Hello from the new world of quarantine. My review of Laurie J. Marks’ final Elemental Logic novel, Air Logic, is up at Strange Horizons. I can’t recommend these books enough, and I think their prickly, cozy, queer message about perseverance and making a better world out of the ruins of the old is pretty on point for these times. Wash your hands and stay safe.

My review of Gods of Jade and Shadow went up at Strange Horizons in September. In retrospect I wouldn’t have minded a little more Jazz in this Jazz Age novel, but it was very enjoyable all the same.

Somehow I forgot to link my portion of the Strange Horizons 2018 in Review on this blog. If you’re looking for things to read and watch at the solstice, you could do a lot worse than check out all three parts.

I got to review Ann Leckie’s fifth novel for Strange Horizons recently and I was extremely happy about it. I love Leckie, and this book was an interesting twist on her established themes. It’s also Hamlet as retold by a rock, but the rock is the actual protagonist of the story, and it was great. I’ve seen some people perhaps not quite grasp that; I’ve also seen people say they couldn’t get into the book. I can see how that could be the case, but I was immediately gripped by the question of how the two halves of the story fit together. It’s great, and if you were put off the Radch books for whatever reason, this is a great, very different book to read.

My review of A Conspiracy of Truths went up at Strange Horizons a few months back. I’m a fan of the author’s podcast (although, as with most things in life, I’m woefully behind on it), and I picked up this novel out of a desire to support her. I wound up really enjoying this “fantasy of fake news” quite a lot, even if its take on a “fantasy of fake news” isn’t quite what I expected from the elevator pitch.

You will note that the review doesn’t engage at all with the hopepunk discourse, which blew up while I was writing it. This was a deliberate choice on the part of me and my editor at Strange Horizons. Since nobody is paying me to write here, and since my morning coffee hasn’t fully metabolized yet, I will just say that I find the concept of hopepunk desperately undertheorized, which is a fancy way of saying “not framed with anywhere near enough conceptual rigor.” I will also say that I’m with AOC (always)–I think hope is something you have to do and be rather than waiting for it to come to you externally.

My review of The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang went up at Strange Horizons a few weeks ago.

I have at least three hands of feelings about this book, and not all of them made it into the review, which I wrote several months ago. In the interim, I’ve continued talking with people about it, and I’ve been able to articulate some of the things which were still inchoate for me while I was writing the review.

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My latest review, of the indie comics anthology Wayward Sisters, is up at Strange Horizons. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.

My review of Karen Healey and Robyn Fleming’s charming new novel is up at Strange Horizons. I liked this book very much–it reminded me of Sherwood Smith in a very good way. And yesterday I learned that there is a sequel short story available, even better! May it be the first of many.

My review of the latest animated Star Wars series was published at Strange Horizons a few weeks ago. I loved this show to pieces, and it’s great Star Wars storytelling. If you’re a Star Wars fan, do yourself a favor and watch the show before Solo comes out next month.

This novel has already garnered a lot of buzz, and it was quite interesting to see someone combine wuxia movies and Hong Kong gangster flicks with the trappings of fantasy novels. I didn’t love this book unreservedly, but it’s definitely worth reading.

The island of Kekon is the only source of jade in the world, and it’s jade that gives the island’s Green Bone warriors their powers of agility, speed, strength and perception. Decades ago they used those powers to win Kekon its freedom from colonial overlords; now the two crime families who worked together for independence are on the brink of all out war as Kekon’s economy has taken off. The scions of the youngest generation of the Kaul family–cautious Pillar Lan, brash Horn Hilo, and failed future Weather Man Shae, who walked away from her family once and just returned, as well as their adopted cousin Anden–face an uncertain new world in which they will be tested by the Ayt clan, led by a ruthless female Pillar whose plans encompass a stage far larger than the island.

There’s no getting around the fact that this book is long, probably too long, as has been the case with most adult novels I’ve read recently. Lee, however, avoids the soggy middle problem which often afflicts these novels by having the plot take a sharp left turn that I won’t spoil. It works well, and it sets the front half of the novel up as a kind of golden age in retrospect, which is interesting.

I grew up in New Jersey, so I have a pretty high degree of automatic side-eye for the idea of competent and/or even moderately honorable mobsters, but it’s a fantasy novel, so I’ll give Lee that one for free. The real problem with the book from my perspective is that the female characters (Shae, Ayt Madashi, and Hilo’s fiancé Wen) are much more interesting than the male characters. I’m also not wild about the fact that Anden is a bundle of tragic queer and tragic half-breed stereotypes rolled into a ball, and let’s remember that this is a novel that Lee constructed: queerness is “unlucky” and therefore only okay if people don’t talk about or “flaunt” it on Kekon because she decided that Kekon would be this way.

All that being said, I grew to like the characters quite a lot by the end, and there’s a good deal of sharp-edged hilarity in the brief glimpses we get of Kekon from the white not!European perspective towards the end of the novel. I’m definitely also interested to see where the story goes, and even if that turns out to be a place I don’t like, Lee’s bold story and world-building are a boon for the genre as a whole. We need more books like this, and it deserves its success.