Literary Omnivore

Babel, by R.F. Kuang, has been on my list for a long time. I somehow missed her rise to prominence, having read The Poppy War trilogy but skipped Yellowface, and I was curious to see how she’d grown as an author.

The style of the prose in Babel is an interesting blend of modern and faintly Victorian. I found that the slightly stuffy voice encouraged me to slow down and engage with the text differently than I might have otherwise. The occasional footnote and translation adds to the overall air of academia in a way I found charming.

I have a tendency to avoid information about and reviews of books before I’ve read them, doubly so if the book has become popular, so I came into the story a bit flat-footed. By the third chapter, I was sitting somewhat uncomfortably with the casual racism espoused by various characters in the text. Their views are typical of the time period in which the book takes place, but I couldn’t shake a sense of surprise that Kuang would let these views go unchallenged.

She doesn’t. Turns out that’s more or less the engine of the plot, which she makes obvious within the first hundred pages. By the end of the novel I felt, if anything, a little browbeaten with the evils of colonialism and the racism inherent.

The better parts of Babel are, for me, its restraint. Unlike the discussions of racism, many of the plot elements build slowly over time, Kuang refusing to show her hand early, which lets you sit with seeping dread or slowly build up hope. She deftly lets you assume things about her alternate history, inevitably inviting comparison to the real world and its history of colonial violence. As the reader, you are left the space to draw your own conclusions before anyone’s motives or true goals are spelled out, and that makes the impact of the story much stronger for me.

This is where Kuang has grown the most, I think, since Poppy War and I was excited to see it. While she retains the same capacity for brutality that I saw in her debut novel, there’s more subtlety here. Making the reader engage more makes the hurt keener, the commentary more incisive.

E. B. Asher’s This Will Be Fun often appears in tumblr rec-lists for queer romance, so I thought I’d give it a go. Unfortunately, it really didn’t work for me. I found it unfocused and frustratingly unwilling to delve into the emotional depths it sets up.

The premise is a strong one: four heroes are forced back together on a quest (complete with messy romantic entanglements) after the last one ruined their lives. Despite this, I struggled to determine what tone the narrative wanted to strike. The characters’ inner monologues are honest to the point of glossiness, eschewing subtext and subtlety in a way that reminded me a little bit of stage theater. This exaggerated quality is so consistent, so immediate, that I took the prologue to be a deliberate establishment of its perspective character as a caricature of a hero. Although I can’t be sure, I don’t think that interpretation is the intended one—there are no signs that anyone considers him a little silly, nor any indication that the reader should find him cartoonish. If anything, the narrative takes him and all the other characters completely seriously, despite their exaggerated archetypes.

The world, too, is rendered in almost cartoonish style. It gestures at the trappings of the fantasy genre—absolute monarchy, castles, travel by horseback through vaguely European countryside, swords, sorcery—but consistently adds recognizably modern elements. There are stories that do this well: Shrek uses its ruthless lampooning of Disney as a backdrop to tell a story about finding authenticity outside of conventional beauty, thumbing its nose the whole time at the concept of the Disney princess. This Will Be Fun gives us everything from Ye Olde Starbucks to Ye Olde Las Vegas, but isn’t saying anything about the modern things it incorporates or using them as thematically relevant metaphor. It left me with the impression that the authors (yes, plural, we’ll get there) approached these elements in a very “wouldn’t it be funny if…” sort of way that comes off more like Forrest Gump than anything else; a bunch of cameos that add nothing of substance.

Both the exaggerated characterization and the narrative style run in direct contrast to the themes of the story being told. Love, grief, and the ways that people will harm themselves and others in the name of safety are all threaded tantalizingly through this book. I wanted the characters to struggle messily and mightily with these things, as a person might, but they didn’t really. They spend a lot of their on-page time grappling with their feelings, but in a straightforwardly self-aware sort of therapy speak. Anyone running from their true feelings is doing so consciously, and we are told this in the character’s own voice. Everyone is healed by the end of the book, despite spending the previous ten years pursuing deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms. This kind of tidy, inoffensive storytelling strikes me as a real letdown from the potential created in the setup.

The book is at its strongest when it actually sets its weightier material aside and embraces a more chaotic rom-com style. Bar the actual ending, the last act of the story was super enjoyable and I think it’s because that section is largely hijinks with lighthearted interpersonal drama. The setting and its Ye Olde jokes heighten the hilarity, the jokey bits are grounded in the world we’ve been shown, the plot moves forward apace, and in general it really works.

