Jul 24 2019

The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

“The night in New Orleans always got something going on, ma maman used to say—like this city don’t know how to sleep.” (p. 7) It doesn’t, and neither does P. Djèlí Clark’s splendid, exciting, enchanting novella The Black God’s Drums.

The Black God's Drums

Clark’s first-person narrator, a slightly feral young woman named Creeper, makes her own way in the city, avoiding the constables, the patrols that would get her sent to a workhouse orphanage, or the gangs that would put her under the thumb of a Thieving Boss. She’s found a niche, high up on one of the towers where the airships come in to dock on the hour. She can steal from passengers disembarking; she can overhear things that she can trade with her contacts in the city. As Creeper says, it’s drafty in winter and in summer “all you do is lay about in your own sweat,” (p. 7) but it’s better than many alternatives. She’s got her eyes up, too; the passengers coming from all kinds of places, speaking all kinds of languages, remind her that there’s a big world beyond the iron walls of New Orleans and New Algiers over on the West Bank.

She’s all set to relieve a newly arrived passenger of his gold pocket watch (“Somebody’s bound to snatch it sooner or later—might as well be me.” (p. 8)) when the world falls away and she’s struck by a vision of an enormous skull rising over the city like a full moon of death. It passes almost as fast as it arrived. She recognizes the vision as something sent from Oya, “the goddess of storms, life, death, and rebirth who came over with [Creeper’s mother’s] great-greandmaman from Lafrik and who runs strong in our blood.” (p. 7) The vision lasted long enough for her to lose her mark and, worse luck, for a group of men to be heading her way. Thinking they might be a patrol, she hides in her alcove. Still worse, they head the same way, but fortunately for her they are consumed with their own business and do not notice her hiding in the dark.

And their business is distinctly odd. What are a group of Confederates doing talking to a Cajun about a Haitian scientist?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/24/the-black-gods-drums-by-p-djeli-clark/

Jul 23 2019

Sweet Dreams by Tricia Sullivan

In near-future London, Charlie Aaron volunteers for a drug trial to help make ends meet. Nothing seems to happen, but several months later, she develops a crippling narcolepsy that sees her fired from her desk job, unable to make the anonymous ASMR videos that are her side gig, and thus evicted from the cupboard under the stairs she’d been living in. Fortunately, the wealthy and elderly O needs a roommate to help with errands and such, and she’s more than happy to accommodate Charlie’s illness. When Charlie discovers that, in addition to her narcolepsy, she seems to have developed the ability to walk into other people’s dreams, O is also happy to help Charlie monetize her new-found skills as a dream “therapist”, tho Charlie’s best friend, Shandy, will eventually suggest the much cooler and more marketable title “dreamhacker”.

At first, it’s a New-Age-y gig, with a clientele of the relatively well-to-do who prefer to rely on alternative therapies to deal with their anxieties. O thinks they should expand into more lucrative markets, but after Charlie has an unpleasant encounter with a lawyer wanting a brutally perverse sex dream session, she’s understandably wary. Still, she needs money, so when her ex-boyfriend messages asking for her help treating the dreams of his new girlfriend, she doesn’t have the financial security to say no. Fighting her continuing attraction to Antonio is made worse by the fact that Melodie is a lovely person, a talented musician who’s been having troubling dreams that are preventing her from getting any rest. Her fatigue is showing in her performances, and nothing else seems to be helping.

It’s in Melodie’s dreams that Charlie first encounters a sinister figure known as The Creeper, whom Charlie pursues through a Dream City that mirrors the London she knows. But when Charlie wakes to discover that Melodie has sleepwalked off the roof of the building to her death, she begins to believe that The Creeper wasn’t the embodiment of Melodie’s anxieties but a person just like Charlie, only with murderous intent. With the Dream Police taking an interest in the case and a shadowy Agency getting involved, Charlie’s world is turned upside down as people continue to die. And if she doesn’t stop The Creeper, Charlie herself could become the next victim.

