Matthew's Journal

I've managed to read all the entries for this category; with the voting deadline only a couple of days away, I don't think I'm going to manage to get through the other categories now. I might rank the novels and novellas I've already read, though.

These are quite a varied bunch, which I enjoyed reading. Again, hard to rank them. Still, rank them I must, so...

1. "The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye", by Sarah Pinsker. Odd things happen to a crime novelist on writers' retreat. This kept me guessing without feeling contrived, and had a good sense of strange menace.
   
2. "For He Can Creep", by Siobhan Carroll. Jeoffry the cat runs the asylum where Christopher Smart is confined. This was a real joy to read, witty and engaging.
   
3. "The Archronology of Love", by Caroline M. Yoachim. This has interesting time travel, a plot that reveals itself to you nicely without feeling contrived, and cool aliens. If I was being critical, the characters are a little under-developed.
   
4. "Away With the Wolves", by Sarah Gailey. The narrator is a wolf sometimes, and a disabled human sometimes. A lot about identity and family here.
   
5. "Emergency Skin", by N.K. Jemisin. A mission to the mother planet, with an AI to keep you on track. This felt a bit heavy-handed to me.
   
6. "Omphalos", by Ted Chiang. An alternative cosmology (to say much of how alternative would be to spoil it), but I found it pretty leaden reading.