Matthew's Journal

In order-of-reading:

The Year Without Sunshine, Naomi Kritzer. A story of a neighbourhood coming together to deal with the eponymous calamity; more optimistic than a lot of the things I've read recently, almost too much so.

One Man’s Treasure, Sarah Pinsker. Another story about exploitation; I liked the world-building and the plot.

On the Fox Roads, Nghi Vo. The Fox Roads may appear for you if you really need to run away from something. Here we have people running away from home, and maybe finding new ones.

Ivy, Angelica, Bay, C. L. Polk. Witchcraft, and other ways to protect your neighbourhood. A twisty tale, with plenty of heart. I think my favourite of these.

Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition, Gu Shi (tr. Emily Jin). A slightly confusingly-told story about the societal impact of being able to "cryosleep" for a few decades. I'm not sure the framing story actually helped here, and I found the writing a bit clunky, but there are interesting ideas.

I AM AI, Ai Jiang. Another corporate dystopia; unfortunately, I didn't really find the point of view character particularly compelling, so this fell rather flat for me.

In reading order:

Seeds of Mercury, Wang Jinkang (tr. Alex Woodend). This is a very human tragedy, and pretty depressing. I was struggling to maintain my suspension of disbelief at some of the tech, as well.

The Mimicking of Known Successes, Malka Older. I liked the steampunk setting of this, with humanity exiled to habitats ringing a gas giant. The characters were relatable and well described (though the early switch of narrator was a bit jarring), and the plot was nicely twisty.

Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet, He Xi (tr. Alex Woodend). This was let down for my by a really clunky translation (and poor layout); some interesting ideas, an at times slightly confusing plot (I lost the ordering of events a couple of times), and another rather bleak reflection on humanity.

Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo. Another book in the Singing Hills Cycle, which is a setting I've come to very much enjoy. This is a story about grief, about stories, and about the very different ways people are remembered. It's very moving at times, and also has some lovely funny moments. I realise I've not read When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and should probably fix that :)

Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher. A telling of Sleeping Beauty that wonders if there was good reason for the sleeper to be enchanted thus. I enjoyed the narrative voice (and unusual choice of narrator), and the sense of the otherness of fairy; and the shape of the story and its twists.

Rose/House, Arkady Martine. A nice mash-up of locked-room, haunted house, and noir, even if a little too self-referential in calling out its own genre clichés. I loved the setting and the growing sense of menace, but what is going to keep it off the top spot for me is the ending, which felt a little too ill-defined. Rather like this week's Dr Who episode, if you're going to build up a great mystery, then just leaving the viewer/reader guessing at the end can feel very unsatisfactory.

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...