Book Review – The Saint of Bright Doors

24 Jan 2025 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera is a stand-alone novel that won the 2023 Nebula Award for Best Novel (paid link). It was also nominated for the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The premise sounded intriguing, so I picked it up. I have not read anything else by this author.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.

He walked among invisible devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.

Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.

I enjoyed the beginning of this book, but as the story evolved, I found myself getting less invested in what happened. The initial premise finds the narrator, Fetter, in the city of Luriat where he attends therapy sessions for people with special powers who thought they were destined for something great, only to later discover that they aren’t that special after all. I liked that idea and was entranced by the beginning of the story.

Fetter becomes caught up with a group of rebels who let him indulge his fascination with the Bright Doors that mysteriously appear throughout Luriat. I had hoped for more from this plot line, but the investigation of the doors fizzled as Fetter became obsessed with murdering the leader of a religious cult, who was coincidentally his father. Nothing about this goes well for him, and he has to abandon everything he built in Luriat.

I read that this book was described as part of the magical realism genre, and perhaps this genre is not for me. This is not the first time that I’ve struggled with a magical realism book (see my review of On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu here). The Saint of Bright Doors introduced many ideas and mysteries, but then never delivered with any explanation or greater purpose to any of it. Fetter’s reality shifts and becomes more surreal, but by the end of the book I didn’t care about what happened to him.

I would still consider reading another book by this author, but only if it was not considered magical realism.

You can find more of my book reviews here.

Book Review – The Past is Red

11 Nov 2024 1 Comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , ,

I don’t think that I had ever read anything by author Catherynne M. Valente, and that’s one great reason to participate in a book club. The Past Is Red is a novella that was chosen by one of my book clubs and was not a story that I’d been aware of until then (paid link). It was nominated for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Read on below to see what I thought.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

The future is blue. Endless blue…except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.

Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.

But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

This novella is divided into two parts. The first one is a previously published novelette – The Future Is Blue – while the second part is new material. Together they tell the story of a post-apocalyptic world in which the inhabitants are not trying to rebuild the society that was lost, but are content to simply live amid the remnants.

I had a hard time getting into this story and didn’t finish it in time for the book club discussion (although I did still finish it). The story is set in Garbagetown which is where those humans who have survived catastrophic sea level rise have managed to eke out an existence on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I think that part of what limited my enjoyment of this story was that the timeline hops around and there wasn’t a well-defined plot. Our narrator is not always reliable, which also made it challenging to orient myself in this unfamiliar future world.

Despite these things, Garbagetown itself was fascinating, and I would have loved to have learned more about how it reached its current state. The city is divided into different regions, each named for the type of garbage that they contain. The inhabitants all dream of the day that they will find solid land, and this tiny sad bit of hope keeps many of them going.

Part of this story evoked the old Kevin Costner movie, Waterworld, but without the Mad Max-ian aspects of fuel-obsessed clans fighting over resources. While our protagonist, Tetley, has to still find enough supplies to survive, she also never tries very hard to do more than that. When Tetley finally makes contact with an unexpected friend, I had hoped that this would lead to more of a science fiction-y resolution to the dilemma of those trapped in Garbagetown. But this was not that kind of story, and I’m probably not the right audience to truly have enjoyed this book.

What novellas have you enjoyed and would recommend? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my book reviews here.

Musing on the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Awards

16 May 2024 2 Comments

by Clare in Books Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

With the announcement of the finalists for the Locus Awards earlier this month, I thought I’d take some time to muse on why we pick out certain stories for recognition and to also relate some information on the awards that I follow (Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus).

I recently read some of the nominees for the Nebula Awards so that I could vote for these (my pick for short story was The Sound of Children Screaming, which can be found here). I’ve also been reading some of the short stories that won Hugos and/or Nebulas in the past couple of years (Rabbit Test, If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You).

So what’s with all these awards? What does each one mean? Who votes for them? And why does anyone care?

First of all, I think that it is important to provide recognition for outstanding talent and achievements in any field. The nomination and awards process also highlights a set of work and helps readers find stories that they might not have been otherwise aware of. Let’s go through each of these major awards and talk about the nomination process, categories, and other information about each one.

Hugo Awards.org media download site, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60413579

Hugo Awards

The Hugo Awards have been awarded since 1953 and are named for Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the first classic magazine of science fiction, Amazing Stories. The current categories awarded include Best Novel (>40,000 words), Best Novella (17,500 to 40,000 words), Best Novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words), Best Short Story (<7500 words), Best Series, Best Related Work, Best Graphic Story, Best Dramatic Presentation (long and short forms), Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine, Best Professional Editor, Best Professional Artist, Best Fan Artist, Best Fan Writer, Best Fancast, and Best Game or Interactive Work.