So that’s sort of the premise of the book, but I’m leaving out the layers of technology that permeate the London of 2027 and enable the proceedings, in clever if not necessarily wholly realistic extrapolation of modern tech. Most people have headwear that allows them to see the Augmented Reality primarily pushed by the social media enterprise Big Sky, of which the Sweet Dreams sleep-enhancing platform of the title is an extension. The sci-fi bits are just plausible and vague enough that they work for the story, with one huge exception: why Melodie. There’s a lot of corporate and tech intrigue as Charlie races to unmask The Creeper, and it’s quite absorbing and twisty, but I never really understood why Melodie was targeted to die, if Charlie hadn’t even known about her existence till after Antonio messaged. I did however very much enjoy how Tricia Sullivan built all the characters, from doomed, lovely Melodie to neurotic and lovely in an entirely different way Charlie (with a special shout-out to Lorraine and Stack.) I really enjoyed Antonio and Roman, as well, who are about as far apart on the romance hero spectrum as you can get. The interplay between O and Daphne was also excellent, tho I really didn’t understand the Dream City ending with Charlie and Meera and the masks. I feel like Ms Sullivan was trying to use the scene, if not the entire book, as a metaphor for getting people offline and enjoying the real world but that scene in particular felt more attuned to the wonky logic of the dream realm than to actual reality.

That said, I wouldn’t mind going on more adventures with Charlie, who is weirdly relatable even as she’s a complete hot mess. She’s kind and more trusting than she thinks she is, and has an ethical code I can absolutely understand. This is a decent near-future sci-fi techno-thriller with a cast quite different than you’d expect from same, that I feel would make a great starting point for a series. Bonus points for multiple Arsenal references, which were greatly enjoyed on my weekend in North Carolina, watching them play in the ICC.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/23/sweet-dreams-by-tricia-sullivan/

Jul 22 2019

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

Trail of Lightning delivers perfectly cromulent action and adventure in the Navajo corner of a world that has suffered a partly supernatural climate apocalypse. Maggie, the book’s first-person narrator, is a badass. Trained by a near-god in the arts of combat, she adds magical powers of speed and killing prowess, powers drawn from her Navajo clan lineage. Not every Navajo has clan powers, but many of the characters in an action adventure story do. The title page of Trail of Lightning announces that it is the first book in a series called The Sixth World, so obviously not every conflict that is set up in this book will be resolved in its pages.

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

Maggie is also a mess, as she tells readers numerous times. Neizgháni, the Monsterslayer, took her on as his apprentice. He came to her at the scene of a bloody crime, when the grandmother who had raised her had been killed, strung up, and partly butchered. A similar fate awaited her before Neizgháni’s intervention. After the rescue, he took her away from the human world for a while to train her. Is it any wonder that she gave her heart to him, that she is lost and despairing when the novel opens a year or so after he has left her? Well, it’s not a surprise, but it isn’t healthy, as Maggie admits.

In the world of Trail of Lightning, the fifth world — the mundane one in which the book’s readers still live — gave way to the sixth at an unspecified date but probably some time in the early 2020s. Climate change, among other things, provided the opening for the greater beings of Navajo lore to usher out the old age and bring in the new with a flood of Biblical proportions that has left two thirds of North America underwater. Navajo lands are protected by a massive Wall that fully encircles their territory. It’s clearly supernatural; for instance, its southern quadrant is made entirely of turquoise. Civilization has broken down to Mad Max levels. Maggie drives a 1972 truck modified to run on high-spirit alcohol. She has a shotgun, a Glock, and various knives, some made of obsidian. Other characters have motorcycles and improvised flamethrowers, while still others have AR-15 rifles. No mention is made of the industrial base necessary to produce cars and guns because this is not that kind of a book.

Instead, it’s the kind of book in which the hero digs herself ever deeper into trouble, but with plenty of fights and other violent encounters along the way. The opening sequence concerns a monster that has snatched a young teen girl from her village and carried her into the surrounding hills, presumably for nefarious ends. I’m not sure how the village people had enough time to try other options, decide to hire Maggie, send a motorcycle-mounted messenger to find her, get her to the town hall, negotiate with her, and send her out into the wilds before the zombie-like monster had time to gnaw the girl to the point of serious injury (though not death), but I am prepared to suspend disbelief at the start of a story.

Coyote turns up later, and Maggie sometimes calls him by his Navajo name of Ma’ii. She says they’re frenemies. He talks her into promising to complete a quest for him, but it’s more than likely that he is trying to con her. By the end of Trail of Lightning, I wasn’t sure if the quest was an item put off until later books of the Sixth World, or if Coyote’s serious indisposition (which I can’t think is permanent) makes Maggie’s promise moot.

