate Nancy and CH’s trigger-happy girlfriend Mary. Oh, and another superhero collegemate of theirs, Brain Drain) who figure out whodunnit and where first, and go to confront the bad guy. Trouble is, stopping him involves accidentally transporting themselves to an unknown alien planet.

After hitching a ride on a cosmic whale, they find themselves held captive aboard an abandoned spaceport turned holding facility, where their captors are working the prisoners for… poetry? Turns out that an impending war has increased the demand for heroic verse, and SG and friends are trapped in the middle. But you know SG! Despite being (rightfully) accused of being a meddlesome Earther, she decides that she needs to free the prisoners, stop the war and get her roommate home in time for the finals Nancy will not stop stressing about. All in a day’s work for the Unbeatable SG! Trouble is, will saving the universe mean sacrificing far more than she ever bargained for?

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Aug 16 2022

Maddie And Mabel by Kari Allen & Tatjana Mai-Wyss

I had the pleasure of meeting Kari Allen at ALAAC and loved how she signed my copy of this delightful children’s book with the wonderful message “Share your stories!”

But could you expect less from the writer of this affirming series about a pair of loving, if not entirely friction-free, young sisters? Maddie is the older sister and bossy. Mabel is the younger sister and needy. Ordinarily, this is a pairing that works out quite well, but even the most accommodating siblings can find the foibles of their family too much to bear from time to time, as shown in the five short chapters of this book. The sisters play together, get mad at each other, learn how to apologize and forgive each other, and ultimately show how kids can manage their feelings, compromise and care for each other while still standing up for themselves. It’s a valuable, necessary lesson, couched here in easy language for even small kids to at least understand if not read by themselves.

My youngest kids actually had a little bit of trouble reading this. They’re rising third graders but developmentally delayed, and had trouble differentiating between the ds and bs of the protagonists’ names. Otherwise, they had a blast with it, with Joseph really liking Mabel — or Mabble, as he insisted on calling her — because of her love of rabbits (never mind that Maddie likes rabbits, too.) My eldest son gravitated towards Maddie, ofc, as they’re both on the bossy side.

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Aug 11 2022

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Oh no, this isn’t the last in the series, is it?!

The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky ChambersI mean, it’s not a bad way to end it, but there’s still so much more to explore of this amazing sci-fi universe. This installment tells us a bit more of the Rosk war, and further explores the cultures of the Quelin and Akarak introduced as antagonists in prior books. In fact, two of the viewpoint characters here are of those species, with Roveg being a Quelin in exile and Speaker being an Akarak linguist, whose paths cross when they’re forced to stay moored to a habidome of the arid planet of Gora after a catastrophic accident litters the skies above them with debris, making it impossible to leave or even communicate with anything outside of atmosphere.

Fortunately, they’re berthed, more or less, at the Five-Hop One-Stop, a modest but thoughtfully equipped habidome rest facility run by Ouloo, a genuinely hospitable Laru, and her adolescent child Tupo. With them as they first resupply then while away the hours until they can get back on the road (or space lane, rather) is Pei, the Aeluon captain introduced in the first book of the series. She’s already feeling pretty ambivalent about the way she’s been hiding her relationship with Ashby, Human captain of the Wayfarer, but her time at the Five-Hop will find her questioning herself even more about her priorities and her obligations to her culture, which frowns on interspecies romance.

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Aug 09 2022

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

As we sprint towards the deadline for Hugo voting and I, for the second year in a row, concede defeat over being able to read all the books in time, I wanted to make sure that I at least got to cover a book Doug was raving to me about (tho I see he hasn’t yet gathered his thoughts together here for a review, tut tut.)

While I’ve found that he and I can both like and be lukewarm over books for different reasons, when we agree on something being rad, it’s truly spectacular. And that latest something is Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, which for me was like the manga/light novel remix of my dreams! Sweet, soft teenage protagonist who’s gone through more than anyone her age should ever have to but has a wondrous talent and inner light: check. Ambivalently forbidding mentor figure who’s made a demonic pact but is still the protagonist’s biggest champion: check. Household helper to the mentor who is both motherly and adorable: check. Granted, the space alien love interest of the mentor is rather out of the ordinary, tho said love interest’s family going undercover on earth running a donut shop goes back to delightful reverse isekai form.

And in fairness I haven’t read much sci-fi manga, so maybe genre mashups are more common than I expect. But what I can confidently say is that all this mixed together — with our protagonist also being a trans girl, btw — makes for a truly uncommon if not outright rare delight. Ryka Aoki does not care about genre and neither should you, as you enjoy this virtuoso novel of a violin prodigy who finally finds a home with an unusual cast of utterly delightful people.

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Aug 05 2022

Hello Nature Activity Book by Nina Chakrabarti

with the subtitle “Explore, Draw, Color, and Discover the Great Outdoors”.

Okay, can I be real? While this is marketed as a children’s activity book, I am 100% keeping it for meeeeeee. I did, ofc, reluctantly offer it up to my children, but my youngest two are still enthralled by their excellent Gail Gibbons’ workbooks and my eldest is deeply suspicious of anything that looks remotely like schoolwork as summer vacation draws to a close, so I get to keep this wonderful, wondrous book all to myself!

