THE SIXTH NIK, we need a new literary adjective..."Krausian"

THE SIXTH NIK
DANIEL KRAUS
Saga Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Perfectly aligned for readers of Iain M. Banks’s The Culture series and Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, The Sixth Nik is a galaxy spanning adventure from the New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angel Down and Whalefall.

Deep into space, far past the triworld outposts, beyond range of the lethal trollbot internet, soars The Sickness: a ship woven from biomatter and capable of reacting to every need of its human crew. Sisilla, a nine-year-old cultist with a brain enhanced by arcane tech known as “niks,” has boarded to investigate the enigma of Fém—a plague-riddled planet that has abruptly gone rogue.

The mysterious crew includes a faceless assassin, a beautiful engineer jigsawed by plastic surgery, a peyote-addicted medic, and—most lethal of all—a rugged, NonModded captain with a score to settle with Sisilla. Other dangers abound. A hacked robot begins to believe Sisilla is its daughter. The Sickness itself is mutating, possibly even pregnant. And the secret of Fém is more horrific than anyone could have imagined. To survive, Sisilla will need to forsake her predetermined fate and embrace the unknown.

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My Review: Sisilla is a weird protagonist. She knows when she will die: after she completes her "Chore," the issue/problem/situation her birth family gave her life to resolving with the aid of major surgical brain modification and enhancement by alien tech. It's...distancing, for we-the-reader and most certainly for the Inuit people her birth family sent her to live among (it's the custom, it's required). She is the fifty-fifth child to have this life wished on her before she's got anything like the ability to offer consent, and then there's the fact that she will be killed when her "Chore" is complete. The alien-tech brain mods, the "niks," will be removed from her dead brain, the next sacrificial child will be found and modified, and giant social/technical/existential problems will be solved.

I was appalled and repulsed by this system of abusive exploitation. I was revolted by the most bizarrely powered transport that took Sisilla from her place of education and preparation into distant reaches of space, that "plasmagraphic" ship's name...The Sickness...apt for the ship and the "Chore" Sisilla is to accomplish at the cost of her life. This being Author Kraus, I was expecting seriously effective descriptive language everywhere. I got it in spades. I've seldom liked a character I sympathized with *less* than Sisilla, mostly because the Omelas-ness of her world is a truly effective backdrop for creating kind feelings by way of contrast. I was actually nauseated by The Sickness, thus felt a reluctant protective urge towards the child it was created to transport. A misplaced emotion...Sisilla is not a person in need of protection, but one to be protected against as normalizing a brutal, utilitarian corruption of innocence in a very questionable enterprise. I won't call it a cause.

I finished this read in May. I wrote three reviews, discarded them for being inaccurate and overly emotive. This review goes up no matter what. Author Kraus does a tremendous job of creating fascinating, flawed, awful human being protagonists in the two books of his I have now read. I know a lot of people read Angel Down (review linked on first reference) very differently than I did...it is my favorite WWI novel, despite the war being only the setting of a far, far more damning commentary on capitalism, anomie, and sociopathy writ large. Its commentary would not be as effective as it is were it set in another time and place. That is why I call it my favorite WWI novel. I won't call The Sixth Nik my favorite SF novel, or my favorite alien-contact novel; it is my favorite body horror novel. This is a finely gauged story that evokes sympathy and disgust simultaneously. There is a direct presentation of revolting meaty awfulness. Then there is, as one thinks about it, an awful emotionally excavating familiarity to its meaty awfulness. It is a story wherein People...that giant amorphous guilt-ameliorating construct...have chosen to sacrifice the humanity and the life of a little girl to solve a problem more quickly, more expeditiously, more seamlessly, at that cost.

Is the bell ringing yet?

So this read is not for everyone, not likely to be one you'll undertake unless you are willing to spelunk some dark caves of the soul with only a little light to carry with you. It will reward you with an undistorted assessment of the world, the humans in it, and (from Shakespeare in Love, remember that film?) a bit with a dog aptly named "Positive Roy." I suspect the fairly heavy-handed symbolism of the ship's mode of propulsion...one of my few true objections to the not-subtle nature of the story's worldbuilding...will cause eye-rolling. I offer to the rolled eye a reminder of "the Snarl," an equally unsubtle but much more palatable metaphor for tech-mediated human communication, and quite possibly an equally useful organizing principle to use along with Cory Doctorow's "enshittification."

Would I recommend you read this story? Yes. Do I expect you will? Not many of you. Do I hope you will try to overcome your reluctance to engage with something this complicated emotionally?

Very much. I did. I got a lot out of reflecting, revisiting, rethinking my ideas in this story's mirrors.

YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO BE HUMAN, if the title chills you wait'll you read the story

YOU WEREN'T MEANT TO BE HUMAN
ANDREW JOSEPH WHITE
Saga Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2025!

The Publisher Says: Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca.

