Tag: fiction

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Review

“Fallen”

Melissa Scott

This was a really fun setting; the cultural aesthetic of the dark ages, the knowledge that our civilization is less than it once was. But where, in the actual dark ages, the lost technologies of our forefathers were, like, Making Good Concrete and Building Aqueducts, in this book the lost technologies are things like “an artificial sun at the center of a miniature Dyson sphere” and “a man-made planetoid so near to its star that even with the energy shields keeping it livable, ships can only land on it for a couple hours every day.”

And I love that kind of thing. “Secrets of the ancients” is one of my favorite tropes, but this is very deliberately kept just on the near side of the “sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” line. It feels like everything can be understood, like the knowledge is there to be found, tantalizingly within reach.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; it took a conscious effort to put it down so I didn’t stay up all night reading, and I picked it up and finished it in the morning instead. Absolutely worth the read; check it out.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Price of a Thousand Blessings, Volume 2”

Ginn Hale

Did I buy the second book immediately after finishing the first, and read through the whole thing in the same day? Yes. Yes I did. I’m hoping that, by the time this gets posted, the third volume will be out, and seeing this scheduled post will remind me to go pick it up; as of this writing1 there’s only the two available. Fortunately for me, Volume 2 ended at a stable point, instead of on an extreme cliffhanger.

I think reading both books in close sequence like that helped the effect; lots of Volume 1 was establishing the world, which allowed Volume 2 to pull at the relationships between the characters, and play around with that existing knowledge of the world. This feels like a good one to avoid any further spoilers, though, so I think I’m going to stop there, and just tell you to go read it.2 Though, y’know, read the first book before you try this one; they’re so thoroughly interlinked that the chapter numbers in Volume 2 pick up where they left off at the end of Volume 1. This cannot be read on its own.

  1. Which can be used as a hint for how far in advance I’m writing these. ↩
  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. ↩
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Review

“Price of a Thousand Blessings, Volume 1”

Ginn Hale

I had two clear thoughts in my mind, early on in this book: first, that for the setting, I was picturing Republic City from The Legend of Korra; and second, that the main character’s approach to life reminds me of Sokka from The Last Airbender. While the latter could, conceivably, have been an actual influence, the more I read, the more that I thought the former was just that both were based on the same sort of “1920s New York aesthetic in a heavily Chinese-inspired locale.”

The whole book, really, leans heavily into that Chinese folklore feeling, and it’s absolutely delightful. There’s a strong sense of a weighty, and long, past behind everything. This is a world that has a rich history. It’s also a world that had a People’s Revolution and is now in a very modern-feeling “we’re the People’s Secret Police” sort of place. A different kind of weighty, that.

The protagonist works well, here; he was raised in a temple as a sort of indentured servant of the state, and sets him up for a sort of simultaneous cynicism and naïveté; he’s cynical about his place in the world, about the role of class in his life, but also utterly naïve about the inherent corruption of a secret police. To spoil something from very early on, he saves the day from a bombing, and not once does he come to the (to me) obvious conclusion that it was a plot by the secret police.

The setting also has some interesting mechanics going on: a magic system that works well for big cinematic setpieces, and Avatar-style Doing Magic With Martial Arts, but also feels thoroughly influenced by electromagnetic physics. A delightfully chaotic reincarnation-ish system, which creates some hilarious interactions between characters who either have or haven’t yet figured out that’s what’s going on.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It ends on a vicious cliffhanger, but I at least managed to wait long enough to read this one that the sequel is now out, so hopefully I’ll be reading it soon. Check it out.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Fair’s Point”

Melissa Scott

Decided to go right from Point of Dreams to the next in the series, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It hit the same kind of fun magical-setting mystery plotline as the previous, but spent more time developing the relationship between the main characters in a way that I enjoyed. It also helps that we got to see the incompetent fool from the last book be more incompetent and make more of a fool of himself; there’s a certain joy to schadenfreude.

One thing I’ve enjoyed in these books that I didn’t mention last time: there’s a subtle touch to the setting, whereby the default person is assumed to be female. Paraphrasing, as I didn’t copy down the exact quote, but there’s a scene where they’re discussing who’s been pulling off the mysterious heists, and the line is “‘. . . the woman who’s doing this.’ He paused. ‘Or man, I suppose.’”