I picked up Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire, on a whim while traveling and it proved to be an excellent airplane book.

Darkshire’s style follows in Terry Pratchett’s beloved footsteps, and definitely pulls off the humor. Narrative tongue firmly wedged in cheek, the narrator winks and dances along in front of the reader through footnoted prose that echoes the Grammarye at the heart of the plot. There are occasional pages from the Grammarye set into the text as well, which is fun and adds depth and context to the world.

The book immediately invites you to suspend all disbelief by setting itself somewhere not-Earth. This is a smart move, as Darkshire goes on to playfully twist and change creatures and folklore that will be familiar to most readers, while also using anachronisms with abandon. It’s difficult to feel anything but charmed by this when the whole thing is set under a green sky.

While the overall character work takes a bit of a back seat to the plot, our protagonist Isabella feels layered and real, and is satisfyingly changed by the events of the book. There are a few well-executed twists and turns that help to add depth to the world and story, and makes me want to keep coming back for more (this is the first in a series).

I sought out Shark Heart, by Emily Habeck, at the recommendation of Laura Crone (I know you’re somewhere on this hellsite. Thank you for this and for many other things.). While the core premise is a kind of magical realism, the soul of the book is literary fiction—this is a story about grief and love and the mutability of us all, intimately communicated through the lives of three-ish people.

I was surprised from the very first page by the experimental-feeling format of Shark Heart; prose and poetry and stage scripts intermingle, using negative space to great effect in communicating the emotional beats and the passage of time. These collected scraps of a story feel like diary entries, or the paper equivalent of found footage, despite the novel not truly being epistolary. It lends a vulnerable, unpolished intimacy to the narrative that heightens the experience rather than distracting from it.

I was also struck by the pace of the story. Habeck relentlessly drags the reader through what I had assumed would be the whole story in the first 185 pages, then circles back and slows down and offers context and layers until, at the end, you see the resonating whole. She lingers on a single summer for 51 pages, then races through 8 years in 13. Some segments of the story are decoupled from time entirely, as sharks don’t really mark calendars. The looseness of timing and pacing lends a looping, cyclical feeling to the story; many iterations, tragedies, and triumphs that build into a whole person.

It’s no surprise that the themes of love and loss and personhood are prominent throughout. The narrative manages to be familiar and alien, staring you down with the depredations of degenerative illness and disability without ever saying those words. By imagining the gritty details of what it might be like to transform into a shark, Habeck deftly illuminates what it is for your body to betray you, to become someone who struggles with human infrastructure, to question your own identity as you change. There is also joy in the changing; new sights and sounds and abilities, a fresh perspective, some freedoms in being unburdened of an average human life.

I’ve been interested in exploring dark academia, and Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six fits squarely in the subgenre.

True to the gothic heritage of dark academia, Blake’s characters are interestingly flawed and the story turns on the psychological tension of unseen forces at play. The book is told in rotating third-person limited, lending a disorienting hall of mirrors effect to the reading experience that really works to build the tension of suspicion and doubt. This choice of voice also gave me an intimate sense of how magic works differently for different people in this universe, and how its many forms have shaped the central cast.

The magic system is subtly gripping for me; at first I thought it was nothing special, a soft-rules system in place mostly to make the characters seem special. But as the story progressed, and as I’ve sat and thought about the implications, it revealed itself to be delightfully nuanced and carefully entwined with the laws of physics. The limits and rules of the system are as obscure as the edges of quantum mechanics, the magicians working toward Unified Theory as diligently as theoretical mathematicians, and the narrative handles this gracefully enough that the comparison feels organic rather than forced. I loved the way that each person’s specialty deeply affected their umwelt, simultaneously enhancing their sense of the world around them and blinding them to important things that fell outside their specialty or regard.

There were characters whom I immediately liked, and others I felt mostly indifferent toward, and that assessment stayed fascinatingly static throughout the novel. I typically find myself drawn in to the complexities of gothic characters, even the ones I don’t care for, until I can’t help but be invested in their choices. I think, for me, the difference in The Atlas Six is that the core cast remained fundamentally unchanged by their experiences. They learn, they scheme, their power grows, and they are confronted with Situations, but they do not themselves seem to change. Rather, the inward spiral of the narrative seems to dig deeper and deeper toward who they really “are.”

