Tag: books

A final two Nebula Award finalists

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy3 Comments

In my quest to read all six of the novels short-listed for the 2024 Nebula Awards, I’ve made two posts so far about four of the novels. This post rounds out the six. When I began this series of posts, I have to say I scoffed. The Nebula Award winners will be unveiled on June 8th, and I only decided I’d do this thing a bit past mid-May. Was I crazy???? And now that I’ve actually done it (except for one–full disclosure, I read it earlier this year), have I ever read such an impressive collection of novels? If I have, I’ve never blitzed through them this fast. But they were so absorbing it was hard to stop. Okay, I’m a fast reader. But I’m not a fast reader of boring stuff. So there’s that.

I read these novels in no particular order, by the way–just grabbed one and dug in. It also didn’t hurt–in fact helped a lot–that I’m on a month’s DYI writing retreat in Portugal, where I am perched five stories above the beautiful Largo de São Domingos in Porto. Wafting through the windows along the balmy breezes are fantastic performances by the street musicians in the square below, especially the music of the superb soprano jazz saxophonist who bills himself as Andre Luis. Was there ever a more perfect writing/reading environment? I’ll go home to the U.S. soon and find out who won the Nebula this year for best novel, but I’ll leave a big part of my heart here in Porto.

Here are my final two reviews: The Terraformers, by Annalee Newitz, and The Water Bandits, by S. L. Huang.

Find out more HERE.

Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers (Tor, 2023)

How do I even begin? And what is this novel, anyway? Is it green lit/eco lit? Yes. Is it something called “noblebright“? Yes. Not dystopian. Not utopian, either. Is it structurally set up to fail as a novel? In my opinion, yes. Does it fail? No, no, a thousand times no. It is superb. Please read this book.

The novel covers a thousand years–enough, according to the author, to encompass a full terraforming cycle of the potentially Earth-like exoplanet Sask-E. That means, however, that you don’t get to follow one protagonist, or even several co-protagonists, over the course of the novel. So what happens when you switch main characters like this? In some cases, your novel functions like a series of novellas bound together into a single book. In some cases, you end up with a mess. Some writers succeed at doing this. In the SF realm, I’m thinking of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, or Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves (which I found very unsatisfying–others obviously disagree). Another example might be David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which I found very annoying, especially because I think he’s a great writer (again, many, many others disagree). Against all odds–or anyway, against my own reading history and prejudices, Newitz’s novel brilliantly succeeds, perhaps because one of the main “characters” is Sask-E itself, or–maybe the whole Sask-E terraforming enterprise, based on the philosophy of a society of rangers whose job it is to protect the planet. The author’s interview for The Stranger explains their thinking.

The rangers’ communitarian and ecological principles run up against stiff opposition by commercial enterprises with a much different vision of Sask-E’s future. These interests have the financial and political clout to prevail. If I were to tell you my favorite kind of novel is one with a strong message overwhelming the characters, I’d be lying. I find that kind of novel trying. I’m thinking of the (very much lauded) novel The Tortilla Curtain, by T. C. Boyle (1996). At the end, I felt the characters were cardboard cutouts standing in for ideas, and I also felt resentful that I hadn’t spent the time instead reading a good nonfiction book about the problems of immigrants. A few chapters into Newitz’s book, I wondered if I were in for another experience like that. I wasn’t. This novel is thrilling–as a novel of ideas, but a real novel, not just a long, disguised essay.

The first chapter or two almost made me think we were about to embark on a fun adventure story, maybe of the cowboys-in-space variety, the good-guy farmers vs. the evil ranchers. After all, the novel begins with a ranger named Destry, riding their faithful moose Whistle. But pretty soon the reader is in the deep weeds of how a fair regulatory climate and carefully-maintained ecological balance are essential to justice and a decent life. If this description makes the novel seem drab, don’t be fooled. It’s anything but.

Far into the novel, I had to laugh at the minor character Cimell, a failed game designer who is very earnest but whose games are essentially unplayable. Cimell tries to explain to the main characters in this part of the book (a smart, savvy cat–is there any other kind?–and a sentient train) (Yes, train. A train is one of the main characters. A gamer-train.):

Maybe. . .battles are more exciting. They make for better superhero stories. . .But the revolution is actually happening in the boring details, like how you manage housing and water, or who is allowed to speak.

Please tell me the author hasn’t stuck Cimell into the novel to speak wryly for theirself. This novel is anything but boring. This game–this novel–is anything but unplayable. (Because what is a novel, anyway, but an elaborate game played with words?)

