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This feels like the most "classic scifi" book that I have read in a long time. Spaceships! Evolution! Cold sleep! Ark ships from a ruined earth! Aliens! Consciousness upload! Space battles! I'm half-joking here, but rather than trite, it felt refreshing to read this more classic space opera story as a change of pace from my usual fare.

The story is told through two parallel perspectives, one following the historian Holsten Mason (a classicist of now-gone earth empires) on an ark ship and another following the historical development and intelligent evolution of spiders on a terraformed planet. Both perspectives are told over great swaths of time: pictures of important moments in spider history as they evolve, but also flashes of human experience as well between cold sleep as they try to survive with what's left of humanity. If anything, despite following the same major characters, the human narrative is just as disjoint as the spider historical one, as Holsten is continually woken up briefly to be forced into some (terrible) surprising development and then put back into cold sleep for years immediately after, in a psychologically devastating cycle.

The immediate comparison for me, especially one about intelligent spiders, is to think about Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. One thing I think Children of Time does very well is to consider what a spider psychology would be like, in terms of gender politics, social groups, communication, decision-making, conflict, etc. Spider technology develops in its own branching way and not along human paths or with human priorities. Having a picture of society throughout history as well helps to build this evolutionary social picture. A Deepness in the Sky's spiders in comparison felt ...much too human, in a lot of ways. In some ways, the storytelling there was at a disadvantage because the spider's perspective was mediated by Focused humans translating spider experiences into a more human one. However, I don't feel like the spider-ness came through as it did so strongly in this book.

(One small aside observation, is that I felt like the spider's Understandings and ways of knowing and remembering things about the world felt in some ways like a parallel to current day searchable internet knowledge. When information is easily accessible, it's no longer interesting or novel to just be able to know things, but more about being able to interconnect information from different disciplines or to learn knew things. On a related note, I would LOVE to hear about spider Understanding librarians. How do they organize this information and distribute it??)

In some ways, this is a reversal of a typical "uplift" narrative, where humans uplift some animals, but there's always a power dynamic of human superiority the whole time. One of the things that changes this dynamic in this book is that there's a reversal of humanity's fortunes very early on in the book. Things go very poorly on the human end of things: failing technology, no planets to settle on, intergroup squabbling, revolts, colonial attitudes, attempting genocide. The spider end of the story is generally one of social and technological growth, the successful overcoming of obstacles, and "humanization" to put it in a particular way. By the end, for me, it felt like it was intended for the reader to empathize more with the spiders than (most of) the humans, and I think this narrative framing makes the ending very satisfying.

One small quibble on my part (and this appears to continue into other books [not that I'm hypothetically halfway through book two right now]), is that I found it weird that all of the spiders retained the same names (Portia, Bianca, Fabian, and Viola) throughout each of the different perspectives throughout all of history, despite being different individuals in each story. In some ways, I can understand the parallel of telling one story of humans (the same ones, pulled across time via cold sleep) and one story of spiders (the same names, by convention). However, these spiders were not just archetypes and were different enough from each other, that I felt like it stripped some of their individuality, especially in comparison to the human side of the story.

I enjoyed this book a bunch and will read (am already reading) the sequels.

This book is the tale of Kai (a demon prince) who had been trapped with his witch friend Ziede, working to figure out who had trapped them and why, while also trying to rescue their missing friend Tahren. There's also a perspective of Kai from the past being trapped, freed, and working to fight against the Hierarchs.

I have some mixed feelings about this book. It certainly opens up very strongly and the characters, plot, and world grabbed me immediately. I am a sucker for a story with dual perspective, telling a story in the past as well as the present that echo each other. The worldbuilding ideas felt super fresh and I loved learning about the world, the politics, and the characters. However, I was disappointed by parts of the ending, felt overwhelmed by a lot of world detail for quite some time, and wished that there was a bit more character detail for anybody but Kai.

This book drops you squarely in the middle of worldbuilding detail (almost as much as Ninefox Gambit). Even by the end, I'm still not sure that I know what differentiates various magic types, what the Hierarchs are, or the different flavors of Immortal Blessed. I don't know that I need to know all of these things either, but it felt like I was left with a lot of holes in my knowledge.