This is not framed as tragedy or triumph; the revelation of each person’s character changes nothing fundamental about the system they are entering or the fate they will meet. They don’t even wrestle very much with their true selves, or assert the selves they would like to be in contrast to who they are. It’s difficult to say if this was Blake’s intent, or a consequence of the choice of rotating perspective, or my own genre-based metatextual awareness. Whatever the cause, the character work seemed to me the least effective part of the book.

The plots-within-plots nature of the story works well with the setting and the voice to sustain an air of mystery throughout. Like any good gothic story, it mostly takes place on one thoroughly unsettling property. The limited scope lets you really linger on uncovering each character’s motivations and secrets, and the way their secrets might be their undoing. Each new discovery leads to more questions, the narrative circling slowly toward a greater scheme that threatens the whole cast.

My mind is changed forever. I am not who I was before.

There Is No Antimemetics Division, by QNTM, is a book my wife (notoriously slow reader) finished in a day and a half, set down, and told me that I had to read immediately. I now understand why; it’s nearly impossible to discuss this book with someone who hasn’t read it. Even if you’re okay with spoilers, I don’t think there’s any way to capture the feeling of going on this ride. Allow me to try anyway.

The premise is wild: There exist creatures and objects with properties that make you remember and/or make you forget, and some of those entities are malignant. Some are not. This book is about a small group of people who professionally find, study, categorize, and contain these entities.

But, see, it’s the way the premise is executed that really makes this story shine. QNTM crafts and meters a narrative voice that is as haunting as it is compelling. Reading this book, I felt a growing sense that there was some important thing I was forgetting, some clue I couldn’t quite see that would help me understand the shape of the threat. I think it’s in the way he throws a bunch of information at the reader, all of which is significant, that creates the feeling of forgetting. You know there’s a detail you should have, but you can’t recall everything, and when the pieces of the plot start to slot into place the details come roaring back to you.

Combine that with the slippery narrative voice of a story where every character is unreliable (anti-memory properties!) and you get a viscerally compelling reading experience. You are an echo of the cast in a way—forgetting, remembering, trying to hold the shape of this thing in your mind.

It would be easy—and typical of the genre—for the story to shortchange its characters in favor of this Very Cool Idea, but it doesn’t. Although the narrative voice stays relatively matter-of-fact, it illuminates the inner life of our deeply human protagonist as she squares up against incomprehensible danger. She is forced to make choices in service of her goal, some that she won’t remember, that have real and bitter consequences. QNTM’s ability to pick the right moment to narrow the story down to one person’s life, one person’s tragedies and triumphs, is impressive and it makes the broader story work.

From the very first chapter, the story is twisty—folding in and over itself, inverting perspectives to surprise you and show you something new. The perspective ranges freely between third-person omniscient and third-person limited, with no real marker for when it’s changing. While this works well to deliver the twists and turns at the core of the narrative, it can also trip the reader up at the wrong moment, creating ambiguity or breaking the flow in places that don’t seem intentional. These slip-ups are minor, but they do stand out in a book that otherwise wastes no moment or detail.

It was actually my wife who hunted down and bought Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers, but her usual good taste means I read pretty much anything she buys. I was intrigued by the collection of novellas—an unusual format for me—and enticed by the post-apocalyptic premise.

I think books are like people; your impression of them has as much to do with your own mindset and context at the moment of meeting as it does the book itself. Who you are on the day you sit down to read a book matters.

I say this because I had very different experiences with the two novellas of Monk and Robot. “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” left me inappropriately crying on an airplane, trying not to bother the other passengers despite feeling as though I had just been rung like a bell. “A Prayer for the Crown-Shy” left me metaphorically scratching my head, wondering why I had been told what I had just been told. I don’t think Chambers’ writing is qualitatively different, I just think that the themes of the first novella came for me where I live and the themes of the second bounced off me with a shrug.

The prose in Monk and Robot is relatively simple, evocative of parables and fables. Chambers gently moves the story along with minute focus on the inner thoughts and feelings of Dex, our POV character. The voice is deeply earnest, and doesn’t shy away from the small indignities of life. Dex, like the world, is soft and sweet and somewhat simple. The construction works well to encourage the reader to project themselves and their struggles into the narrative.

