Fiction

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Now I'm definitely playing Pacific Drive

The origin of the Stalker movie, then the Stalker games and finally Pacific Drive; I can definitely see why it spawned so much different media. Roadside Picnic is a masterclass in pulling you in through what you're not told rather than what you are, little about the Zone is explained, years of time are skipped and major action sequences are cut as unnecessary. The book is more interested in the effects the Zone's bounty has on humanity than glorying in the sci-fi or horror...

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.

Entertains while teaching

It's not often that being called Demon Copperhead would be considered the least of a person's problems, but that's certainly the case here. Born on the floor of their trailer home to a drug addict mother, young Demon manages to have quite quite a pleasant childhood with his brother-in-terrible-name Maggot until his mum shacks up with a new man. Thus begins the rollercoaster of Demon's life, suffering through awful situations to seize a ray of hope then be brutally shoved right back into darkness.

Get a part time job?...

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju.

At least she's not a woman in the 19th century?

Another in the storied tradition of 'being a woman sucks' books, this time set in modern(ish) Korea. It starts off like it could be non-fiction and since I've heard a bit about how rough things are for woman in Korea I didn't really start wondering if it was fiction until near the end when I started wondering if you'd have to be Kim Jiyoung's shrink to know all this. I'm sure there are plenty of Korean women who've been through...

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

Surely there are better ways to communicate than holographic scrolls

Another example of me being surprisingly interested in political intrigue after Goblin Emperor and for much the same reasons; the characters are well-written and likeable. I guess something inherent to the genre forces authors to actually think about troublesome things like motivations, worldbuilding and how people might act in a given situation rather than having their characters do whatever seems coolest at the time.

Our protagonist Mahit is ambassador from a small space station to the galaxy-spanning Teixcalaan Empire,...

The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas.

Lesbian lovers leap lustily

In 1967, four female scientists invent a machine allowing time travel (to any time the machine exists, so no going back to see dinosaurs). A burst of celebratory trips the night before they reveal it to the world triggers an underlying psychological condition in Barabra, causing her to have a breakdown on camera the next day and be excommunicated from the project.

Decades later the other three scientists work for (or run) The Conclave, the organisation which monopolizes time travel, while Barbara has been in...

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

Liminal space fantasy

Piranesi (the protagonist, not the book) has a simple life as one of two people left alive in the world, and one of 15 confirmed to have ever lived. He and The Other are scientists, searching for signs of some nebulous 'Ultimate Power' in a series of endless, statue-filled halls which stretch from the sea to the clouds. Despite our only POV being Piranesi's religious reverence for The House, attentive readers will notice things are not as they seem to our protagonist. Eventually he joins us in noticing these discrepancies,...

The Midsolar Murders by Mur Lafferty.

Imagine being so good at solving murders people just keep dying around you so you can solve more.

Just a fun series. You'd think a setting with wasp hive minds, sentient space stations and living rocks which turn into spaceships by drinking the blood of their enemies would be all about the world-building but it's the characters that're the focus here. There still is plenty of quality wordbuilding, it's just relegated to the background where it effectively serves as interesting color rather than requiring you to think too hard about its...

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.

Everyone(?) is terrible

A fictional retelling of Grace Marks' real story which brings the characters to life without drawing its own conclusions.

It's rare to enjoy a mystery which goes unsolved, but Atwood's Grace and the various side characters are so compelling and colorful I don't really mind knowing if she's guilty or not. Mary Whitney and Jeremiah the peddler are highlights in support of Grace and Dr. Simon Jordan's delusional confidence, as is the sheer unfairness of the historical setting. Despite seemingly constant backsliding in the quality of life people can...

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Godlike cyborgs re-enact Romeo & Juliet across untold millenia

Kinda surprised I liked this as much as I did; the prose feels overly flowery, the seemingly omnipotent technology the protagonists have access and its implications are mostly handwaved as irrelevant and there's not much going on plot-wise other than an enemies to lovers romance. Despite all that I really enjoyed the ~2 hours it took to finish; the limited world-building does what it needs to by setting up background intriuge and it's fun...

My Husband by Maud Ventura.