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My Review: Is this story literally intended to be about a hive...powerfully coded culturally as an insect-related word...that controls people to their detriment? Are the hives metaphors for the horrors of cishet society demanding conformity of people not like them? Are the hives infestations of the criminal organizations demanding obedience of the Appalachian people in exchange for the smallest amount of human dignity...or else?

Yes.

The answer is none/all/a combination of these and more. This is why I rate the body horror story as highly as I do. Author White is avowedly transmasc. The story could've been his own; he could be Crane; the body horror could be, is, intensely personal. It is laid out in terms of Crane's quest for bodily autonomy, its various phases and faces of denial and deprivation of this great, fundamental freedom. Trading transphobia for misogyny is not trading up. It is still the imposition of ignorance on top of your own knowledge, the unwillingness of the uneducated to do the work of acquiring the information needed to distinguish between discomfort and threat.

The hive isn't precise or even visible, it's a shifting...space...delineated by rotten stinking meat and a control mechanism brutally physical and insidiously psychological. This is the essence of horror to me. The ugly inner workings of systems of control and brutalization for dominance assertion. The denial of the fundamental freedom, autonomy...self-determination...that all Others endure. That is, throughout time and space, the one sin qua non of horror stories. It gives me shivers even conceptualizing it.

What Author White does best in this story is mobilize all the tropes of horror to embody the reality of an authoritarian world. What the alluring promises of it devolve into. What the systems of oppression will resort to in order to accomplish their hidden aims. Are they even hidden, or are we simply discouraged from noticing them? Accused of being paranoid, thereby handily Othered in an uncontestable way?

The way the story ends, I won't say "wraps up" it's too easy, isn't heartening or triumphal or celebratory. It is instructive. It is condign. It does not spare a thought for the offense against "nice"ness it's made you endure. And surprisingly made you...appreciate, since enjoy is a completely wrong stop to pull on Literature's pipe-organ.

I think this read will titillate the horror seeker, educate the knowledge seeker, and validate the entomophobic person's visceral rejection of reeking, rotting things for what they harbor.

THE REFORMATORY, death and reckoning in Jim Crow Florida...winner of the 2024 BRAM STOKER & WORLD FANTASY & SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL

THE REFORMATORY
TANANARIVE DUE
Saga Press
$28.99 hardcover, available now

WINNER of the 2024 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel!

WINNER OF 2023'S BEST NOVEL—SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida

June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: WINNER OF the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel (2023)

This is one long story. Long in words, long in facts, long! What it isn't is a dragging mess to read. Ghosts, abused boys, wretched families, the oppressive miasma of Florida's hideous climate...any one of these could've sent me on my way. Instead they all work as a gestalt of Horror, suffering, and terror that left me drained but made me as happy to know this story as an old white man who has never had to fear this kind of abuse and calculated cruelty can be at knowing, from the inside out, what the system I and mine have benefited from did while we were looking anywhere but there.

The single most awful part is that it's fictionalized, not fiction.

I just do not know why anyone would, based on skin color or other cosmetic or cultural factors, engineer a life designed to end quickly and prematurely for innocent victims. Othering, a long-standing weapon of mass destruction, is the cruelest and excuses the cruelest means of hurting those unloved. Why we keep burying our knowledge of its occurrence is perfectly clear after reading this story: Admitting that we tolerated this, knowing on some level that it was happening because these people vanished, but not how, not what horrifying acts occurred in our names, is acutely painful.

So is torture. So is the murder of your loved ones.

Suddenly the pain of reading about it isn't quite so bad, is it.

I hope this book becomes the classic anti-racist read of the twenty-first century. It has renewed urgency and relevance as the years go by. It seems white folks just can't stop being horrible to others.

SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL (Reaper #1) is a good read

SILVER UNDER NIGHTFALL (Reaper #1)
RIN CHUPECO
S&S/Saga Press
$19.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Remy Pendergast is many things: the only son of the Duke of Valenbonne (though his father might wish otherwise), an elite bounty hunter of rogue vampires, and an outcast among his fellow Reapers. His mother was the subject of gossip even before she eloped with a vampire, giving rise to the rumors that Remy is half-vampire himself. Though the kingdom of Aluria barely tolerates him, Remy’s father has been shaping him into a weapon to fight for the kingdom at any cost.

When a terrifying new breed of vampire is sighted outside of the city, Remy prepares to investigate alone. But then he encounters the shockingly warmhearted vampire heiress Xiaodan Song and her infuriatingly arrogant fiancé, vampire lord Zidan Malekh, who may hold the key to defeating the creatures—though he knows associating with them won’t do his reputation any favors. When he’s offered a spot alongside them to find the truth about the mutating virus Rot that’s plaguing the kingdom, Remy faces a choice.

It’s one he’s certain he’ll regret.

