Matthew's Journal

Wandering Earth II is on the Hugo shortlist this year. We'd not seen Wandering Earth, so decided to watch that first. Whilst this was probably necessary to get a chunk of what goes on in Wandering Earth II (which is in fact a prequel), I think it did cause us to start Wandering Earth II expecting the worst.

I didn't think much of Wandering Earth - it was visually very impressive, and tugged at the heart-strings, but key aspects of the plot just didn't make sense and were too implausible even for sci-fi.

Without getting into spoilers, the same can be said of the prequel; too much of the plot was based on engineering/science so bad as to disengage my suspension of disbelief. Again, it's visually stunning, and the emotional set-pieces hit home, but the plot just didn't work for me. I found the device of announcing "[time period] to [next crisis/key plot event]" a bit jarring, too. I'm afraid the final plot twist/reveal felt hollow too, although it is presumably the setup for the third film.

I've now read all of these (although I didn't write a review of Some Desperate Glory when I read it some time back), so time to vote.

1. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty
2. Witch King, Martha Wells
3. Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh
4. Translation State, Ann Leckie
5. The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera
6. Starter Villain, John Scalzi

I'm hoping the voter packet will be out soon, as otherwise tracking down all the short fiction will become tedious...

Sometimes, when I have an evening off and nothing more pressing to do, I open a beer, turn off my brain, and watch an action movie. Starter Villain is that experience in book form. It's silly and fun, but I don't think deserves to be on a Hugo Award shortlist (any more than a James Bond film would).

Our narrator, Charlie, inherits his Uncle's business, only to discover that his uncle was a Bond-style villain complete with island lair. Of course, his life is currently in a bit of a state, yet he will turn out to be smart and perceptive at just the necessary moments to do much better in his new role than anyone expected.

The plot rattles along, and the narrator is amusingly snarky, and as long as you're happy to take it on its own terms, this is a fun diversion.

There's a lot of interesting ideas in this book, some plot twists that sneak up on you, and a strange yet believable setting. But somehow it didn't quite work for me. I like that it's not a typical hero's journey sort of book, but the effect of this is that it feels like the point of view character has very little agency; things happen to them for reasons which are often unclear (and for reasons that often don't even become clear later on). And I'm afraid that left me feeling rather disengaged from the narrative, too.

That's a shame, because the start is arresting, there are a number of nicely-drawn characters, and a very twisty plot that doesn't feel contrived. And there is a lot being said about violence, racism, empire, and trying to grow up as yourself rather than what your parents want you to be; I can see why this book has had a lot of rave reviews.

I really loved the Ancillary trilogy, so was very much looking forward to reading this. I did enjoy it, and there are some interesting ideas, but I felt the plot was a bit uneven particularly near the end.

I think a lot of the ideas in this book are about identity, and how people with power try to impose their ideas of peoples' identities onto them (like the Radchaai habit of imposing she pronouns onto everyone they encounter), and the violence inherent in denying someone their identity. Including, in this case, whether someone counts as human or not. All of this is caught up in events that could have wide-ranging impact on the galaxy. I liked all three of the point of view characters, and they all develop interestingly during the book.

( Major plot spoilers )I did like this enough to remember that I should get hold of Provenance, which I've not read :)

I think this is the first non-Murderbot book by Martha Wells that I've read. Kai, the main character, wakes up in a sticky situation, and there are two narratives through the book: one in the present where he tries to work out how and why he ended up in that sticky situation, and one in The Past where we find out about Kai's back-story and the recent history of the world.

I found this really hard to put down; granted some of that was because the book tends to shift between the two narratives at cliff-hangers, but also because I wanted to learn more about the world and to see what would happen next. I've seen criticism online that few of the characters other than Kai are particularly fleshed out, and I think that's fair, but then Kai is a very interesting character. It's not a book that holds your hand in terms of the world-building, but I didn't find that a problem.

There is quite a bit of violence (and the sort of large-scale death attendant on warfare), and I think some of what Wells wants to talk about is the impact of that sort of large-scale trauma on people and societies, but I think there is also hope here, and examples of people trying hard to do better and work together.