The perfect couple

The narrator is just a normal woman who loves her husband. Over the course of a week, endlessly escalating revelations exemplify just how normal and healthy her love for her husband is. I'm hesitant to write about the plot in any detail for fear of spoiling it, not because it's reliant on twists or shock value (both of which are plentiful), but because the journey of perspective you go on as you read is part of the experience. The prose is also excellent, posessing that intangible 'quality' I so...

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.

Everything is fine, nothing is answered

This one just didn't do it for me, despite not being meaningfully different to the preceding two. Part of it was definitely a bit of ick from two characters I very much saw as kids (Lyra's ~12 in this book!) suddenly being very interested in romance. I mean it makes a lot of sense, most kids are at that age even without the extensive trauma-bonding, but much like their other authentically child-like reactions and decisions it's just not fun to read for me.

Something else...

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.

What's better than one impulsive child with a reality warping macguffin? Two

Opening a sequel with the POV of a completely unknown character is always an interesting move, leaving the reader wondering if they'll be important going forward or killed off immediately to set up a new threat. Someone does kick the bucket in the first chapter but it's not Will Parry, our new deuteragonist from a version of Earth slightly more familiar than Lyra's. With him come a cast of modern villains and allies, as well as a surprise returning...

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman.

I can certainly see why ~8 year old Brett liked this

Lyra Belacqua is a tenacious young lady who, despite her cautious daemon and noble birth, just wants to be a kid. Over the course of this first entry in the trilogy she lives out the dream of every child with an overactive imagination. From finding out her decidedly not-dead parents are famous, interesting people to befriending an armored polar bear and rescuing hundred of her peers from an evil research station, Lyra's bucket list is probably done at the tender age...

Together We Will Go by J. Michael Straczynski.

Not sure how to feel about this one

On one hand, 12 strangers getting on a bus for a cross-country roadtrip ending in their collective suicide by driving into the ocean is a pretty compelling setup. On the other, the same things which make it compelling also make it very difficult to pull off. I'm not an author, so I'm not sure how a book like this should be written, but IMO this isn't it.

The overall structure is there I think; you have a varied group of people...

Liberty's Daughter by Naomi Kritzer.

Sadly the rich were not eaten

Beck Garrison lives on the seastead, the classic libertarian dream of a sovereign nation in the middle of the ocean. If one ever made it further than the 'buying a cruise ship' phase. In Beck's universe they made it quite a bit further than that, and the book's strongest point is building out what these seasteads would look like.

A few different 'nations' have sprung up on the converted cruise liners and sea platforms, from the debauchery of New Amsterdam to the unrestrained techno-capitilism of Sal...

Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

I'll probably see these very differently in a few years

Two (mostly) cozy books about the escapades of the titular boys in 1840s Missouri. The first is a more lighthearted romp from Tom's POV, while the second picks up soon after the events of the first and follows Huckleberry on quite an adventure down the river.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Much of the first book is spent establishing Tom as the absolute epitome of boyhood through a series of short stories where he...

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison.

There's a point at which humility ceases to be a virtue

A satisfying end to Thara's saga, assuming it continues to be that. The stakes are raised yet again, this time resulting in the animosity of a Shell-level corporation and providing an even scarier dead thing for Thara to send off into the ether. All the characters we've come to know and love (or be annoyed by) make appearances in addition to a dashing goblin principate guard, a bumbling prelate and the kafka-esque bureaucracy of the Catacombs Guild.

It's essentially...

The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison.

Way too eager to explore a haunted area called the 'Hill of Werewolves'

The 2.5th chapter of Thara Celehar's suffering starts off on a worryingly positive note. He gets to do normal things at his job, have minimal interactions with people in positions of power and even gets an apprentice! Fortunately we quickly return to normal, as investigating the suspected murder of an elderly marchioness leads him on the mother of all tangents, ending with something notably scarier than a ghoul and serious consequences.

Also, photography is apparently inherently pornographic...

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison.

What if the emperor was a decent guy?

Poor Maia is the 4th son of the elvish emperor, consigned to a remote manor with his abusive uncle for the crime of being born to a wife the emperor didn't like very much. Or at least he was, until the airship his father and three brothers were on exploded, making him the new emperor.

Growing up with no one to talk to other than a drunken uncle who beats you for fun is perhaps not the most standard training for emperorhood, but...

The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison.