The Terraformers is an extremely important novel, and I am so glad it’s a Nebula finalist. The more of us who know about this book, the better. The more of us who read this book, the better. The planet needs us to. In addition, it’s a great reading experience. Did I mention sentient worms? And the much-maligned naked mole-rats finally get their due.

Find out more HERE.

S. L. Huang, The Water Outlaws (Tor, 2023)

What a fun, exciting novel this one is! I enjoyed it immensely. It’s a re-imagining of Ming-dynasty writer Shi Nai’an’s Water Margin, considered one of China’s “Four Great Classical Novels” and a precursor to later wuxia fiction: stories (movies, games, etc.) heavily involved with martial arts, magic, and underdog characters fighting for justice. This re-imagining is set in the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE), although it doesn’t adhere slavishly to historical facts. Huang’s acknowledgments page at the end of the novel gives a good overview of what parts are historical and what parts are made up.

I don’t know enough about wuxia, just that one of my favorite movies ever is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, directed by Ang Lee). For the hard-core wuxia fan, I’m sure Huang’s novel presents even more delights than it does for me. Even so, I found it thrilling. It’s a tale of women who are thrust to the margins of society. These outcasts band together in a sisterhood considered a pack of bandits by the authorities but freedom-fighters by themselves and the villagers they protect. A fascinating subplot concerns a woman forced to participate in a sort of proto-Manhattan Project to create a weapon of mass destruction–some of it based on wuxia tropes about magic and the magical arts, but a lot of it on actual Chinese experimentation with gunpowder. This part of the plot reminds me somewhat of Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. The characters are compelling, and the moral dilemmas they face give them depth.

A serious message about the nature of justice and the dangers of messing with dark destructive forces undergirds this exciting tale. I had a blast ending my Nebula Finalists reading binge with this one.

COMING UP NEXT:

I have some thoughts about who I’d vote to win.

Two More Nebula Finalists

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy7 Comments

Continuing my previous post on the short-listed novels for the 2024 Nebula award, here are two more reviews of the finalists, Ann Leckie’s Translation State and Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors:

Find out more HERE.

Ann Leckie, Translation State (Orbit, 2023)

A compelling read from Leckie, who returns to a familiar setting, the interstellar empire of the Radch. Some time ago, I read the first of her Imperial Radch trilogy, Ancillary Justice, and reviewed it for this blog. At the time, I found the book hard to penetrate, but by the end of the novel, pretty fascinating. I was unsure whether I’d continue the series, and in fact didn’t. Now, with Translation State, I’ve returned to Leckie’s complex world of intrigue and danger and exotic species. The characters, the plot, the ingenious, very organic and natural-seeming use of pronouns to delineate a gender-fluid universe of peoples and cultures, are all outstanding. This novel is billed as a stand-alone novel in the Radch universe, but I agree with many reviewers who point out that the more a reader knows about that universe, the better the reading experience with this most recent novel.

Throughout Translation State, I was in awe of Leckie’s world-building. The Radch are not the main focus of this book, although their influence pervades the complicated politics that drive the plot. This novel focuses on the mysterious Presger and the intermediate forms some of them take to bridge from their alien consciousness to the humans with whom they exist in an uneasy alliance. A too-fragile treaty may be the only barrier standing between humanity and annihilation, so the stakes are high. I was reminded of Iain Banks’s great Culture novels.

To inhabit the mind of a species this removed from the human is quite a feat, and Leckie pulls it off. I’m thinking of other novels that accomplish something similar, such as William Golding’s The Inheritors, or Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves (which itself won the Nebula in 1972). I guess I could mention China Miéville’s great Embassytown, too, but that novel is in a class by itself.

Is it mean-spirited of me to say that in the end, I was a bit let down by Leckie’s tale of found family? On the other hand, while it may be fascinating to imagine the politics and treaties that stitch the universe together, in the end, at least for the novel (for readers? for human beings?), it all comes down to the personal. Only connect. Translation State is actually a very sweet-natured novel, and I enjoyed it immensely. And I think now I’ll return to the Ancillary books and start reading them in order.

Find out more HERE.