The world is vividly conveyed and futuristically enticing; several of the scenes appeared so clearly to me that I was inspired to end my painting hiatus. There is enough worldbuilding to make things feel immersive, but not so much that it exerts drag on the parable-like qualities of the story. Descriptions of past and present float along in the easy pace of the story, adding texture without necessarily adding meaning. Much of the worldbuilding feels geared toward the parable as well—designed to make you ask questions, to ponder, to reflect. The impact of the moral within each tale will probably vary widely, among people and seasons of life, but I think that might be okay in a parable.

Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao, was my Christmas read this year—another book picked out by my wife. This was a thoughtful, dream-like book; perfect for curling up with on a rainy winter afternoon.

First, it’s worth mentioning that the cover art is absolutely gorgeous. Every time I put the book down, I would find some new detail in the art that spoke to the story within. The whole book has been beautifully laid out and constructed with care, which definitely added something to the reading experience.

Yambao’s prose is not shy about its themes or its influences. From the first section of the book, I knew Water Moon would be about the relationship between fate and choice, freedom and determinism. The art of her narration is that each scene adds a fine layer of detail and meaning to that theme, slowly building the story into something weighty.

For all the heft of its themes, the prose itself is gauzy and restrained. It drifts mostly on the surface of events, jumping around in time, only taking us into the characters’ feelings and perceptions enough to understand their confusion or conflict. Allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions about the characters’ revelations and motivations lends weight to their choices and really makes several of the twists and reveals work. As I read, theories about what was really going on flashed up to the surface only to disappear again, like fish in a pond.

Some of the mystery in the narrative comes from the setting itself—the world Yambao creates is wondrous and strange, vividly rendered along every step of the journey. The setting feels heavily influenced by Miyazaki, particularly Spirited Away, and really works to enhance the dreamlike qualities of her prose. The setting demands your attention and unmoors you from reality, repeatedly distracting you from the plot while adding thematic heft and resonance almost behind your back.

A Power Unbound is the last installment in Freya Marske’s Last Binding series, and it definitely delivers on the promise of the first two books.

For me, this was the most plot-centric of the three books in the series. Given the number of burning questions I had about the world and various characters’ backstories by the end of the last book, I was grateful for this. As the central cast has broadened further since the start of the series, and as this book does not have the same restricted setting as A Restless Truth, it would have felt artificial if Marske had attempted to keep the same intimate focus in this narrative.

That said, the tried-and-true format of chapters narrated from the two main characters’ perspectives still emphasizes the character work, and Marske brings a remarkable depth and pathos to Hawthorn and Ross. I honestly didn’t expect to get very invested in their relationship, but I should probably know better by now. Not only were they compelling, but their relationship served to bring a level of class-consciousness that the series needed.

The worldbuilding was outstanding in this installment, from the expanded view of magical society to the continued exploration of how contract and intention matter. We get some deeply satisfying exposition about how magic works and moves in this world while all the while making clear that the rules of British magic are not universal. Not only do we get to see the characters gain skill and knowledge, but we get to see magical perspectives outside their experience. All this works together with the plot to really make the conclusion of the story shine.

The multiple perspectives Marske offers us throughout the series feel like she really wants us to pick up this storybook world and examine its many-faceted realities. We experience the wonder and terror of the plot from magical and non-magical characters, from varying levels of wealth and social status, from embittered cynics and exuberant idealists and no-nonsense pragmatists. The real genius of this series is the lack of a singular protagonist; the invitation, the demand for us to see the necessity of many people with many talents and flaws working together to create community and prevent the abuse of power.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty was my post-Thanksgiving treat book of 2024, and oh boy was it the treat I was hoping for! This book has made me bother my wife about reading it so that we can talk about it together.

For anyone who has read the Daevabad Trilogy, the setting will be familiar and there are a couple of cool Easter eggs in the book that made me wonder if this is in fact the same world. While palpably set in a specific place and time (Medieval Gulf of Aden), the book also gives you a sense of wonder with a throughline of magic and influences from the unseen realms. It’s a really great balance.