Anyway, it’s a fast-paced tale of action and monsters and a bit of betrayal here and there. The mix of Mad Max and Navajo tradition is interesting; it’s not a run-of-the-mill setting at any rate. There’s obviously more to come of the Sixth World, and it could be fun.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/22/trail-of-lightning-by-rebecca-roanhorse/

Jul 21 2019

Tauben im Gras by Wolfgang Koeppen

Wolfgang Koeppen was born in 1906 and thus grew up in Germany’s Weimar years. He published his first two novels after the Nazi takeover but before the war began. At first, his work as a scriptwriter for film studios in Munich made him exempt from the draft. Following a bomb attack, he went underground and made it through the rest of the war without attracting official notice.

Tauben im Gras by Wolfgang Koeppen

He made his mark with three post-war novels, published in the first half of the 1950s: Tauben im Gras (Pigeons in the Grass, 1951), Das Treibhaus (The Hothouse, 1953), and Der Tod im Rom (Death in Rome, 1954). I read Treibhaus when it was re-published in the early 2000s as part of the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s first set of 50 great novels from the 20th century. It’s a terrific book that captures the political atmosphere of Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder years. The new capital of Bonn was often called a hothouse because it was so small compared to Berlin, and because in its overheated atmosphere some species grew that wouldn’t have survived colder climes.

Pigeons in the Grass is a much rawer book, with all of its action taking place on one day early in Munich’s years under American occupation. It’s written in near stream-of-consciousness, with occasional interjections of NEWSPAPER HEADLINES in the middle of Koeppen’s long sentences. He follows several people as they make their way through the day, writing in the third person and moving in and out of their thoughts, sometimes showing what they do, sometimes relating their internal monologues, sometimes depicting the action only through what they see and here. There is Alexander, the famous actor who is playing the title role in a luxurious production about a Grand Duke; the people are tired of seeing their own privations on the big screen and want to escape into a gilded fantasy world. There is his young daughter Hillegonda who has been given over to the not so tender care of a nanny from the countryside who is convinced that the show-biz parents are horrible sinners. She drags Hillegonda to early mass, telling her to repent; Hillegonda is mostly puzzled by the idea of God, but she knows she doesn’t like the nanny.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/21/tauben-im-gras-by-wolfgang-koeppen/

Jul 21 2019

The Night Manager by John Le Carré

Not quite 100 pages in on this one, I pronounced the Eight Deadly Words. Sorry, eponymous Jonathan. Even sorrier, Sophie, who lived and died some years before the main action, and who existed to give Jonathan regrets. And perhaps to show that the corrupt Egyptian brothers might be a darker shade of grey than the British spies. You at least deserved better.

The Night Manager by John Le Carré

I’ve read a lot of Le Carré over thirty years or so, and it may be that he just doesn’t have anything new to show me. Or maybe it was just this book. I have one more on my shelves (The Tailor of Panama), so eventually I will get around to testing this thesis.

He has, together with Ian McDonald, also cured me of using the word “discreet” to describe a place such as a club or restaurant, conveying a sense of wealth and privilege, of insider knowledge, of movers and shakers conversing quietly in booths and shaping the world away from the presumably indiscreet eyes and ears of ordinary people. Le Carré has often presented spies as something of a hidden aristocracy, and I’ve decided I don’t like it any more than any other aristocracy. Goodbye “discreet,” you are now keeping company with “outstanding.”

The eponymous Jonathan is the night manager at an old-fashioned hotel in Zurich. He is also a man with a past. That includes service with the British Army in Northern Ireland and various degrees of cooperation with British intelligence. Said cooperation led to poor Sophie’s death when Jonathan let the spooks know that Sophie’s biznesman boyfriend was freelancing some large arms sales. Said boyfriend put two and two together, and presto Jonathan had both regrets and motivation.

