ase

This Is How You Lose The Time War (Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone)(2019): Novella, DNF. Multiverse time travel conflict between bio-oriented Garden and the tech-oriented Agency stands as background for the romance of Blue and Red, who manipulate the fate of different strands to their masters' wills. 

The narrative alternates between Red and Blue, each chapter made up of first person present tense experience leading to a letter from the other character. It has the most lush prose I've slogged through since I gave up on Valente; and like Valente's work, is more interested in purple prose-y artifice and stilted effect on the sentence level than telling a story. This is what happens when you aim for "luminous prose" and miss, IMO. It's frustrating to have a run of stories that sound great on paper and summarize with a bang, but fail to capture and sustain my interest in the story, the characters, or any of the related elements of the written word. 

Around halfway through I want looking for spoilers and found lightreads' comment that the novella's "about" is "engendering hunger", which killed any lingering desire to finish the story. Cue "I Want It All" on my headphones as I walk and bus and drive through a city absolutely crammed with people who are hungry to found a unicorn, people who are hungry for food security and housing, people who are numbed to hunger by personal upheaval, at a time when we see corrupting, unbalanced hunger at a national level... an absence of hunger has rarely been a problem I have thought to worry about. It's a metaphor that speaks to me, yes: it says that it's time to hurl the story against a wall and move on.

I postponed the throwing reflex long enough to flip to the last sections, which goes to that place where Red and Blue's personal timelines wind up inextricably meshed in ways that are Not For Me, and gave up.

Lent (Jo Walton) (2019): Jo Walton does Groundhog Day! In Renaissance Florence! Mostly Florence. Richard III guest stars. 

( Liked it! Spoilers. )

Thrawn: Treason (Timothy Zahn) (2019): Entertaining tie-in novel. Tarkin throws down a bet: if Thrawn solves a problem for Krennic, Thrawn's TIE Defender product gets the budget. If Thrawn doesn't solve Krennic's problem, Project Stardust gets the budget. Thrawn and the Chimera are saddled with one of Krennic's assistant directors - and his flowing white cloak -  the bet runs into Imperial politics and an intrusion from some old foes from the Unknown Regions.

At the beginning of the novel I disliked Assistant Director Ronan with all the fire my heart generates for Third Imperial Flunky On The Left (with a flowing white cloak!). By the end of the novel, Ronan was promoted to Accidental Comedic Relief thanks to his genuine belief that Thrawn had a secret plan to fight inflation. (Spoilers: there is no secret plan to fight inflation.) The last time someone took the available information and ran with it in such a catastrophically mistaken direction was back in Legends. Something about the Noghri in general and Khabarakh clan Khim'bar in specific having an off day? Ronan's small - almost insignificant - failure to figure out what is going on is going to make his post-novel life Something Else.

What more... I am absolutely in favor of the plan for Faro to get a fleet instead of a task force. There's an essay I am not writing about military SF and women in mil SF and how much I miss straight-up early Honor Harrington novels, which in retrospect are kind of clunky, but were a formative influence in my teens. I am A+ in favor of Faro and Ar'alani passing the Bechdel; I am not in favor of Eli getting the "please kill me if the pirates board" speech from the navigators. Come on, the navigators are Force-sensitive, I'm pretty sure Vah'nya at least could figure out how to use a knife; or, this being SW, a thermal detonator to take some Grysks straight to the afterlife with her.

The Raven Tower (Ann Leckie) (2019): Fantasy standalone in the same universe as several of her shorter works including "The God of Au", "Marsh Gods", "The Nalendar", and "The Unknown God", none of which I've gotten around to reading as of this writing. I did my best to avoid spoilers; this starts slow, in my personal nemesis, second person present tense, which did not help. Once I adjusted to that, and to the flashbacks, I got along with the novel perfectly well.

( The spoilers. )

The Fated Sky (Mary Robinette Kowal) (2018): Sequel to the Nebula- and Hugo-winning The Calculating Stars.