But as the three face dangerous hardships during their journey, Remy develops fond and complicated feelings for the couple. He begins to question what he holds true about vampires, as well as the story behind his own family legacy. As the Rot continues to spread across the kingdom, Remy must decide where his loyalties lie: with his father and the kingdom he’s been trained all his life to defend or the vampires who might just be the death of him.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Weeelll...ya see...it's like this: I ain't the one to say nice things about vampire stuff, or about throuple romances. I do not believe the first exist, or could; the second seems like a really, really, really hard way to have a relationship one wishes to keep in place on the long term.

So what the hell made you ask for this DRC, old man?, I hear you wonder.

Rin Chupeco.

The Never-Tilting World and Wicked As You Wish as well as their debut The Bone Witch are all very well-written stories with queer characters and stakes that matter, characters I cared about, and world-building I invested in. I expected this book to have those strengths...mostly did...and be even better than their seven-years-ago debut. Not so much on this one.

The problem for me is that I can't put my finger on exactly how, why, or where. The prose is fine. The story doesn't have plot holes. I knew about the vampires before I asked for the DRC. There's not a good palpable reason for me not to be warbling my fool lungs out about this book. But.

There is always a chemistry between book and reader that is never, ever the same. Authors aren't the same people from book to book. Readers aren't either. And sometimes, in any kind of relationship, two chemistries change just enough, in just the wrong direction from each other, that one is not resonating in the right way for the other to get the gleeful rush of connection.

This is what happened in my experience of this perfectly good story.

COSPLAY: A HISTORY: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life, is pretty much the perfect gift for your geek buddy

COSPLAY: A HISTORY: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life
ANDREW LIPTAK
Saga Press
$24.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A history of the colorful and complex kingdom of cosplay and fandom fashion by Andrew Liptak, journalist, historian, and member of the legendary fan-based Star Wars organization the 501st Legion.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?

Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.

Cosplay veterans and newcomers alike will find much to relish in this rich and comprehensive history.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cosplay, literally a portmanteau of "costume" and "play", is very much part of the science fiction, horror, and fantasy subcultures. Any time you see TV reporters at events like ComicCons in San Diego or New York, they're there to see how many salaciously boob-exposing Sailor Moons or Elvira Mistress of the Dark cosplayers they cen get B-roll from. That is, then, what the normies look at and think of as "cosplay."

Whereas the *actual* field of cosplay is immense. It is multi-gendered. It is inclusive, it is vastly and richly endowed with niches and rivalries and personalities that can't find easy outlets in a world of mundanes. (This is where I'd usually put in "muggles" but Rowling's determined to die on a hill I don't want to climb.)

I blame Jules Verne. He held that dinner party (which Author Liptak tells us about) where guests came as his novel's characters! In the stodgy nineteenth century! Only it was not really so stodgy, just not public in its peculiarity the way we ever-increasingly are giving ourselves permission to be. In fact, cosplay has quite a history and Author Liptak quite a nose for what to look for, where to find it, and how to explain it.

A lifetime spent in the 501st Legion, the greatest and most active cosplaying organization in the Star Wars universe, has given him not only the joys of solidarity and fellowship with his fellow ubergeeks, but a keen grasp of what makes cosplay a Thing. It's an appeal that begins with an IP or "intellectual property"...that's a story, to the rest of us...that fires imaginations all over the spectrum of its genre's fandom. (If I need to explain "fandom" to you, you're reading the wrong review. Flip back a page and go from there.)

The 501st is a charitable organization; it's a profit-spinning offshoot of Star Wars's films and books that isn't completely controlled by the Mauschwitz people; it's a found family for its heading-for-20,000 members. Many people, especially those with the kind of passion and focus that makes cosplay appealing, aren't very comfortable in their families of origin. Many times they've left them whether voluntarily or not. Cosplay organizations are alternative affectional groups centered on a shared vision. Often they're of practical support as well, when crises strike. It's been my own experience that these groups (the Browncoats in my case) will do so much to assist their fellows that it is quite overwhelming and heartening.

After all, when a bunch of folks in the salad days spend the time, the energy, the money, and the social capital to make outfits like these, they're already among Nature's aristocrats. The desire to Do It Right, the get the details exactly as they should be drives many cosplayers to research films and TV shows and comic books and manga and games and...well, everything...for the smallest, least-visible detail that a particular character's presentation requires to be *just*so*. Equally there are interpreters whose idea of character's presentation of self could use some, well, tweaking to be just exactly perfect. The two camps have equal access to the starting imagery, and they share the modern world's astonishing array of personalizable, customizable anything. Technology has afforded the cosplayers 3D printing options that were once the province of the studios who created the films they obsess over. Makeup for special effects? Several generations of Fangoria magazine and its ilk readers have made careers of their obsession and remain in the cosplay community.

Naturally, this being Murruhkuh, we need to acknowledge the cosplay community has a lot of racist and sexist people in it; in fact, there is considerable gatekeeping on multiple fronts. Societal, institutional racism is part and parcel of fandom just like it is of every other aspect of our culture. More prevalent still is sexism's idiocy, and that's a fandom issue going back to the Futurians in the 1930s. Author Liptak doesn't dwell on these unpleasant realities but he doesn't ignore their existence and takes the quietly expressed stance I trust anyone reading my words would: "You do realize how stupid this behavior is, right?"