And if you don’t think that’s a nice distinction to make, consider that I typed it backwards, despite very actively knowing what the point of it was; defaults matter.

A fun read; probably start earlier in the series, but if you’ve been following along, maybe you already have! Anyhow, here’s your link.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Point of Dreams”

Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

This is, apparently, the third book in the series; of more surprise to me was the fact that I’ve apparently read the first, though I have no memory of doing so. I suspect it didn’t clear my tolerance for the fiction rule of thumb. This time, at least, I was interested enough to stick through the vocabulary, and wound up quite enjoying the book.

To sum up the general vibe of the book: queer fantasy police procedural. It’s very much a different world — the setting is vaguely Renaissance-flavored, but between the very present magic system, the different evolutionary path that language took, and the two suns, it’s pretty clearly not doing the alternate-history thing.

The murder mystery part was a bit slow to get started, but took off pretty well after that. There was a scene early on that read at the time as a fairly clearly Chekhov’s Gun, which paid off quite well, but in retrospect was also some excellent foreshadowing; I enjoy when a book pulls off something like that.

I also enjoyed… something I’m going to tuck into a footnote, as it contains spoilers.1

Overall, a fun read; check it out.2

  1. Seriously, spoilers about the murder weapon; skip this footnote if you want to go into the book without that foreknowledge.
    The use of magical flower arrangements as the murder weapon started off as an interesting concept, but became darkly comedic in light of this being a Magic Is A Known Thing fantasy-world. The general fact of them being able to go over to the university to consult with the Department of Magical Flowers makes it feel plausible within this world. The way that conversation went, though, was the funny part. Arriving at the (very real) Department of Magical Flowers to ask about magical flower arrangements. “No, there’s no such thing as magical flower arrangements. No, there’s simply no way that putting multiple magical flowers together could cause any sort of interaction or compound effect.” “Fine, fine, can you at least provide some input on the first murder? The one where it was a single magical flower?” “fake news” ↩
  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. ↩
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Review

“Luminescent Machinations”

edited by Rhiannon Rasmussen and Dave Ring

And here I am again, reading yet another anthology.1 I think this is the last one in my queue for a while. Ending on a pretty good note, though; while nothing leapt out at me quite as much as with Power to Yield, there’s also the benefit that nothing leapt out at me quite as much as with Power to Yield. Nothing extremely good, nothing deep and depressing.

The choice of “mecha” as a theme was interesting, and while most of them stuck with the classic Big Robot approach, I think every story did something interesting with it, and a few pulled the concept of mecha into a fantasy setting. Quite fun to read through all these different bite-sized pieces of worlds, wondering each time what they’re going to do to differentiate themselves. Delightfully, they all did.

I think my favorite goes to the one that felt the least “mecha” to me—Charles Payseur’s “The Demolition of Trucko Brahe”. There’s a bit of hinting at some giant robot fights, but the mecha here is a truck. A sentient alien truck, but a truck. This reminded me of Animorphs, really, though from a different angle. It’s a world that was clearly built around being a children’s show, but we’re looking at the aftermath. What happens after the war was won by heroic sacrifice, and the saviors of the galaxy get dropped back into the unaware world from which they came. It was sad, melancholy, and hopeful, all at once.

Overall, an enjoyable read; here’s your link.2

  1. Two in a row is already a lot, but it was, in point of fact, three; I just disliked the third one and so didn’t write a review. ↩
  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. ↩
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Review

“Power to Yield and Other Stories”

Bogi Takács

As with every anthology I read, my thoughts are a little mixed. Some of the stories I love, one or two I may hate, and everything in between. This one was net positive, I think. And, being by a single author instead of a mix, there’s more of a sense of ordering to the whole thing.

I absolutely loved Volatile Patterns. I’m always a fan of good worldbuilding, and this was a tour de force, a short story giving me so many fascinating glimpses into what feels like a very full world.

And here’s where the sequencing hits: part of what makes it a very full world is that it’s one entry in a larger collection about this shared world. So some of the details being hinted at are there to uncover, in other stories.

Power to Yield expands on that world. And while it left me some hope that, in the years after Power to Yield and before Volatile Patterns, the situation improved, it has a very… Omelas quality to it. That the utopian society I saw first was built upon something much darker.