The story seems to be aiming for Space Race alternate history as a subgenre. ( The problem is, the choices are not organic to the characters or opening premise; they are forced by where the author wants the plot to conclude, and how she wants her social justice to work out. )

If you liked The Calculating Stars, you'll probably like The Fated Sky. If you thought reading Stars was as fun as Eating Your Vegetables, well, Sky is very like, only mostly in tin cans far from Earth. Go forth and make good choices.

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik) (2018): reread. First, because the local used book store had a copy; second, because was not done with my disappointment with last year's Hugo nominees. (It was not a good year for me!)

Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me (Janet Mock) (2017): Second biography by the writer and activist, touching on love and further explorations of living an authentic life. The author is 100% in control of her material, managing to describe her experiences in a way that evokes both empathy and the occasional "ouch, what a roommate situation" wince as she grows, heals, and lives.

Additional incomplete Hugo commentary!

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander: Combining two things that are terrible -  humans being terrible to other humans in the name of capitalism, humans tormenting non-humans for passing entertainment - in one nightmarish "why?" of fiction. What is the purpose of radium elephants? What storytelling achievement was aimed for here? I do not understand.

"If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again" by Zen Cho: An imugi fails to become a dragon, lives with a human, figures out this dragon thing. I'm sort of hung up on the imugi failing to pass as human, or a celestial being, or as anyone other than the imugi the human saw before the relationship, and the human in this relationship repeatedly saying, "oh, I knew the whole time, I figured you'd tell me when you were ready." That... it's weird.

"The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections" by Tina Connolly: Interesting conceit. Not 100% sold on the execution, but an interesting idea!

"Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" by Daryl Gregory: Humans will adapt? I guess?

"When We Were Starless" by Simone Heller: I keep trying to say something that isn't, "this reads like someone's postapocalyptic Cybertron AU" and failing. It's not bad, it's... middle of the road genfic.

"The Thing About Ghost Stories" by Naomi Kritzer: Ghost story! Daughter who studies ghost stories gets her mom's ring because ghosts! That's it, that's the story. Nice smooth writing, no pain to read.

That "post as you read" didn't work for me. If I'd waited until I'd read all the Lodestones, the "plucky rebellious teen girl, in present tense..." summary opening opportunity would have presented itself.

Children of Blood and Bone (Tomi Adeyemi) (2018): (  Plucky teen girl fights racism and an oppressive regime, in first present tense! )

The Belles (Dhonielle Clayton) (2018): Did not finish. ( Plucky teen girl fights beauty standards and corruption, in first present tense! )

Tess of the Road (Rachel Hartman) (2018): ( Plucky teen girl fights stifling family and social expectations, in third person past tense! )

Dread Nation (Justina Ireland) (2018): (  Plucky teen girl fights zombies and discrimination, in first present tense! )

The Invasion (Peadar O'Guilin) (2018):( Plucky teen girl has survived a fight with the Sidhe, must now fight the government, in *third person* present tense. )

What can I say about the Lodestones?

First: YA is apparently not my genre. All these novels engage with things I should find interesting - racism, sexism, unrealistic beauty standards and class signalling via same, etc - but do so in ways that run counter to telling a story that compels me to keep reading.

Second: I walked away feeling I'd read some long movie pitches. The novels didn't seem to use the written word format to maximum effect. Children of Blood and Bone particularly struck me as having the energy and visual imagination of Star Wars, where the spaaaaaaace! component has been replaced with a fantastic Africa. It would look awesome! You can practically hear the soundtrack! For me, this is not an intrinsic plus! The joy of the written word is that an experienced and talented writer can do things with it that would be difficult or impossible to convey in another medium; or at least, would be best communicated through scripting, staging, and direction that reflect the spirit rather than the letter of a story. To read a novel and think how little it would take to put it on screen is to read something that hasn't made the most of its medium.

The first person present tense prevalent in these nominees may not help. Unless the protagonist is unusually observant, extroverted, or strategic for a teenager, it takes a writer at the top of their game to slide more mature observations around the PoV character.

