#2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella

[spaceagemermaid]

Novella Review: Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma by R.S.A. Garcia

Tonya R. Moore reviews the finalist for the 2022 Ignyte Award for Best Novella and for the 2022 Theodore A. Sturgeon Memorial Award: R.S.A. Garcia's scifi novella: Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma.

Published in the January 2021 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, R.S.A. Garcia’s compelling sequel to her story, The Sun From Both Sides is set in a distant, post-transhumanist future where every human in Eva’s culture is paired with artificial intelligence, which functions as their sibling and protector, from birth. Eva lives with her husband, Dee, in cloistered contentment in a sylvan…

[annarellix]

The Unbalancing by R. B. Lemberg (Birdverse)

Beneath the waters by the islands of Gelle-Geu, a star sleeps restlessly. The celebrated new starkeeper Ranra Kekeri, who is preoccupied by the increasing tremors, confronts the problems left behind by her predecessor. Meanwhile, the poet Erígra Lilún, who merely wants to be left alone, is repeatedly asked by their ancestor Semberi to take over the starkeeping helm. Semberi insists upon telling Lilun mysterious tales of the deliverance of the stars by the goddess Bird. When Ranra and Lilun meet, sparks begin to fly. An unforeseen configuration of their magical deepnames illuminates the trouble under the tides. For Ranra and Lilun, their story is just beginning; for the people of Gelle-Geu, it may well be too late to save their home

Book link: https://tachyonpublications.com/product/the-unbalancing/

My Review: I fell in love with the Birdverse when I read The Four Profound Weaves as this complex, inclusive, and fascinating universe kept in thrall and made me sad when I closed the book. The Unbalancing is even better and I was happy to travel again to the Birdverse and meet the characters. There's a lot of inclusivity and the characters are realistic, fleshed out and interesting. There's nothing forced, there's no sense of things-done-because-I-had-check-a-list, everything flows and i was sad again at the end of this book. I had a bad case of book hangover but I'm happy I read it. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Tachyon Publications for this digital copy, all opinions are mine

The Author: R.B. Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe to the US. R.B.'s Birdverse novella The Four Profound Weaves (Tachyon, 2020) is a finalist for the Nebula, Ignyte, Locus, and World Fantasy awards, as well as an Otherwise Award honoree. R.B.'s poetry memoir Everything Thaws will be published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2022. Their stories and poems have appeared in Lightspeed Magazine’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction!, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, We Are Here: Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, and many other venues. You can find R.B. on Twitter at @rb_lemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/rblemberg, and at their websites rblemberg.net and birdverse.net.