Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay …
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart
4 étoiles
These Fragile Graces is a fun trans noir murder mystery novella. It's a story that focuses much more on interpersonal and community relations than it does on a well-plotted mystery or detailed worldbuilding. That focus also sums up my feelings about what I felt worked and didn't in the story.
Mostly, I wish the mystery plot was a little bit more cohesive, and that there was more detail about the state of the world itself rather than being in a vague near-future urban decay. I loved the small detail of having memory implants to deal with trauma-based dissociation from childhood, but I wish the ideas around implants/augments and a rejection syndrome connected more to the plot.
It is nice to see an anarchist commune in fiction (I feel like maybe I've only read this in Margaret Killjoy's work previously) and how the protagonist Dora wrestles with her relationship with the …
These Fragile Graces is a fun trans noir murder mystery novella. It's a story that focuses much more on interpersonal and community relations than it does on a well-plotted mystery or detailed worldbuilding. That focus also sums up my feelings about what I felt worked and didn't in the story.
Mostly, I wish the mystery plot was a little bit more cohesive, and that there was more detail about the state of the world itself rather than being in a vague near-future urban decay. I loved the small detail of having memory implants to deal with trauma-based dissociation from childhood, but I wish the ideas around implants/augments and a rejection syndrome connected more to the plot.
It is nice to see an anarchist commune in fiction (I feel like maybe I've only read this in Margaret Killjoy's work previously) and how the protagonist Dora wrestles with her relationship with the people in it, wishing she could keep them safe in ways that they don't want to be. And, the heart of this novel is a very trans story about how Dora deals with a (non-estrogenated) clone of herself who comes to murder her but she ultimately ends up protecting. From the moment her clone showed up and yelled traitor, I knew exactly where this story was going, but it was still satisfying to get there all the same.
Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a …
Those Beyond the Wall
5 étoiles
A very different book than The Space between Worlds, but equally good.
While TSBW kind of revolved around the interworld travel premise, Those Beyond the Wall is firmly rooted in "Earth 0"'s Ashtown. Mr. Scales has a wildly different perspective on the Ashtown oligarchy and culture than Cara did, and it's kind of fascinating to see some of the blind spots the author built in. Despite the very different plot foci, there are similar strong themes of antifascism, anticolonialism, and the struggle for justice.
It's even more gritty than the original, yet potentially more hopeful as well.
I would strongly recommend reading TSBW first, because a lot of the setting is taken for granted here.
‘My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used …
I've had this one on my to-read list for ages - I'd better start it now if I'm going to finish in time to read Those Beyond the Wall for #SFFBookClub February
Eccentric genius Adam Bosch has cracked the multiverse and discovered a way to travel to …
The Space Between Worlds
5 étoiles
I read this book five years ago, and thought I'd refresh myself before the #SFFBookClub read of the sequel this month. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed this story and world. The writing has a brusque, hardboiled tone from the cynical point of view of a survivor, and it really works for this particular kind of book.
This is a multiverse travelling story, where there is technology that can send people between similar worlds, but only safely to ones where their "other selves" are not alive. Cara is somebody who has fought to survive her whole life and thus has few other selves alive, so she gets a job as a "traverser" to be sent to other worlds to collect information. Because it deals with worldwalking between closely related worlds rather than wildly different ones (like Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series), it gets the opportunity to explore the same …
I read this book five years ago, and thought I'd refresh myself before the #SFFBookClub read of the sequel this month. I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed this story and world. The writing has a brusque, hardboiled tone from the cynical point of view of a survivor, and it really works for this particular kind of book.
This is a multiverse travelling story, where there is technology that can send people between similar worlds, but only safely to ones where their "other selves" are not alive. Cara is somebody who has fought to survive her whole life and thus has few other selves alive, so she gets a job as a "traverser" to be sent to other worlds to collect information. Because it deals with worldwalking between closely related worlds rather than wildly different ones (like Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series), it gets the opportunity to explore the same characters in different timelines where their lives had taken different paths.
The post-apocalyptic wasteland locale of this novel is split into the wealthy folks of Wiley City living behind a wall (literally and metaphorically the airquotes nice white people of this story), the religious Ruralites, and the survivors of Ashtown between them. Cara is constantly code switching and crossing borders, both locally and multiversally--she is pretending to be a Ruralite, is secretly from Ashtown, while she precariously lives in Wiley City (hoping to get citizenship). Thematically, I love how the book ends with doubling down on Cara's role as an intermediary between worlds.
Power to Yield is a collection of speculative tales exploring gender identity, neurodivergence, and religion …
I added this to the SFFBookClub poll for the month of January because I super enjoyed it.
If you don't know about it, the SFFBookClub is our informal fediverse science fiction and fantasy book club. I figure that folks from bookwyrm probably might be more interested in reading and talking about books so I wanted to post this here as well. We vote, read a book together, and then discuss via the #SFFBookClub hashtag over the course of the month. Take a look if any of these books sound interesting to you and you want to read along with others.
The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels …
The woman woke to the crackling of her anklet and knew the boy had come upstairs. She leaned toward her clock: the numbers glowed 06:00. The stars outside the window were growing pale. She would not sleep again now.
