Book round-up: February 2021

[sixthlight]

A month of mostly very good reads and two massive face-plants by Canadian authors. Sorry Canada but this was not your month. Better luck for the rest of the year.

Non-fiction

Empty Planet (Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson)
This book has one thesis (the planetary population is actually poised to decline steeply over the next century, not plateau) and I guess it works in that it made me think. However, it also made me incandescently furious at its failure to connect the economic motivators the authors ascribe easily to non-Western women with why, say, a dinner party’s worth of women they meet in Belgium who are all working full-time jobs while their male partners study or freelance, and then are expected to do the dishes after the party, might not be running to reproduce. And it is probably needless to note that it didn’t address queer reproductive rights at all (which is! Like! Super-relevant to my personal lack of offspring at this present time actually!) If you’re curious read a review and spare yourself the aggro.

Fiction

Winter’s Orbit (Everina Maxwell)
Originally an origfic on AO3 called ‘The Course of Honor’ (which I never read), this is an arranged marriage space opera which basically hit all my happy points. It is entirely possible to quibble about certain aspects of the worldbuilding, but basically it’s an all-around good time with a lead couple who do that excellent ‘very competent in complementary ways but convinced that the OTHER person is the only competent one in the relationship’ dynamic.

Star Daughter (Shveta Thakrar)

Tried it because I knew I’d seen it recced somewhere reliable; it’s a YA (het, I think) romance about a desi girl in New Jersey whose mother is a star, drawing on Indian mythology. A well-written portrayal of teenage concerns + supernatural for the first fifty pages, after which I wandered away because I don’t care about Relatable Teenage Concerns that much, but will definitely have an audience elsewhere.

The Perfect Assassin (K A Doore)
Secondary-world urban fantasy about a young man in a Middle Eastern-esque desert city (sorry, it is that generic) who has trained as an assassin in his family’s tradition despite assassinations being banned for his life; of course, as he completes his training, people start dying mysteriously...not, like, bad but I found the plot overly predictable and the worldbuilding left me with more questions than answers (mostly, ‘what the fuck does this city on pillars in the middle of a trackless waste actually produce to support this many people?’) First in a trilogy, but I don’t care enough to keep going.

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting (K J Charles)

M/M regency romance, ft. mathematics, bets as transparent excuses, people who like their family members, an extremely hard-headed view of the economic and social realities of Regency Britain, and a clear and deep well of rage which almost all my favourite British authors seem to be tapping into these days. Less escapism and more demanding of a better world. Recommended.

Ring Shout (P Djèlí Clark)

Three women in 1920s Georgia (and their allies) fight the KKK, who are in this story a supernatural as well as a natural evil. A horror-adjacent fairytale of sorts - the author says in an endnote he doesn’t see why Black people shouldn’t get cool magic swords in history as well as epic fantasy, and he is absolutely correct. I laughed, I cried, if the movie gets made I won’t watch it because the horror would be too visceral (literally) for me in a visual medium, but it will make a hell of a movie for people who don’t mind that.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (Nghi Vo)

A fairytale of a very different sort - scholar Chih, last seen in The Empress of Salt and Fortune, must tell a story to three tigers (and deal with their corrections along the way) to keep themself and their companions alive through a long, dark night. Lyrical and immediate at the same time. Also there are mammoths. Between these two novellas I’ll pretty much read anything Nghi Vo puts out next.

Fireheart Tiger (Aliette de Bodard)

Princess Thanh, returned home after years in an overseas court, has to negotiate with her former lover for her kingdom’s independence - and figure out why fire has followed her home. The emotional beats all hit for me but the story felt a little slight; not a criticism, it just won’t stick with me as much as some of her other work.

That Inevitable Victorian Thing (E K Johnston)

Wants to be a cute queer/poly-adjacent teenage romance with Secret Royalty; chooses to try and do this in a setting where Queen Victoria (checks notes) solved racism and sexism by making her daughter her heir and marrying her children outside Europe and (checks notes) the British Empire still rules most of the world but it’s Good so that’s Fine (or at least, we stay strictly with very privileged characters who never question whether it’s Fine.) Would be interesting if it was INTENTIONALLY depicting a eugenic, perisexist, assimilationist dystopia. Absolutely does not know it is depicting those things. Peak white feminism and, crucially, has made me look back less kindly at elements of this in the author’s previous work.