#tade thompson

[bookaddict24-7]

BOOKS ON MY TBR SHELVES BY BLACK AUTHORS:

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman

American Dreamer by Adriana Herrera

Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown

The Roommate Risk by Talia Hibbert

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Cool. Awkward. Black. by Various

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

No Gods. No Monsters. by Cadwell Turnbull

Tristan Strong Punches A Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia

___

Have you read any of these books? Are any on your TBR?

___

Happy reading!

[shsenhaji]

📚 May Reading Round-Up 📚

I finally can say that I've read LOTR! Or, at least, the first book (I've also read The Hobbit). May was a good reading month, in which I was once again able to get to some of my long-waiting TBR, and where I also decided to re-read The Greenwing and Dart series by Victoria Goddard (which is delightful as always).

- The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (the audiobook by Andy Serkis was amazing; liked the first half better than the second, made more sense than the movies but was less emotional, didn’t love the narration style or some of the themes, loved our best boys and more of Bilbo... Boromir 😭)

- Paladin's Faith by T. Kingfisher (Good, funny, loved the romance, great ending, didn’t feel like there was a final character resolution but there was growth, definitely setting up later books)

- Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly (Good, somewhat unrealistic, loved the messages and themes, binged it in a few sittings)

- Calamity by Constance Fay (Very funny, intriguing worldbuilding, cute romance, didn’t love the take on this trope but didn’t hate it)

- Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas (Read it in one sitting, beautiful, bittersweet, cute, a fun read, really loved this take on Neverland and Peter Pan)

- Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Fun, really enjoyed the middle, liked the characters, compelling, didn’t love the ending or how the romance was resolved, great worldbuilding)

- Stargazy Pie by Victoria Goddard (Re-read, a fun emotional ride, noticed even more hints and details, loved it)

- Bee Sting Cake by Victoria Goddard (Re-read, the emotions didn’t quite hit me as much this time, loved it, heartwarming and validating)

- Whiskeyjack by Victoria Goddard (Re-read, ending got me all emotional, such fun)

- Blackcurrant Fool by Victoria Goddard (Re-read, not too intense, emotional ending, really enjoyed the plot and the characters)

- Love-in-a-Mist by Victoria Goddard (Re-read, delightful, fun, heartwarming, didn’t like Master Boring as much)

- Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson (Compelling, great worldbuilding and interesting characters, felt a bit let down by the resolution/ending)

- Batman: Wayne Family Adventures Vol. 3 by C.R.C. Payne and Starbite (Got very emotional, a fun read)

[youtwitinmyface]

[downthetubes]

Launching Today: PJ Holden’s Null Space

Null Space is a new weekly webcomic beginning today, Friday 6th October, the brainchild of 2000AD artist PJ Holden, featuring a veritable feast of big name writers from science fiction and fantasy, some making their debut as comic writers

Null Space is a new weekly webcomic beginning today, Friday 6th October, the brainchild of 2000AD artist PJ Holden, featuring a veritable feast of big name writers from science fiction and fantasy, some making their debut as comic writers with this project. “Each story will be self contained, set in its own world and be a delicate little gem of a one pager,” says PJ, whose many comic credits…

[bookcoversonly]

Title: The Murders of Molly Southbourne | Author: Tade Thompson | Publisher: Tor (2013)

[peonybookblog]

Recent (ish) sci-fi reads I've really loved!

Rosewater | Our Wives Under the Sea

[alfvaen]

Heavy Novel

August was a heavy month. Bob Geldof said so, and it's hard to disagree. I read some books in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Potential spoilers within for Jo Clayton's diadem series, Tade Thompson's Rosewater/Wormwood series, Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series, and of course Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga.

R.A. Salvatore: The Crystal Shard, completed August 5

Once again it was time to try a new author…a male author, and not one of the complete unknowns relegated to the pool table. I was ready for another epic fantasy, and for a while I was considering Broken Blade by Kelly McCullough, but then I was on Tumblr and saw a bunch of posts about Drizzt do'Urden and remembered that I had this book on the shelf as well. I've been hearing things about R.A. Salvatore for a while now, but I confess that I never got too deeply into D&D novels the way I did (at some point) into Star Trek. I did read the Dragonlance books pretty slavishly for a while, but to diminishing returns (I gave up after the first Richard Knaak one, I recall); I tried the first Forgotten Realms one, Azure Bonds, and was kind of meh. And at first what I heard about Drizzt (my fingers keep wanting to type "Drizzy", lol) sounded kind of cringe to my newly-sophisticated palate. (Heavy irony there--I was still reading Piers Anthony and Jack L. Chalker for years, and I now find them both relatively cringe.)

