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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The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think this one is almost as good as Anubis Gates. It's weird, but I really got into this.

Sure, I love myself some Byron and Shelly and Mary Shelly antics as much as anyone. It's GOTHIC LITERATURE, people. Hell, this one is a hell of a lot more gothic than the original gothic stories. Death, being haunted, like seriously haunted by lovers over years and years, of serious family drama, of darkness and noble friendship and seriously erudite learning and poetry all mixed into one of the best historical fantasy period pieces I've read in years.

And how it's driven by a very clever take on lamias/vampires, with equally clever readings of the bible and more ancient histories, and the depth of Power's worldbuilding in general to make the tale shine?

Totally gorgeous. Heads and shoulders above anything else out there. Most are amateurish compared to what Powers can dream up.

His works are truly something else, and at this time in his career, at the end of the 80's, he's in prime shape. Seriously recommended.

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Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think this book might be my second favorite of the series.

It's not because I particularly liked the five egotistical scientists who created a whole ecosystem out of whole cloth on their particular alien world. I didn't. In fact, it's super easy to loathe them. And for very good reason, it turns out.

It's not because I think those in the Society, the one made up of many kinds of minds and aliens working together toward an accommodating, positive end, is such a fantastic politicized end I just have to spout hundreds of great things about it to anyone who could be bothered to sit still for it. Or complain about how it's still a FORCED creation by Kern's virus, or how unrealistic even that would be--if it wasn't for the fact that THIS NOVEL specifically addresses that and a handful of other rabbit holes in such a clever and clear way that I was forced to re-evaluate all of my earlier dismissals.

I love this novel precisely because it touches on so many great SFnal concepts, be it forced Darwinian concepts or the Game of Life writ VERY large on a VERY large canvas, to the impermanence and faulty nature of memory, to self-hood in wildly different matrices, or how massively different cultures (Stomatopods!) can STILL find a way to work WITHIN vastly different conceptual fields than their own.

Or I could just point to the time-hopping structure of the plot, all weaving together a picture both wonderful and strange and gorgeous and terrible, point at the wild cast of characters on every side, and just sit aghast at what became of them all at the end.

And make no mistake: Tchaikovsky weaves it all together in a very cool way and the ending is wild. Like, top-SF wild.

I 100% recommend. Perfect for all of ya'll who like to make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.


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