Which is an effective arc, but I don’t think that I actually like it. There’s a pattern in our culture, thinking that for something to be “realistic” it has to be dark, grim, depressing. Treating those qualities as a necessary component of a story, rather than simply qualities that can be present or not, without that valence. A story can just be happy; fiction can give us utopian societies without necessitating that there be a twist, a darkness hidden beneath the candy-shell exterior. We can be hopeful. That’s allowed.

I did enjoy reading this collection, though, so I’ll have my usual Bookshop link here.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Starter Villain”

John Scalzi

I sometimes struggle with the ‘fish out of water’ trope, and that was the biggest issue I had with this book — it turned what could’ve been a “spend a day reading an entire book” into a few days of shorter reading sessions. But I did get past it, and overall, the book was great. Scalzi’s writing style is wonderful, and I’m going to have to look at some of his other works just for that; very approachable, and the sense of timing is great.

The general concept here is “Charlie’s uncle died, and boy, dealing with the estate is a hell of a way to find out your uncle was a Bond villain.” There is, in fact, a scene where somebody admits that the Bond villains were actually inspired by their organization. A very nice touch, really—there’s no way to pretend this wasn’t inspired by the film aesthetics, so double down on it!

Overall, this was a fun read; the additional short story at the end was also a delightful touch, gave me just enough “here’s what’s going on afterwards” to feel like I have closure with the characters, while still leaving me feeling like they’ve got good lives going on. Well worth the read; check it out.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Snow Crash”

Neal Stephenson

Wound up discussing my recent reread of The Diamond Age at book club, and that turned into deciding our next book club book should be Snow Crash. I was honestly surprised at how many of my coworkers hadn’t read it yet — I really think of this as one of The Canonical Computer Nerd Books.

When I first read it, my thought of this book was that it really wanted to be adapted to film. I’m not sure how well that would actually work, but these days, we have a better option: forget a movie, this should be one of those big-budget HBO one-season series treatments. The pacing would work a lot better; there’s just too much going on, and a few too many “let’s just talk about backstory for a while” chapters to really fit into a reasonable runtime for a movie. But either way, this is a book that wants to be visual. So many of the scenes remind me of reading the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey — one of the best film novelizations I’ve ever read, and it’s because it was written in tandem with the film, in collaboration with the film crew, rather than as an afterthought. Partway through, there’s a swordfight in VR that ends with the victor pulling off their VR helmet, and you see that they’ve wound up outside their home, holding their actual katana, with an audience watching from a safe distance. And I, despite not being a very visual thinker at all, can see that; I can’t recall if the book says it’s happening at sunset, but I know for certain that my mental image of that is at sunset, near LAX, those late-afternoon heat shimmers in the air, the roar of a jumbo jet coming in for a landing…

I absolutely love this book. Unlike The Diamond Age, it’s not really a hopeful future; this is, through and through, an extrapolation of the cyberpunk, the dystopian corporate grunge of the 1980s. It feels like neon lights and the graphics in Tron. If you haven’t read it, please do.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“The Diamond Age”

Neal Stephenson

All the discussion of nanotechnology in Chip War made me want to reread this book, so here I am! I have, in point of fact, done something of a review of it before, but as that was over a decade ago, I figure it’s probably okay for me to take another pass.1

I’ve always thought of this as being set in the near future, but there’s actually no indication that’s the case, and some indications that it’s not. The bit where an elderly lady reminisces about having been a Cool Teen during the age of Snow Crash, which is set in (a very 1980s-flavored) near future, would indicate that it’s closer to a century out. Slightly disappointing for my hopes of seeing this level of post-scarcity reasonably-safe nanotech within my lifetime, I must say.

Diamond Age is the book that ruined 3D printing for me. I simply cannot be satisfied with a version of the technology that can produce plastic tchotchkes when what I’m envisioning is a device that can lay down individual atoms, assembling molecules from the ground-up to produce anything from a swarm of cancer-eating nanobots to a perfectly-nutritionally-balanced meal to a new mattress. But sure, making replacement parts for your kid’s dollhouse is cool or whatever, I guess.