The Hugos are one of the most prestigious awards for the science fiction and fantasy genre. A list of nominees and winners can be found here. The Hugo Awards are presided over by the World Science Fiction Society. Attending and supporting members of the World Science Fiction Convention can nominate and vote on the awards. Even if you can’t attend the convention physically, you can purchase a supporting membership for voting privileges. The physical awards are announced and presented at that year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), which is held generally around September and moves to a different city each year (2024 = Glasgow).

The Hugo Awards have been associated with some recent controversies. The Sad Puppies ran a campaign to nominate slates of works in reaction to the recent success of BIPOC authors and overall diversification in the genre. This led to several nominated authors declining to have their works considered (when included on the Sad Puppy slate), and No Award being selected in several categories where the Sad Puppy nominees dominated. The World Science Fiction Society made changes to the nomination and voting process in 2017.

More recently, the 2023 Hugo Awards became the source of another controversy when the voting statistics from the recent Worldcon held in Chengdu, China were released (scroll down to page 20 on the linked .pdf). Authors whose work may have been considered too political for Chinese censorship laws had received nominating votes, but were declared ineligible. Other votes from Chinese citizens were thrown out because they were considered to be following a slate suggested by a magazine (despite the rules not permitting this). Going forward, the Hugo administration has vowed to improve transparency in the process. You can find more details about what happened here.

The logo is from the following website: http://www.sfwa.org/ Nebula Awards official website, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35826707

Nebula Awards

The Nebula Awards follow a similar process, with the main difference being that those who nominate and vote for these awards must be members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). This is the professional organization for authors, artists, and editors in the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Categories for the Nebula Awards currently include Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, and Best Game Writing (same word count requirements as for the Hugos). Other awards that are not technically Nebula Awards are also included in the Nebula process. These recently have included the Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction of Fantasy Book, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (for lifetime achievement), Author Emeritus (awarded posthumously for lifetime achievement), the Kevin O’Donnell Award for service to SFWA, and the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for significant impact on speculative fiction.

The Nebula Awards go through a similar round of nominations followed by voting, with the announcement and presentation of the winners at the SFWA Nebula Conference. This is usually in the spring and is held in the United States (2024 = Pasadena, California).

World Fantasy Awards

By Statuette design: Vincent Villafranca – Original publication: http://www.arctera.com/wfa/wfadmin-award-announcement.htmImmediate source: http://www.arctera.com/wfa/wfadmin-award-announcement.htm, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53804878

The World Fantasy Awards are a favorite of mine, I think because I lean more toward fantasy in my reading overall. These are administered by the World Fantasy Convention, which occurs annually in a different location around the world (2024 = Niagara Falls, New York). While the World Science Fiction Convention is a larger event with plenty for fans of the genre, the World Fantasy Convention is a professional event for authors, artists, editors, agents, and publishers. It can be a great place to meet people in the field for an upcoming author.

The World Fantasy Award nominees are partly selected by the attendees of the World Fantasy Convention, but also by a panel of judges who are professionals in the field. The categories for awards are Best Novel (>40,000 words), Best Novella (10,000 to 40,000 words), Best Short Fiction (<10,000 words), Best Collection (single author), Best Anthology (multiple authors), Best Artist, Special Award–Professional, Special Award–Non-Professional, Convention Award, and Life Achievement Award.

Controversy about the physical award arose in recent years. It had formerly been a bust of H.P. Lovecraft who has been criticized for his outspoken racism. The new award was changed to the one pictured in 2016.

Locus Awards

Designed by Francesca Myman, with art by Shaun Tan and presented by Locus Magazine. Source: Locus. – Original publication: Locus Magazine Immediate source: https://locusmag.com/2020/06/locus-awards-winners-2020/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68857244

The Locus Awards are put together by Locus Magazine, which is a monthly trade publication for the science fiction and fantasy genre. The awards are open for nomination by the public and the votes of subscribers to the magazine count twice. You can find the recent top 10 nominees here.

Categories for the Locus Awards include Best Science Fiction Novel, Best Fantasy Novel, Best Horror Novel, Best Young Adult Novel, Best First Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Anthology, Best Collection, Best Magazine, Best Publisher, Best Editor, Best Artist, Best Non-Fiction, and Best Illustrated and Art Book.