The Adventures differs from the Daevabad Trilogy in voice and theme, forgoing court intrigue for the many compromises and betrayals of a life at sea. The scope is relatively narrow: one woman, her desires, and lives that touch and are touched by her own. For me, Amina Al-Sirafi’s rich inner life - rife with contradictory desires, imperfections, ideals, and a sardonic humor that spoke to my soul - is what makes this book so great. Her middle-aged perspective was refreshing in a world full of coming-of-age books; it was remarkably uplifting to see someone who had already earned hard wisdom and made a name for herself still wrestling with big dreams and uncertainties.

For all that, the plot was gripping start to finish and the entire read was a rollicking good time. Honestly, I have never read or seen a pirate story I enjoyed more. There is sex, booze, swashbuckling, trickery, and banter. This is the book you’re going to want to share with your friends for the pleasure of saying “oh shit, I can’t believe they did that!” S.A. Chakraborty has left me dearly hopeful that we haven’t seen the last of Amina Al-Sirafi.

I didn’t wait long to read A Restless Truth, although this review is rather delayed. The book was delightful; exactly as sapphic as I had hoped, and as well-constructed as the first book had led me to expect.

Freya Marske’s character work for this book was on another level. The core cast is slightly larger, although she retains the alternating two-voice narrative structure that centers the focus on the primary characters. In some ways, this structure works better to highlight the main characters’ internal struggles, differences of opinion, and vulnerability than it did in A Marvellous Light. Her prose is the real star of the book (again) as she nails the balance between modern and believably-dated registers. The narrative is infused with wit and dazzle, with the occasional bitter edge shining through. It’s delicious.

The world of The Last Binding expands in this book, and Marske displays the same talent for giving a sense of depth and texture without revealing everything. There are still many things to learn about magic—for both the reader and the characters—and the rich detail Marske gives us keeps me coming back for more. One of the ways she denies us a massive expansion of knowledge is the core conceit of the story: This is effectively a locked room mystery.

Setting the story on a boat is an extremely clever way to incorporate Robin’s visions from the previous book; it constrains the locations and the people to a known quantity and makes his visions feel like they have real stakes and immediacy for Maud. It also heightens some of the tension in the romance, as you ask yourself whether any real relationship can take root in such a liminal setting. And, of course, we know that the people seeking out the items of the Last Contract are willing to torture and kill to get their way, so our main cast being stuck on a boat with them is intense.

The sapphic storyline was all that I had hoped for, in both its resonance and its conflict. The romance is messy and fraught, and Marske’s character work really shines in the ladies’ reluctant vulnerabilities with each other. I was struck by the ways that they see and know each other, by my own familiarity with the shock at being seen. She does not ignore the realities of her chosen setting, and that makes the story all the more resonant for me.

“An ache had lodged itself in her heart: a shrapnel piece of all the histories of women who'd been important to one another, stretching back through time.”

Full disclosure up front: I read A Marvellous Light because it is the first book in a series that includes a lesbian romance plot line and I crave a well-written sapphic story. I was not expecting to love this book—period romance isn’t really my cup of tea—I was expecting to get through it, to gather the context I needed to enjoy the second, sapphic novel.

Freya Marske blindsided me in the first chapter with a beautifully interesting magic system, then landed the second punch with a compellingly mysterious plot. She had the absolute gall to make the time period and setting relevant to plot, characterizations, and magic system, which drove me to relish her choice to make this a period piece. I was forced—forced!—to enjoy this book. Despite its lack of lesbians.

Although it was the mechanics of the world that first drew me in, the leading characters quickly charmed me with their depth of personality and strength of voice. I found Edwin particularly wonderful, and an excellent person to introduce us to this magical world and its limitations. The supporting cast is not neglected in the writing; in fact, several of my favorite moments in the book center on Miss Morrissey, who is only present for a small fraction of the story.

I was very impressed by Marske’s ability to weave together a steamy romance and a magical mystery in a way that kept both main storylines compelling and natural. This is probably my favorite form of romance novel: one with enough nuance and plot to survive on its own without the extra thrill of romance, which allows the romance to build depth for the characters and an extra layer of “more, please” to the story.

One of the things that works best about the world Marske creates is that many things go unexplained, or are introduced imperfectly by the characters. The gaps she leaves create a wonderful sense of depth and contour for the magical society and its workings—this is a world full of wondrous things and none of the characters are omniscient experts. It’s equally clear that the author is an expert, but will only reveal information to us in ways that feel natural for the narrative. In a world where it increasingly feels like writers and producers of media don’t trust their audiences to handle subtext, this was a truly refreshing display of masterful worldbuilding and characterization.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the prose itself, which takes all the above structural qualities and makes them shine. Marske’s voice in this novel is well-balanced, using period style while keeping the language smooth and accessible for a modern audience. By leaning in to a slightly older sensibility, she’s able to really land some of her language during important character moments. Lines like “I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you” made me a little feral.

