Book #126 of 2021: The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang (Tensorate #1) Some fantasy stories invent cool worldbuilding but then neglect to tell a compelling narrative within that space; others do the opposite and offer a rousing plot amid a generic landscape of medieval castles and kings. This novella, I am happy to …
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Book #123 of 2021: Passing Strange by Ellen Klages There’s a lot to enjoy in this detail-heavy novella of queer life (and particularly its romance of two women) in 1940 San Francisco, but I wish it would provide greater connective tissue between its chapters — and that the minor fantasy element at the start and …
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Book #119 of 2021: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (Danielle Cain #1) The setting to this supernatural horror novella is a lot of fun, offering a sort of queer punk commune made up of squatters and/or idealistic radical leftists who are noticeably less common in fiction than in real life. I …
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Book #114 of 2021: White Cat by Holly Black (The Curse Workers #1) I’ve enjoyed this fantasy novel enough to continue on to the rest of the trilogy, but I have some real issues with the memory and emotion manipulation magic that populates the story. The protagonist at least somewhat recognizes how problematic it is, …
Book #111 of 2021: The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #1) In the first Thomas Covenant trilogy, the titular antihero resisted the appeal of the fantasy realm that summoned him from our reality, but gradually came to decide that its ideals were worth fighting for even if he …
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Book #107 of 2021: The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark This 2018 novella is short enough that it feels more like a proof-of-concept for the setting than a full story, and while that worldbuilding has cool potential — a steampunk Afrofuturist historical fiction version of New Orleans that’s neutral in a Civil War …
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Book #105 of 2021: A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology edited by Dhonielle Clayton I love how works like this aim to spotlight authors and characters of under-represented backgrounds in literature, but for me as a reader, the YA sci-fi and fantasy stories in this collection are generally more good than …
Book #103 of 2021: The Truth by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #25) Overall this is a fine comic romp through the fantasy city-state of Ankh-Morpork as it’s introduced to the concept of print journalism, and the novel comes late enough in author Terry Pratchett’s career that it largely avoids the needless sexism and classism that sometimes …
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[Review originally written 4/1/16, updated 4/10/21] Book #100 of 2021: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson This novella is honestly not one of Brandon Sanderson’s strongest examples of self-contained storytelling. But that’s fine, because it’s not aiming to be. It’s instead a behind-the-scenes sort of deal, showing one particular character’s actions during the second and …
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Book #97 of 2021: A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland (A Conspiracy of Truths #2) In the final analysis I think I don’t love this spinoff sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths quite as much as the original novel, but it’s a welcome return to a land where diversity in race, gender, sexuality, disability, …
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