The winners are announced during an awards presentation that is associated with a weekend of readings and panels held in Oakland, California this year.

This has turned out to be a longer post than I thought it would be, but I hope it was helpful to explain some of the honors awarded in the science fiction and fantasy genres.

Have you voted for any of the awards? Which books have you read that won one of these awards? Let me know in the comments (above).

Book Review – Elder Race

19 Apr 2024 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Elder Race is a short novel (or novella) and was the first fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I have read (paid link). It was nominated for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Read on below to see what I thought.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…

This story is told through alternating perspectives, switching between Nyr, a depressed anthropologist, and Lynesse, a princess looking to prove herself. It is the tale of a lost colony of Earth, and Nyr’s failed mission to study the people there. At the core of the story is the juxtaposition between Nyr’s science fictional view of the world and Lynesse’s fantastical view of technology that she has no way to understand. The story’s genre depends on which perspective we take.

In the end, it is a work of science fiction, but one that encompasses the difficulty in determining genre in some stories. My favorite example of this is Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, in which McCaffrey always presented the stories as science fiction (paid link). However, in my own reading of those books, they always felt like fantasy, since the specifics of the technology don’t matter until the books at the end of the timeline.

In Elder Race, another aspect that surprised me was how the story depicted Nyr’s mental health challenges. He uses his technology to suppress the effects of depression for a time, but he also knows that this is not a solution for his condition. We see a lot of heroes that either ignore their trauma and do what needs to be done or experience intense emotion without suffering more specifically. In this story, Nyr can only put the effects off for so long, and this adds a unique factor to this tale.

I rated this book as one of my top reads for 2023 and put another series by this author on my to-be-read list. Have you read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – Planetfall

01 Dec 2023 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , ,

I’ve had Planetfall by Emma Newman on my shelf for a few years and kept meaning to start it (the story of my reading life, but that’s a separate topic). It is the first book of four in the Planetfall series, which was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2020 (paid links). Read on below to see what I thought.

I read this in trade paperback format.

Here is the blurb:

Renata Ghali believed in Lee Suh-Mi’s vision of a world far beyond Earth, calling to humanity. A planet promising to reveal the truth about our place in the cosmos, untainted by overpopulation, pollution, and war. Ren believed in that vision enough to give up everything to follow Suh-Mi into the unknown.

More than twenty-two years have passed since Ren and the rest of the faithful braved the starry abyss and established a colony at the base of an enigmatic alien structure where Suh-Mi has since resided, alone. All that time, Ren has worked hard as the colony’s 3-D printer engineer, creating the tools necessary for human survival in an alien environment, and harboring a devastating secret.

Ren continues to perpetuate the lie forming the foundation of the colony for the good of her fellow colonists, despite the personal cost. Then a stranger appears, far too young to have been part of the first planetfall, a man who bears a remarkable resemblance to Suh-Mi.

The truth Ren has concealed since planetfall can no longer be hidden. And its revelation might tear the colony apart…

While this book is part of a series, it looks like the other books are only set in the same universe and do not involve any characters from this volume, so it could be read as a stand-alone. Planetfall set up a mystery involving a religious-like calling, a troubled colony, and an alien city but then failed to give me enough of an explanation or resolution at the end. Even so, most of the book was great and other readers may enjoy the ending.

Renata is one of those guilty characters who has been hiding a secret for so long that by this point it is impossible to think of revealing it to others. The stable life of the colony on this alien world is uprooted when a descendant of another group of colonists thought to be long-lost arrives on scene. This visitor causes some colonists to rethink an annual tradition tied to one of Ren’s secrets, propelling the main plot of the novel. Ren’s other secret is that she never lets anyone see her home because she is a hoarder. This created a situation that was unique in the science fiction that I’ve read, and ultimately ties together with the rest of the conflict as the book progresses.

The action and stakes increased toward the conclusion of the book, and while I don’t want to give any spoilers here, the ending was one in which I had expected a greater reveal and explanation and was left sort of scratching my head.

Have you read any of the Planetfall books? Have you read any of Emma Newman’s other books? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – The Ten Thousand Doors of January

17 Feb 2021 2 Comments

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow is a book that intrigued me when it was first released in 2019. I finally had a chance to read it, and it is the best book I’ve read so far in 2021.

In the early 1900s, a young woman searches for her place in the world after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

This book can be described as a portal fantasy – where Doors open into other worlds and the story follows the characters who travel through them. Yet it is also more than this and is not a simple adventure through one such Door. The novel is written as a book within a book, with January reading sections of the strange book from the blurb as she explores her own glimpses of these worlds. It becomes more complicated than that, but I don’t want to spoil how this book evolves as you learn what is going on.

