fiction

Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney

Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney (Rebellion Publishing, 2023)

★★★☆☆

Necromancer with an allergy to violence becomes embroiled in political intrigues.

Told with glee and pizzazz, this story gave me a lot of what I love most about Lois McMaster Bujold’s World of the Five Gods or Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief series, which is to say, sublime encounters with the numinous. The joys depicted here were gorgeous and glorious, and I appreciated the explorations of complex trauma and consent. It’s a long book, but I never found the style inaccessible or boring. (I did, however, have to start a vocabulary list* to keep track of all the unfamiliar words/archaisms I learned.)

Re-read: Animorphs by K. A. Applegate

Over the last two months, I (re-)read the entire 54-book Animorphs series,* originally published by Scholastic in 1996-2001.

This series was formative for me. It, along with Brian Jacques’s Redwall, kicked off my interest in SFF. I remember thinking “‘science fiction’ must mean something that could be true—like people being infested by Yeerks and no one knowing about it.” I remember ordering the books via the Scholastic Book Club in the late 90s, through newsprint catalogs that looked like this.

Despite these memories, I had only ever finished about two-thirds of the series, and I knew nothing of how it ended, except grimly.

Present day: I and a few co-readers had been talking about returning to the series for some time. The ebooks are freely available on the Internet, with the author’s approval. In 2022, I could find no greater comfort than indulging in the stories I’d loved as a child. Thus: my Great Animorphs Re-Read. There are far too many books in the series to do individual reviews, but I will be sharing my big takeaways from a craft and storytelling perspective (series-end spoilers ahead).

So, without further ado…

Re-read: Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay (Roc, 1999)

★★☆☆☆

On a peninsula occupied by two sorcerous tyrants, a group of survivors from Tigana—a province whose name has been magically blighted out of everyone else’s minds—fights to regain what has been taken.

Originally read in 2016 and rated five stars, with the comment:

I read this because all the Amazon reviews said “best book I’ve ever read.” And it WAS really good. Complex characters, tons of action right off the bat, lovely exploration of dark themes about memory and identity. Agree with another review about the contrasting antagonists—very humanized and well done. Beautiful, lyrical writing. Kind of drags in the middle though, and the ending didn’t blow my mind quite as much as expected. I really liked the treatment of Erlein—my palms were sweaty while reading about the encounter with him, and the depiction of the ensuing complex, raw emotions was just on point.

Five years later, I still believe Tigana accomplishes what it sets out to do. But I’m a sharper reader now, and take more issues with it.

Books I Read: September 2020

Didn’t have a ton of energy to write full-fledged reviews for books this month, so here’s a quick roundup of some novellas I read alongside the Elemental Logic series.

Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children #1) by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com, 2016)

★★☆☆☆

Another one where I’m in agreement with the politics but the execution didn’t work for me. I’m especially here for the ace and trans representation, but, while I felt the trans character’s transness was revealed elegantly, the ace character going “I’m asexual; this is what that means” and providing a dictionary definition was exactly how I don’t like to see exposition done.

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps #1) by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com, 2015)

★★★★☆

For how plotless most of this novella is, I loved it! The vernacular surprised me in the beginning, but then I was in for the ride, and appreciated the tension between the narrative/dialogue voices. I also enjoyed the worldbuilding and vivid characters.

Annabel Scheme and the Adventure of the New Golden Gate (Annabel Scheme, #2) by Robin Sloan (via author’s website, 2020)

★★★★☆

Since I enjoyed the first Annabel Scheme novella more than either of the author’s novels, I was excited for this. Fun little romp, with some lines that are just *chef’s kiss* and an ending full of heart, though it kind of goes sideways in the middle.

Elemental Logic Series by Laurie J. Marks

Earth Logic (Elemental Logic #2) (Tor Books, 2005)
Water Logic (Elemental Logic #3) (Small Beer Press, 2007)
Air Logic (Elemental Logic #4) (Small Beer Press, 2019)

After falling deeply in love with Laurie J. Marks’s Fire Logic (which I reviewed last October), I dragged my feet on the rest of the series for fear of disappointment. But after discovering that the books were available from my local library via Hoopla, I decided to give them a go.

Earth Logic

★★★☆☆

If there was a problem with Fire Logic, it was the narrative that a colonized country should be expected to embrace its colonizers. Earth Logic reckons with that narrative and asks how to forge peace with a violent colonizer without resorting to the same tactics they used. The plot isn’t as gripping as the first book, since part of the answer is “decisive inaction,” and I didn’t fully believe some characters’ decision to kill [redacted] based on a reading of the glyph cards, which hadn’t been so blindly followed in the first book (IIRC). However, I enjoyed the introduction of two wonderfully complex new characters, Garland and Clement.

Water Logic

★★★★☆

The plot begins to pick up again: we learn of a rogue air witch out to assassinate Karis, and some time travel shenanigans occur. These hooks kept me intrigued while characters in the present day confronted issues of ethics and philosophy as well as the hard work of nation-building. I was SHOOK when [redacted] and [redacted] died, paving the way for a very compelling (and brutal) journey for Clement. And I loved how the time travel storyline exposed the complexities of past Shaftal—Zanja’s meeting with [redacted] gave me life!—and how those complexities tied into the larger reveal the characters come into at the end.

Air Logic

★★★★★

Unputdownable! The plot is GRIPPING, with an insidious villain and a couple turns that made me gasp in shock. I loved seeing the neurodiversity of the air children and how their inflexibility meant they had to systematize their ethics. Zanja, meanwhile, is gripped with grief and madness—and loses her most precious support system at the same time. (Her ending, and how the aforementioned time travel figures into it, is marvelous.) All the characters felt so real, including Tashar and Maxew, two disaffected young men who descend into extremism. A stunning conclusion to the series that gave me all the resolution I wanted.

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade #3) by Seth Dickinson (Tor Books, 2020)

★★★★★

A double agent working to shatter the empire she serves finally obtains the power she covets, but its use will devastate millions of innocent people.

I was mega-hype about this book, and Dickinson does not disappoint in the least. We get a ton of plot and character development, and everything feels polished in a way The Monster Baru Cormorant sometimes did not. (I wrote a spoiler-y, tinfoil-y review of that entry here.)

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries #4) by Martha Wells (Tor.com, 2018)

★★★★☆

Plotty things happen to Murderbot that force it to confront its previous team of human handlers. This entry felt like a strong resolution to the events of the first four novellas, and getting to see the way the humans interacted with Murderbot was moderately uplifting.