Because of that, I hope that there is more than just this single book, because so much of it leaves me wanting. There's whole swaths of history that are not described in the past (e.g. Kai's grandmother) as well as between the past and present sections of the narrative. On top of that, it felt like there were some characters like Tenes and Sanja who didn't really get a lot of space on the page. It almost felt like the cast was too broad and so characters didn't get enough room to develop.

I certainly dig the gender stuff going on in the background. Kai is a demon who inhabits multiple bodies over time. There's also some snooty "oh these Arike folks have some binary gender hangups" in an epigraph before some of the chapters. There's some comments about mercenaries (normally women) being forced to present in ways that they normally wouldn't. This is all kind of in the background of the story, but mostly I just want to hear more about demon gender, thank you.

I think my biggest disappointment with the book is the method in which some of the plot lines are wrapped up. I'll leave those thoughts in a spoilerly comment separately.

Despite some negative feelings above, overall I really enjoyed this and it makes me want to go back and reread the Raksura books again.

The shtick of this book is that Peter and Maria have an awkward one night stand, but then end up awkwardly starring with each other for six years acting as slow burn lovers stuck on an island on a hit TV show. This was a fun read overall; I think I enjoyed Maria being extremely self-aware as to her own needs for happiness, and her need to have and create community wherever she goes.

This book also amps up the silliness from previous books. There's Dolphy McBlowholeface the local dolphin, Swedish poop humor, a running gag about jars of pickled herring on hand at all times, and a fear of cows. Not that I need my romance novels to be srs bsns at all times, but I think this humor style (or quantity thereof?) didn't quite land for me.

One thing I have enjoyed about the whole series is all of the cast interactions with each other, and so in particular I really enjoyed the epilogue of this book, where the whole cast gets together to watch the finale air together. It hits home in a very "Mass Effect Citadel DLC party" way, where I feel like seeing all the characters interact together felt like a more satisfying send-off than even the end of the romance story proper.

I enjoyed this followup book to Spoiler Alert featuring some of the side characters as main characters. They're VERY different people than Marcus and April, with Alex being a giant ball of energy (and overly excited about fanfic tropes) and Lauren having some delightful quiet snark. I continue to enjoy how much all of the characters in these books are their own individuals with their own personal growth; even if this is a romance book and so it's necessarily about two folks coming together, they still continue to have their own independent needs and lives.

I think this could just be a me thing, but I think one offputting thing to me is the way that Alex is a continual insult train about Lauren's height. Given how much Lauren puts up with other people making comments about her appearance (and given that her biggest obstacle is learning to value and stand up for herself), this really struck me as a weird interaction. I know that constant teasing is a way that some folks interact with each other, but this felt too insult-y for my own comfort.

If anything, I am glad to have read this book for the idea of BIG HARPY ENERGY. I certainly can use the reminder to take up more space, value myself, and care less about what other people think of me.

This was a fun conclusion to this trilogy.

I think ultimately, this is a book driven by the principal point of view characters and their actions. Despite that many of them are leaders of empires, islands, or organizations, this fantasy series is less about political maneuvering and more about interpersonal conflicts and shifts. This made a lot of sense in book one, following three or four different characters in different places, none of whom were in real positions of power. However, I think I was a little surprised at how much this style continued through the whole series.

In some ways there's some superhero vibes, where the sides are determined by which heroes are opposing or supporting whom at any moment. I said this about book two, but I appreciated the ongoing shifting allegiances. Characters join up, and then split apart and join opposite sides. Some are forced to be on sides they don't want. Some help each other only reluctantly. I think it works really well and creates some good character growth moments.

In the end, I still feel a little like some of the magical world-building details got handwaved through more than I wanted. I'm still not sure I really understand the underlying reason why islands are sinking. I understand what actions make them sink, but not why. (Maybe I don't understand what makes them float in the first place?? ) I feel like the memory pools also felt a little too convenient, and I wish this were better foreshadowed or explained. There's some "I hope you don't find out what this magical artifact really does", but then that detail is never revealed. The book also itself asks (but does not answer) what the connection is between all the things that bone shard magic can be used on.

I'm not trying to nitpick details here and I certainly don't need some intricately built magic system in a book, but it just didn't all quite hang together for me in a way that I wanted.