The main story gets started one evening in January 1991 as snow is falling on Zurich and bombs are falling on Baghdad. Jonathan has learned that “the worst man in the world” will soon be lodging in his hotel. “Richard Onslow Roper, trader, of Nassau, the Bahamas” (p. 3) is on his way with his free-spending retinue to take up residence in a vast suite and shower money on the Hotel Meister Palace. Roper had been a counterparty to the Egyptian boyfriend, and probably the source of the two and two that the boyfriend added up so fatefully for poor Sophie. He trades in cocaine and weapons, among other things. He has lawyers and shell companies and plausible deniability out the wazoo. He has connections to various intelligence services, especially the British. They think he is in their pocket, and he thinks they are in his. It is a topological conundrum.

But it was not enough for me to care what happens to these people. Even the good bits, some of which — the story of Herr Kaspar’s toupee, for example — are quite good (this is Le Carré after all), were not enough. The protagonist will survive but not triumph; the antagonist will get away, though not cleanly; many prices will be paid, and few rewards will be reaped. About a fifth of the way through The Night Manager, I set it down and have not picked it up again. They will have to meet their fates without me.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/21/the-night-manager-by-john-le-carre/

Jul 20 2019

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars starts with a bang. Elma York, Kowal’s protagonist and first-person narrator says that she and her husband had flown up to the mountain cabin that he inherited for stargazing, “By which I mean: sex. Oh, don’t pretend that you’re shocked. Nathaniel and I were a healthy young married couple, so most of the stars I saw were painted across the inside of my eyelids.” (12) At times, Elma has a very 2010s voice for a 1950s character. Marital bliss is soon interrupted by a catastrophic event.

Although the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics has, in the book’s world, put three satellites into orbit by March 1952, they do not yet have the technology to search for asteroids whose orbit could intersect with Earth’s orbit. (In my timeline, systematic cataloging objects greater than 150 meters in size whose orbits implied a possible collision with Earth began just after the turn of the 21st century.) Geologically speaking, that’s less the blink of an eye. Unfortunately for most of life on Earth, the cosmos blinks and drops a large meteorite into the Chesapeake. Washington and Baltimore are obliterated. Congress was in session. In early chapters of the book, it’s not known whether the entire US government is wiped out, or whether a cabinet secretary of some sort might yet be found to assume the reins of power.

Elma and Nathaniel both work for NACA; he is an engineer, and she is a computer. That is, she is a person who sets up the equations for many of the tasks of space flight, and then does the calculations with pencil paper and slide rule. Electronic computers are starting to come on line later in the book, but they are not entirely reliable and prone to overheating. They had both been at Los Alamos for Trinity, so when they see the light of the meteor’s entry they immediately think that it is an atomic bomb. The radio’s continued operation tells them that there had been no electromagnetic pulse, so it’s not an atomic attack by the Russians. Nathaniel comes up with the idea of a meteorite just before the earthquake’s shock wave hits their cabin. And levels it, just after they have gotten to the relative safety of a doorframe.

As physicists, they know what is coming next. “’The airblast will be what … half an hour late? Give or take?’ For all the calm in his words, Nathaniel’s hands shook as he opened the [car] passenger door for me. ‘Which means we have another … fifteen minutes before it hits’ … All I knew for certain was that, as long as the radio was playing, it wasn’t an A-bomb. But whatever had exploded was huge.” (p. 16) They drive a bit down the mountain — they are already on the lee side — and take shelter under an overhang. Still, the airblast blows out most of their car’s windows and knocks the car itself halfway across the road. Trees are laid out like the Tunguska event.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/20/the-calculating-stars-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

Jul 19 2019

Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo

Welcome to Lagos begins well outside of the Nigerian metropolis, at a hot and dirty army outpost somewhere in the Niger delta: oil country, but also rebel country. Serving under a corrupt colonel and terrorizing local people is not what Chike Ameobi signed up for the army to do. After twelve months as an officer in that region of bad rations and pointless conflict, he’s had enough. During a nighttime raid, he and Private Yemi Oke leg it into the brush. It’ll be death if they get caught by either rebels or army, or possibly even just the local people, but death could come for them just as easily on patrol, or if the colonel finds out they weren’t shooting at civilians like the rest of their unit. On their way out, they discard parts of their uniforms. Then they hope for the best.