I elected to start with the first published book, rather than the first chronologically. This is not a simple decision; I've gone back and forth on this over the years. For instance, back when I was first trying out the Darkover series, I found a chronological list in one of the books and thus decided to start with Darkover Landfall, which was a bad call; I recall it as being so heavily infected with prequelitis as to be practically incomprehensible on its own. (Readers of Dragonsdawn will find this a familiar experience.) I also read the Deryni books starting with Camber rather than Kelson (though on reread the first Kelson trilogy was noticeably worse writing, so maybe I dodged a bullet there). But when I read the Vorkosigan series for the first time, I read in strict publication order, which I guess is not the worst way to read them but I certainly don't do it that way any more.

So with the Drizzt books, I did some research. It seemed like in this book, and its Icewind Dale trilogy, Drizzt was part of an ensemble cast, as opposed to the prequel trilogy where he was the main character. In the end I went for this one on the publication-order theory. Also apparently there are a total of 39(!) Drizzt books.

For the most part the book is…about what I would expect for a D&D book. Characters mostly seem pretty flat, combats are done decently well, evil is evil, plot is mostly pretty predictable but with occasional twists. It wasn't bad, and I read it all the way through to the end, but I might have enjoyed it more when I was 17. (Or younger, but I would have been 17 when it came out, so…) The book does not pass the Bechdel test, because I believe we only get two named female characters if you include Gwenhwyfar the panther, and I don't think Catti-Brie ever talks to her. (Nor does she even get a whole hell of a lot to do--even her potential romantic subplot is vestigial.) The setting is not bad--Icewind Dale and its Ten-Towns region, whose leaders tend to squabble a lot over petty grievances and fishing rights, practically rings the truest of anything.

So now I'm reconsidering my starting point and may actually want to try the prequel trilogy to see if they're any good, because Drizzt did seem the closest to being an actual character. Even if the renegade Dark Elf who turned against his evil race/culture toward the light is a cliché, it feels like Drizzt might be the reason it's a cliché. Not sure if I'm going to buying any more of the books right away, but it turns out my brother-in-law has the whole series and so maybe I'll just arrange to borrow some from him.

Jo Clayton: Shadowplay, completed August 9

Back to a female author next, probably not epic fantasy because of the Drizzt book, and it felt too soon for another urban fantasy as well, which usually means going to science fiction, or occasionally mainstream or something. When I don't have a strong indication of what to read next, I will often sort my to-read shelf chronologically, with the books that have been there longest at the top, and see what leaps out at me. This time I apparently settled on Jo Clayton.

Jo Clayton's books were big mass-market books from the 1980s, and I saw them around all the time…through rarely in the right order. Like I'd look on the library paperback racks and see Changer's Moon (third in its trilogy) and Blue Magic (second in its trilogy). In her case I never tried to read them out of order, so sometimes it was a long time before I got to start them. But I did finish her Diadem series, nine books in all. In those books, we follow a woman named Aleytys who gets a mysterious diadem (high-tech because this is SF and totally not magical at all) and then gets sold into slavery or something? (It's been a while, so some of the details are vague.) After a few books she frees herself and joins the Star Hunters and then goes looking for justice (possibly against her mother, who may have been the one to sell her into slavery). The diadem contains the mental patterns of three other people, including Swardheld and Shadith, who have been trapped in there for decades or even centuries, and provide her aid and advice in her travels. Later in the series (spoilers!) she figures out how to extricate her helpers into physical bodies. Shadith ends up in the body of a teenage girl. And Shadowplay is the first book in her series.

Shadith is on her way to a university education (fitting for her young body, anyway) but in trying to evade a creepy and lecherous security guard at a transfer station, she ends up interrupting a kidnapping in progress and getting dragged along by the also-somewhat-creepy-but-at-least-not-lecherous leader of the kidnappers to a mysterious planet that seems to be in the middle of a period of unrest. It turns out the kidnapper is some sort of high-level snuff artist, who likes to instigate horrible events on innocent planets, film them with his tiny drone cameras, and then sell the footage to certain wealthy and jaded clients. Shadith and her fellow abductees are dropped in to play the roles of avatars of a particular trio of folklore figures from the planetary culture that turn up from time to time and trigger unrest. Luckily, Shadith and/or her current body have psionic abilities to to read and control the thoughts of others…though mostly she can't use it on sentients, so she limits it to animals, where it still frequently comes in handy.

It sounds interesting enough, but I don't think Clayton actually pulls it off. Shadith and her fellow "avatars", a hunter with two large cats and a falcon, and a reptilian fellow with some mind-clouding mental abilities of his own, keep trying to get off the planet without getting involved with the natives…which means that, as a reader, I didn't feel the need to get invested in the on-planet struggles until most of the way through the book. And I had trouble with the character and culture names, which may be a skill issue, but it was like they kept getting introduced in such a way that I didn't realize they'd be important later. Our trio keep escaping and getting recaptured, escaping and getting recaptured, until it feels less like try-fails to advance the plot and more like futile efforts to extricate themselves from it. And then, at the end, Aleytys shows up and rescues them, literally using the phrase "dea ex machina". Okay, it's true that Shadith had tried to contact her earlier and was hoping that she'd show up, but still, it felt like a bit of a cheat. Shadith does do some work to help in her own rescue, but it doesn't feel like enough.