Unless a character requires one, no one in the cosplay world should be required to wear a mask.

"What to get your geek giftee" is a problem now solved. Twentyish bucks, ordered right now, and you're home free. It will, I can damn near guarantee, hit their fandom. It is likely to amuse, guaranteed to entertain, and just possibly inspire some of those you give it to on a new hobby, habit, obsession even. And that, my friends, is because the author did his job: He brought faces, stories, and his own heart to all his readers. Come and enjoy.

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW, latest gore-with-more from multi-award-winning horror dude Stephen Graham Jones

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Saga Press
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Nominated for the BEST NOVEL AWARD—2021 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARDS! Winner annunced on 29 October 2022.

A 2021 NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR!

WINNER OF THE 2022 LOCUS AWARD—BEST HORROR NOVEL! Watch the ceremony here.

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.

“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award-winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: There are all sorts of ways to read a Stephen Graham Jones book. Surfaces work...there's always a story hanging around, you won't be wandering lost in thickets of writing-armpit sweat-watered weeds...references work too, you can unpick your memories of the midnight movies or frightfrests your friends threw (or open IMDb if you're really young)...but I think the best way is to make it through as it's happening, to be there as Jade walks across the graduation stage or through walls or up into skies limited only by the basic laws of physics.

The reason I feel that last works best is that, by the time I'd reached the end of this read, and then read Author Stephen's Acknowledgments after the wrenching and impossibly sad final scene, I was so wrung out that I simply accepted that everything I'd just been through had been intended to do what it did to me. As I'm not one to write book reports (ask Mr. Singleton! never turned so much as one in during high school) I'm not going to try to do that at this late date. I referred to this book's immediate older sibling, The Only Good Indians, as "gore with more" and that's an assessment I stand by as applied to all of Author Stephen's books. Part of that "more" is the strangely hypnotic effect of the story arc receding from view...the interstitial "SLASHER 101" essays addressed to the One Good Teacher (of history, naturally) Mr. Holmes are well and truly weirding Your Faithful Reader out. When they switch addressees, it gets even weirder...but in the end, it's painfully intimate and deeply instructive to read them.

In common with all Author Stephen's books, you mere peon of a purchaser have no rights. You're not stupid, you've read some of his other work (at least The Only Good Indians!), you're aware that horror is in store. So surrender your volition. Then the entire experience of being in Jade Daniels's rage-filled head makes all the sense in the world. Because then you're not actually sure if ANY of this is happening in meatspace. Is this an adolescent with anger and abandonment issues responding to the end of what never was childhood? Is this a young woman processing the pain and rage of a life that was wished on her by weaker, worse people than she was? There's a sparkling moment of fizzing delight when Jade meets Letha, a beautiful rich kid whose father has a trophy wife and whose presence in the town of "Proofrock" (think a minute, and hard, for more than the surface snicker; that's all it takes to turn it into a shiver), when Jade anoints her "the Final Girl." That's both when the tale gets grounded in consensus reality and when its ascent into the dark and cold vault of Jade's own head is cemented.

I'm always a fan of gerunding done with panache...Author Stephen does it with panache. At one point, Jade Holden Caulfields across a lawn, and that's me dead cackling. I think there are few greater pleasures than easter-egging your readers' experience...hoping they'll get most of them. I think the fun of reading a book whose author has chosen a niche to write in, one with an astoundingly vast mythos/history/background to explore, is in part the recognition factor of word-play. Yes, it's about slasher-film homage, and no Holden Caulfield isn't slashed to death (though generations of English students have no doubt fantasized that Salinger met that fate after writing it), but he *is* the prototype of the Angsty Teen too smart for easy answers. With everything Jade's carrying around, she's not one whit less burdened than Holden and possibly by some similar troubles given that she's got A Thing growing up strong for Letha.

Adolescent sexuality is always fraught. Parents play their roles in shaping it, either with rule or without them, with clamp=downs or without supervision, there's no right way to ride this roller-coaster. But the issue facing Jade isn't made any easier by her absolute conviction that Letha is The Final Girl, that staple of the slasher film, therefore of necessity being lustrous and almost superhuman in her glorious Otherness. That's how she's supposed to be, right? Jade "doesn't make the rules...just happens to know them all." Her unique and defining obsession with slashers is gong to pay dividends, right? Because she's preparing the Final Girl for her role, unlike most...she won't be surprised by the tragedies.

I think I speak for all readers when I say that the way this blows up can only be described as FUCKING EPIC.

And from that point on, the cigarette boat is away and the pace does not let up.

