Author: katenepveu

Posted on

2014 Campbell Nominees

A quasi-Hugo post, as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is awarded through the same process but is Not A Hugo.

Wesley Chu. [*] I tried to read his first novel, The Lives of Tao, and gave up after, let’s see, four chapters. It was competently written but I wasn’t enjoying myself at all. Chad told me about it and yeah, it’s basically the Goa’uld and the Tok’ra all over again: sentient aliens that require hosts to live, share humans’ brains with them, and can use humans like meat puppets—except not even the nominally good ones in Chu’s novel ask for permission first, and they can’t be removed without killing the human. And from the four chapters I read, and what Chad told me, no-one takes the ethics of that at all seriously! Plus I am seriously over male geek wish-fulfillment fantasies; and when even positive reviews note its “[e]ye-rolling male gaze” and how the women are “all there to serve the male-driven plot”? No thank you.

[*] Initially I had a brain-glitch and conflated him with John Chu, who has a short story nominated for a Hugo. I got their names right in the entries and even the tags, and then just . . . glitched. Horribly sorry, and thanks to Caroline for pointing it out in comments.

Max Gladstone. Really liked his first book; meh about his second.

Ramez Naam. I stopped reading Nexus in the fourth chapter, when the clumsy exposition got to be too much. I hadn’t been enjoying myself much to begin with there, either—I’m pretty sure that the first chapter, which shows a guy using a seduction program and then a porn program to get a woman into bed, is supposed to show that he’s a bad guy, but being in his POV was seriously offputting—and then I realized that I’d already read works by multiple other authors on the ballot that were more technically accomplished, and closed the file.

Sofia Samatar. A Stranger in Olondria is really good; “Selkie Stories Are for Losers” is growing on me.

Benjanun Sriduangkaew. Short fiction only so far. Two of the three stories in the voter packet are online: “The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly” (Mythic Delirium) and “Silent Bridge, Pale Cascade” (Clarkesworld). (The other is “Fade to Gold.”) These were all very good. Sriduangkaew’s prose is a little on the ornate side for my tastes, but I’d comfortably put these up against anything else on the short fiction ballot.

(This is as good a place as any to note that many of the stories on the ballot this year are about identity in the face of technological changes to memory: the two Sriduangkaew stories linked above; “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”; “The Waiting Stars”; and of course Ancillary Justice.)

My ballot is probably 1) Samatar; 2) Sriduangkaew; 3) Gladstone; 4) No Award.

5 Comments

Posted on

2014 Hugo Nominees: Novella

One more short fiction category for the Hugos.

“Wakulla Springs” by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages (Tor.com). This is pretty well-done, except for two things. First, its narrative weight is fairly unbalanced, scanting the end. Second, it becomes unequivocally SFF only in, literally, the last paragraph—indeed, I’ve seen a number of people argue that it’s not SFF at all. I think it is, because when I re-read that paragraph (I’d forgotten it entirely from my first read), I saw how the SFF element worked with the themes of the story . . . but in a very “let us write a high school essay pointing out the themes” kind of way. So I think it’s SFF, I just don’t think the SFF element is very good.

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente (published as standalone book; available as an ebook but not for free online). This also scants its ending, alas. More, it shifts from first to third about halfway through, and I would really have liked either first-person or some more explanation for the actions of the protagonist late in the story. Plus I didn’t find the narrative voice employed, in either first or third, very easy to get into. But I was somewhat more interested in it than in “Wakulla Springs,” so I don’t know.

The Butcher of Khardov by Dan Wells (published as a standalone book; available as an ebook but not for free online). I got about three pages into this before I said, “ugh, no.” Chad assures me that I didn’t miss a thing.

Did not read: “Equoid” by Charles Stross, because I am allergic to Stross’ fiction, which this time let me avoid some really awful sexual violence against a child, among other things (a short summary, read with due caution for triggers), so yay for that; “The Chaplain’s Legacy” by Brad Torgersen, again for the reasons discussed here.

I am really not sure what my ballot looks like, at this point, because I found both “Wakulla Springs” and Six-Gun Snow White flawed in fairly similar ways, and those are the only two going above No Award.

No Comments

Posted on

2014 Hugo Nominees: Novelette

I’ve actually finished all the Hugo reading I’m going to do! Now I just have to . . . write it up. And vote, of course. Okay, here we go, today’s the day for all these (scheduled) posts.

So, I read 3/5 of the Novelette ballot. I’m going to discuss it, and the rest of the ballots, in alphabetical order by author’s last name.