Early the next morning, they surprise a young man at a vulnerable moment. Chike and Yemi take him hostage, pressuring him to take them to the main road. “Whenever Chike described what happened next, he began by saying it was mythical. … He saw a girl appearing as if from the tree itself, her legs sprouting from the bole, her arms fro the brambles, her hair a compost of twigs and leaves.” (p. 21) She runs smack into their hostage, who improbably calls himself Fineboy; there is a brief tussle and then she faints. Her name is Isoken, she has gotten lost from her parents, and says she was attacked during the night by a group of men who wanted to rape her. Isoken leads them to a village where she has an uncle, but it turns out the uncle is not much better than the night gang. Four of the novel’s five main characters are now assembled. Oma, the fifth, joins them on the crowded bus to Lagos, wedged in the front seat with Chike. She is fleeing a husband who beats her.

At first it looks like Chike’s new, hodgepodge platoon will disperse as soon as they make it to the big city. Part of Onuzo’s art is how natural she makes it seem that these unlikely allies stay together amidst the teeming millions in Lagos, how chance encounters form bonds that overcome initial mistrust and build a group that looks after each other. Two additional strands of the novel follow first Ahmed Bakare, editor of the Nigerian Journal, son of a wealthy family who has come back from a banking job in England to try to make a positive difference in his native country. Corruption can kill a crusading paper more thoroughly than the violence that the army used in the old days; if word from on high gets around that no one should buy ads in the paper’s pages, it will run out of money sooner or later. Ahmed has to balance his ideals with the realities of staying in business and protecting his staff, knowing all the while that he is disappointing his parents by not pursuing a more conventional career in business or graft, or at least staying in England and angling for respectability. The other strand follows Chief Sandayo, soon to be former Minister of Education. He had risen from activism in the Yoruba lands of the southwest, where he built schools and improved education, to the political capital of Abuja, where intrigues eventually get the better of him and he flees just ahead of ignominy and possibly worse.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/19/welcome-to-lagos-by-chibundu-onuzo/

Jul 10 2019

Two Dark Reigns (Three Dark Crowns #3) by Kendare Blake

Finally, a book I picked for meeeeee!

Nothing against the books sent to me for work, here or at CriminalElement.com, but dang, it’s nice to have free time again and the luxury of leisurely selecting from my back catalog, so to speak, what I’d like to read next. So, of course, I chose to enjoy the magnificent Kendare Blake’s magnificent Two Dark Reigns, silently screaming nearly throughout with emotion. Poor Katharine! I don’t normally have a lot of sympathy for murderous royalty but the poor girl has been stripped of so much agency that it feels almost churlish to blame her for all the bad shit she winds up doing.

Anyway, Katharine is queen now but not everyone is happy about it. The two weakest powered groups on Fennbirn — the oracles and the wargifted — are more than ready to elevate Jules to power, paving the way for a new system of government devoid of the Goddess’ blessing. Meanwhile, Arsinoe and Mirabella are navigating life off the island, but supernatural compulsions start pointing them back, having to do with the legacy of the last Blue Queen of Fennbirn, the fourth-born sister who immediately ascended the throne, dooming her siblings to death mere hours from the womb. Illian (sp? Sorry, I don’t have my Kindle handy) was a powerful elemental who created the mist that protects Fennbirn from the mainland and died aaaaaaages ago, so why would her ghost show up to two abdicating queens now?

I think my favorite part of this book was the way it portrayed the characters’ necessarily shifting allegiances and aims as they reacted to events and to each other: it was a shockingly sophisticated look at politics given that this is “merely” a YA fantasy novel. It’s hard not to root for each of the triplet queens as they struggle to break the chains of received history in order not only to survive but to preserve their beloved island. Honestly, the only non-triplet character I cared about was Billy, though Daphne-in-the-past was pretty cool too. And lol, the ending. Er, not the prophecy part (I’m pretty sure Arsinoe just assumed the worst, for some reason,) but the Pietyr part. He got what he deserved.

The WORST part of this book was ending it and discovering that the next (and last?) book in the series comes out in September. I’d thought that the whole series was completed so am just stewing at how much longer I have to wait than anticipated. That said, it’s back to the reading mines I go; hopefully, I will return here sooner rather than later!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/07/10/two-dark-reigns-three-dark-crowns-3-by-kendare-blake/

Jun 26 2019

The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion

Hi, Frumious Readers! I feel like I’ve been away foreeeever, but it’s been crunch time over at my other reading job with CriminalElement.com so my apologies for being infrequent over here. Anyway, with Doug away for a bit, I’m glad to be back with this really great new novel sent to me by our friends at Titan Press. It’s thrilling to be part of their blog tour for The Record Keeper, and do check out the other sites that are covering this book, as well.