There are the obligatory twists and turns, the reveals that aren't *quite* reveals, and the accustomed ways that Author Stephen's practiced to get your kishkes kicking and your shvitzer sprinkling. You can't fault the man on delivering the suspenseful goods! If you're in the market for a low-gore delivery of suspense, however, look elsewhere. The way this works is for your expectations to be manipulated so I won't be discussing particulars. Suffice to say I was taken in. More than once. And I'm a pretty well-broken-in reader....

Still, there's no point it wondering why no good deed goes unpunished or how exactly it is that one's expected to walk away from what can not help but feel like a set up straight from a film. The pain and the passionate pull of it will reach some screeching crescendo, won't it, just give it a little more time and it has to!

Nonsense, says the Great God Author.

By the time we've reached the moment when there is no more to give, when the entire story's gone to the most extreme place that it can go...there is something more in the tank for a send-off, and there's no way that you'll believe your eyes when you get there.

Some things just can't be put right. And others can't be left wrong. The issue is...who decides.

THE HIDDEN GIRL and Other Stories, nominated for Best Collection in the 2021 Locus Awards

THE HIDDEN GIRL and Other Stories
KEN LIU
here is his website
Saga Press
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Kindle edition $1.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link) until 31 August 2025.

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From award-winning author Ken Liu comes his much anticipated second volume of short stories.

Ken Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This collection includes a selection of his science fiction and fantasy stories from the last five years — sixteen of his best — plus a new novelette.

In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from the forthcoming book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, The Veiled Throne.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM SAGA PRESS VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ken Liu is a busy, busy man. He is practically the sole engine behind Chinese SF being translated into English, and that's a major feat right there, especially while he was also being a lawyer and a software engineer...and also writing his own fiction. Thankfully the fact that his story "Good Hunting" was made into an episode of the first season of Love, Death + Robots for Netflix, and two seasons of a series called Pantheon is being made for AMC from these post-Singularity interconnected stories means that he's now a full-time toiler in the vineyards of literature.

There is, I suppose inevitably, quite a lot of focus on names, naming, descritpive labeling, and other methods of identifying unique points in the information flow-chart of the Universe. There are entities with graphic and mathematical-symbol augmented (or even composed) names; there are subtle jokes scattered around having to do with the sounds and definitions of the component parts of the names; it all feels playful, and is in part that. But think...a Chinese-American man, by the fact that this label is applied to him, becomes supremely sensitive to the power of names and naming. The power to create, destroy, invent, reinvent, control and rebel is in the power of naming. What better way to use that power, inherent in storytelling, than to signpost one's purpose without having to bash the reader with Messages.

A hefty proportion (possibly even all?) of the stories in this collection are set in that Uploaded (as opposed to Artificial) Intelligence/post-Singularity world. Liu takes his time exploring the inevitable losses of the end of the Anthropocene, making the coming of UI (that is, formerly human personalities freed of our slow wetware by insertion into quantum computers) "gods" inevitable. Then, as only Author Liu can, parsing out the ways humanity, freed of bodies, might optimize Life, the Universe, and Everything. These have the overarching feel of a novel that just wouldn't *quite* take shape. The key scenes are here...but there simply wasn't enough *oomph* to launch the project with a reasonable chance of success. But they're absolutely perfect cloth to shape a sixteen-episode TV series into!

I shall, in time-honored tradition, use the Bryce Method of story-by-story rating and explaining my reasoning for the ratings I've assigned them.

Ghost Days (2013) is a simple morality tale of memory's role in resisting Entropy.

Digging in the earth was a promise to the future as well as an acknowledgement of the past.
–and–
Which is authentic? he thought. The World or the Word? The truth or understanding?

This was a very interesting, though patchily pasted together, exploration of colonial memory syndrome: The old you is authentic, better, but the new you is what will enable you to survive. Squeaks to 4 stars

Maxwell's Demon (2012) revisits two low points in the world's history: The Japanese Internments and the atomic bombings. Takako, Okinawan-Japanese Nisei internee, is coerced into "serving her country" as a spy, does her job, solves a centuries-old physics thought experiment, and even gets to go home. Not quite the way she expected in any of these cases. Injustice towards women is the way of war, disproportionately of the world. 3.5 stars

The Reborn (2014) does a wonderful job of imagining the consequences of truly alien aliens with antithetical ideas about selfhood rollin' up on Earth, settin' up shop, and lettin' it rip. Superior technology, developed over functionally infinite lifespans, leads to very, very strange bedfellows when dealing with Humans.

Made much more poignant, then repugnant, by the first-person narrator's position in the new hierarchy. The fact is the aliens are correct, if not right, in their assessment of Humanity's deeply toxic relationship to Memory. It's the first 5 star story!

Thoughts and Prayers (2019) parses the coming Singularity and its inevitable role in grieving, virtue signaling, politicking, and trolling...because none of those human behaviors are goin' anywhere.

We prize "freedom to" so much more than "freedom from." People must be free to own guns, so the only solution is to teach small children to hide in closets and wear ballistic backpacks. People must be free to post and say what they like, so the only solution is to tell their targets to put on armor.

