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.

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 – Every Heart a Doorway

05 Mar 2024 Leave a comment

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

I just finished reading Every Heart a Doorway last week. This is the first book (of 9 so far) in the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire (paid links). She is one of the authors that I previously mentioned in this post on 10 Authors I Haven’t Read Yet from November 2023.

This is technically a novella, so it was a shorter read. This book won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards in 2016/2017 and the series won the Hugo Award for best series in 2022.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.

I think that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was the first fantasy book that I read, and definitely the Narnia series was one of my most beloved stories growing up. I absolutely love the premise of Every Heart a Doorway, which looked at what happens to children who have traveled to another world and then returned to their mundane lives.

I had to wonder what type of story this would be though, now that their adventures are over. It turns out that when you gather many such children at a special school to learn to deal with the aftermath of their fantastical adventures, things don’t always go well. This book featured a murder mystery, as students start dying with parts of their bodies missing.

The characters in this book were diverse and well-drawn for the short length of the novella. I had my suspicions about the identity of the murderer, but it didn’t become clear until later in the story. I have heard that the following books in the series alternate between continuing the greater story and going back to tell about the children’s backstories. I’m not sure I’ve seen a series structured quite like that before. I intend to keep reading more of this series soon.

Have you read any of the Wayward Children series? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

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 – Binti: The Complete Trilogy

08 Apr 2020 1 Comment

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

I read Binti: The Complete Trilogy last fall as a book club pick and enjoyed it a lot. Binti is a character in a series of novellas by author Nnedi Okarafor and this volume brings all three of the novellas together in one book, with a bonus new story included. Please follow my Amazon links to help support this blog.

Raised in a traditional village amongst her Himba people, Binti leaps at the chance to attend Oomza University off-planet. Her decision upsets her family, but she believes that the chance to study at this prestigious school outweighs their concerns. Before she can even get there, her ship is attacked by the Medusae and everyone but her is killed.

Binti must communicate with the Medusae and prevent a catastrophe at the university while she struggles to personally deal with the aftermath of the slaughter. Each story in this book takes place at slightly different times, but they all follow logically. Eventually we see how Binti deals with her decision to leave home and how her people receive her when she returns.

The new story in the book is a pleasant tale and adds a little to the characters of the other students at the university. Overall, I really liked how Binti viewed the world as a character. Even though she rebels to some extent by leaving home, she is still one of the Himba people. Her unique outlook makes her character more real and her struggles are based in trying to reconcile her relationships with the universe, her family, and her people.

I don’t know if there will be any further Binti stories or not. The book comes to a satisfying conclusion, but doesn’t rule out another tale. If you want to just start with the first novella, you can find that one (just titled Binti) here.

Read more of my reviews here.

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