Absolutely a mixed bag in the way that only an anthology can be. There’s some stories in here that I really didn’t like—I hated “Our Lady of the Open Road,” it just felt crushingly depressing all the way through.
And then there’s some that I really liked. The final story, “And Then There Were (N-One),” was absolutely masterful: a murder mystery set at an interdimensional continuum for various iterations of one person. Now that is a concept!
Weirdly, the ones that I quite liked were the ones about grief. “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,” and “The Narwhal” were both really touching pieces about loss. “Remembery Day” was beautiful and aching and sad. And I loved it. Usually I don’t; usually I want upbeat things to read. But it worked.
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
This was a fun little swords-and-sorcery isekai kind of thing, which mostly did a good job of taking those tropes and twisting them a little bit. The wizard feels like a less-self-serious Gandalf, and the fact that it takes them a few tries to actually wind up isekai’d, after the wizard himself pops over to our world for a bit, adds some fun variation.
It does, however, still feel like a book written in the 80s; the feminist qualities to it feel very Second Wave Feminism in a way that I don’t dislike, but does date it. The biggest failing, to my mind, was that despite being in a different world with a very different history, there’s still a recognizably Christian church running around. It was mostly okay, being a sort of vaguely monotheistic part of the pastiche of western European medieval tropes… right up until there were mentions of people crossing themselves. That’s what kicked me into “okay, wait, how did the same gesture wind up as the holy thing?”
That aside, it was a fun book. And the big bad being ancient lovecraftian horrors was a nice twist, too; made it bad bedtime reading, but an interesting bit of variety. Check it out.1
This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
I quite liked this—the three arcs it’s split into each feel different in a fun way, and expand on the universe more.1 Bouncing back and forth between two viewpoint characters also worked very well, and the fact that both of them are the “Proxies”, supporting their “Primes”, the ones who are very clearly driving the action most of the way through, made it all the more interesting. It captures a little bit of that space opera “there’s a lot of big things happening in the background” feeling, whilst staying very close to the action.
Overall, I enjoyed the heck out of this one; it’s significantly longer than my last couple reads, but that didn’t stop me from plowing through it in a single day. Definitely a page-turner. Check it out.2
I’m quite curious if this counts as taking place in the same universe as Scarlett Odyssey – it seems very possible, the magic system in that feels very “sufficiently advanced technology. ↩
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Sitting here in the depths of winter, keenly aware of the fact that my instinct in winter is to listen to depression music, and that’s really not what I need right now. Instead, this playlist is me making an active effort to have happy, or at least upbeat, music around.
Don’t tell anyone, but I had to come back and add this after initially scheduling this post, because I absolutely did forget this time: the link to the full playlist.
Remembering how much of early Coldplay was definitely Depression Music, and then listening to this happy tune, I love that for them. ↩
Good one to listen to the words; it’s not happy, it’s angry, and she’s really telling a story well. ↩
Possibly my favorite addition this month? I dunno why this one clicked for me as much as it did. ↩
Just when I was starting to think “I haven’t listened to Lil Nas X for a while…” he drops some new music, and it’s great. ↩
I’ve listened to about half the lyrics of this one, I just tune in for bits and pieces, and while it’s not happy, it sure is upbeat in that 80s funky synth-wavey way. Who doesn’t want a horror movie in the form of a bop? ↩
Tep No always feels sorta like it should be played during a guided meditation or a yoga class, and the name fit the vibe I was going for this month. ↩
This was a fun little novella. Emperor Norton is such a character that he feels like he should be completely fictional, but is, in fact, an actual historical figure. And Williams did a good job of working around my issue with historical fiction—the rule to time travel appears to be “you can’t change what’s in the historical record,” but thanks to, y’know, there not being cameras around all the time in 1910, it’s easy to fudge things. Steal an artifact from the past? No worries, the building burned down shortly afterwards, destroying all the evidence.