Possibly the wisest words this very wise man has written. A chilled, grateful-I'm-old 4.5 stars

Byzantine Empathy (2018) starts out written in the awful, chest-pokey second person. Then it goes into the Blockchaining of Charity. There wasn't a lot of hope for me and this story by then...the weaponization of empathy? Shall we call time of death?

I understand how she thinks, but she doesn't understand how I think. I understand her language, but she doesn't understand mine—or care to. That's how power works in this world.

Both heartbreaking and honest, completely unsparing and without self-pity; the true power of empathy is in clarity, simplicity, singleness of purpose. A rare thing in reality. Second 5 star story!

The Gods Will Not Be Chained (2014) posits the Singularity will come with far more human-derived baggage than one is accustomed to it wagging in fiction. A bit on the simplistic side, though I'm delighted by the author's plumping for the e'er-contentious holonomic brain theory, dividing roboticists and AI folk since 1946. 4 stars, though I expect it'd be more if I understood it better

Staying Behind (2011) tells us the story of The Singularity by way of Aldiss's Greybeard out of St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, only compressed into a short story. A lot has changed in the ten years since it was published. I don't hear much about human consciousness being uploaded these days. Folk are freaked out enough by the guaranteed-to-happen rise of some species of AI! This one didn't convince me it needed a place in the collection. 3 stars because he did it before everyone was on the bus

Real Artists (2011) failed to excite me. A woman gets her dream interview at Pixar A Movie Studio Led By A Young Man and discovers she's been Had, he isn't an Auteur he's a wicked good engineer. He needs her; she's got to decide if she can do the *real* job instead of the fantasy one in her head. Only okay. 3.5 stars because I suspect Author Liu has peeped Tinsetown's rapidly approaching reality

The Gods Will Not Be Slain (2014) wasn't quite what I expected...sequel to "The Gods Will Not Be Chained", prequel to "Staying Behind", and an altogether more exciting end of the story, of what clearly wanted to be a novel but didn't quite make the last hill before the torrent of plot would've taken it to the sea of Published Novels. Maddie and her mom and Grandma are going to remain in the suspend file, but no one is wise to bet against three women who can survive apocalyptic awfulness...they'll be back if they want to. 4 stars

Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer (2011) moved me in several ways...the love of an older parent for a final child, the deep and abiding sadness of losing someone you will always love, the careful way digital child..."god" in the parlance of the earlier stories set in this universe...Renée's mother (one of the Ancients, who remembers what it was like to have a "body") prepares her for the darkness that is always the future but we hope our kids won't live to see up close...well, the survival and even resurgence of the physical world is worth the price. I think.

"I miss you," Dad thinks to himself. He does not know that I'm still awake. "When Renée was born, I put the < star > in her name because I knew one day you would go to the stars. I'm good at making people's dreams come true. But that is one dream that I can't create for you. Have a safe journey, Sophia." He fades out of my room.

A man with a broken heart, one who loves where he is no longer...not...loved in return, will sound the same wherever he lives. 4 stars

The Gods Have Not Died in Vain (2015) brings us that one step closer to the virtual world of "Staying Behind" with Maddie's new little sister "Mist." It's heart-rending to know the world will end; it's also inevitable, it's been staring at us since before I was born, but I'm still impressed that Maddie has the strength to plow on in that cage of knowledge she shared with her father.

"You can't feed billions of people with backyard gardens," said Mist. "Nostalgia for a Garden that never existed is dangerous. The mass of humanity depends on the fragile, power-intensive infrastructure of civilization. It is delusion to think you can live without it."

It's really very simple. The equation won't ever balance. It's time to change the terms. 4 stars

Memories of My Mother (2012) does more with "time travel" than The Time Traveler's Wife or "Story of Your Life"/Arrival did, only in just a couple pages. Time behaves differently when you move at relativistic speeds; but, like Maugham's "The Appointment in Samarra" tells us, there is only so much running one can do before it's too late. Pithy, pungent, powerful...4.5 stars

Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts (2016) is set 500 years after the Climate Crisis, in a world so different...coral reefs on Harvard Common, submersible refugee pods to ride out now-lethal cyclones the world over...that it seems like an alien planet entirely. Are Maddie & Mist in their digital paradise in Svalbard? Permaybehaps, but no sightings or intersetions in this one. Instead we have a Thoreauvian scary-rich dropout from Humanity's Solar System spanning civilization, Asa < whale >-< tongue >-π, as she floats around the tropical seas over Boston.

The fact that the refugees remain stateless, so many generations after the wars that stripped their ancestors of homelands, seems to make it impossible for a solution to be envisioned by anyone from the Developed World—an ancient label whose meaning has evolved over the centuries,but has never been synonymous with moral rectitude.