The plot of the book remains a wonderful sprawling thing, something like twenty years in duration. This reread I found myself being more critical of the aspects of a ‘white savior’ arc going on with regards to one of the characters, but I may just have to file that as being the sort of thing that we simply weren’t concerned by at the time it was written. The overall theme, though, still works: this is, really, a book about growing up, and about parenting your child. Or someone else’s child that you’ve become an adoptive parent to. Or an entire generation of children.

And it’s also about cultures. I quite like the way Stephenson approaches cultures and subcultures; it’s also a key element in Snow Crash.2 In both cases, the setting he has created allows for more freedom of movement between cultures, and reduces the impact of birthplace in cultural development. Basically, he’s saying, what happens if your identity is tied less to where you’re from than it is to what you value? What happens when people can form interest groups in the way that was first truly allowed by the internet, and then we turn that freedom of association up to eleven? Imagine pseudo-countries, little enclaves worldwide where all the people with one set of values — Victorian-esque politeness and stoicism, to pick a non-random example — gather themselves together. That’s the world of Diamond Age, the world that Snow Crash portrays taking shape.

It’s an interesting concept, for sure! I don’t think we’re quite on track for things to go that way, but it’s a valuable thought experiment either way, and one I really enjoy reading every time.

Summing up: The Diamond Age holds up well ten years later, and I still recommend it. It’s a great piece of science fiction. Check it out!3

  1. Note the first: That post went up ten years and a day before I started writing this one, which is a delightful coincidence.
    Note the second: that’s not even the oldest post remaining available on this blog, much less the oldest one that remains in the visible-only-to-me part of the archives. It’s very weird to have been doing this “writing stuff on the internet” thing for that long. ↩
  2. Which I will likely be doing a similar review for soon; books prompt me to read other books, and this one was prompted by one book club and wound up prompting the other book club. Fun! ↩
  3. 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. ↩
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Review

“How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying”

Django Wexler

I don’t know how I feel about the realization that I’ve read enough isekais to think “this is the best isekai I’ve ever read” and have that be a somewhat meaningful distinction, but here I am.

This was an absolute delight of a book. The use of footnotes hit right in the “it’s been a while since I read any Terry Pratchett” part of my brain, while the first-person narrator was wonderfully chaotic.

The isekai part of the story had a fun twist: not only is she in this fantasy world, destined to save the kingdom or whatever, but she also can’t screw it up—because if she dies, she gets reset back to having just been summoned by the wizard. With her memories intact. The incitement for the story, then, is that she has been stuck in a variable-length time loop for over a thousand years of subjective time, she can play the plotline like a fiddle, she’s memorized everyone’s responses so well that her life is like watching a speed-runner compete. And she is bored, and decides to try something new: can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

Such a fun read, very well-targeted at my interests. I have a single quibble, and it’s the variable amount of memory of “vaguely 21st century culture” stuff she remembers—it was, I reiterate, a thousand years ago for her. On the other hand, I could probably chalk that up to “it’s been translated from Fantasy World Language, with cultural references added for flavor” and call it good. Definitely not worth avoiding the book; like I said, a delightful read, I heartily recommend it. Check it out!1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Bookshops & Bonedust”

Travis Baldree

Once again, I went in a little doubtful – this time, because I was so happy with Legends & Lattes that the idea of a prequel sat a little off with me. I wanted to see more of the same, the characters I already knew, what their futures held. And yes, there’s a bit of that in the epilogue – and what I devoutly hope is a good hint towards what the sequel will cover – but this was mostly about Viv’s origins.

And, in true cozy fantasy style, it was mostly mostly about people being kind and helping each other out and making a nice place together. And where Legends & Lattes made me want to find a regular coffee shop to hang out in, Bookshops & Bonedust brought my childhood dream of opening a book store roaring back to life. There’s a retail space on the ground floor of my apartment building that hasn’t been occupied in the entire time I’ve lived here, and that feels a little too tempting right now…

These two books feel like Baldree has really nailed a target demographic. People like to curl up with a good book, feel warm and safe, and that’s what he gives us. Warmth, safety, and the feeling that we’re part of a little something, a community, and the space that a community builds together. Absolutely wonderful to read, I heartily recommend this one as well. Check it out.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Glamorous Notions”

Megan Chance

I’m of at least two minds about this book; it was fun, in parts, and an interesting look at mid-century Hollywood. Being not only from the perspective of a woman, but the perspective of someone who wasn’t an actress, definitely added to the whole experience – the costume designer isn’t someone I’ve thought much about in the past, much less the politics of being a costume designer. And on that count, this book was an absolute win!

