This book is subtitled "Feminist bicycle science fiction stories of transgender and nonbinary adventurers", and that's a pretty good summary of the contents. The stories are delightful, and capture some truths about the experience of riding a bike as well as trans & non-binary representation. They're fun stories, but also thought-provoking, and generally at least somewhat optimistic. I enjoyed them a lot.

Again, in reading order:

美食三品 (Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times), 宝树 / Baoshu. What if you could experience food as another eats it? Quite a nice story, but I found the biology hard to swallow...

The Sound of Children Screaming, Rachael K. Jones. An angry story about gun violence in schools.

The Mausoleum’s Children, Aliette de Bodard. A strange and well-sketched world, with some good twists.

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub, P. Djèlí Clark. What could possibly go wrong? I'm afraid I found the plot here a bit too obvious.

Better Living Through Algorithms, Naomi Kritzer. I was expecting this to head for one of two obvious cliché endings (and thus to be annoying), but actually it went elsewhere and I thought it was pretty good.

Answerless Journey, Han Song (tr. Alex Woodend). Two people wake up on a spaceship without their memories; an interesting idea, but it needed some answers to actually be engaging.

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 :)

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.

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 :)

On my recent travels I got through a fair few ebooks, mostly borrowed from the library:

Starling House, by Alix E Harrow, is set in a dying coal town in Kentucky; Starling House is an old manor house owned by a reclusive family, and avoided by the townsfolk. But Opal (the narrator) is poor and desperate, so ends up taking a job there. And the horrors of the past refuse to go away. This is a gothic fantasy book that worked for me on a number of levels - it's a great page-turner, with plenty to say about poverty and slavery, and has some nice ideas about how stories get told & retold along the way. I'm a bit surprised to not see it on the Hugo shortlist.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty is on the Hugo shortlist, and it's great fun (I'd seen it being plugged in paperback in Waterstones, which is why I picked it up in ebook from the library). Amina (who narrates the story to a scribe) is a middle-aged mother and retired pirate captain in mediaeval Oman (but with magic) who is forced out of retirement for one more heist. The setting felt real, and the narrator's struggles with their wavering Islamic faith likewise genuine; and I liked that Amina's age, experience, and family ties were strengths to her character. Perhaps some aspects of the plot were a little far-fetched, but I really enjoyed this. Plus some more "here are different ways to tell the same story".

System Collapse, by Martha Wells got enough nominations to make the Hugo shortlist, but the author declined the nomination (I don't know why, but their Witch King is on the ballot). Being a Murderbot fan, I enjoyed this, although I'm not sure it has much new to offer.

Acolytes of Cthulhu, edited by Robert M. Price, was on the whole a bit of a disappointment. It's a collection of short stories, which I'd borrowed because one of them was by Neil Gaiman (though that turned out to be Shuggoth's Old Peculiar, which I've read before); while a few of them were good and/or had neat twists, on the whole they felt like a collection of pot-boilers or pastiches.

Of the Hugo finalists this year, I've read two of the novels (the other being Some Desperate Glory), one (Bea Wolf) of the comics, and seen one of the long form dramatic presentations (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and two of the short forms (both Dr Who episodes).

This is the final part of the Scholomance triology, all of which have been nominated for the Lodestar Award. To my mind, it's the best of the trilogy; both in that there was less of the self-sabotage that irked me in previous books, and that it creates a sense of inevitable crawling horror about the way the world is ordered. The way wizarding society has set itself up is awful, but you also see how it has ended up that way, and that holds a mirror up to our society and the way we persuade ourselves it's OK to treat outsiders the way we do, and persuade ourselves the things we do to make ourselves comfortable are fine really.

I did spot some of the major plot points coming, but I think that may have been part of the point of this book - the chickens coming home to roost, previous books' events now being explained, and the reader can see El's denial slowly peeling away. Despite all of which, and the fact that there isn't a happy ever after, there is also hope at the end, that people trying to do the right thing can make a difference.

Also, points for canon bisexual character where it isn't a Big Deal :)

My voting order for these:

1. We Built This City, Marie Vibbert. The value of important but menial work; join a union!
   
2. If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You, John Chu. A cute story, addressing some serious issues (race & racialised policing; coming out; the media).
   
3. A Dream of Electric Mothers, Wole Talabi. What would well-meaning advice be like if it came from all your ancestors?
   
4. The Difference Between Love and Time, Catherynne M. Valente. A lovely story, some witty moments, but I wasn't quite convinced.
   
5. Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness, S.L. Huang. A fair enough take on the ethics of "AI" systems, but I don't think the fictional parts added much to this.

I won't rank The Space-Time Painter, by Hai Ya, because it's not available in any language I understand.

This is a detective story with occult elements, at least noir-adjacent. A magical detective discovers that a murder case is more sinister than it first appears, and that powerful occult players are at work. Plus it's 1940s Chicago, so they have to keep aspects of their private life hidden.

This is a pacy story with some well-drawn characters, and a nicely twisty plot. The ending works nicely unless you stop and think about it too much. ( major spoilers )

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.