Some Books I Loved

Hi everyone!  As I read, I like to do "themed" months, and it's easy to do with the various months that the States celebrates.  Not only is it a way to read some books that I might not have otherwise, but I think that devoting a whole month to a single topic, a single community's stories, is the best way possible to try to learn to see the world from their perspective Isn't that why we read?  To put ourselves into the mind of someone else?  That's certainly a big part of why I do Here's my reading list for February, feel free to join! * * * "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2013 I don't only  read speculative fiction.  I mean, I mostly do.  But I dabble in literature every once and a while.  I absolutely love everything Adichie writes, and this one is a modern classic about the Black experience in the West.  I can't wait "Chain Gang All-Stars" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, 2023 Another modern classic, the story of gladiat...

**X-Men but make it queer.  Erm.  More queer.  Explicitly queer, I guess?  X-Men but make it explicitly queer.  So damn queer** I already wrote about this for my year-end list, but I feel like this series is deserving of a post of its own, because there is a whole lot going on here In a large and still-expanding universe (so far by my count, there are 5 novels in the main arc, 3 spinoff novels, and an anthology of stories written by other authors), Whitby has written a story about an X-Men fan who gets mutant powers, and says to herself, "ok.  I know what to do with these." [note, I'm tagging this both "Series (concluded)" and "Series (ongoing)", because the main storyline Whitby set out to tell goes through the first 5 books and the first spinoff, which takes places between Books 4 and 5.  But there's been more since then!] Let's get one thing out of the way right off the bat:  This series is woke as fuck.  There are characters who are homos...

 **A vision of near-future America that is chilling, but also so obvious that I'm almost wondering why we don't do this already** I'm tagging this as "Dystopia", but frankly it's close enough to what we have now that it barely counts.  Or at the very least, brings up some pretty bleak questions about current American society.  Which is, obviously, the whole point that the author is trying to get at Set in near-future America, the "specfic" idea is that the country has added a new feature to the insurance system:  After your claim is rejected, your final appeal has been denied, you have one last option:  A duel to the death versus a representative of the insurance company And of course, these fights are broadcast on live television.  Because, duh, America.  The fights are shown in bars across the nation, people gamble on the outcomes (if this book had been written only one or two years later as sports gambling has truly taken over the industry, I guar...

**A story about the magic that create a bright and shining haven, and the cost we don't always realize is being paid for it** M.L. Wang is an author to watch, for sure.  Her first few YA novels were, well, let me just say that it was very obvious that they were indie-published, in that they were in need of a good editor.  And yet she hit on something truly special with "The Sword of Kaigen", an absolute stunner of a sword and sorcery novel with great characters ("She hadn’t broken quietly like porcelain. She had broken like black glass and ice—jagged and more dangerous than ever."), some badass swordfights (sorry, no spoilers), and absolute haymaker punches of line that made me put the book down for a minute ("What the world would never know . . .").  Great book.  And whatever it is she found in writing Sword, it's clear she kept it for "Blood Over Bright Haven" It's hard to explain this book, simply because the less you know about it...

 **Late-90s Cyberpunk Space Opera . . . yeah, I know, that's a hell of a combination of words . . . but with a surprisingly thoughtful central message about diversity and xenophobia** In many ways, this novel is a pastiche of some of the classics of Science Fiction.  It is unashamed at its debt to William Gibson, and the influence of Frank Herbert is obvious as well.  Cordwainer Smith literally gets a shoutout in the Forward, but I won't say for which story since that's a bit of a spoiler (but yes, if you know Cordwainer Smith, it's almost certainly the one you're thinking of).  However, Friedman takes these elements and combines them into something that feels less like a ripoff and more like a respectful homage--achieving this mostly because this novel takes that foundation and adds to it in some surprisingly beautiful and original ways The first unique point is the history of her setting, which is fantastically realized and darkly plausible, a backdrop for the adv...