Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame by Neon Yang

 

I met Neon Yang at New York Comic Con a few years ago - they were very cool, and helped change the name on the book cover of my copy of The Black Tides of Heaven that I brought to get signed, since it had been published under their former name. I enjoyed that book, and I also believe that I enjoyed The Genesis of Misery (although, to be frank, I cannot remember much about it). 

I very much enjoyed their new novella, Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame, which Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC of in exchange for an honest review. 

To be fair, the first time I tried to read it, I bounced off the first page and couldn’t get into it. However, I realize that I was clearly in more of a science fiction than fantasy mood at the time, because a few weeks later, I restarted it, and did not want to put it down. It tells the story of an imperial dragon hunter who is sent as an emissary to another country where she meets the monarch and uncovers her secret (which I will not spoil here). Even though I saw the reveal coming a mile away, I still really enjoyed this book! (Also, I think I was supposed to figure out what was going on before the protagonist did).  This was a delightful book that I highly recommend. 

The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix Harrow

I first heard of Alix Harrow when her short story “A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” was nominated for a Hugo Award. I read it, and I loved it. When her first novel came out, The Ten Thousand Door of January, I read it right away, and was a little disappointed. The book felt disjointed, and I didn’t care for the protagonist or her struggles very much. I felt like the author didn’t successfully make the leap from short story to novel.  I read Ms. Harrow’s two fractured fairytale novellas when they were nominated for the Hugos and I enjoyed them, although they felt a bit glib.I think I’m part because I’m getting a little tired of the hard-drinking, Devil-May-care protagonist trope. 

Starling House, however, was a massive leveling up - one of the absolute best books I read the year it came out. I loved it so much!!!

So of course I was excited when the publisher and NetGalley granted me an eARC of a new work by Ms. Harrow in exchange for an honest review. The Knight and the Butcherbird was a wonderful post apocalyptic short story about the lies we tell ourselves and the choices we make to survive. It was wonderfully engrossing and my only complaint was its brevity. I sure hope that the author revisits this world in another work soon.

Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire

 

An excellent follow up to the last volume!

I love Seanan McGuire’s body of work.  (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. When Incryptid was nominated for the Best Series Hugo in 2018, I dove into that and I loved it! It is probably my second favorite series by McGuire (Velveteen Vs. holds a special place in my heart). 

This is the first Incryptid book since the series switched publishers from DAW to Tor, and I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be granted and advanced reader copy, I was overjoyed when Tor and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of the latest Incryptid book, in exchange for an honest review. 

The book starts with what seemed like a recap for new readers, but it was incredibly well done and did not ostracized me, a long time reader of this series.

The book picks up with Mary’s story, not too long after the conclusion of the last volume. We get to visit with several other family members before the story kicks in into high gear.

One of the most wonderful things for me in this book was to get more with some characters that have not had a lot of narrative time until now. We get to spend more time with Elsie and with Arthur. After Artie was shattered and put back together again, we have not spent a lot of time with him, and I am so glad that we did, even if the more we learned about him the sad I get about his fate.

The actual plot of this book is a lot of fun, and it advance sis the overall fight-with-the-Covenant storyline in a satisfying way. 

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Breath of the Dragon by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee

 Breath of the Dragon by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee 

I was really looking forward to this book, and I was so disappointed because this was not the book that I wanted it to be.  I have read a number of by Fonda Lee, and I have enjoyed each and every book of hers. I have been waiting for a long vacation to read the Green Bone Saga, but I absolutely loved Untethered Sky. So, when I saw that she had a new book available on NetGalley, I requested it. I didn’t know who the Shannon Lee was that she coed with, but I figured I would give it a go. I really enjoyed the prologue - it set up a pair of twins, one of whom was thoughtless and doomed his family to a separation. Then chapter one began with the thoughtless child being a whiner, and a complainer, who only cared about martial arts while his father wanted him to get a nice respectable government job. I was really hoping that the book was going to alternate chapters so we could see the point of view of his twin brother and mother. As I read, it slowly dawned on me that we were not going to switch and see what was going on with the more interesting brother, but we were going to be stuck with the stupid, thoughtless, selfish brother throughout the book. About a third of the way through, I realized that Shannon Lee is the child of Bruce Lee, and that this book was going to be a boring slog of a martial arts competition. I’m sure there are people out there for whom this is a great book, but I am not one of them. 

Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler

 

I read this book at the wrong time.

I had never heard of Ray Nayler until I saw his book The Mountain and the Sea on the nebula nomination list. (It’s still on my TBR pile!) 

When I saw a new book by him on NetGalley, I decided to give it a go. This book was hard. It’s set in a world with an incredibly brutal fascist regime where the leader’s mind keeps getting transferred into new clones bodies when the body degrades. Some of the imagery was evocative and some of the language was beautiful, but reading about this brutal government as my own country descends further into fascism was not the diverting SF novel I was looking for. I also felt like many of the characters were ciphers with no interiority. 

An interesting book, but not for me at this point in in time. 

Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington

 This was a very promising debut! 

I have been trying to read outside my comfort zone - I try to make sure I don’t get into a rut where I only read the same authors all the time. Also, I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy lately and I decided to more actively seek out more science fiction books. 

So a few months back, when I got an email from NetGalley telling me I was auto-approved for a bunch of books by authors I had never heard of, I decided to say “what the heck!” And I downloaded all of them, thinking maybe I’d find something good, maybe I wouldn’t. So I was very pleased when I started reading and realized/remembered that this was a time traveling archeologist book!

In premise, this book felt like it was trying to be Connie Willis mixed with Indiana Jones. 

Now, I absolutely adore Connie Willis and her Oxford time traveling historians, and the premise revealed in To Say Nothing Of The Dog that items about to be destroyed in history can be removed from their original time and brought back to the present/future. At first I thought this book might be in conversation with that book, but I don’t think so. I don’t think this author is that familiar with a lot of other SF books, because this book often felt like a trope-fest crossed with a Byzantine history course - But fun! I’m not adequately conveying how much fun this book was or how much of a page turner it was. Even though the main character was too morose and too good at everything, and the twist was able to be seen a mile away, and the science of the time travel did not seem well thought out, I didn’t want to put this down! I really enjoyed it, flaws and all, and look forward to the next book in the series. 

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses Malka Older

I am really enjoying this series! I first started reading this series of novellas when the first one was nominated for a Hugo Award. I really enjoyed it and checked the second one out of the library shortly after I finished it and liked that a lot too! I’m all for a Holmes/Watson framework for a mystery, and I have loved SF mysteries since I discovered the Caves of Steel in junior high. I was excited when I got an eARC of this third volume from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

The mystery in this book is not quite as fun as in the first two - frankly, by the time of the solution I had forgotten who several of the suspects were. I love the world building and the setting of these books, and the characters are the reason I keep coming back. I understand why the narrator is infatuated with Mossa- I love Mossa as a character- but Mossa is a terrible person to be in a relationship with and it shows (as, presumably, Sherlock Holmes would be a dreadful boyfriend).  I enjoyed how academic research was key to solving the mystery. And I enjoyed just how terrible an investigator/interviewer the narrator was (I was also taking a science-based interviewing course for law enforcement while reading this book).  

Bottom line - I will happily keep reading these as long as the author keeps writing them.