At the end, our snuff-film director escapes, so presumably the rest of the trilogy is Shadith trying to hunt him down. I haven't quite given up on the series yet, but it'll probably be a while before I get around to reading Shadowspeer, the second book. (Hmmm…is that "shadow-speer", or "shadow's peer"? I'd always assume the former, whatever a "speer" was, but now I'm wondering. Echoes of Andrew Offutt's "Shadowspawn"…)

Naomi Novik: A Deadly Education, completed August 12

After the Jo Clayton I wanted something a little newer…but perhaps not an entirely new author. And there was this Naomi Novik book sitting there. I sometimes read books a little slower than other members of my family (which is still faster than most people, I imagine), and my wife and my eldest son at the very least, if not my younger son too, had already read this one. I took a little longer to finish the Temeraire series, which I thought was pretty good if not amazing, and then I decided to go through her two fairy-tale-esque standalones, Uprooted and Spinning Silver, which were both really good. This is the first book in the Scholomance series, which I keep conflating in my head with Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series, which I also hadn't read yet, because my mind does that sometimes. (At least I'm pretty sure now that the Locked Tomb series is not written by Alix Harrow, though I have to look up the actual author every time still.)

I suspect that it would be accurate to say that this, a book about teenage wizards learning magic in a big magic school, might be vaguely Harry Potter-inspired. But if so, it's Harry Potter where Hogwarts has no actual professors, only spells that try to provide you with learning material and presumably somehow assess the assignments you submit. Oh, and there are "maleficaria", a.k.a. evil magic beasties, constantly trying to kill you if you let your guard down for even a second…and also you have to fight your way through a horde of them to graduate. Many wizards come from "enclaves", basically gated wizard communities intended to be defensible against maleficaria, though not all do; our protagonist, Galadriel, was raised by her mother in a commune after a "mal" killed her father, and she is apparently the subject of some prophecies that she will become a powerful force for evil. And she does have a talent for using "malia", which, unlike "mana" (which can be gained from a number of activites such as exercise, crocheting and other effortful exertions), is acquired by draining the life-force of other people, and is somewhat frowned upon.

Galadriel is in her junior year at the start of the book, trying her hardest not to give in to the ease of using malia, but she's an outsider in a place where being alone is a good way to get yourself killed by mals. And then New York enclave prodigy Orion Lake, who has the rare talent that he can gain mana by killing mals, bursts into her room to save her from a mal that she was planning to kill anyway, and keeps hanging around her because he's convinced she's going to turn evil. The whole thing annoys her, but she's not above using the perception that she and Orion are dating or something to weasel her way into some highly transactional relationships. Galadriel (or "El" as she prefers people call her) has built up quite a hard shell over the years, though, from a lot of childhood traumas that have taught her she can't rely on other people, particularly enclaves.

The book is a lot of fun, and really didn't make me think of Hogwarts all that much while I was reading; it is too much its own thing. Characters die, but overall the progression is towards hope. Highly looking forward to reading the other two books in the series. (The next book is called The Last Graduate and I'm already speculating as to what that might mean…)

Lois McMaster Bujold: CryoBurn, completed August 16

Almost done the Vorkosigan reread, and into the part that feels more like a slog, because this is probably one of my least favourite books in the series. I mean, most of the book is just meh, and the best part is really the post-denouement twist that hits with the last line of the book proper, and is then dealt with in a short epilogue. After maybe the first few pages Miles rarely feels like he's in jeopardy, and the tension just ratchets down throughout the book.

Probably what she is doing here is an attempt to explore some of the ramifications of cryofreezing the way she did many of the implications of the uterine replicator, so we go to a planet, New Hope a.k.a. Kibou-Daini, where people routinely get themselves frozen if they're ill or old, or feel like they might become ill or old in the future. The worst part of the whole setup is the fact that people who are frozen are allowed to assign a proxy to vote for them (since they're technically not dead), which ends up being the corporation who has custody of their frozen body. And with corporate mergers, those voting blocs have become intensely concentrated. Sure, that's fine. But I just couldn't get too invested in the plot.

Miles is on Kibou-Daini investigating a company that's trying to set up this scheme on Komarr, and through one of those series of coincidences that I don't care for, ends up meeting a runaway boy named Jin whose mother was frozen to stop her blowing the whistle on a particularly egregious corporate failure. The only part which is not an implausible coincidence is that it's a different company than the Komarr one. We get POV from Miles, Jin, and also Roic, and we get guest appearances from Mark, Kareen Koudelka, and Raven Durona. It has its moments, but it's very lightweight.