“The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang (Subterranean). As far as I’m concerned, this juuuuust barely escapes being a blog post or a Slate article about how technological advances change the way we approach memory, as opposed to being, you know, a story. And I would respect people who thought it didn’t escape it. (I also liked it better when I thought the third-person thread was not part of the first-person narrator’s presentation, but that’s a minor point.)

“The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard (at the author’s site). This was really good: emotionally engaging, genuinely science fictional worldbuilding, a lot of tension, resonant with current-day concerns while avoiding being didactic.

“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor.com). Nothing about the emotional weight of this story surprised me in the least, and that’s not even getting the weirdness of the worldbuilding that secritcrush on LJ notes.

Not read: “Opera Vita Aeterna” by Vox Day or “The Exchange Officers” by Brad Torgersen, for the reasons discussed here.

My ballot: 1) “The Waiting Stars”; (2) “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”; (3) “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”; (4) No Award; (5) “The Exchange Officers”; (6) “Opera Vita Aeterna” (on ranking items below No Award).

No Comments

Posted on

Hatke, Ben: (02-03): Legends of Zita the Spacegirl, The Return of Zita the Spacegirl

The concluding books of Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl trilogy, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl and The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, are as good or better than the first. Zita’s not perfect and the books let the consequences of her momentary lapses of judgment play out, with the same great art and inventive fun as before. Lovely plot momentum, too, Exhibit A for which is SteelyKid: the morning after we read the first half of the second book, she was dragging even more than usual, and she eventually admitted that she’d stayed up to read (or “read,” more likely) the second half of the book. So, though I felt like I was betraying my younger self to do it, I made sure to keep the third book out of her room when we weren’t actively reading it . . .

SteelyKid was a smidge taken aback by the “life goes on” style ending, because apparently narrative closure is an important thing when you’re almost six, but seemed satisfied by my firm promise that if the author wrote more books about Zita, we would get them. So, to the extent the SteelyKid seal of approval means anything to adults (as she also really likes, you know, Scooby-Doo books), there you go.

4 Comments

Posted on

Leckie, Ann: (01) Ancillary Justice

book cover Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice was one of the most talked-about books of my social circle over the last several months, and is nominated for a Best Novel Hugo. I think it’s not quite as amazing as all the discussion led me to expect, but it’s still damn good. Unless Mira Grant’s Parasite is far better than I expect (not that I have anything against Grant, but I haven’t heard anything about Parasite—well, anything at all, actually, which necessarily includes “anything that would suggest it’s as interesting as Ancillary Justice“), it’s at the top of my Hugo ballot.

The narrator of the novel, who goes by Breq, used to be a two-thousand-year-old spaceship called Justice of Toren which served in the Radch Empire. More specifically, she used to be an AI which controlled the spaceship as well as thousands of ancillaries—human bodies whose minds were wiped so that they could be controlled by the AI, like limbs. But now only a single ancillary body remains.

About the first half of the novel proceeds in two strands: retrospective narration of Justice of Toren‘s experiences twenty years ago, and a present-day strand in which Breq is on a quest for vengeance against the deliciously-named Anaander Mianaai, the Lord of the Radch Empire, who uses the same technology behind ancillaries to exist across thousands of bodies. So right away this is catnip for me: I love well-executed variations on narration, and there’s two things here, one new-to-me and one not but still great. First, the retrospective narration is first-person singular (“I”) but from many different physical perspectives. It starts out focused on One Esk, a twenty-ancillary unit stationed on a planet that the Radch Empire has recently annexed (read: violently conquered), and later broadens to include the awareness of Justice of Toren‘s ship functions (which are mostly background noise when the story is focused on the planet). At all points, the different perspectives and events experienced and related by the “I” are handled deftly. (And in particularly tense moments, the geographically-dispersed narration gives a kind of cinematic effect of quick-cutting between scenes, which is cool.) Second, in all her manifestations, Justice of Toren/One Esk/Breq is a profoundly unreliable narrator: but in ways completely separate from her multiplicity of physical inputs, which just delights me.

This is another book I read in tiny fragments at first, which did it no favors, to the point where I delayed writing this up until I could claw out some chunks of time to re-read it properly. And it works better that way, because what I thought at first was an overly-slow start turns out to be important for character development. I admit that I’d like there to have been more story in the present-day plot than there was; it is apparently a trilogy, and the book ends as a natural break point but with a tantalizing/frustrating promise of “this is just the beginning.”

This is a book very concerned with identity, as should be obvious from what I said already, and also with class. I haven’t seen much discussion of it along the latter lines; if anyone has links, please leave them in comments, because I know my thinking about class issues is pretty 101 and I’d love a more nuanced and informed analysis. It is not, much, a book concerned with gender, though that’s the other thing everyone knows about it: (a) it’s a book about an individual who used to be a spaceship and (b) it uses female pronouns for everyone, regardless of what, if any, gender they self-identify as.

