Book round-up: July 2021

[sixthlight]

I didn’t have a book club book this month because we did The Doors of Eden, which I read earlier in the year, so for once I read a non-fiction book of my own choice! I mean, apart from all the other non-fiction I have read this year. Also, a bunch of novellas and a comfort mildly trashy Mercedes Lackey, plus two more challenging novels (The Unbroken and Ministry for the Future).

Fiction

The Unbroken (C L Clark)
Secondary-world fantasy in French-controlled colonial Egypt (well, the fantasy version thereof, but the reference is very one-to-one) about an indigenous soldier who was stolen and raised in a colonial battalion, and is desperate to prove her worth, and her relationship with a princess sent to govern the colony who is equally desperate to prove she is ready to inherit the throne. The thesis of this book is “there is no way to fix colonialism no matter how nice you are or how pure your intentions are”, and I had to put it down at several points because the protagonists were making decisions that I could see were going to end in disaster, but which were also the only decisions they could make, in true Greek tragedy style. Not a tragedy, though; I don’t know how a somewhat-happy ending might be pulled out of this series but I’m interested to see if it can be.

Division Bells (Iona Datt Sharma)
Novella m/m romance about a special advisor and a civil servant in post-Brexit Westminster. Gonna be honest: I mostly enjoyed it for the extreme political nerdery (this was unquestionably written by somebody who knows the system well), but found it hard to entirely buy the romance because, uh, upper-class white Tories are not romanceable in my book no matter how sweet and gay and personally nice they may be. YMMV.

Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night (Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma)
Novella. Two metamours who tolerate each other at best - a highly organised mum of two and a musician - are set on a Christmas quest through London to save their mutual magician boyfriend, who is trapped by a spell. Lots of fun, sympathetic to all its characters, and has one of the funniest Two Queers Who Don’t Like Each Other Pretend To Be A Straight Couple scenes I have ever read.

Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson)
As climate change gets worse, the United Nations sets up a special body to represent the people of the future. There are lots of ways to describe this which make it sound like a technothriller, but it is emphatically not; it is a book about bureaucrats making changes through bureaucracy, mostly set in Switzerland. In true KSR fashion it sort of loses track about ⅔ of the way through and meanders to an ending that isn’t really an ending, but a lot of the concepts are interesting, especially as they relate to stuff I'm encountering professionally. Content warning: it starts with a detailed description of a heatwave that kills twenty million people, from a ground-level view, and it’s...A Lot. Everything after that is MUCH less traumatic.

Finna (Nino Cipri)
Hilarious novella about two exes in faux-Ikea who are voluntold to rescue a customer from an interdimensional portal which has appeared in their store. The worldbuilding is excellent, the depiction of corporate retail is painfully accurate, and the leads’ relationship - loving each other, but not knowing exactly what they want to be to each other now - is very well-drawn (and queer). A very worthy Hugo nominee.

Jolene (Mercedes Lackey)

Another entry in her Elemental Masters series (but not Sherlock Holmes fanfic, THANK fucking GOD). This time...it’s songfic. You know the one. Except it’s set in late nineteenth century Tennessee. Is it good? Not exactly. Does it contain an abundance of food and craft porn? Yes. Is it kinda sorta trying to include non-white people? Very much so! How long does it take to get to the actual songfic? Basically the entire book, but you know what, I enjoyed it and not even ironically.

The Witness for the Dead (Katherine Addison)
Set in the same world as The Goblin Emperor but not any sort of direct sequel; this time, it follows a prelate who can speak to the dead as he solves a variety of mysteries related to the dead (some murder, some otherwise). Very much urban fantasy in the sense of having an incredibly detailed sense of place - I absolutely believe the city exists, it has neighbourhoods, it has presence, it has (and this plays a big plot role) opera. Apparently there are going to be direct sequels and I look forward to them.

Non-fiction

The Missing Lynx (Ross Barnett)
Recommended by a friend a long time ago, this outlines the major megafauna species which have gone extinct in Great Britain and Ireland since the end of the last ice age, and speculates on whether it might be possible to bring them back. (Spoilers: the lynx and the wolf are the only really solid candidates). A very easy read and seems to be based on pretty solid palaeontology; the author is an ancient DNA expert.

Comments

[fitzcamel]

Witness for the Dead: Urban fantasy in the circa 1985-2005 sense, yes! (I have sometimes in the privacy of my own head proposed renaming that subgenre "metropolitan fantasy," for the obvious reasons. Not sure it quite captures the whole range (e.g. something like the Last Hot Time), but it would definitely fit this one. I hadn't heard about the direct sequels; good news! :)