And then, yeah, there's a painful event at the very end and an epilogue in the form of five drabbles. (I'm not sure whether to give it away here or not, given what a gutpunch it was on first read, but it's also entirely the basis for the plot of Gentleman Jole And The Red Queen, so I won't be able to talk about that book without giving it away… I guess it can wait until I get there, though. Which will, by this point, be next month.)

Tade Thompson: The Rosewater Redemption, completed August 21

As I've mentioned before, I seem to have a harder time finding male authors for my diversity slot than I do female ones. Tade Thompson's Rosewater trilogy (well, Wormwood Trilogy, technically, but they all have "Rosewater" in the title) is something that would otherwise have been on the bubble, but I've kept going on it because of this particular scarcity, mostly from the library. For whatever reason (perhaps because I'm currently following Tade Thompson on Bluesky) I decided to go with this one, given that the book was available at the library and I requested it with enough lead time for it to come in promptly.

The Wormwood books are set in Nigeria, where a gigantic alien entity named Wormwood (hence the series title) has relocated after its initial appearance in London. It starts healing people who come to it, leading to the formation of a shanty town outside its boundaries called Rosewater (ironic name based on the fact that it stinks) (hence the book titles). The first book, Rosewater, is all from the POV of a man named Kaaro, who has some psychic abilities based on alien biotechnology; the second book, The Rosewater Insurrection, is a multi-POV book about Rosewater's growth as a power and its struggles against the Nigerian government, and Wormwood's real goals. This book also seems to be multi-POV, but one of them gets to be first-person, and is the mysterious "Bicycle Girl" who showed up in earlier books and whose backstory is now delved into.

Sadly, the plot of this one is a bit scattered; with all of the characters from the previous two books, it feels like we're just visiting them in random order, and few of them get much shrift. There is a resolution of sorts, in the end, but it's slow to manifest and frankly I'm not sure if anyone gets "redeemed" per se. As series conclusions go, I've seen worse (cough The Sacred Band cough), but it still doesn't pack the punch of eiher of the first two books.

Garth Nix: Sabriel, completed August 25

I picked this one up next mostly because it came up when my wife was helping me organize my to-read shelf. This is not just a virtual shelf on Goodreads, and it's not a single shelf of books. It's not even a single bookshelf. No, it's two small bookshelves and a overflow shelf. At some point I did just keep the books I was planning to read on the shelves with the rest of them, but at some point, probably when I was transitioning from "read books in a strict sequence" to "pick the next book from a shortlist" mode. Currently it is organized by gender (since that informs my current reading schedule), then more or less by genre, and then by title. But besides the physical shelf I do maintain a Goodreads shelf, and a spreadsheet where I can keep track of things like when the book was acquired and the like. And sometimes they get out of sync, so I was sitting in front of the spreadsheet while my wife was going over the physical shelves. She found some on the shelf that weren't in the spreadsheet, I found some that were in the spreadsheet but not on the shelf, and we reconciled them. But she quibbled with the placement of Sabriel with the adult epic fantasy novels rather than the YA novels, so I decided I'd read it soon and settle the matter to my satisfaction.

I have read Garth Nix before, but mostly his middle-grade ones; I got them for my oldest son, starting with Mister Monday from the "Keys To The Kingdom" series, and he liked them, but I only got up to Sir Thursday before deciding I was tired of them. I had also read A Confusion of Princes, which had an interesting promotional campaign consistent of a Facebook game called "Imperial Galaxy" where you were an officer in a fleet ship. I was actually in Nix's own fleet, though my immediate commander was Arthur Slade; I enjoyed the game, but everyone else I tried to recruit to play it apparently didn't because I ended up with a bunch of inactive players in my fleet as dead weight. (Ah, Facebook games. They were their own particular thing.) Anyway, I had picked up Sabriel at some point, and I thought it was adult fantasy, so I decided to try it next.

But I guess perhaps it is actually young adult; at least, the main character is. The titular character is a girl whose mother died when she was born, and she herself was only saved from death when the mysterious Abhorsen (her father, apparently) showed up and ventured into the land of death to retrieve her. As a result of this experience, she is excessively pale and has a natural talent for necromancy. Oddly, this world is divided into the magic-laden Old Kingdom and the magic-poor Ancelstierre, and Sabriel grows up in a boarding school in a land of cars and guns (though no computers yet that I've seen), but close enough to the border wall that there is still some magic available for her to learn. When, in her Year Six, she receives a message that her father has gone missing, she has to leave school and return to the Old Kingdom to try to rescue him from the land of the dead.

It's a really good book, with some breakneck oh-my-god-please-let-her-rest sequences in it, a talking cat who is more than they seem, a nail-biting finale, intriguing worldbuilding, and barely a word wasted. One scene where she's listening to the people in the next room having sex makes it a little doubtful for YA but who knows, these days. And a little bit of head-hopping in one important scene, but it's probably fine. Apparently there are like five more books in the series? (And here I thought it was just a trilogy…) Apparently there's a reasonable-priced four-volume ebook omnibus available so probably we'll just do that. (Yes, my wife has read it now too, and my son probably will soon.)

