Thursday, February 28, 2019

"The City in the Middle of the Night" by Charlie Jane Anders

This was a real treat to read! I seriously could not put this down. I loved the characters, and the worldbuilding is deep, weird, and inventive. The whole novel is an adventure—something I forget that I'm always looking for, until I find such a good example. Although there's plenty of darkness—dystopia, struggles for survival, tragedy and betrayal—the work as a whole has tons of exuberance. It's a sophisticated but unpretentious take on classic science-fictional topics, and I devoured it.

The story takes place on January, a tidally-locked planet colonized by humans. In the narrow strip between perpetual day and perpetual night, humanity has adapted to the world's challenges. Our main characters meet as a revolution is brewing, travel to a rival city, make forays into the night, encounter some of January's original inhabitants, and generally have an exciting time.

No plot recaps, but possible spoilers below:

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Review- A Taste of Honey

Despite working in the difficult and often-overlooked novella length, Kai Ashante Wilson has been stirring up increasing excitement and praise from the top tiers of writers, editors, and readers. Last year's The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps blew readers people away with its inventiveness and energy, and A Taste of Honey is an even greater achievement.

Set in the same world as Wildeeps, A Taste of Honey follows a young man of privilege who falls in love with a foreign soldier. Alternating chapters between the ten days of their frenetic romance and slices of Aqib's life years and decades afterwards, Wilson packs an astonishing amount of character and relationship into this slim volume, while also masterfully sketching the outline of a fantastic and magic-filled world. The world-building is delightful, the structure and plotting excellent, the characters immediately resonant, but what sticks with me most from A Taste of Honey is Wilson's use of language, both narratively—where he moves from invisibly descriptive to concisely insightful—and in his dialog, which captures an energy and a believable complexity almost unmatched in fantasy.

I'm going to do my best to avoid spoilers, but this is a pretty short work. Caution advised below if spoilers worry you:

Monday, October 24, 2016

Overclocking Clarke's Third: Yoon Ha Lee's "Ninefox Gambit"

An unusually inventive military SF novel, I found Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit very enjoyable in a very science-fictional way: I spent almost the entire novel building and revising this world in my head, and I'm still not entirely sure I've got it right. Like my last two reviews, I recommend it highly, with audience-specific caveats. Possible spoilers below.

Friday, January 22, 2016

Think Galactic- Stations of the Tide

For January's Think Galactic, we discussed Michael Swanwick's 1991 novel "Stations of the Tide".

The novel is set an indeterminate but considerable time in the future. Humans have colonized other solar systems, and our action mostly takes place in the Tidewater region of the planet Miranda, which is periodically flooded. Our protagonist, a nameless bureaucrat, has been sent from the advanced space-borne societies to track down Gregorian, a Mirandan who may have stolen some dangerous replicating technology.

On one level, it's a straightforward science-fictional riff on the noirish detective tale, flavored with some bureaucratic spook business. Despite its relative brevity, though (250ish pages), there's a surprising number of levels here, threads and allusions and alternate plot interpretations constantly seeping in.

So, as you can imagine, a nice discussion. Spoilers below!

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Chicago Nerds: Hyperion

After many nominations and near-selections, Dan Simmons' Hugo-winning "Hyperion" (1989) finally made it to the top of the Chicago Nerds' book-club list.

Structurally, "Hyperion" draws on "The Canterbury Tales" (1390ish), being composed of a frame story of a group of pilgrims travelling together, with the bulk of the novel made up of the individual stories that six of the pilgrims relate; each individual's story is told in a different style, and has a different thematic focus.

I found Hyperion a delight to re-read, as did many others at group; I think we were about evenly split between first-time readers and re-readers. It's one of those books that is a real pleasure to share and talk about. Possible spoilers below!

Friday, January 30, 2015

Blackstone FSF: The Thief

On Monday the Blackstone Library Fantasy & Science Fiction book club discussed Megan Whalen Turner's "The Thief" (1996), a Newberry Honor book. A fun read, good discussion! Serious, definite spoilers after the jump: