Matthew's Journal

This is a story told in the second person - you are Torquell, a young man who is six foot tall. That's tall for a human, but much smaller than an ogre. And ogres are the Masters for whom humans must toil, as that is the natural order of things.

This is an excellent story, which deals with class, power, race, and the hero's journey. If it's bleak at times, there's plenty of humour, and the plot is carefully constructed and compelling. While I often complain that writers don't quite manage to stick the landing, I felt the ending here is very well done. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed this story, which is in turn about stories and how the stories you hear about a person are only ever partial, and how appearances (in person or in stories) can deceive. I read another Novella in this world a couple of years ago (but had forgotten that Chih and Almost Brilliant were featured there too); the fantastical elements this time have very little impact on the plot itself.

This is inspired by Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (WP describes it as a retelling thereof, which I think is not really fair), and it's a nicely constructed horror story with a suitably creepy atmosphere. There's a certain amount of body horror here, so if that's not your thing maybe give this a miss.

But I thought this was a good reworking of Poe's ideas, and the narrator is nicely drawn and pretty competent (avoiding some of the horror tropes of "no-one but an absolute idiot would be doing this, WTF you fool" that can be annoying). Recommended (providing you like horror stories!).

Another film from the Hugo shortlist, this is a coming-of-age drama about a girl who turns into a giant fuzzy red panda when she experiences strong emotion, something that starts happening about the time she turns 13.

It has quite a cringy start, which I didn't like, but it does have some genuinely funny moments, and while I felt that it mostly ticked off the usual coming-of-age themes, it wasn't too heavy-handed with them (except perhaps the "overbearing mother behaves thus because she couldn't never keep up with her mother's expectations" trope). You have to not think too hard about the plot, though, or it starts making less sense. ( spoilers )

This is the 2022 book in the Wayward Children series; Cora (who has appeared in a couple of previous books) decides to leave Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children in favour of a different school that promises to rid children of traces of the other worlds they've travelled to.

This series has always leaned into the Rules that govern fairy stories, and often the cruelty and collateral damage that results; similarly the way that adults and children can be cruel to other children. I think McGuire really leans into that in this book - both in how Cora is treated for being fat, and in how the various educational institutions deal with that. The Whitehorn Institute is likewise used as a critique of boarding schools and how they manage behaviour.

If you like this series, then this is a reasonable addition; if you've not enjoyed previous ones then this won't change your mind.

This is the first Scalzi I've read. On this showing, I'm not inclined to read another (which is a surprise, because I know he's very popular). It feels like it ought to be a great premise for a book - a secret organisation, an alternate reality close to ours, giant monsters. But there's an awful lot of nothing much of note happening, the characters are all broadly the same wise-cracking smartarse, the plot developments such as they were were telegraphed a mile off (even I saw them nearly all coming), and I managed to come away with no real idea of what anything looked like. And this wasn't a Lovecraftian horrors that defy sanity and coherent description sort of thing, either: our narrator doesn't think it's interesting to note much other than that they're very big and very loud (and similarly doesn't bother describing anything else).

It's still quite fun - the villain is odiously hateable, there are a lot of one-liners since basically all the characters are that sort of person, and it's a great premise. There's just not enough material here to go with that premise.

This is a sequel to 2019's Black Panther, and has to deal with the unexpected death of Chadwick Boseman, who played T'Challa / Black Panther in that film. Rather than recast the role, instead Wakanda Forever opens with people grieving T'Challa's death, and other countries sensing weakness in Wakanda and trying to exploit this to get hold of vibranium. The way that Ramonda (suddenly made queen) and Shona (who couldn't cure her brother's terminal illness) respond to their grief makes a significant difference to the plot.

As well as grief, there's a heavy theme of colonialism and its long-lasting impact here, and I think it's good that we largely see it from the point of view of the (formerly-)colonised peoples.

All of which means there is some emotional and thematic weight to go with some pretty good action set pieces. The weakness, though, relates to the plot around the Talokan civilisation( spoilers )Overall, then, a bit of a mixed bag.

Tesla Crane and her new spouse Shal Steward are on honeymoon, travelling incognito on an interstellar cruise liner to Mars. Then there is a murder outside their cabin and it looks like someone is trying to frame Shal for it. Tesla has her lawyer Fantine on speed-dial, but as the ship travels away from Earth the lightspeed lag gets longer and longer, and the ship's chief of security is adamant that Shal must be the guilty party...

This is a murder mystery set on a cruise liner in space; the interstellar liner is vast, and convincingly described, right down to how they manage to have sections with terran, lunar, and martian gravity. There are lots of nice details, some of which turn out to be relevant to the plot. I enjoyed each chapter starting with a cocktail recipe (some alcoholic, some not; most real, some fictional), some of which are quite funny (e.g. "Extra-Dry Martini. 2oz. gin. Stir over ice. Say the word 'vermouth'. Strain into martini glass"). There are parts of the described society that feel quite contemporary (e.g. courtesy masks are still widely available; most people are Mx. by default, and it is customary to include pronouns when introducing people), and the escalation of surveillance and counter-surveillance tech was pretty believable.

Tesla, the main protagonist, has PTSD and chronic pain from an earlier industrial accident (which we learn about as the plot advances), which is largely handled sensitively; although the hard-hearted critic might note that there are rarely any serious consequences from taking the safeties off her DBS pain relief system. She has a service dog, Gimlet, to help her with these conditions, and the incredibly cute Westie steals many of the scenes they appear in. Tesla is obviously also extremely wealthy, and not above using that wealth and status to get her own way. At times this goes beyond "interestingly flawed protagonist" into "really annoying protagonist", and definitely left me at times more "interested in the answer to the mystery" than "cares about wellbeing of protagonist".

The mystery is resolved in a way that didn't feel too much like cheating to me, although I'd have to read the book again to see if I felt one could have put the clues together along the way; I certainly didn't spot many of the twists coming. Overall, a fun and engaging read.

I've one of the shortlisted novels left to read; I'm hoping the voter packet is going to be out soon, as otherwise tracking down all the shorter fiction categories is going to be tiresome...

The cover promises "High fantasy, low stakes, good company", and certainly delivers. Viv is an Orc who retires from adventuring to run a coffee shop, in a city where no-one has heard of coffee (so supplies including the necessary machinery have to be bought from far-off gnomes). It's an entertaining take on the coffee shop AU beloved of fanfic authors, and it is lovely to watch Viv building a new life and family around her coffee shop (including a visiting dire-cat!).

It's frothy fun, and I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not sure it's really award-winning material...

This is a reimagining of H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau, set in 19th-century Mexico. Chapters alternate between Carlota (the eponymous daughter) and Montgomery (the majordomo) as point-of-view characters; and we see Carlota coming to terms with both the intrusions of the outside world into her secluded but happy upbringing and learning that much of what she thought she knew about her father's work was wrong.

I'm afraid I didn't really get on with this book - it felt like it took a long time to get going, and I found it a melancholy read that left me pretty depressed. I spotted one of the twists coming (I suspect one is meant to), but didn't feel invested in the fates of either of the points of view characters, both of whom grated on me somewhat. I've not read Wells' book, though, so perhaps this is book is more a conversation that I'm missing half of.