I came here to drink tea and solve murders

The more I read of this the more convinced I became it was partway through a series, but I never really felt compelled to put it down and check. Celehar's very matter-of-fact approach to decidedly not matter-of-fact situations is a perspective which seems like it should make him a boring character, but never manages to. Instead he's just a competent guy trying to get his job done in the midst of murder, undead and office politics.

We begin with the...

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei.

Birds solve crimes in space

I enjoyed this while reading it, but struggle to think of anything that stood out looking back. Our protagonist (Asuka) is one of 80 crew members on a an all-female colony ship which just had its course forcibly adjusted by the same explosion which killed its captain. As the 'alternate', the only person on the ship without a clearly defined role, Asuka gets roped into becoming humanity's first space detective. Her investigations are interspaced with flashbacks to their training on Earth, providing context for her constant...

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey.

Noir detective with magical-sister issues goes back to high school

I really enjoyed this one, even stayed up an hour past my usual bedtime to finish it off last night. Ivy is a very human protagonist who's quippy without entering Marvel territory, and the supporting cast all fill their roles well. She's a private investigator estranged from her magical sister, at least until a death at the magical high school her sister teaches at smashes them back into each other's lives.

The cast & overall story are kept tight & focused...

Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Home & Away style drama but compelling characters

When I look back on the plot it seems simple to the point of ridiculousness, but the emotional highs and lows carried me through so well while reading that I didn't notice. I wasn't expecting to get so attached to a bunch of aristocrats and their ward, but Briony, Cecilia and Robbie are all deeply flawed, deeply interesting people trying to do the best they can in the world as they see it.

Unfortunately for Cecilia & Robbie, Briony sees the world as a creative...

Crossroads of Ravens by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Goddamit now I have to play the Witcher games again

I first read the Witcher series in 2015; can't remember if it was because I played the games or I played the games because I read the books. Either way I absolutely devoured them; the core characters were all charming but flawed, the setting was my first encounter with a grittier, more 'realistic' fantasy and the writing had that intangible sense of 'quality' you get from a good author. It probably didn't hurt that I was all-in on the 'Witcher Expanded...

The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett.

My YA novel moratorium lasted all of two weeks

In my defense, I'd just finished [Homo Deus](/books/2025/homo_deus.md and wanted something light after the inevitable depression brought on by thinking about the future. I really liked the main hook of the magic system; being able to just argue reality into giving up and letting you do what you want is cool. The protagonist's ability to then argue with the things arguing with reality, and exploit their single-mindedness to convince them to do things they weren't designed for, lead to some highlight...

I'm getting too old for this.

• The Day Death Stopped by Rebecca Thorne

There are a lot of problems with this book. The characters are so one dimensional and the story so straightforward I skipped from the first third of the book to the ending and still perfectly understood/expected what happened. Much of the time which could've been spent making the characters anything other than tired cliches was instead spent details which exist just to be quirky, and worldbuilding/a power system which frequently contradicts itself. I'm mildly annoyed that I wasted as much time as...

The Book of Love by Kelly Link.

Desperate Housewives but university first years and magic.

Not winning a Pulitzer, but it was an enjoyable ride. The opening gave me high hopes by teasing an interesting world beyond the protagonists' understanding, then let me down by proving it was still beyond their understanding right up to the end.

Every interesting secret or ability ended up being disgorged in their general direction or handed to them before they even needed to think about it. Need to learn magic by a deadline? Just don't think about it at all and...

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman.

A classic Arthurian legend; minus the Arthur.

This book subverts expectations so often that it wraps right back around to meeting them again, but it's still an enjoyable read. As the story takes great pains to impress upon you, Arthurian legends should be filled with gallant knights rescuing damsels in distress and undertaking glamourous quests for King and Country. In this version of Camelot though, the knights are decidedly human with all the vices that entails, the damsels are quite capable of rescuing themselves and the last glamourous quest severely culled...

Named for what it provides David Foster Wallace while people try to guess what on Earth is going on.

• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

It's a testament to the difference between great and decent writers that I had absolutely no idea what was happening for the majority of this book, but was still enraptured enough to spend something like 40 hours finishing it.

DFW opens with the classic 'start at the end' gambit, then constantly keeps the reader off balance by jumping around in time and resolutely refusing to reveal anything resembling an overarching...