I'm continuing my reread of this series before I get to the new final book in the trilogy. This book has Lin getting square into politics, avoiding assassination attempts, and trying to wrangle all of the islands and stepping into more mysteries that her father has left her. The climax of the book manages to believably get ~all of the major characters together into the same place for a final battle with some murky sides and shifting loyalties. I definitely appreciated the slow dribble of lore and backstory through journal translations; we learn a lot more about the Sukais, the empire, and the Alanga and I am here for all of it.

That said, I forgot just how uncomfortable this book was for me to read. I think it mostly revolves around the way Jovis is being pulled in multiple directions. I think it's one thing for the first book to have Jovis trying to leave the Ioph Carn smugglers (he just wants to leave, they feel betrayed) and being pursued by them while he tries to chase down Emahla. This is fine to me, maybe because he's clear about what he wants and up front about what he's about the whole time, and maybe it's because the book does a good job of writing the Ioph Carn as the creepy smuggling mafia that it's acceptable to spurn.

However, the first book ends with Jovis in a very new position and sworn loyalties, while simultaneously still being in contact with the Shardless Few and also dangerously getting reinvolved with the Ioph Carn. As always, it's not clear to him what the right thing is to do, and so he tries to play it every way. Maybe it's just my own personal discomfort with "lying to people you care about" and "not talking to people you (should?) trust" as narrative tension. Or, maybe it's just super effective on me grimacing emoji.

The third book in this trilogy came out last month so I took the time to comfort reread the first two books before I read the third one for the first time.

Overall, this book was super enjoyable even on a reread. It has four point of view characters, but each of them had their own unique intrigue and appeal. Unlike some other fantasy series, I never felt impatience to "get back to the good character". There's Lin the secretive emperor's amnesiac daughter, in competition with her foster brother to be heir, trying to learn bone shard magic. There's Sand who lives in a haze on a thinly inhabited island who suddenly regains her memories of other places. There's Phalue the daughter of a corrupt governer, who is trying to woo somebody who challenges her liberal "just world" beliefs. Finally, there's Jovis, a navigator turned smuggler, who tried to get out of the smuggling game to chase after his stolen childhood sweetheart, who meets a strange creature and gets increasingly suckered into helping people.

The world-building overall is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the bone shard magic idea a lot, where people inscribe (human) bones with commands on them and combine these shards (into dead animals) to form animated constructs. Big magical programming vibes. The flip side of this system is that these bones come from living humans to power these constructs, and requires all children to "tithe" parts of their skull. When the bones are in use, it drains the health of those people and causes them to waste away. It's a really neat way to think about "magical externalities" and especially who bears them.

When reading through recent Otherwise award winners, while I was looking for a copy of the novella Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon I asked my library to procure a copy of the anthology it came from. I found and read that novella earlier, but my library came through as they do and so I was excited to read through more from this anthology.

I quite enjoyed Marian Denise Moore's "A Mastery of German". This is a story about a project manager being handed a new project, which turns out to be monetizing human memory by transferring knowledge along genetic lines. It brings in how the narratives of past generations aren't recorded (especially in racially disparate ways) and how this project might rectify that, but also digs into some of the perilous ethics of such a thing. The last line of the story almost feels like the first line of some sequel story exploring a terrifyingly(?) changed world in which this technology is commonplace.

I thought Dilman Dila's "Red_Bati" story was a lot of fun; this is a story about Red_Bati, a robot "dog" with too much intelligence who refuses to be relegated to the scrap heap of a mining ship after its owner has died. There's some fun action, and I like the exploration of what the difference between spirits and code is, if humans imagine both into existence.

Finally, Dare Segun Falowo's "Convergence in Chorus Architecture" is a novelette that I would best describe as Yoruba mythology speculative fiction along with horror elements. It's a ride of a story about the village Osupa being invaded by a flying boneship of multidimensional thieves; most of the village is transported away into the sky against their will, and in the end are transformed unexpectedly into something else entirely. This summary elides quite a bit of detail, but reading this anthology was worth it for this gem.

It was interesting to read this book so soon after reading What Moves the Dead. I can see why Ursula Vernon wrote about it in her afterword as being a similar setup and recommended that everybody go read it immediately.

The book itself is immensely creepy and I found it very compelling. The plot setup is that socialite Noemí is asked by her powerful father to go investigate what's going on with her cousin Catalina's marriage in an isolated rural mansion. The creepy atmosphere is spectacularly well done: a decrepit remote mansion, very little electricity, locked windows, strange dreams, family secrets, suspicious local history, the overly strict housekeeper with too many rules (silence! no hot baths! no coffee!), also the household's obsession with eugenics and "superior races".

