Happy Friday, ghouls and Gallifreyans! Today I’ve got reviews of Moscow But Dreaming and the sci-fi works of Charles Yu, plus more robot news, witch face-offs, Ravenclaw reading, and more.
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Provenance by Ann Leckie.
Following her record-breaking debut, award winner Ann Leckie, returns with a new novel of power, theft, privilege and birthright.
A power-driven young woman has one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.
Ingray and her charge return to her home and find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict. They must make a new plan to salvage her future, her family, and her world, before they are lost to her for good.
Remember that robot battle I was so excited about last week? WELP. They faked the livestreaming. I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED IN EVERYONE INVOLVED.
Invisibility! It’s just science. Kind of. Maybe. Sort of.
This has almost nothing to do with books but I love this Good Witch vs. Bad Witch round-up on Tor.
What are the best epic fantasy series? Margaret has nominated 50. Not only does she have very deliberate rules for how she made the list, but she also includes important details like whether or not a given series is finished. I’ll be over here wallowing in nostalgia and adding things to my TBR.
Remixed fairytales are my favorite. If they’re yours too, here’s a list of seven (all of which I cosign).
The New Weird: it’s a genre, we swear. If you’ve read China Mieville or Jeff VanderMeer, you’ve already experienced it, and here are some more. I’d like to nominate The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden for inclusion as well.
Where my Ravenclaws at? I deeply appreciate this reading list for myself and my fellow Housemates.
And now for our reviews!
Charles Yu: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Sorry Please Thank You
As Charles Yu is the guest editor for Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, it seemed the perfect time to remind you how wonderful his own works are!
HTLSIASFU, as we like to abbreviate How to Live Safely… because wow that is a whopper of a title, is Yu’s debut novel, and it punched a hole in my heart the first time I read it. On the surface, it’s the story of a time-travel technician also named Charles Yu who lives in one of the many universes created by the existence of fiction (not unlike the primary conceit of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde). So, for example, he answers a repair call from Luke Skywalker’s son. His dog is imaginary, and his computer’s name is Phil. But the beating heart of this book is a father-son story: our protagonist’s father disappeared when he was a boy, and he took the job he has mostly so he could go searching for him. Yu balances the real emotional weight of this with lots of sly wit, grammar jokes, and surprise appearances from pop culture. True story: I loved this book so much when I first read it that I created a fan account for Phil on Twitter.
If you like short stories and you enjoy structural experimentation, you must get yourself Sorry Please Thank You. The subjects of his imagination are as varied as his style: from the big-box employee who finds zombies during the graveyard shift (heh), to intrepid RPG players, to the contractor having your bad day for you, and so much more. There is real grief, real heartbreak, real struggle on the page; there are also puns, numbered lists, and absurd plays on modern life. In other words, it has all the components of a sci-fi-inspired collection you could want.
I’m looking forward to seeing what Yu picked for this year’s Best American; while I’m waiting for my library hold to come in, I’ll be over here with his books and a box of tissues.
Moscow But Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia
If you’ve listened to either Get Booked or SFF Yeah!, you’ll know that I often browse through my library’s ebook catalogs late at night looking for new things to read. It’s appropriate that that is how I found Moscow But Dreaming — as the title implies, it’s a surreal, fabulist, very dreamy-feeling collection. If you’re a fan of the stories of Kelly Link, China Miéville, Helen Oyeyemi, Aimee Bender, Angela Carter, I could go on and on but will stop now, you’ll want to pick this up.
There’s not an official through-line other than Sedia’s style; while many do take place in Moscow or Russia generally, the collection opens with a story set on the Moon. While the stories are mostly fantastical, one features artificial intelligence. One takes place from the point of view of a sock puppet at a school for autistic children. Two involve zombies. One takes for its inspiration the many email scams involving foreign banking. Mythology and folklore butt up against modern settings and concerns, and then blend and twist in startling ways. Some of these stories made me wince; some made me laugh; several made me check to see if I was, in fact, awake. None of them failed to provoke a reaction.
In his introduction to this collection, Sedia’s fellow SFF author Jeffrey Ford talks about the many accolades her novels have won as well as the charms of these stories. None of them were on my TBR list before, but you can bet they are now. Sedia is a welcome addition to my reading life, one that leaves me aware of the inherent strangeness of all things if we just bother to look.
And that’s a wrap! If you’re interested in more science fiction and fantasy talk, you can catch me and my co-host Sharifah on the SFF Yeah! podcast. For many many more book recommendations you can find me on the Get Booked podcast with the inimitable Amanda.
Ravenclaws represent,
Jenn