(And if at any point I think, "but what if the Fair Folk kidnapped Ari Emory? How long until she took over their throne(s)? Or what if they took Caitlin, that would be a Fae bloodbath," it's time for me to put the novel down and admit it's not for me.)

What's interesting to me is that cursory web searches indicates several of these were quite well received in the YA market. What is the attraction? Clearly I need a teen to make dolphin noises of joy at me until I understand what part of the teen reader soul these novels lock into.

For voting... I don't know yet! I suppose I should rank the DNFs at the bottom of my votes, but I'm pretty apathetic about the nominees I did finish. Feel free to suggest rankings in comments.

The Tea Master and the Detective (Aliette de Bodard): Consulting detective solicits the skills of a maker of blends that have psychotropic properties, allowing people to survive "deep space" (FTL?) unscathed. Deep space and bad experiences there shape the narrative.

Unlike Peach (see below), I figured out how to read this: close enough to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson to start there. Notably, most of the characters are women; it's as if Bodard has taken to heart "why make Third Spear-Carrier on the Left a man when they could be a woman?" and carried that through to, "why not make everyone a woman?"

As a nominee... it's rock solid writing, would not be sad if this took a rocket home.

The Black God's Drums (P. Djèlí Clark) (2018): Steampunk (?) historical AU in the free city of New Orleans. The orisha-touched protagonist overhears a deal involving the Confederate States and a Haitian scientist who aided in the construction of a doomsday weapon, and enmeshes herself in a counter-plan.

Drums is perfectly acceptable writing. It doesn't do anything new, but it does a competent take on existing memes. Would be a safe choice compared to the wildly variable creativity and skill in the novellas this year.

Beneath the Sugar Sky (Seanan McGuire) (2018):Third of the Wayward Children novellas.

( So close, yet so far. ) The more I think about the moral underpinnings and worldbuilding assumptions of the Wayward Children series, the less I like the implications.

Binti: The Night Masquerade (Nnedi Okorafor) (2018): Binti confronts personal tragedy and a crisis in Meduse-Khoush relationships as she asserts her Hausa identity, even while she continues to change.

( More ambitious than successful. ) Not my favorite of Okorafor's work, and for me, not a strong contender in this year's field.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach (Kelly Robson) (2018): ( I do not understand what just happened. )

Anyone who understood what this novella was trying to do, please explain it in comments. Anyone as baffled as me, let's be mutually puzzled in comments!

Artificial Condition (Martha Wells) (2018): Previously read. Interstitial, which is a minus, but includes ART, who is currently my favorite minor character in the Murderbot series.

Prelim rankings: Artificial Condition, Tea Master, Drums, Night Masquerade, Peach, Sugar Sky, No Award. I have no idea what Peach was trying to do, but it was failed in interesting ways. I may shuffle rankings before voting closes, but mostly in the middle and bottom of the range.

I forgot that I read Ash in December and January!

Ash: A Secret History (2000)(Mary Gentle) is alt history fantasy. It uses the word "fuck" a lot. The thumping doorstopper of a novel claims to be based on medieval texts covering the life of a mercenary captain, Ash, with a number of interstitial email hardcopies of conversations between the "translator" and a publisher's agent. The emails are less unimportant than they initially appear.

I made my first stab at Ash pre-LJ... late high school? Early college? In the US, It was published in four paperback volumes, and I happened to get my hands on the first. It was a period of indiscriminate reading. I struggled through the rape, gore, and sense that something was Not Right about the historical background until the end of the first volume, and despite my usual completionist streak, never got around to the rest of the series.

However, Ash is now available in one complete ebook, and was $3.99 when cahn picked it up based on rachelmanija's reread and got me thinking about it again. Just as importantly, I was doing a lot of travel in December and January, and big fat ebooks pack exceptionally well for long flights.

( Spoilers consider about what is reality, anyway. )