I concur with story main character Asa < whale >-< tongue >-π when she says, from her billionaire's imitation of poverty aboard a refugee pod, that "Nostalgia is a wound we refuse time to heal." 4 stars

Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard (2020) visits those outside the technoparadise, the scavengers whose last contact with the wildly advanced nanotech-meets-CRISPR future's last-ditch effort to manipulate the material world has resulted in...what else?...new castes and classes of people who can, after drinking "Revelation wine," change into spirit-animal-like forms rooted in their...psychology? anyway, inner world. Permaybehaps a bit over-the-top in its bog-standard superhero genesis-myth borrowing. In the end, I could see the comic-book art too clearly to enjoy the amazing episode of Love, Death + Robots that I'd been watching in my head until that last Dedication to the Cause scene. 3.5 stars

A Chase Beyond the Storms: An excerpt from "The Veiled Throne", Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty is exactly what it says it is. Its existence has me AGOG for this long-awaited entry into the technological fantasy-world action. If you haven't read The Grace of Kings https://tinyurl.com/GraceOfKings, start there. Amazing, wonderful stuff. 4.5 stars because *squee*

The Hidden Girl (2017) changes scenes to 8th-century China...or is it a Klein bottle in the UI universe...either way, it is a beautiful, supremely filmable tale of stealing your own life from those who want to dictate what it should be. I hate that word "should" with its freight of guilt & coercion. Marred by some speechy dialogue but a glittering gem withal.

I emerge into the space above space, the space within space, the hidden space.

Everything gains a new dimension—the walls, the floor tiles, the flickering torches, the astomished face of the governor. It si as if the governor's skin has been pulled away to reveal everything underneath: I see his beating heart, his pulsating intestines, the blood screaming through his transparent vessels, his gleaming white bones as well as the velvety marrow stuffed inside like jujube-stained lotus paste. I see each grain of shiny mica inside each briak; I see ten thousand immortals dancing inside each flame.

Tell me you can't immediately see the VFX and feel the cold of Space at the same time. Solidly 5 stars

Seven Birthdays (2016) wonders if Erich Segal wasn't right after all, fifty-odd years ago, when he penned the deathless aperçu "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Bona Dea Nutrix creates and destroys from a cold distance with warm love and blazing, unending passion powering her. In the end, we're all someone's child, someone's parent, with eternal connections and consequences.

Ave Imperatrix, morituri te salutant.

I had once thought the Singularity would solve all our problems. Turns out it's just a simple hack for a complicated problem. We do not share the same histories; we do not all want the same things.

I am not so different from my mother after all.

I believe the profoundest truths are most effectively said in the simplest terms. Recursion rules. Another 5 stars

The Message (2012) privileges parenthood in a fairly heavy-handed way. "You're very much like your mother" is only a short mood-swing away from "You're JUST like your MOTHER!!" & is as destructive, if not as caustic.

Interesting setting of a long-dead alien civilization's death-palace. Also a very honest look at the cost of Humanity's itch to know. Just...sentimentalized. 3 stars

Cutting (2012) is a short concrete poem to the unstoppable power of loss.

The act of remembering is an act of retracing, and by doing so we erase and change the stencil.

It is too short to be a story, but functions very well as a coda to a collection of work dedicated to exploring the boundaries of our dimly perceived illusion-of-reality. 3 stars

PERSEPHONE STATION, seven-eighths perfect noir space opera, one-eighth perfect lesbian SF

PERSEPHONE STATION
STINA LEICHT
Saga Press
$27.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Hugo award-nominated author Stina Leicht has created a take on space opera for fans of The Mandalorian and Cowboy Bebop in this high-stakes adventure.

Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has largely been ignored by the United Republic of Worlds becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation tenaciously wants to exploit.

Rosie—owner of Monk’s Bar, in the corporate town of West Brynner—caters to wannabe criminals and rich Earther tourists, of a sort, at the front bar. However, exactly two types of people drank at Monk’s back bar: members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who sought to employ them.

Angel—ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing—is asked to perform a job for Rosie. What this job reveals will affect Persephone and put Angel and her squad up against an army. Despite the odds, they are rearing for a fight with the Serrao-Orlov Corporation. For Angel, she knows that once honor is lost, there is no regaining it. That doesn’t mean she can’t damned well try.

I RECIEVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Okay...see...the trouble I've had with publishing this review has been the fact that there are two books here. One, the one you've seen advertised, is a noir space opera with a lesbian/non-binary cast. That book is *fabulous* and I get all verklempt and must retire to the fainting couch when I realize just exactly how hungry I've been for this exact combination of storyteller and story told for my sixty-plus years on this planet.

Then there's a different book, a truly terrifying anti-capitalist cli-fic tocsin rung in your damned scatty ear, demanding that you pay fucking attention to the simple, selfish way you're making your decisions because the planet's just about had it with you and me and the guy behind the tree. It's giving itself a fever to burn out the goddamned infection that's harming it.

As inhospitable as Brynner was, the rest of the planet was far worse, with storms ranging across thousands of miles of landmass and winds of 135 knots or more. The areas not regularly engulfed in severe weather were plagued with hostile life-forms.