This is only partly successful, but is also not that big a part of the book. In-text, we’re told that Radchaai society doesn’t have gender and therefore doesn’t mark it linguistically, and that Breq is unable to identify individuals’ gender in other societies. It’s implied that in translation, Radchaai ungendered pronouns are rendered “she.” Put that way, the problem with this is immediately obvious: “she” is not an ungendered pronoun. Sure, it’s better than Brust translating Paarfi’s ungendered forms of address into the masculine, and frankly I found it very relaxing to have the default be female instead of male [*]; but it’s quite true that in challenging the male default, the book’s pronouns then fall headfirst into reinforcing the binary gender default. I think it would have made more sense for the book to use an ungendered pronoun for Radchaai and an arbitrary gendered pronoun (“she”) for others. But, because Breq doesn’t care about gender, and because Radchaai society doesn’t either, the pronoun thing is a pretty small part of the book: Breq has a few musings about navigating other cultures politely, but that’s about it.

[*] Also relaxing is that the Raadchi are brown-skinned (indeed, a fairly dark brown is apparently the fashion).

There’s lots of stuff I haven’t even mentioned yet—aliens, there are aliens that are offstage in this book but very significant and teased to appear in the next; very tantalizing hints about Breq’s time before the present-day strand picks up (I don’t know if those are short stories, backstory to be expounded upon later, or just things to make the universe feel convincingly large, but any way I love them); and the relationship between Breq and her officers and former officers, including Seivarden Vendaai, who Breq almost literally stumbles across at the start of the present-day strand and rescues from hypothermia. (Yes, coincidence. I’ll allow it for the thematic resonances.) Leckie is juggling a lot of balls, and it’s tough to resolve anything on this scale, but as soon as I finished this I pre-ordered the sequel, which is out in October.

In short: not the best thing since sliced bread, but damn good. Read it.

(By the way, the series name comes from the header image at the author’s website.)

A spoiler post follows.

No Comments

Posted on

2014 Hugo Nominees: Short Story

More Hugo homework, the four nominees for Short Story. I’m going to do this, hmm, alphabetical by last name.

“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu (Tor.com). I liked this story a lot when I first read it, and I still like the conceit—the water of the title appears when you lie—and most of the characters. But on re-read, the malignancy of the narrator’s sister really stands out as a contrast to the nuance granted to the other characters. There’s the barest hint of an reason, but it’s not, for me, adequate or followed through, and she ends up feeling like she belongs in some other story. It’s distracting and frankly somewhat distressing, and knocks the story down in my estimation on both the craft and individual enjoyment levels.

“The Ink Readers of Doi Saket” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt [*] (Tor.com). This is a story by a Dutch author set in present-day Thailand about the festival Loi Krathong. It makes me uncomfortable on a number of different levels. First, I am not the right reader for a satirical/ironic/humorous/something tone when the story starts with a murder. Second, I think it’s rude to use an active religion as fantasy fodder if it’s not your religion; that goes double for using a deity as an actual character. (I am assuming that it is not based on the biographical information I can find about the author and the next point.) Third, it uses footnotes to translate the Thai names, which I find very distracting and, also, the most prominent example of the way the overall story gives me the vibe of “you-the-intended-reader are Not Like Them!” (Chu’s story is an interesting contrast in this regard; it contains a number of untranslated words or sentences in Chinese, and makes clear their content from the surrounding context. Which, we’re SFF readers, we’re totally capable of that.) So, yeah, you could say I didn’t like this one.

[*] I am assuming based on the author’s domain name that he has an unhyphenated two-word last name; if I’m wrong, let me know & I’ll correct the tag.

“Selkie Stories Are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons). I have read this story about half a dozen times, because the first time I read it, it left me absolutely cold, and I know a number of people whose tastes I respect who are in raptures over it. It’s a very well-crafted story: distinctive narrative voice, excellent economical characterizations, careful parallels and resonances. And for the first four times or so I read it, it just . . . sat there in my mind, like a polished stone egg, admirable but completely lifeless. On the last couple of reads it’s starting to pick up emotional resonance for me, but I wouldn’t blame anyone else for not waiting that long.

(Also, in looking at reviews, I was surprised how many readers of a SFF magazine had no idea what a selkie was. But even if you don’t, again, I think the story makes it clear from context if you’re reading with your SFF-worldbuilding goggles on.)

“If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky (Apex). This is by far the shortest story on the ballot, not even a thousand words if cut-and-paste into Word can be trusted. I loved it immediately, and still love it, but it’s so short that it’s hard to talk about. I love the rhythm of the prose and the way it leads from one thing to another and the emotional effect that has. I can see that the prose might not work for some people, but read it slow and give it a shot. It’s unquestionably my first choice.