It’s a fun and hopeful little story, I quite liked it. Give it a go.1
This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
This book caught my attention so much more thoroughly than I expected it to. The magic system is fascinating: we start off with the titular character, a spellbreaker—one of a small group of people born with the natural ability to break spells cast by others. And, as it turns out, to sense their presence in a way that the actual spellcasters (or, as they’re called, aspectors) cannot. It goes into more detail: there’s four types of spells, and the way the casting system works feels… honestly a great deal like it was originally designed to be the setting for a videogame. Learn a spell by consuming Magic Points, and then after that you can cast it at will until you’re tired out and need to rest? That’s a writer, explaining a game mechanic.
So, we have a fascinating setting. And then we have two fascinating characters: Bacchus Kelsey, a wealthy scion, up for his mastery examinations in magic… and running face-first into a wall of “it is the 1800s and Britain is very racist”. And then there’s Elsie Camden, the (illegally) unregistered spellbreaker, who lives a double life. Mild-mannered—or rather, well-raised and -behaved—administrative assistant by day, vigilante spellbreaker by night, going on secretive missions to help the downtrodden masses. Magic, after all, may be magic, but it’s also a form of power… and power corrupts.
I was locked in to the book fairly early on, but by the end I couldn’t put it down. An absolutely delightful read, I highly encourage you to check it out.1
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
A quick read, but a very enjoyable one. It’s a bit of a medical mystery, but mostly what it’s about is the experience of being… well, going into the author’s note at the end, of being Persian. Of being an oppressed minority… whilst also being aware that your people were once the oppressors.
The linguistics and magic were both very interesting, and I found all the characters to be well-developed. Definitely worth the read.1
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
The ‘jumping the shark’ moment for this book was in the appearance of one of the Pern books in-universe. A bit on the nose to have your “fantasy setting, but it’s actually another planet that got colonized by humans before the big civilization collapsed” book feature, as one of the Ancient Artifacts… a book about the exact same concept. In this case, the threat is still unknown, but we do get to see it, and it’s a bit more… active than thread.
That said, I did really enjoy the setting; I’m a firm believer in the whole “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” thing, and dropping the general level of technology available to people lowers the threshold on “sufficiently advanced” enough to make it more recognizable.
It also helps that the love arc here was just… hilarious. I quite liked all the characters, and seeing them interact, but the fact that there’s at least one love triangle, one member of whom keeps thinking about jumping ship to a different love triangle, makes it fun.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the book; my main complaint is that it’s an entire book’s worth of setup, and the payoff is going to happen in, presumably, the third book of the trilogy. I’d rather one long book to three medium-short ones. Still, a fun little fantasy/science fiction thing, worth a try.1
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Spent almost the entire month various kinds of ill, so this is a short one – didn’t particularly feel like scrubbing through new music, most of the time. But hey, it’s got a healthy dose of Christmas music in with my usual nonsense.
I started to get more into this book the further I read; it starts off as a spy drama kind of thing, and transitions into being a guerrilla warfare story instead. It’s an interesting setting—a conquered Terran Empire, and a resistance trying to accomplish anything, really, from amidst the ruins. The lost blackcollars, elite, superhuman warriors trained in ancient forms of combat, combines well with that setting to make me think, as I’m reading the author’s bio and seeing how much Star Wars he’s written, “oh, of course.” It does, indeed, feel like a homier version of that story, including some attempts at the “I am your father” level twist.
It was a fun read, worth the time I’d say. Check it out!1
This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
I was honestly expecting a lot more of this book to fill me with that specifically “you’re insufferable” kind of rage, but aside from a couple brief appearances, it really didn’t do that at all. Instead, it was an interesting overview, both of Fadell’s career, and of a big pile o’ advice. Mostly it was targeted at the founder/CEO folks, but a fair chunk of it is applicable to those of us who haven’t drunk the Silicon Valley kool-aid and are content to not be the face of the place we work.
One through line I felt was the connection to Steve Jobs. It wasn’t as devoted to the man as, say, Make Something Wonderful was, there were really only a couple anecdotes about him, but his influence, his style, felt like it permeated the book. You can really tell that Fadell thought of Jobs as a mentor, and learned a lot from working with him.