Kim Harrison: Every Which Way But Dead, completed August 31

Between the YA-ish fantasy and the upcoming Vorkosigan reread, it seemed like the next book should probably be urban fantasy, with a female author. As I probably mentioned a little while ago when talking about the Faith Hunter series, I have started a lot of these series and have mostly not gotten super invested in any one of them to give it priority over the rest. Maybe the Tobey Daye (Seanan McGuire) and Kate Daniels (Ilona Andrew) are picking up a little, but mostly I can take or leave them. So I ended up just picking the "oldest" one of them which, now that I read a little further in the Faith Hunter series, is Kim Harrison's "Rachel Morgan/The Hollows" series.

Since I do read these books fairly well spaced apart, I do like a good recap game to remind me what happened previously. This book is mostly doing a decent job, though we start right out of the gate with a high-stress situation, Rachel having to confront the demon she made a bad deal with in the previous book to save people's lives and take a bag guy down. But we are quickly reacquainted with her vampire housemate and professional partner Ivy and other recurring characters.

The plot of the book seems to wander a lot, though. ("Every which way", like the title, perhaps?) Dealing with the demon's castoff, getting a contract from a famous musician for concert security, going on a date (with another vampire) which ends badly, meeting some of Ivy's family… She keeps shooting herself in the foot and endangering herself through sheer thoughtless stupidity. By halfway through the book it's not clear where it's going. And by the end, there have been some exciting scenes, but it feels like there's not much of a through-line. One job that Rachel was hired for didn't even happen in the book but was mentioned in the denouement like an afterthought.

I haven't quite given up on the series, but I am not inspired to speed up my reading pace.

So kind of a mixed month, with two great books and a handful of meh ones. Sometimes it do be that way.

I also finished the Dan Gardner Risk book. I quite appreciate what it has to say about how we fail to assess potential risks accurately. I feel more informed for reading it, which is to say that I'm probably in the state of thinking that I assess risks more accurately when I'm actually just as likely to make inaccurate estimates despite all my awareness of logical fallacies. I'd like to see an updated version of the book, or at least a discussion in the same vein, that deals with things like Covid-19, and whether the author still thinks of school shootings as an overblown risk.

I got An Immense World by Ed Yong as a birthday present, but I haven't started yet. Trying to read another month of comics on Marvel Unlimited instead (April 1994), though I spend a lot of time with the Simon Tatham's Puzzles app.

[tigger8900]

Far From the Light of Heaven, by Tade Thompson

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Michelle Campion is serving as first mate aboard the Ragtime, a colony ship that aims to transport its occupants — safely in stasis — to their destination. Piloted by a state-of-the-art AI, immune to human error, there's nothing that could go wrong! Except when Michelle emerges from her stasis as their journey comes to an end, she discovers that a number of the passengers have been slaughtered as they slept, a crime that could only have been committed by somebody — or some thing — already on the ship.

This is a neat little locked room mystery set in space, with a compelling twist in the second half. I don't know what I thought was going on when I started this book, but I certainly wouldn't have guessed that! I loved the afrofuturism — the destination colony is in the Lagos system — and the attention to scientific detail, though I have to take the author's word for it that it's accurate. I also appreciated the themes surrounding AI consciousnesses.

My biggest gripe with this book is that it felt like a prequel to a different book or series. There were some aspects — the Lambers, Nightshade — that felt un-elaborated upon, and the ending of the story felt like it was setting up the kind of grand conflict that would be the main plot of a different story. There should be another story taking place five or ten years after this one, and the fact that we don't have that makes this feel incomplete somehow, despite the fact that the mystery was successfully concluded.

I usually try to note animal death content warnings in my reviews, but this is one where I'm gonna have to direct you to somewhere else. I have a note that there is such a content warning needed, but I've fallen behind on reviews and no longer recall the specific contexts well enough to warn.

[jolieeason]

It's Monday, What Are You Reading---May 15th, 2023

So, I realized that I haven’t done IMWAYR for a long time. Actually, the last time I posted was in September 2021. So, it has been a minute. Why decide to post now? Well, I want to, and I like sharing what I read over the weekend (no huge lists of books like on WWW Wednesday). So with no further comment, here are the books: It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet up and share what…

[oetter]

i need Books to Read. or i fear i may perish

[avdmai]

pov you're a sci-fi writer who just learned about mycelial networks and you're about to give fungi telepathic powers

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: black science fiction

As february and black history month nears its end, if you're a reader let's not forget to read and appreciate books by black authors the rest of the year as well! If you're a sci-fi fan like me, perhaps this list can help find some good books to sink your teeth into.

Bleak dystopias, high tech space adventures, alien monsters, alternate dimensions, mash-ups of sci-fi and fantasy - this list features a little bit of everything for genre fiction fans!