Vajra Chandrasekera, The Saint of Bright Doors (Tordotcom, 2023)

This novel, by Sri Lankan writer Chandrasekera, is simply astounding, a sweeping tale of power and the structures that drive power, loosely based on a legend about Siddhartha. The novel has received wide acclaim, nominated for the Locus award and short-listed for the Lambda award, among other accolades. Chandrasekera imagines a hybrid world of the fantastic (gods and anti-gods and spirits and demons and messiahs abound, as well as the mysterious “bright doors” of the title) and the realistic–shoddy apartment blocks in a steamy South Asian city, civil unrest, unfathomable and obscure caste distinctions, corrupt politics, and more–a heady mix. This is a characteristic Chandrasekera’s novel shares, at least a bit, with his fellow nominee Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (reviewed in my preceding post), except that in Talabi’s novel, the spirit world and the regular world, while they may intersect, are clearly separate–that’s even a huge plot point in Talabi’s novel. In Chandrasekera’s novel, the spirit world’s and the ordinary world’s objects and personae and passions and concerns are all jammed and mashed together in a dizzying stew that defies any attempt (reader’s, chararacters’) to pry them apart.

This novel is infused with the historical and political concerns of Sri Lanka, matters pretty completely opaque to me. I refer readers of this blog to this great review and analysis published recently on the Strange Horizons magazine site. The reviewer, New Zealand writer Tehnuka, has a far greater understanding of these issues than I ever will. That said, even without the deep background of readers like her, I can tell you I found Chandrasekera’s novel as compelling a read as anything I’ve come across lately.

Its political concerns are not just local and regional, either. Many readers, from many parts of the world, will resonate with this aspect of the novel. Great quotation, too frighteningly true in too many parts of the world, not excepting my own:

the law might do anything, at any time, to anyone, and justify itself any way it likes–it is feral, like the invisible laws and powers of the world of which it is a pale imitation.

Quick message: I love to read. Love it. You do, too, I’m figuring, or you wouldn’t be here. So. . .LOVE YOUR PUBLIC LIBRARY. LOVE YOUR LIBRARIAN. For some of us, libraries and those brave souls, librarians, stand between us and the dark. So far, in my read through the Nebula finalists, any one of these books could be banned by ignorant ill-meaning people simply because all of these novels (so far, anyway), take an unflinching look at the human condition. (some, the not-so-human!)

The Nebula Awards are almost here!

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy2 Comments

In March, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announced the finalists for their Nebula Awards 2024, one of the several most important awards for SF and fantasy. Here’s the short-list of all the nominees who published in 2023. I decided to read all the nominations for best novel. The whole list is a lot of fun, though, and I saw many other types of nominees I might love to blog about–movies, game writing, short fiction, and others. Nevertheless, I’m just going to concentrate on the novels this time.

In this post, I’m reviewing two:

Martha Wells, The Witch King

Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon

Here they are:

Find out more HERE.

Martha Wells, The Witch King (Tordotcom, 2023)

Wells is most famous for her wildly popular Murderbot series. The Witch King marks her return to fantasy after a long time writing mostly SF. I enjoyed the intrigue, the world-building, and the characters in this novel of demons and empire. The interesting take on gender grabbed me, too. In the end, though, it seemed very over-complicated to me. I see it is listed as book one of a series, so maybe the series needs all these complications and will build on them in future books.

Find out more HERE.

Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (Daw, 2023)

What an amazing novel. This fantasy heist tale crosses time and place, with world-building centered in Nigerian spiritual practices and beliefs–chiefly (I THINK) Yoruba, but check me on this, because I know little about it, only what I learned watching a fantastic production of Wole Soyinka’s masterpiece, Death and the King’s Horseman, and then avidly reading it. So–I’m a pretty ignorant reader, considering everything. But how fascinating Talabi’s novel is! This is what I wish American Gods had been (sorry, not a fan) but wasn’t. This is a very different kind of book, to be fair–very tightly plotted, with an engaging, often humorous tone imagining what it’s like to be part of the Nigerian spirit world AND steal an artifact from The British Museum AND have a beyond-time-and-place love affair (NOT a romantasy, by the way). The cameo appearance of Aleister Crowley reincarnated as a louche teen idol is hilarious–because, he says, being a Satanist is just too ordinary and boring these days. The other characters disdain him as a lightweight. I savored every word of this novel.

SIDE NOTE–colonialism is bad, right, but Nigerian writers in English are such a boon to the language that I am swooning with delight at finding a new one. The great Nigerian writers like Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, younger writers like Chris Abani and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, so many more, many I’m sure I don’t know yet–and now this. I’m not equating all of these books, because they are from different cultures within Nigeria, have different aims and audiences, and meet different levels of taste–but I’m saying the world of reading is a better place for all of these great writers in whatever form and way they choose to do art.