Matthew's Journal

I've read all of these, and ranking them is proving quite a challenge! They're all worth a read, I think. Still, I have to rank them somehow, so I think I'll be voting thus:

1. Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson. Humanity has wrecked the planet, and is trying to put it back together again; only then someone discovers time travel. This is a very nicely put together book, and manages both to foreshadow how things will go wrong but also fit a twist into the ending.


2. Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells. Murderbot returns :) I still love the narrative voice, and murderbot's difficulties with humanity and its own humanity.


3. The Black God’s Drums, by P. Djèlí Clark. An alt-history New Orleans, where a girl and a ship's captain must work together to save the city, with some ancient deities helping them too. The world is beautifully drawn, and I liked the distinct voices, and the plotting.


4. The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard. This is set in a universe I've not read any books from before, so I may well have missed some nuance here, but I didn't find that a problem with getting into the story. This is a well-crafted story with some interesting characters, but it felt a bit like the characters didn't have much sense of urgency in resolving the mystery, which in turn meant I didn't either.


5. Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor. This book made me cry, more than once, and does feel like a fitting ending to this trilogy. On the other hand, one of the key plot developments felt a bit too much deus ex machina for me (the part with the small spaceship - if you've read this, you'll know which bit I mean).


6. Beneath the Sugar Sky, by Seanan McGuire. I rather bounced off this, and it worked less well for me than Down Among the Sticks and Bones, which was on last year's slate. McGuire does a good job of writing in the style of fairy stories, and the narrative choices have a certain inevitability to them, but it wasn't really my thing.