For more details on the books, continue under the readmore. Titles marked with * are my personal favorites. And as always, feel free to share your own recs in the notes!

If you want more book recs, check out my masterpost of rec lists!

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor

Something massive and alien crashes into the ocean off the coast of Nigeria. Three people, a marine biologist, a rapper, and a soldier, find themselves at the center of this presence, attempting to shepherd an alien ambassador as chaos spreads in the city. A strange novel that mixes the supernatural with the alien, shifts between many different POVs, and gives a one of a kind look at a possible first contact.

Nubia: The Awakening (Nubia series) by Omar Epps & Clarence A. Hayes

Young adult. Three teens living in the slums of an enviromentally ravaged New York find that something powerful is awakening within them. They’re all children of refugees of Nubia, a utopian African island nation that sank as the climate worsened, and realize now that their parents have been hiding aspects of their heritage from them. But as they come into their own, someone seeks to use their abilities to his own ends, against their own people.

The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown

Novella. After having failed at establishing a new colony, starship Calypso fights to make it back to Earth. Acting captain Jacklyn Albright is already struggling against the threats of interstellar space and impending starvation when the ship throws her a new danger: something is hiding on the ship, picking off her crew one by one in bloody, gruesome ways. A quick, excellent read if you want some good Alien vibes.

Dawn (Xenogenesis trilogy) by Octavia E. Butler*

After a devestating war leaves humanity on the brink of extinction, survivor Lilith finds herself waking up naked and alone in a strange room. She’s been rescued by the Oankali, who have arrived just in time to save the human race. But there’s a price to survival, and it might be humanity itself. Absolutely fucked up I love it I once had to drop the book mid read to stare at the ceiling and exclaim in horror at what was going on. Includes darker examinations of agency and consent, so enter with caution.

Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson*

Utterly unique in world-building, story, and prose, Midnight Robber follows young Tan-Tan and her father, inhabitants of the Carribean-colonized planet of Toussaint. When her father commits a terrible crime, he’s exiled to a parallel version of the same planet, home to strange aliens and other human exiles. Tan-Tan, not wanting to lose her father, follows with him. Trapped on this new planet, he becomes her worst nightmare. Enter this book with caution, as it contains graphic child sexual abuse.

Rosewater (The Wormwood trilogy) by Tade Thompson

In Nigeria lies Rosewater, a city bordering on a strange, alien biodome. Its motives are unknown, but it’s having an undeniable effect on the surrounding life. Kaaro, former criminal and current psychic agent for the government, is one of the people changed by it. When other psychics like him begin getting killed, Kaaro must take it upon himself to find out the truth about the biodome and its intentions.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

Young adult. A century ago, an astronomer discovered a possibly Earth-like planet. Now, a team of veteran astronauts and carefully chosen teenagers are preparing to embark on a twenty-three year trip to get there. But space is dangerous, and the team has no one to rely on but each other if - or when - something goes wrong. An introspective slowburn of a story, this focuses more on character work than action.

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

After the planet Sadira is left uninhabitable, its few survivors are forced to move to a new world. On Cygnus Beta, they work to rebuild their society alongside their distant relatives of the planet, while trying to preserve what remains of their culture. Focused less on hard science or action, The Best of All Possible Worlds is more about culture, romance and the ethics and practicalities of telepathy.

Mirage (Mirage duology) by Somaiya Daud

Young adult. Eighteen-year-old Amani lives on an isolated moon under the oppressive occupation of the Valthek empire. When Amani is abducted, she finds herself someplace wholly unexpected: the royal palace. As it turns out, she's nearly identical to the half-Valthek, and widely hated, princess Maram, who is in need of a body double. If Amani ever wants to make it back home or see her people freed from oppression, she will have to play her role as princess perfectly. While sci-fi, this one more has the vibe of a fantasy.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Life on the lower decks of the generation ship HSS Matilda is hard for Aster, an outcast even among outcasts, trying to survive in a system not dissimilar to the old antebellum South. The ship’s leaders have imposed harsh restrictions on their darker skinned people, using them as an oppressed work force as they travel toward their supposed Promised Land. But as Aster finds a link between the death of the ship’s sovereign and the suicide of her own mother, she realizes there may be a way off the ship.

Where It Rains in Color by Denise Crittendon

The planet Swazembi is a utopia of color and beauty, the most beautiful of all its citizens being the Rare Indigo. Lileala was just named Rare Indigo, but her strict yet pampered life gets upended when her beautiful skin is struck by a mysterious sickness, leaving it covered in scars and scabs. Meanwhile, voices start to whisper in Lileala's mind, bringing to the surface a past long forgotten involving her entire society.