The book's pacing was excellent for me. There is a slow build of mystery and unexplainable occurrences. Backstory is slowly revealed, but there's more questions than answers and Noemí is not sure she can even trust her own experience. And then, suddenly, there's a gut punch reveal and the action shifts, leading into the climax of the book. The mystery reveal felt exceedingly well-crafted to me; rather than cheapening the spooky atmosphere, if anything everything got even creepier once the mask was off, and it fully justified all of the atmospheric details that led up to that point.

I read this short story here: www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/theres-magic-in-bread/

There's also an author interview linked on that page, which I also enjoyed: www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/non-fiction/author-spotlights/author-spotlight-effie-seiberg/

This short story has two parallel perspectives centered around baking bread, and about feelings of despair and helplessness; one half about struggling with that helplessness in this covid pandemic with home baking, and the other half running a bakery (and involving a bread golem!) in a more historic setting with antisemitic violence and policing.

I certainly have needed a lot of escapist literature in the past few years.  (Even as I write this my brain pops in to say...ok but what if we reread the entire Vorkosigan or Foreigner or Wayfarers series again????) But it's also deeply refreshing to read a piece that directly addresses the pandemic, as well as addressing my own feelings of helplessness when things are falling apart around me and I don't feel like I have any leverage to fix it.

I am not sure the message that even things that don't help still help sinks in for me; not in the sense that the story is ineffective but more I find myself coming up against a lot of internal friction and resistance. Some of this I think is continuing to come to terms with the fact that true solutions to big problems are slow communally-driven systemic changes, and that will rarely feel tangible on a personal level, even if I'm dealing with them as directly as is possible. Deep down, I too hunger for the empowerment of creating my own bread golem and making tangible change in the world.

I really enjoyed Emily Tesh's Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country novellas, and so was excited to read this (very different) novel. In some ways this novel emits YA sf child warrior action dystopian vibes, but it's a lot heavier than I'd expect a YA book to be.

This is a book where aliens have destroyed earth, and there's a small space enclave of humans set on vengeance at all costs. But, the thrust of the story is that when the protagonist Kyr leaves this community, she discovers that these humans are largely a fascist cult, and this is extremely hard to swallow information for cult poster child Kyr, still set on vengeance for humanity.

It's a book about deprogramming from propaganda and the narratives you've grown up with. It's a book about burying queer feelings in unsafe environments even from yourself. Unsurprisingly, it's also a book with (at times) unlikeable main characters who do some awful things at every scale.

(I will also repeat the book's own content warnings here which are: "contains sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist, and ableist attitudes; sexual assault, including discussion of forced pregnancy; violence; child abuse; radicalization as child abuse; genocide; suicidal ideation; and suicide". I really appreciate the trend of books providing their own content warnings these days!! It is nice to not be surprised by these things!)

It's always hard in any story to not to be sympathetic with the main character, but I think you need extend quite a bit of trust towards the author for the first part of the book. Moreover, I also wonder if your excitement about this book will likely parallel your desire to hear this sort of "white person unlearning shitty childhood beliefs" story. I personally think it's a pretty believable arc, especially because this book is more of an "unlearning" story than a "redemption for past actions" story. So, I mention all this not as an insult to the book, but rather a conditional on any recommendation.

(I don't know where else to put this thought but it's an extension of the above conditional and also a content warning of sorts; there's a scene at the end with Kyr and Yiso, an alien that Kyr has been xenophobic at and has misgendered for most of the book. They're having a poignant moment, and in that moment out of nowhere, Kyr asks to touch Yiso's alien hair-equivalent? This is incredibly creepy?? I'm sorry??? It's just that in a book dealing with being less space racist maybe a "touching" hair-touching scene could have gotten a second look. They already had an awkward hug scene earlier that would have made way more sense to revisit here!)

Finally, to put a few spoilery thoughts in a vague way, I did not at all expect the plot of the book to go the way it did. I appreciated the way the turn of the book provides Kyr with some much needed perspective that would have felt like implausible personal growth otherwise. I also appreciate the plot structure revisiting the events of the beginning of the book with a different perspective. It was a nice echo, especially with a character who begins the book herself obsessed with replaying past historical military events in VR.