The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic, 2013)
★★★☆☆
Like Gnomon, this felt like it was written just for me: it’s set in a dystopian future-Brazil inflected with Japanese touches (the focuses, for me, of a semester abroad and minor degree respectively). Despite the disasters that have befallen this timeline, Johnson introduces us to the colorful city of Palmares Três, where light, art, music, and dance are central to the way the characters navigate the world. Against this backdrop, we see several instances of queer/polyamorous romance, sexual fluidity, and supportive female friendships.
As might be expected for a young city “restarted” in the ruins of the world, Palmares Três’s politics are far from perfect. The society is refreshingly matriarchal, but characterized by class stratification (the city is a literal pyramid), tech isolationism, and human sacrifice—against all of which the main characters rebel. June is an artist coping with the grief of her father’s suicide, and Enki is a young summer king whose death at the end of his term will sanctify his choice of the next queen. Enki pushes June to make bigger and more politically motivated art; June experiences fear of and attraction to him in compelling mixture. Together, they use their bodies, their city, and their choices to foment revolution.
Sadly, the development of their “dystoromance” comes at the expense of worldbuilding. Palmares Três never quite gels: it’s unclear why the city is the way it is, why there haven’t been any prior gestures toward revolution, (and thus) why June is the only one capable of leading. (“Tech isolationism” could have been a phrase picked out of a hat.) While I disagree with a Brazilian Goodreads reviewer that the author “abuses” Brazilian culture “to make this empty fictional world seem ‘exotic’,” there certainly is an unfortunate lack of cohesion to what is otherwise the most interesting and vibrant part of the book.
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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Press, 2019)
★★☆☆☆
Argh! I really wanted to love this book, especially after hearing Vuong speak at Green Apple Books and being floored by his thoughtfulness, eloquence, and interdisciplinary reach. But I just couldn’t get along with his writing style here, which, in between the moments of gold, is the stuff of torrid, self-aware Tumblr posts: “We were exchanging truths, I realized, which is to say, we were cutting each other.” I dislike it so much I’m having an identity crisis over wanting to support the hell out of this young, queer, Vietnamese American writer yet constantly cringing at what he’s passing off as a rupturing of the novel form. But I’m happy to be in the minority (as it certainly seems I am) if it means Vuong’s work is staking out new space for for Asian American writers to succeed in the literary world.
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Ash by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2009)
★★☆☆☆
I meandered along with this lesbian retelling of Cinderella. The author wanted to tell a story where two women’s love wouldn’t be societally fraught, and as a result, the main conflict is Ash choosing between Kaisa, a mortal woman, and the fairy Sidhean and all he represents. But that conflict is fairly weak; the contract she invokes with Sidhean to pursue Kaisa never turns out to be much of a challenge. And since Ash is an unreliable narrator who doesn’t openly acknowledge her feelings for Kaisa, it’s tough to understand or relate to their romance. I did enjoy Lo’s writing style (here more than in Adaptation), but that’s about all I can say for this book.
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How Long ‘til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit, 2018)
★★★★☆
This short story collection exceeded my expectations. From the title and cover, I expected modern-day characters/settings with only touches of magical realism (à la Friday Black). Ignoring how that doesn’t jive with everything else I know about Jemisin’s work, I was glad to be wrong. Almost every story in this book spins up an entire speculative world rich with its own history, rules, and characters. Since Jemisin’s worldbuilding was my favorite part of The Broken Earth trilogy, that would have been treat enough. But almost every story also features people of color resisting, sticking to their guts, and grinding out excellence against society’s expectations. And gets us invested in their conflicts and choices over the course of but a few short pages. Any of these things in isolation is already hard to find in SFF (though that’s changing, thanks in no small part to Jemisin’s efforts); that they all come together here, in fresh take after fresh take, is testament to the author’s own excellence. Not every story is a gem—some are decidedly rough around the edges—but my favorites included “Red Dirt Witch,” which sets the promise of future generations against a fey encounter in the Jim Crow South, and “The Trojan Girl,” which considers how emergent AIs in a hyperconnected Internet might learn, associate, and grow.