This was an excellent choice for the book club at work; I heartily enjoyed it in that context, and am looking forward to the discussion.1 I think it’ll be a similarly good fit for anyone that works in tech, or doing product design; check it out.2
Well, I’m running these on a bit of a backlog, so by the time you’re reading it, I will have already had the discussion. ↩
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
I’ve kinda got to enjoy a book that makes me think about what the pluralization of “apotheosis” is.1
This feels like it was inspired by Song of Achilles—or, at least, it’s within that same “let’s tell one of the ancient Greek myths in a way it hasn’t been told before” genre. It’s the story about the end of Cronus’ reign, about Zeus coming to power… but it’s from the point of view of a woman living under the Cronus regime, and boy, does he ever not believe in women’s rights. The latest in women’s fashion is self-mutilation in hopes that it’ll avoid catching his eye; “property rights for women” is a discussion of how many women a man can own. Not… a great place to live.
In that depressing setting, I did find the story rather fun. The romance arc was… confused, at best? There’s a clear romance arc, and then there’s the actual mythology, and they didn’t align super well. But then, what’s a retold myth without artistic license?
All in all, this was a fairly fun read; give it a go.2
This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Y’know, I’m really not sure why I’m surprised that I’m just feeling unsettled at the end of this book. It features not one but two distinct zombie apocalypses, and both “zombie” and “apocalypse” are, independently, genres that I don’t enjoy. I quite liked the second protagonist, and the first one was… interesting, if less likable, certainly a more fleshed-out character than I’d expect to see in a book this short, but it doesn’t really balance out my usual response to zombie things of “kill it with nuclear fire.”
Listen, before you get into this playlist, I’d just like to say: we all deal with the stress of the election in our own way. My way just happened to be “open YouTube, search for ‘tiktok thirst trap compilation’, and switch off my brain.” Which I mention because there’s a clear trend in where I picked up music this month.
And, down here at the bottom, strategically placed just to make sure people see that there are these little notes below it, here’s the Apple Music playlist link.
“I’m going to sing my Friday night song.” “What’s it about?” “Friday.” “Oh-“ is a hilarious way to start a song. ↩
New Imogen Heap? In 2024? It’s more likely than you think! ↩
I still can’t decide if I actually like this song, there’s some bits where the ‘slowed’ part feels like it wasn’t done quite right. ↩
I haven’t at any point looked up what the lyrics are and tried to translate them, I just enjoy that the vibe of this song is “absolutely filthy” ↩
I’d call this song “a gateway drug to Christmas music.” ↩
I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this book; turns out, it was amazing. Four different stories, told in five parts, and they all pieced together beautifully.
It starts with the meta-story, the one we see a vignette from every couple years along the timeline, with a historian going to space. Then, the first half of the book she’s writing, a translation, another translation, and the second half of the book.
And let me tell you, that first transition, where she comes up from writing the first book and decides to tackle another project, and it’s a timeskip of a five-digit number of years into the past? A heck of a change, but it all made sense by the end. Each piece forms the context for the others, so that by the end you’re feeling things snapping together, waiting for characters a little bit in the past to figure out things that happened long in the past, but a little after the bit we got to read through… oh, what a delightful mystery.
I also found the writing style incredibly enjoyable. It is… heavy on the As You Know, Bob. Which I was briefly annoyed by, then quickly came to love, and much later realized actually makes sense within the context of the book—it’s a book within a book. In the meta-story, the historian never does this; but each of the books she’s writing are for a specific audience, who will almost certainly not know the sorts of things she’s talking about. In light of that, it becomes “As You Know, Bob,” but I’m in on the joke that it’s for the in-universe readers of her book. And, aside from that, it was just a lovely expression of “oh yeah, Buzz Goddamn Aldrin is a coauthor of this thing.” In places it feels like each chapter is 3 pages of plot and then 17 pages of detailed explanation of orbital mechanics, or how a spaceplane works, or what policy changes would be necessary to create this lovely science-fiction future. It’s the feeling of in conversation realizing that a) this person is an expert on something and b) you’ve just set them off on it and now you’re coming along for a very educational ride. I love those moments.
Overall, I absolutely loved this book. It got weird, and it was fun, and I loved it. It’s hopeful science fiction, and I adore that kind of thing. Check it out.1
This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
