Matthew's Journal

I've read all of these, and propose to vote as follows. Again, I found the ranking quite hard, although I think the winner is just a bit clear of the rest, and I nearly considered voting the last below No Award for Not Being SF/F/Horror...

1) "Down Among the Sticks and Bones", by Seanan McGuire
2) "All Systems Red", by Martha Wells
3) "The Black Tides of Heaven", by JY Yang
4) "Binti: Home", by Nnedi Okorafor
5) "And Then There Were (N-One)", by Sarah Pinsker
6) "River of Teeth", by Sarah Gailey

No cut this time, as I think I've avoided spoilers...

"Down Among the Sticks and Bones" is, I learn while writing this entry, part of a series (the Wayward Children); it doesn't feel like it. It's one of those slightly disturbing fairy stories which are a bit knowing without being smug, and a bit moralising without being simplistic; and there's a certain inevitability to events without the plot being predictable. This story really drew me in, compelling and stylishly written. Like a number of the other entries in this category, this has twins in who are both very similar and very different; as a twin myself, I've enjoyed this emergent theme.

I enjoyed "All Systems Red", and while there are to be more murderbot books, this felt like a satisfactory story in its own right. I enjoyed murderbot's dry authorial voice, its uncomfortable relationship with humanity (and its own humanity), and the malevolent corporate cost-cutting. I wouldn't say the plot was particularly revolutionary, but this is still a great deal of fun, and I'm looking forward to the sequels.

"The Black Tides of Heaven" is the first of a two-part series (the second part was released at the same time), and I think that probably they should just have been released as one book. I will probably try and get hold of a copy of the second part, though! I liked the world-building, and the coexistence of magic (called slack-craft) and more scientific means (the machinists); and the plot kept me turning the pages. And there are some interesting free will questions lurking, too.

"Binti: Home" suffers a bit from being the middle of a trilogy (that I haven't read the first part of); the ending felt in some ways like just the point where the book's getting going. And I imagine I missed some of the impact of already knowing the characters. But it was self-contained enough that I got into the story pretty quickly; I didn't feel this was doing anything particularly new thematically, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I liked the premise of "And Then There Were (N-One)" - someone arranges a convention of Sarah Pinskers from lots of different parallel realities and then one of them dies. So lots of that "what if...?" that I think people have about life decisions. Despite that, I didn't find myself caring about the plot (and, indeed, the solution felt a bit contrived).

I've got into trouble for this before (back in 2014, when I ranked "Wakulla Springs" below No Award), but I didn't think "River of Teeth" was really SF - it's an interesting enough alt history where a chunk of the Mississippi delta has been flooded and people ranch hippos. I quite enjoyed it, though the epilogue to set up a sequel annoyed me a bit; I felt the story had ended quite nicely, and then the epilogue un-ended it, if you see what I mean.