Eacaping Exodus (Escaping Exodus duology) by Nicky Drayden

Seske is the heir to the leader of a clan living inside a gigantic, spacefaring beast, of which they frequently need to catch a new one to reside in as their presence slowly kills the beast from the inside. While I found the ending rushed with regards to plot and character, the worldbuilding is very fresh and the overall plot of survival and class struggle an interesting one. It’s also sapphic!

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah*

In a near future America, inmates on death row or with life sentences in private prisons can choose to participate in death matches for entertainment. If they survive long enough - a rare case indeed - they regain their freedom. Among these prisoners are Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker, partners behind the scenes and close to the deadline of a possible release - if only they can survive for long enough. As the game continues to be stacked against them and protests mount outside, two women fight for love, freedom, and their own humanity. Chain-Gang All-Stars is bleak and unflinching as well as genuinely hopeful in its portrayal of a dark but all to real possible future.

Parable of the Sower (Earthseed duology) by Octavia E. Butler*

In a bleak future, Lauren Olamina lives with her family in a gated community, one of few still safe places in a time of chaos. When her community falls, Lauren is forced on the run. As she makes her way toward possible safety, she picks up a following of other refugees, and sows the seeds of a new ideology which may one day be the saviour of mankind. Very bleak and scarily realistic, Parable of the Sower will make you both fear for mankind and regain your hope for humanity.

Binti (Binti trilogy) by Nnedi Okorafor

Young adult novella. Binti is the first of the Himba people to be accepted into the prestigious Oomza University, the finest place of higher learning in all the galaxy. But as she embarks on her interstellar journey, the unthinkable happens: her ship is attacked by the terrifying Meduse, an alien race at war with Oomza University.

War Girls (War Girls duology) by Tochi Onyebuchi

In an enviromentally fraught future, the Nigerian civil war has flared back up, utilizing cybernetics and mechs to enhance its soldiers. Two sisters, by bond if not by blood, are separated and end up on differing sides of the struggle. Brutal and dark, with themes of dehumanization of soldiers through cybernetics that turn them into weapons, and the effect and trauma this has on them.

The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds duology) by Micaiah Johnson

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s a catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying. As such she has a very special job in traveling to these worlds, hoping to keep her position long enough to gain citizenship in the walled-off Wiley City, away from the wastes where she grew up. But her job is dangerous, especially when she gets on the tracks of a secret that threatens the entire multiverse. Really cool worldbuilding and characters, also featuring a sapphic lead!

The Fifth Season (The Broken Eart trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin*

In a world regularly torn apart by natural disasters, a big one finally strikes and society as we know it falls, leaving people floundering to survive in a post apocalyptic world, its secrets and past to be slowly revealed. We get to follow a mother as she races through this world to find and save her missing daughter. While mostly fantasy in genre, this series does have some sci-fi flavor, and is genuinely some of the best books I've ever read, please read them.

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings*

In an alternate version of our present, the witch hunt never ended. Women are constantly watched and expected to marry young so their husbands can keep an eye on them. When she was fourteen, Josephine's mother disappeared, leveling suspicions at both mother and daughter of possible witchcraft. Now, nearly a decade and a half later, Jo, in trying to finally accept her missing mother as dead, decides to follow up on a set of seemingly nonsensical instructions left in her will. Features a bisexual lead!

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

South African-set scifi featuring gods ancient and new, robots finding sentience, dik-diks, and a gay teen with mind control abilities. An ancient goddess seeks to return to her true power no matter how many humans she has to sacrifice to get there. A little bit all over the place but very creative and fresh.

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson*

Young adult. Young artist June Costa lives in Palmares Tres, a beautiful, matriarchal city relying heavily on tradition, one of which is the Summer King. The most recent Summer King is Enki, a bold boy and fellow artist. With him at her side, June seeks to finally find fame and recognition through her art, breaking through the generational divide of her home. But growing close to Enki is dangerous, because he, like all Summer Kings, is destined to die.

The Blood Trials (The Blood Gifted duology) by N.E. Davenport

After Ikenna's grandfather is assasinated, she is convinced that only a member of the Praetorian guard, elite soldiers, could’ve killed him. Seeking to uncover his killer, Ikenna enrolls in a dangerous trial to join the Praetorians which only a quarter of applicants survive. For Ikenna, the stakes are even higher, as she's hiding forbidden blood magic which could cost her her life. Mix of fantasy and sci-fi. While I didn’t super vibe with this one, I suspect fans of action packed romantasy will enjoy it.

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

1960s classic. Rydra Wong is a space captain, linguist and poet who is set on learning to understand Babel-17, a language which is humanity's only clue at the enemy in an interstaller war. But Babel-17 is more than just a language, and studying it may change Rydra forever.

Pet (Pet duology) by Akwaeke Emezi

Young adult novella. Jam lives in a utopian future that has been freed of monsters and the systems which created and upheld them. But then she meets Pet, a dangerous creature claiming to be hunting a monster still among them, prepared to stop at nothing to find them. While I personally found the word-building in Pet lacking, it deftly handles dark subjects of what makes a human a monster.

