Sweet Harmony by Claire North
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I read this, I saw nothing but our very real dystopia of debt and health care. And of course, that's entirely the point, dressed up in nanotech health services and a beauty-industry on much more than standard steroids.

It is, of course, a Claire North novella, and so it is also, of course, hard-hitting.

All those bad choices are far less of a real issue than the system that sucks you and and sucks you dry on the promise. And oh, the promises are everywhere and hard-baked into society's expectations. No worse than needing to get more and more expensive clothes to be on the good with your peers, and infinitely worse because the debt directly affects not just your health, but your senses.

It's rather rage-inducing. But so very plausible.

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The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Huxley.

Of course, it would take a phenomenal writer of his caliber to spearhead the romance of the '60s, the American Enlightenment, the spiritual revolution that eventually went nowhere because that's humanity.

And yet, it was a good dream. A dream of artists and changing one's perceptions with or without hallucinogens, of touching the true nature of reality, of getting down to the true platonic idea. Of seeing the terrain. And not just the map.

No matter who you are, it's still a worthwhile read, if not just for its place in history, then for its place in developing human consciousness.

It's something we've just about lost.

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The Merge by Grace Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I honestly wanted to love this. I love some good body horror as SF, after all. It's a thing.

And making it be a thing between mother and daughter, combining the two together, is a true Freudian nightmare--dressed as a good societal thing. Or husband and wife. Or father and daughter. It's just... so... ICK.

That's what makes for a good dystopian SF horror, right? The ick factor.

But sadly, early on in the read, it became ALL TOO CLEAR that the true horror was gaslighting. It's bad enough, of course, or in some ways, the true mark of our society. Gaslighting, propaganda, lies, lies, lies dressing up the true evil.

And the horror is that we're all fooled into walking off that cliff. Over and over and over.

So why am I just giving this a three star?

Because I was thrown out of the story by how stupid everyone is. Put simply, I tore out my hairs.

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The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be honest, I asked to read this only on the strength of the title and the hope it would be lightly diversionary. The hope that it would be something more--rather than exactly like--a Readers Digest novella on the level with dogs-eye PoV of small household grief-and-family-tragedy-processing.

But here we are.

The smart appliances ho-hum and feel for their people. There's even a Lassie moment or two and we get all nostalgic for To Kill A Mockingbird and if you're lucky, there's even some literary mirroring if you're paying attention.

I'm not saying this is a bad book. It IS light and it IS diversionary, but it'd be best read if it had come out 60 years ago.

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Secondhand Luck by Kim Harrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty decent continuation of a new UF by one of my favorite UF authors.

Specifically, I really enjoy the evolution of the magic rules here. I thought I had a pretty good grip on it from the first novel, but I really appreciate how everything keeps breaking and getting fixed again in the middle of mystery, a dangerous magical stalker, growing friendships, and just trying to do the right thing.

In other words, doing all the things that good UFs do. Plus, it gets into the magical weeds in a fun, fun way.

You can say it's Plucky. ;)

I'm definitely going keep following this.

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The Demon King by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh lordy, I really fell apart while reading this one. Excellent on every level. Gold-standard epic fantasy.

Maybe it's a bit of the weight of all the history of the the Warded series and a great deal about the fact I've grown to love these kids so much, but being cut off from everything they knew and having to to navigate their way around a foreign country with very alien ideas and ideals, let alone technology, would have been enough for any standard fantasy novel.

It would have been enough to satisfy me.

But instead, Brett went all out and gave us not only a fantastic build-up, making me love all large cast of characters and their complicated setup, but really throws it all into the real shit AND we have to deal with some truly brilliant fights. And the scale? Never fear.

It's DELICIOUS.

This is and continues to be one of my all-time favorite fantasy series. Creative, clever, rich, rich, rich.

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The Hidden Queen by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic fantasy.

Sure, it absolutely builds on the great Warded Man series, but directly follows the events of The Desert Spear, which continues with their kids. It's not only a worthy sequel-series, it's absolutely rich in great characters and even more rich in magic, worldbuilding, and action.

The action isn't immediately obvious until much later, but frankly, I don't care. These kids have to deal with so damn much. Rich arabic-type culture and also a fresh medieval culture trying to work together, duels, very interesting intersex normalization subtext, power dynamics, and so much more. Like musical harmony. Or super-sensitivity masquerading as introversion. Or just plain oldschool perception-dynamics.

There's a glut of things to love in this novel, and the cliffhanger at the end is fantastic.



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