And oh what a joy it is, especially in these pandemicesque times, to have a guided exercise in appreciating the nature around you. While this book skews ever so slightly towards temperate climes, it is very much usable by readers with access to any outdoor spaces with rocks and birds and leaves. It’s also a book that encourages different creative outlets, whether it be the coloring you’d expect from volumes like these, to poems, scrapbooking and paper arts.

In fact, that multi-disciplinary encouragement is one reason I appreciated having both the physical and electronic versions of this volume available to me. While nothing beats having the slightly oversized activity book printed on art paper in my hands, having the pdf also means I can print out extra pages as needed, particularly for the activities that require a little cutting out but still have other exercises printed on the back of the sheet. This way I don’t have to choose between which I’d rather do more, cut out a page to make a tree bark rubbing or draw a bird on the reverse side. Plus, I can now make multiple rubbings using the different techniques suggested by the author!

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Aug 03 2022

Giant Island by Jane Yolen & Doug Keith

Yeesh, how was I convinced that this debuted next month and not this one?

But hey, here we are now! And here are Ava and Mason, on what seems to be the incongruously named Giant Island, a small islet that they set out to explore with their dog Cooper while Grandpa goes fishing in the same spot his own grandpa showed him as a child. The cover itself is a spoiler for the mystery inside but also serves to ease the reader into the book’s world, where the children discover the magic of having an honest-to-goodness giant to play with on a pleasant summer’s day.

There’s a lot of magic in the way this gentle tale is conveyed, with easy to read prose and an art style that’s very Green Man, sketched out with the barest shades of menace before turning entirely to the whimsical and delightful. I hadn’t been familiar with Doug Keith before this book, but his illustrations are perfect for this modern fairy tale that riffs on long-standing global myths of large geological formations being the embodiments or remains of larger than life beings.

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Aug 02 2022

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers writes science fiction stories whose characters don’t necessarily save the world. If they’re fortunate, they save their own part of the world, and maybe make the overall shape of things a little bit better. I both like and respect that approach. I like it because if every story is about saving the whole entire world, then there’s a certain sameness involved; the stakes of the story seem pre-set and externally imposed. I respect it for two reasons. First, because assuming that stories within a setting are worth telling even if they don’t upend the setting shows she values the worlds that she has created, that they have meaning in themselves and not just as playthings for the protagonists. It also shows that she respects her readers enough to expect them to care about characters who are not taking part in world-shaping events. Second, because having created a world (or in Chambers’ case, quite a few worlds) there is a temptation to tell The Most Important Story within that world, and Chambers resists it. I’m glad she does. Not every science fiction story should be like that, but I think the field would be better off if more were.

The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is apparently also the fourth in her Wayfarers series. I’ve only read one of the other three in the set (Doreen has read and reviewed all three), but I didn’t feel lost at all. I’m sure there were depths that I missed because I didn’t recognize returning characters or the resolution of their conflicts. The good news, though, is that the novel totally works as a standalone.

Three interstellar travelers are stuck at a way station run by the gregarious and solicitous Ouloo and her only slightly scowly adolescent child Tupo. They are stuck because of disruptions in the satellite network above the way station’s world. It is — temporarily, everyone hopes — unsafe to travel from the surface to orbit, and all long-distance communication is disrupted. Each of the travelers is from a different sentient species, although Ouloo has gone to great lengths to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable, and each of them has a reason to want to be on their way as quickly as possible, although the details of those reasons do not become clear until much later in the book.

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Jul 31 2022

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Earth has a problem. But as Project Hail Mary begins, the protagonist and first-person narrator has no idea what the problem is. He knows a lot less than that, in fact. He doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t know how he got there, doesn’t even know his own name. Why is the room round? Why are there two dead and desiccated bodies strapped onto things like medical beds next to him? Why is he strapped down, for that matter?

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Andy Weir has taken the opening to The Martian and amped it up by taking away any of the protagonist’s knowledge of where he is or what he is doing there, along with most of the skills he needs to do whatever he is supposed to be doing. Before long, the protagonist has to contend with a not-very-bright AI that controls his immediate environment, and the whole thing reads for a while like a novelization of an Infocom game, where only exactly the right verbal response will get the computer to do what one wants it to do. I guess the approach is supposed to increase dramatic tension, but I found it only aggravating. Memories return to the narrator in large chunks, and that is how Weir gradually reveals the backstory.

Earth’s problem is a neat one, from the perspective of a science fiction story, rather less so for anyone who happens to be living through it. Astronomers discover a funny line going from the sun’s north polar regions to Venus. Simultaneously, they discover that the sun’s luminosity is measurably dropping. The energy is going into the link. At the detected rate of decrease, earth’s ecosystems will be in grave danger in a matter of decades no matter what terrestrial actions are taken. The protagonist — who eventually remembers his name is Ryland Grace, Dr. Ryland Grace, former academic speculator about extraterrestrial metabolisms and current teacher of middle school chemistry — is pretty bummed to remember that.

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