(Chad’s reaction to the ballot was that it was “a bundle of misery,” which is not my impression. Because of the weird tone, I’m not entirely sure what effect “Ink Readers” was going for, but besides the minor matter of the murder that opens the story *ahem*, I think it’s probably not unrelieved misery. For the rest, spoilers, rot-13: V guvax “Fryxvr Fgbevrf” naq “Jngre” obgu raq ba abgrf bs ubcr, naq juvyr “Qvabfnhe” qbrfa’g, V ybir gur ynathntr fb zhpu gung vg qbrfa’g srry pehfuvat.)

My ballot thus tentatively stands at: 1) “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”; 2) “Selkie Stories Are for Losers”; 3) “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere”; 4) No Award; 5) “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket.” What about yours?

(Also: I’ve updated the about page with a comment policy, if you’re new here.)

No Comments

Posted on

Hatke, Ben: (01) Zita the Spacegirl

Zita the Spacegirl cover I got Ben Hatke’s Zita the Spacegirl for SteelyKid, but wasn’t on her bedtime rotation the night she finished it, so flipped through it myself quick.

This graphic novel is really charming. Zita and her friend Joseph are playing and find a mysterious device with a big red button in a crater. Zita, of course, pushes the button; a portal appears, tentacles grab Joseph and pull him through, and then the portal closes. Zita takes a moment to freak out and then jumps after him.

On the other side of the portal, she finds many different aliens on a planet that’s going to be hit by an asteroid in three days. She explores the planet and collects friends and allies in her quest to rescue Joseph (picking up a superhero-style costume along the way, as you can see on the cover).

I love Zita’s bravery, active nature, and loyalty to her friends. And the art is great, clean but detailed enough to show off the inventiveness of the worlbuilding. (The author’s site has four one-page comics about Zita and friends, which give a good sense of it.)

SteelyKid enjoyed it, by the way, but according to Chad was somewhat taken aback by the fact that the end of the volume concluded a story but not the story. So we’ll be acquiring the next two volumes (it’s a just-completed trilogy) pronto and will report back.

3 Comments

Posted on

Rees Brennan, Sarah: (02-03): The Demon’s Covenant; The Demon’s Surrender

Continuing the catching-up with Sarah Rees Brennan’s The Demon’s Covenant and The Demon’s Surrender, which conclude the Demon’s Lexicon trilogy.

Unfortunately the thing I loved best about the first book was the narration, and each book in the trilogy has a different narrator. So my excitement was already somewhat reduced, and never really recovered.

The second book sagged a bit, in terms of wheel-spinning, my relative lack of interest in the characters’ romantic choices, and finding some plot issues a little too obvious (and one annoying, major spoiler, ROT-13: gjb obbxf jvgu qrnq zbzf ng gur raq bs rnpu bar, ernyyl?). The third was better in many regards, but I was distracted by feeling that it should not have been narrated by a single person, because at some point I start to notice how often the narrator has to listen at the door to keep us updated on important developments. (Further, my notes to myself from way, way back in the day indicate that I had a problem with trying to repeatedly generate suspense from the combination of an ignorant narrator and a knowing audience, but it’s been so long that I can’t back up with details now.)

Basically I liked the series reasonably well overall, but didn’t feel it lived up to the first book.

No Comments

Posted on

Novik, Naomi: (07-08) Crucible of Gold, Blood of Tyrants

More backlog catchup, this time the most recent two books in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, Crucible of Gold and Blood of Tyrants.

I have to confess that I was reading the second of these, Blood of Tyrants, and had literally no recollection of the existence of Crucible of Gold as I started—I kept thinking they’d just left Australia (which would be Tongues of Serpents, the one before). As I read, though, there were enough references to Crucible that it came back to me: “oh, right, they went to South America and things happened.” Once I remembered them, they were perfectly pleasant things and made sense and advanced the plot and themes, but my initial failure to remember their existence suggests that, perhaps, it was not the most striking of books.

Blood of Tyrants covers a lot of ground, literally and figuratively, but moves quickly and fully sets the stage for the next and last book in the series, which I am very eager for. It also ends on rather a cliffhanger, so at this point you might as well wait for next year sometime when that comes out. Otherwise, I’m a little dubious about it giving Laurence amnesia for a good chunk of the book, but it’s the kind of thing that I would want to have a fresher big-picture view of the series to decide.

(Which I expect to have, as I am tentatively slated to re-read the series for Tor.com in the leadup to the last book’s release. Expect reports of research reading on the Napoleonic Wars here as preparation . . . )

2 Comments