Bonus AKA I haven’t read these yet but they seem really cool

Lion's Blood by Steven Barnes

Alternate history in which Africans colonized South America while vikings colonized the North. The vikings sell abducted Celts and Franks as slaves to the South, one of which is eleven-years-old Irish boy Aidan O'Dere, who was just bought by a Southern plantation owner.

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

Young adult dystopia. Ellie lives in a future where humanity is under the control of the alien Ilori. All art is forbidden, but Ellie keeps a secret library; when one of her books disappears, she fears discovery and execution. M0Rr1S, born in a lab and raised to be emotionless, finds her library, and though he should deliver her for execution, he finds himself obsessed with human music. Together the two embark on a roadtrip which may save humanity.

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

Lelah lives in future Botswana, but despite money and fame she finds herself in an unhappy marriage, her body controlled via microchip by her husband. After burying the body of an accidental hit and run, Lelah's life gets worse when the ghost of her victim returns to enact bloody vengeance.

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

Young adult. Fen de la Guerre, living in a quarantined Gulf Coast left devestated by storms and sickness, is forced on the run with a newborn after her tribe is attacked. Hoping to get the child to safety, Fen seeks to get to the other side of the wall, she teams up with a scientist from the outside the quarantine zone.

Everfair by Nisi Shawl

A neo-victorian alternate history, in which a part of Congo was kept safe from colonisation, becoming Everfair, a safe haven for both the people of Congo and former slaves returning from America. Here they must struggle to keep this home safe for them all.

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Space opera. Enitan just wants to live a quiet life in the aftermath of a failed war of conquest, but when her lover is killed and her sister kidnapped, she's forced to leave her plans behind to save her sister.

Honorary mentions AKA these didn't really work for me but maybe you guys will like them: The City We Became (Great Cities duology) by N.K. Jemisin, The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull, The A.I. Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

[anxietycalling]

tlt friends: if you are looking for a new book to read, try leech by hiron ennes. just finished it, was fantastic and slightly unsettling, need 500% more information about the world building details. written by a queer author! i am not good at reviewing books but this one grabbed me and i read it in like 3 days

[peresephoknee]

@ossifer-bones I keep thinking of part of an interview Muir gave about how world-building can sometimes become a way of procrastinating actually writing one’s story and I’ve begun to think about that notion in relation to a lot of books! I read Some Desperate Glory last year and while I did enjoy it - I think it suffered a lot from wanting to explore its world rather than the relationships between the characters and the plot that unfurled due to those interactions. The relationship between the protagonist and the alien she encounters was particularly underwhelming because Tesh didn’t quite build enough of their relationship for the payoff at the end (I’m being vague in case you haven’t read it!) and I think the time devoted to set-building could’ve been spent doing that and bulking other characters’ relationships as well.

it’s such a shame when a book ends up choking on its own worldbuilding because it views worldbuilding as the meat of the story rather than the set for the play to take place inside of

[jeanmoreaux]

*✧ — october wrap up

after posting my last wrap in may (??!!?), i am bringing back my wrap up this month due to popular demand (one person sending me an ask about it). frankly, my summer has been quite busy and packed with many, many experiences. and while i read a lot of book in the months from june to now, i simply didn't find the time or energy to make these posts. so i won't catch you up on what i have been reading over the summer, BUT you can check out my goodreads if you're interested. if there is a standout among them, i am sure it will end up on my end of year wrap up/favourites list. if you have any specific questions though (best/worst books of a specific month), i am more than happy to give you an answer.

2024 goal: 171/100 books

as alway, feel free to drop book recs, questions, or opinions in my inbox; i am always happy to talk to you about books!

* –> newly added to my favorites shelf

follow my goodreads | follow my storygraph  | previous wrap ups

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer | 5★

The Duke at Hazard by K.J. Charles | 3★

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin | 5★

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K.J. Charles | 3★

A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K.J. Charles | 4★

Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan | 4★

The White Book by Kang Han | 4★

* We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian | 4.5★

We Can Never Leave This Place by Eric LaRocca | 2★

* You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian | 5★

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson | 5★

The Iliad translated by Emily Wilson | 5★

* Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones | 5★

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

rereads

Masters of Death by Olivie Blake | 4.75★ | review

Heartstopper: Volume Five by Alice Oseman | 4.5★

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White | 5★

The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic | 5★ | review

The Raven King by Nora Sakavic | 5★ | review

He Started It by Samantha Downing | 4.75★ | review

The King’s Men by Nora Sakavic | 5★ | review

[peonybookblog]

In the third quarter of 2023, I read 30 books, most of which were fairly silly paranormal romances because those are my go-to when I'm having a rough time, which that part of the year definitely was. My July favorite was Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, August was Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher, and September was Rosewater by Tade Thompson. Honorable mention in September for Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi because that was also an excellent book.