I picked up Finna, by Nino Cipri, at my local library based on the premise alone. IKEA holds portals to alternate universes and two recently-broken-up exes must journey through the portals to rescue a lost shopper? Yes, please! Sign me up.

Finna delivered on that premise, and did so in style. From the very first scene, the narrative voice is saturated with exhaustion at the soul-sucking realities of retail work. The store is labyrinthine, as are the alternate realities, and the sense of mild bewilderment is palpable throughout the story. That bewilderment is offset by a sense of wonder and adventure as the story moves between worlds, and it really makes the story flow well.

The character work is textured and believable; the main characters have flaws and charming quirks and feel very grounded. The loss of their relationship is an important part of the story, and it’s an ache that runs throughout.

A Fire Born of Exile is the second novel in Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe series. While I don’t think they technically have to be read in order, The Red Scholar’s Wake provides a useful introduction to the universe and good context for this installment.

Like The Red Scholar’s Wake, once A Fire Born of Exile got going I couldn’t put it down. The very first chapter introduces chaos, mystery, and dubious justice meted out by authority figures. From there the plot spirals into vengeance and political intrigue against a backdrop of personal tragedy and the tenderness of finding hope. De Bodard continues to deliver poignant character work, somehow making the smallest personal elements feel like the most important parts of the story.

Although the romance in this story centers on human characters, spaceships still feature prominently in the cast. The mindships are undeniably people, while also clearly not quite human. Their strangeness is a beautiful touch in the worldbuilding. The Xuya Universe feels really well-realized and interesting, and I enjoyed the deeper dive into how mindships and overlays work and are made. While there’s still no hint of anything I would call “hard” sci-fi, the world is immersive and vibrant enough that the “just go with it” storytelling works well.

The plot is compelling all the way through, and I particularly liked the way the story started with various disparate threads that de Bodard wove together tightly for the climax of the book. Each character gets an interesting progression through what it means to be free, or if such a thing is possible, and the journey is well-considered and believable.

I didn’t know what I was in for when I picked up The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard. Despite her many accolades, I had never really heard of her work and I stumbled across this recommendation buried in a list of sapphic sci-fi. Better lucky than good, I guess; this book was a blast.

Less than seven pages in, the story had me going “Seriously? Okay…”. The very first chapter serves up a unique premise: a pirate ship has captured and subsequently proposed marriage to a woman who, until that moment, had scraped by salvaging tech. While that’s interesting on its own, the world is presented in such rich and original detail from the very start that I was completely drawn in.

De Bodard’s choices for how technology has advanced are really clever—a mix of altered reality and cyborg-construct advances that really works without too much explanation to a modern reader. She doesn’t go into the intricate physics quite like Alastair Reynolds might, but she also supplies much more in the way of rules/tech than Ursula K. Le Guin would.

It was also clear from the start that this book takes place in a far-future Vietnamese society, and does not have time to coddle you with explanations for names or cultural references. I love this in a book; I love being given little opportunities to go learn something new, and I love an author who doesn’t feel the need to explain their every reference. That said, if you are a person who sounds things out in their head when you read and you aren’t familiar with Vietnamese pronunciations, you may want to keep a tab open to look up how to say some names. If you feel inclined to be annoyed about this, remember that the Iliad doesn’t include a pronunciation guide either (nor does Scalzi’s Redshirts, for that matter).

By 100 pages in, the spaceship was a fully-realized character with a rich emotional inner life and I couldn’t wait to figure out more about pirate politics. I wouldn’t have to wait long…the first big “Oh damn!” political move happens about 25 pages later. From there, the plot is well-balanced between the complexities of the main characters’ relationship and the broader sweep of pirate drama.

I was really impressed by the way de Bodard chose to lean in to the strangeness of an embodied ship and the ways that might play out in a marriage. Get to Chapter 14 and you’ll see what I mean. She has a real talent for embracing an extremely queer perspective and showing you its beauty and intensity.