It feels like space has been left for a sequel (though one is not currently planned, I gather), which I would very much enjoy reading, but this is a good stand-alone story.

Barbie lives a perfect life in Barbie world, which is ever so pink, and where the Kens exist to be decorative. Until she starts to experience interference from the Real World, and must go to investigate. The trailer has more spoilers than that...

This is an odd movie; it has some laugh-out-loud funny moments, too much cringe for me, and a plot that begs you not to look to hard at it. And what happened to the narrator for the middle two-thirds? I think it can't work out if it's a satire of Barbie, a homage to Barbie as a feminist icon, marketing for Barbie, or nostalgia for adults who remember when they played with Barbie; given some of its content and its 12 rating in the UK, it's really not aimed at kids who currently love Barbie.

The streaming platform I watched it on offered me Grave of the Fireflies as "watch next", which would have been quite a tonal shift...

This is a sequel to Into the Spider-Verse, which I rather enjoyed. I'm afraid I was less happy with this film. Part of it is the lack of adequate ending; this just sort of stops (with some cliff-hangers) ready for the next film in the series. Partly it's that the multiverse thing is less new than it was in the previous film, and the whole musing-on-canon-thing feels too much like a plot device than something that really makes sense.

The action sequences are really good, though, and there's plenty of nice details that go flying past. And maybe the sequel will make it all worthwhile...

Nimona is set in a scifi-faux-medieval walled city (with cell phones, a metro system, flying cars, and armoured knights); we are told that in the distant past Gloreth defeated a giant black monster and enclosed the city with a wall to keep the citizens safe. In the present, the anarchic Nimona turns up in the lair of the fugitive Ballister and declares that she's going to be his sidekick.

I enjoyed this - it's fast-paced and funny (without being cringey!), and keeps teasing you that it's going to lapse into fairy-story tropes only to swerve at the last moment. There's some nice queer representation, and the characters are pretty believable. It has things to say about being different and being the outcast, and how hard it can be to try and be normal enough to fit in. ( Spoilers )

On my recent travels I got through a fair few ebooks, mostly borrowed from the library:

Starling House, by Alix E Harrow, is set in a dying coal town in Kentucky; Starling House is an old manor house owned by a reclusive family, and avoided by the townsfolk. But Opal (the narrator) is poor and desperate, so ends up taking a job there. And the horrors of the past refuse to go away. This is a gothic fantasy book that worked for me on a number of levels - it's a great page-turner, with plenty to say about poverty and slavery, and has some nice ideas about how stories get told & retold along the way. I'm a bit surprised to not see it on the Hugo shortlist.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty is on the Hugo shortlist, and it's great fun (I'd seen it being plugged in paperback in Waterstones, which is why I picked it up in ebook from the library). Amina (who narrates the story to a scribe) is a middle-aged mother and retired pirate captain in mediaeval Oman (but with magic) who is forced out of retirement for one more heist. The setting felt real, and the narrator's struggles with their wavering Islamic faith likewise genuine; and I liked that Amina's age, experience, and family ties were strengths to her character. Perhaps some aspects of the plot were a little far-fetched, but I really enjoyed this. Plus some more "here are different ways to tell the same story".

System Collapse, by Martha Wells got enough nominations to make the Hugo shortlist, but the author declined the nomination (I don't know why, but their Witch King is on the ballot). Being a Murderbot fan, I enjoyed this, although I'm not sure it has much new to offer.

Acolytes of Cthulhu, edited by Robert M. Price, was on the whole a bit of a disappointment. It's a collection of short stories, which I'd borrowed because one of them was by Neil Gaiman (though that turned out to be Shuggoth's Old Peculiar, which I've read before); while a few of them were good and/or had neat twists, on the whole they felt like a collection of pot-boilers or pastiches.

Of the Hugo finalists this year, I've read two of the novels (the other being Some Desperate Glory), one (Bea Wolf) of the comics, and seen one of the long form dramatic presentations (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and two of the short forms (both Dr Who episodes).