In a post-apocalyptic world, the only surviving habitable land is a slice of the east coast of what was once North America. After years of bitter fighting along racial lines, the three surviving superpowers — the white English, the Asian Clayskin and the black Kongo — sign a treaty known as the Niagara compromise, which gives the three races separate but equal rights. Well, “equal” because we all know what that really means. The English are tasked with researching agricultural advances, while the Clayskin serve as merchants and tradesman. The Kongo themselves form the bulk of the agricultural labor, though stratify themselves further with the ranks of First Brother and Second Brother, along the lines of physical characteristics. The First Brothers include Record Keepers like our heroine, Arika of House Cobane, who live lives of relative privilege. They’re supposed to look after and champion their field hand brethren, the Second Brothers, but — at the risk of repeating myself — we all know how that works.

Arika studies at the Schoolhouse run by the sadistic Englishwoman Jones (she has a first name but I couldn’t be arsed to look for it because she is the poster girl for white feminism and, obviously, sucks.) Arika’s overweening ambition is to graduate as valedictorian so she can become a Senator, thereby escaping the arbitrary racial rules of the nation and securing herself an unassailable position from where she can truly advocate for her race, First and Second Brothers alike. She clings to logic and order without realizing that both have been framed for her by a society that wants to keep her docile and conforming. When a new student comes to the Schoolhouse and jeopardizes her standing, she begins to realize that there’s more to the world than she’d accounted for, inspiring the spirit that Jones had tried to break so long ago to unbend itself anew.

Okay, first let’s talk about this novel’s few but unignorable flaws. First, it is desperately underwritten. This is Agnes Gomillion’s first book, and she will look back on it in the future with a wince, not because it’s bad (it’s actually really good) but because she’ll know where she should have done better, taking more time to elaborate on plot points and interior lives and emotions instead of rushing from one cool idea to another. I absolutely understand the excitement to get this rich, vivid world out of one’s brain and on to the page, but there are a ton of what feel like missed moments that should have been dwelled upon instead of quickly presented then moved away from. This could easily have been a book twice its size that I would still have devoured with glee.

The second comes at the end of the book, and involves torturing an unconscious person. Yes, that person absolutely sucks, and yes, I believe that revenge isn’t necessarily evil or unwarranted, but come on. I don’t go for the honor card often, but it’s not heroic to inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain, and it’s cowardly to do that when the other person can’t fight back at all.

Anyway, those aside, this is a fascinating dystopian take on the rule of divide and conquer perpetrated historically by white Europeans and perpetuated by their minority subjects upon their own bodies. It’s got excellent historical chops as well as sci-fi bonafides: I loved the idea of the Helix and the fangirl references to Frederick Douglass. I’m very interested in seeing where Ms Gomillion goes with this next, as I’m intrigued by the whole Obi Solomon thing as well as by the forces that seemingly lie coiled in Arika’s breast. Sequel please, and soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/26/the-record-keeper-by-agnes-gomillion-2/

Jun 23 2019

Off to the Wabe

Perhaps to gyre and gimble. Back in mid-July.

In the meantime, I have become a supporting member of Dublin 2019, an Irish Worldcon. I’m gutted that I won’t be able to attend in person, but what can ya do?

Dublin 2019

I had an amazing time at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki, and enjoyed being a Hugo voter for the first time that year, so I am taking up the task again this year. I’ve already read two of the six nominees for Best Novel — Space Opera by Catherynne Valente (which Doreen also read) and Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee. Doreen and I have both read the first Binti novella; the third one is a finalist this year. Doreen has read the first three Muderbot novellas; the second is a Hugo finalist in 2019. Doreen has read Beneath the Sugar Sky, which is a finalist this year; she and I have both read other novellas in the Wayward Children series. Among the Best Series nominees, I have written about several of Charles Stross‘ Laundry books. Doreen and I have both written about Yoon Ha Lee‘s Machineries of Empire series.

Good reading ahead as I pedal through southern Germany.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/23/off-to-the-wabe/