From Chapter 15 on, I couldn’t put this book down. The personal and the political get so interwoven, so intense, that the last third or so of the book is totally gripping. Its themes—examining what it means to be safe in an exploitative society, how or if you should exert agency, and what costs are acceptable—come together beautifully without declaring some sort of artificial victory.

Delta is the sequel novel to M.T. Zimny’s Beta, which I read earlier this year. I’m happy to report that one of my big wishes from the last book paid off: the mechanics of New Delos become very relevant in this book!

The action picks up pretty much right where Beta left off, and while the big-picture stakes are higher, a large part of Delta is still devoted to teenage antics and drama. Samantha, our POV character, struggles to manage her relationships—with her best friend, with her almost-boyfriend, with her family, with herself. Some of those struggles are really organic and feel authentic to the character. Others don’t. She’s almost cartoonishly bad at interpreting other people’s intent, and she makes some bafflingly poor choices that hurt her friends needlessly. While this isn’t out of the ordinary for YA, it is sometimes frustrating as an adult reader.

With the world and characters already established, the narrative pace starts fast and doesn’t let up. The action definitely drives the story forward, and the pace lends it a comic book feel that meshes well with the superhero world. The first chapter has a fight, first major disaster happens less than 60 pages in, and the book keeps that pace pretty much throughout—the stakes of each disaster build until the whole city is in peril.

The action sequences are really engaging and well-written, and it’s clear that Zimny has a talent for writing action-packed scenes. This book leans harder into some rule-of-cool settings and fight mechanics, which honestly makes things fun.

So many things are going on, though, that some of the character beats don’t have room to breathe and that occasionally caused emotional scenes to not land with me. Interestingly, the supporting storylines fared much better and I am super invested in the arcs of a couple of the side characters. Naomi’s story gets particularly interesting and I love the way that the book wrestles with the consequences of having her specific set of powers.

The world continues to feel inconsistent, even as we learn more about the past and Samantha’s involvement in its making. The set-up and pay off of major and minor elements is still tight and well-conceived, and I like some of the zanier explanations for things, but I still can’t understand why New Delos exists or why Apex feel like it’s a haven for them. As before, this is not an insurmountable complaint—it’s barely relevant to the plot of this book—but it does linger in my mind as I’m reading.

John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build A Nest In was an enjoyable romp told from such an original perspective that it sucked me in and kept me absorbed for an entire day.

Telling a monster story from the perspective of the monster can be tricky; it’s tempting to make them too recognizably human, or to give them ethics that don’t make sense, but Wiswell executes this element of the story beautifully. Shesheshen, our point-of-view character, is deliciously strange and the mechanics of her body and her needs are well-considered. Like many well-written monstrous characters, she is a reflection of parts of ourselves that can be hard to accept. It works really well—by the end of the first section, I was rooting for Shesheshen to eat aggravating townsfolk.

By the middle of the second section, you begin to see the shape of the story and the world in which it takes place. We meet the other primary character and Wiswell spins the classic romance “I have met you under false pretenses” trope into something charmingly fraught for our monster. As Shesheshen continues to fake being human, there’s something poignant about the way she seems to slide sidelong into greater understanding about herself.

As the romance builds and Shesheshen gets more invested in the local humans’ drama, the story really leans into tinkering with fairy tale tropes. The metaphorical language and themes are overt, but it doesn’t seem like Wiswell was ever trying to conceal them. His storytelling style mirrors many fairy tales in its frank simplicity, and the effect works well in this setting.

The measured pace of the narrative, even as it builds to life-and-death stakes for nearly everyone in the story, gives the reader space to really focus on Shesheshen’s interior world. There are a few big twists that are reasonably well-seeded, although the most enjoyable part of them for me was the ways in which the twists subverted genre conventions for both fantasy and romance.

I’m conflicted, however, about some of the representation in the book. The two main characters are well-conceived and their choices and actions make any modern label you could assign to them coherent. Shesheshen is a semi-fluid invertebrate monster creature that doesn’t sexually reproduce; why would she be anything but ace? But there are some anachronisms to the narrative that seemed overly simplistic to me. Several un-named characters are referred to as “enby”, which was jarringly out of touch with the setting. There are times when it’s difficult to parse why Shesheshen is so well-adjusted, or why she understands nuanced human social interactions on the first try. These issues are minor from an overall storytelling standpoint, but it detracts from some of the depth of the story.