On the other hand, I found myself rather irritable with the main character at many points. I had to remind myself that she didn’t grow up with the same media diet I did, but even through that thought, it felt like she maintained too much naïveté for too long. Maybe it was a deliberate refusal to see what was going on? I suppose there was a bit of her not quite realizing she was falling in love with a woman, and that sort of confused tangle of emotions can get one to a whole lot of We’re Just Not Thinking About What’s Going On Here, but still. The back half of the book was her trying to clean up the mess she’d gotten into, and I didn’t have nearly as much sympathy as I could’ve.

Still, it was a fun read, so give it a go.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“Omnitopia Dawn”

Diane Duane

Not a first-time read, but apparently I’ve never written up a review, so I’m finishing up a comfort-reread by talking up this book that I really enjoy.

The general setting here is a vague “near-future” kind of thing; having been published in 2010 or so, I think it’s pegged as being approximately 2015, but the technology is all vague enough that it still works as “vaguely near-future.” It’s recognizable concepts – we all get the idea of video games, of massively-multiplayer games in particular, and VR. It’s just turned up a little bit; the sort of voice control that we always hoped the Siris of the world would turn out to be, VR that uses hand-wavey technology to explain how it can be a fully tactile experience, and the hilariously-named “hyperburst memory” that is never even remotely explained. It works; that’s just silly enough a name that I can totally see someone coming up with something genuinely innovative and world-changing… and then naming it that.

Past that, this absolutely feels like a book written by someone who tinkers with computers for fun sometimes. There’s enough of a grasp of the concepts, enough talking about programming and thinking about tech, to make that clear; but it’s also just as clear that Duane is a really good writer, because she’s given it all a much more visual, visceral sense. I’m more than willing to accept the hand-waving science fiction aspect, because it means I get to skip past the boring bits of debugging that I am oh-so-familiar with, and instead get to imagine a world where the tech tools are to the point that it is visually interesting.

Lastly, I like most of the characters in the book. There’s some fun interactions present between Dev, the CEO of the game company, and Delia, the reporter sent to interview him — since we’re switching back and forth between their viewpoints, we get to see her suspicion that he can’t really be like that, and then get his own perspective on the fact that, yeah, he kinda is just like that, but also a lot more of why and how he is.

Overall, I just love this book. I did mention that it’s a comfort-read, didn’t I? A book doesn’t become one of my “I’m stressed and need to wind down” go-tos by being bad. Check it out.1

  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. ↩
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Review

“The Dark Lord’s Daughter”

Patricia C. Wrede

Oh, this book is just, chef’s kiss, exactly what I was hoping it would be. It’s the magic of Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles, that delightful send-up of story tropes within the genre, but applied to isekai in the ‘fantasy world’ realm instead of the fantasy world alone.1 It also has an interesting twist on that in that it’s not just the main character who gets yoinked into Fantasy World – her mom and brother come along too, which worked really well to alleviate the underlying sense of loneliness that genre usually has.2

It also did a pretty good job at capturing that sense of building something that I love. Definitely in less detail; this is a young adult book after all, and spending several pages talking about, like, staffing logistics would’ve gone over like a lead balloon, but the amount of it that’s present felt just right.

All in all, this was a really fun book to read. My only complaint is that the note it ends on feels like the end of the pilot episode of a TV series; I want to see more of this world, learn more about how the magic works, all that.3 There’s a whole lot of threads set up that aren’t abandoned, per se, but also clearly don’t come to anything within this book. I suppose I’ll have to wait for the sequel. In the meantime, however, I absolutely recommend it; check it out.4

  1. I can’t believe I just added an “isekai” tag to my blog. ↩
  2. A lot of isekai stories seem like they’re trying to avoid addressing that, or talk up how much of a loner the protagonist was before it all happened, but that’s not less lonely. Humans are social animals! We’re meant to be part of a tribe, of a society. Slicing off someone’s entire support network all at once is gonna do some damage. ↩
  3. Particularly since the magic has some clear bridging notes to how computers work, and boy am I ever a sucker for a hard magic system that’s computer-science-flavored. ↩
  4. 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. ↩