sixthlight

You know that gif of Jim Kirk from the tribble episode where tribbles are just steadily falling on his head? That was me for this…entire three month period, yikes, things not letting up from August. Pregnancy + living with my parents + moving house + three conferences in one four-week period = Just, A Lot, All The Time. I could barely read for a lot of it, even stuff I liked and was excited to read. I am pleased to report I’ve come back up for air in December but anyway, we’re doing all my reading for those three months at once because…yeah. I will not be sorry to see the back of 2022.

Fiction

Point of Knives, Fairs’ Point, and Point of Sighs (Melissa Scott)

The first two of these were re-reads from about five years ago; the third was new to me. As noted in August, these are secondary world urban fantasy mysteries with queer protagonists who develop a romantic relationship rather than queer romances; if they were on AO3 they would be filed as casefic. The worldbuilding and city in which they are set continue to be the main attractions (the leads are a wee bit bland for my tastes) but I will read as many of these as Scott cares to write.

A Mirror Mended (Alix E Harrow)

Follow up to A Spindle Splintered, wherein our fairytale-universe-hopping protagonist meets an Evil Queen and things go wrong (and eventually right). This one riffs on Snow White rather than Sleeping Beauty. It hasn’t stuck with me deeply but it was a fun read if you like fairytale remixes and deconstruction and prickly protagonists who get in their own way.

Nona the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

What’s to say that I haven’t said on Tumblr? Will make no sense if you haven’t read the first two Locked Tomb books; doesn’t necessarily on a first read even if you have, because that is the way Muir rolls as a writer. Delightful, gory, bold. Muir also embraces her voice as a Kiwi author specifically in this one - pikelets!!! - and I am still chewing on the implications months later. Occasionally I consider that if I were dictator of the world non-Kiwis would be banned from commenting on it. Sorry/not sorry guys. Love your working tram systems.

The Grief of Stones (Katherine Addison)
Sequel to The Witness for the Dead; Thara Celehar continues to be depressed, gay, repressed, and constitutionally incapable of not trying to solve murder mysteries. I was slightly less than convinced by the Big Twist near the end - it felt like something the author wanted to happen so she could explore the implications rather than a natural outgrowth of the story - but I am willing to see where it goes.

Ocean’s Echo (Everina Maxwell)

Space opera mlm romance, this time with telepaths; one who causes trouble by breaking the rules and one who causes trouble by following them. Theoretically the protagonists are like 19-20 but I was genuinely befuzzled to realise this halfway through; in my head they were at least half a decade older. I was really enjoying this for about ¾ of it and then hit a wall for reasons I can’t quite articulate, sort of like the point in a Phase 4 Marvel movie when you realise there’s still a whole hour to go. Points for both embracing and hard swerving on various telepath/soulmate tropes, however.

Non-fiction

The Alarmist (David Lowe)
Autobiography of a scientist who played a key role in atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements which helped demonstrate the rapid pace of climate change. Lowe is a workmanlike rather than lyrical write but for a first book he does well enough; most scientists would be worse. I appreciated the honesty about his emotional life and relationships and how that affected his career, but man, it was also grating as a scientist in 2022 to see how easily he fell into jobs and promotions. Not his fault but the 1970s (for white men) were truly a different world.

An Immense World (Ed Yong)

Another winner from Yong, probably one of the best science writers out there today, on the variety of wonder of animal senses. It has never been made so clear to me what different worlds other species operate in. Probably should be required reading for anybody trying to imagine from the viewpoint of an alien species. Good mix of ‘stuff I already knew, but not in detail’ and ‘genuinely new things’.

The Complete Book of Home Organisation (Toni Hammersley)
I went through a phase when we moved into the new house (I am sparing you the other books, which have already departed my memory). This does tend to assume you are an American woman with a husband and children and want to organise your house from that perspective, and the less said about its comments on diet the better, but there are some genuinely good and useful tips here - it was incredibly helpful when I was laying out my new and much larger kitchen. It doesn’t always assume you have a lot of space, either.

The New Zealand Pregnancy Book (Sue Pullon and Cheryl Benn)
Intended as a bible on pregnancy and the first weeks of parenthood for people based in NZ; last updated in 2008 and probably needs a new edition, but still thorough and useful if being pregnant is a situation you are in. Tries to not be heterocentric but since this was 2008, exists in a world where there are two groups of parents: straight people and lesbians. Points for effort I guess. Really reassuring in terms of explaining what the hell is going on with your body.

Exponential (Azeem Azhar)
This book has one thesis, which is that humans & current society are not good at understanding the implications of exponential trends (c.f. SARS-COV-2). This is true as far as it goes, but this is very much an “I have a hammer and now all problems are nails” book written by a technological optimist. Gave up about halfway through when his assumptions about things he knows less about than I do (e.g. the problems and challenges of factory food production) started to really bite. I would have preferred a longform essay.

Re-reads

Daughter of Mystery (Heather Rose Jones)
Read this first in 2018, before I started blogging my reviews - it’s the first book in the author’s Alpennia series, Ruritanian wlw (mostly) romances. This is the most Ruritanian and romance-y of them all, with secret identities, unexpected inheritances, plots to seize the throne, etcetera, all grounded in what feels like a very realistic nineteenth-century central European world. Still boatloads of fun.

Monk’s Hood, St Peter’s Fair, The Leper of St Giles, and The Virgin in the Ice (Ellis Peters)
Technically re-reads in that I know I read every Cadfael novel Wellington City Libraries had in 2004 or so, but it has been nearly twenty years and I remembered only vibes and setting. Cadfael is a Welsh monk who came to the cloth after a lifetime as a sailor and soldier, including participating in the First Crusade; he uses his extensive period medical knowledge and life experience to solve crimes in the border town of Shrewsbury during the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. This was a random pick of 4 consecutive books in the series the library happened to have available at the time. Written between 1977 and 1994 and probably prototypical as deliberately historical mysteries; IMO they have held up solidly although not without some visible aging. They do a reasonable job of balancing a worldview that feels genuinely different and keeping the leads hashtag-relatable - Cadfael’s concern is always very much for justice and the ordinary person. Very much appreciated at a point where I was struggling with fiction, period. I will dip back into this series the next time I need some comfort re-reads.