The characters were believable and January has to struggle through situations made worse by her race and gender. Every time she is told to “know her place” I wanted to slap someone. But she has friends who stand by her side through everything, and her dog, Bad, who never willingly leaves her side.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January was nominated for both the Nebula (2019) and Hugo (2020) Awards, as well as the World Fantasy Award and Locus Award for Best First Novel. I’m sure this book will end up as one of my favorites for 2021.

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Book Review – This Is How You Lose the Time War

15 Apr 2020 Leave a comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I picked this book up on a whim when I was looking for more stand-alone science fiction novels. I haven’t read a lot of time travel fiction, so why not explore a bit?

This is How You Lose the Time War was just nominated for a Hugo in the Best Novella category as well. I wasn’t familiar with authors Amal El-Mohtar or Max Gladstone prior to this. Please follow my Amazon affiliate links to help support this blog.

The way that this book is structured is unusual in that it is told from the perspectives of two opposing time-traveling agents, Red and Blue. Each one works for their faction to win a war that has raged across alternate timelines. The narrative switches between short scenes in which each agent finds a letter from their opposite, followed by the text of that letter.

I really like the way that this book was written as it was a fresh way to explore this type of concept. The language was beautiful but also a bit inaccessible at times. I’m sure I missed some of the references that the book makes.

The best part of this novel for me were the glimpses of each alternate reality through history, from Atlantis and prehistoric times to fishing villages and space battles. We never get to see much of each one, but the characters experienced just enough to draw me in.

Overall, I felt this book was too long for what it was trying to do. Part of the ending was easily predictable, but one aspect did surprise me. I think that it could have been just as effective though with fewer exchanges between Red and Blue.

This book won’t be for everyone, but as it is a novella, it’s fairly short. I’m glad I read it, but it isn’t going to be one of my favorites.

Read more of my reviews here.

Book Review – The City in the Middle of the Night

12 Apr 2020 1 Comment

by Clare in Books, Reviews Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I am still very much behind on my book reviews, but since the Hugo award nominees were just announced, I thought I’d share my thoughts on those nominated works that I’ve already read. Please follow my Amazon affiliate links to help support this blog.

So this is a book review of The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders. This book has been nominated for a Hugo for Best Novel. I listened to the audiobook version of this a couple of months ago. I reviewed the authors previous book, All the Birds in the Sky, here, and it was one of my favorite reads for 2019.

The premise in The City in the Middle of the Night is that people have colonized a planet that is tidally-locked. That means that it doesn’t rotate, so one side always faces toward the sun while the other side always faces away from it. This sets up a rather inhospitable environment where one side of the planet is too hot for people to survive, while the other is unbearably cold.

On this planet, humans have struggled to survive along the border between these two extremes. Making their lives even harder, dangerous alien life lives on the planet and the technology that was brought with the original colonists is breaking down and cannot be rebuilt.

The novel is told through the perspectives of two main characters. Sophie is a student in the city of Xiosphant where people’s circadian rhythms are regimented by the government in the absence of normal day-night cycles. She is in love with her best friend, Bianca, but when she takes the blame for her friend’s minor theft, she finds herself dragged from the safety of the city.

Abandoned and left for dead in the night outside the city, Sophie is beset upon by an alien called a Crocodile by the cityfolk. She surrenders herself to the monster, only to learn that the creatures are sentient as it helps her survive the cold and return to the city.

The second main character is Mouth, a member of the Resourceful Couriers, an illegal caravan that trades between cities, risking the dangers of the road. Mouth was once a member of the nomadic citizens, but all her people died tragically, leaving her alone to remember their culture. When she arrives in Xiosphant, she becomes obsessed with obtaining a citizen artifact from the palace. Her own story starts to overlap with that of Sophie and Bianca as Bianca joins a building rebellion and Sophie begins to engage again with the people of the city.

The plot is secondary to the relationships in this book, and while the narrative kept me interested, in the end, I found myself wanting more resolution in terms of the plot that had been building from the beginning. My opinions of each important character changed as I learned more about them and as they made their choices through the story, and they all felt very real and well drawn to me. I didn’t necessarily like them all, but I understood why they behaved the way that they did to each other.

I still enjoyed this book, but not as much as All the Birds in the Sky. It almost feels like the plot needs a sequel, but my understanding is that this is currently a stand-alone book.

Read more of my reviews here.

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