I like both books, but telling you about one without mentioning the other...and I've seen plenty of reviews either miss this crucial pont or simply decide to belt up about it...despite the fact I fear you'll now think this is another eat-your-kale book with long-faced Prognostications spoken by Archetypes and ending in DOOM! or worse, ending in Savior-Rescue-Sunshine-Lollipops-and-Rainbows!

Author Leicht has labored mightily practicing her craft for more than ten years, been Hugo-nom'd, and is of finer stuff than that. What is here is a story that will pound your pulse and sweat your brow without rolling your eyes.

Now. What's so hard about that, you're wondering? A lot, let me assure you. Author Leicht is not unknown to me, and I am lucky if I hear from her should I say something she finds stupid or offensive about her work...which, I hasten to add, isn't untrue even of authors to whom I am as unknown as dark matter...so what to do? Mention the apparently-stealth aspects of the read and suddenly find myself unfriended, or go along with the herd?

Well, you're readin' it, so here's to hoping I don't screw stuff up too terribly.

My major grouse is simple. What's feminist about this read? Why, in 2021, should I find it in any way remarkable that a woman is a warrior, a leader, a badass? My mother left her husband, took three jobs, and supported me in 1960s Texas. I am not unacquainted with double-X badassery. Anyone who's witnessed a birth knows how warrior spirit comes to children from the women who bore them. So...lesbians? Is that it? I grew up with lesbian grandma-equivalents, a couple who were Together for most of the twentieth century. Lived together, stayed together, were quietly but obviously together...in the South!

A thumping good read, this book; but feminist? How?

That said, let's look at the world. Persephone Station barely enters into the story, but the planet is...fascinating, yes, but also maddening because *I*WANT*MORE* around how the central surprise about the way it works is accomplished and sustained. I want more about the Emissaries, and I want more about the unusual health effects of the Serrao-Orlov Corporation's primary target. Wouldn't the quality of immortality-tied-to-place rather make the whole thing less attractive? But the sheer joy of Angel realizing she's been played but knowing *why* in the same moment, and entering the conspiracy of silence willingly, can't be overstated. It is an frequently fallen into trap for authors to forget that readers invest in the main character's world-view. Not so Author Leicht. Angel's betrayed, yes; but this betrayal she goes along with and therefore I felt comfortable doing so, too.

And space opera dudes? Your worries about this being all talktalktalkfeelingsfeelings are unfounded. The action scenes are...wait for it...killer good. Angel's a disgraced member of a warrior clan who takes nothing about her strategy, her tactics, or her weaponry for granted. That means you can't, either. And that is a good thing in a space opera. The downside of that is that there isn't room for smexytimes. Of the two things, I can find smexytimes in about a trillion places and I can find lesbian-led SF in under a dozen.

My last observation is about the AI in this book...the Forbidden Being. A woman's body inhabited by a rogue AI, one that's developed sentience and emotional intelligence of a sort, is possibly the most SFnal thing in the book. We've gone beyond Robot, readers. The entry of this character into the book is a turning point. Our space opera finally has an alien. (The Emissaries are cool...they aren't terribly alien, they want what people want.) The way the AGI (as it's known in the book) inserts itself into human affairs often made me think of the paranoid QAnon people who believe in the Deep State hoo-hah...they should love this, I smirked to myself more than once...but in point of fact, it's not far-fetched at all. That was a moment for pausing and reflecting....

Whatever else I can say is a development of the theme "whyever is anyone surprised that women write good, solid SF that centers women as leaders and warriors and do it with panache", so here endeth the lesson. Go buy the book.

THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, Stephen Graham Jones's exploration of madness among Rez refugees

THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS
STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
Saga Press
$16.99 trade paper, $9.99 ebook editions, available now

WINNER OF THE 2020 SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!

WINNER OF THE 2020 THIS IS HORROR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!

FINALIST, WORLD FANTASY AWARD: BEST NOVEL, 2021! Winners to be announced 7 November 2021.

Rating: 5* of five

WINNER OF THE 2020 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL!

The Publisher Says: A tale of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS NOVEL FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The alert readers of this blog will have noticed that I've been on a Stephen Graham Jones kick here lately. Actually, what y'all don't know is that this is only the tip of the iceberg. I've been *reading* Author Stephen's work for a long time, and haven't reviewed them here because I've bought them for myself. How can I reasonably ask publishers for free reviewers' copies if I'm just gonna go buy 'em and review 'em anyway? What sane businessperson would sign up for that deal?

So my silence is broken by this DRC approval, and I've grandfathered in all the earlier and later stuff because Y'ALL. AIN'T. FOUND. HIM. YET. I mean, in your millions who buy Clive Barker and Stephen King. That's the audience that Stephen Graham Jones merits. Major film franchises. TV development deals. The whole shootin' match.

Because this is top-quality writing, using the bones of the genre fleshed out in new and interesting ways. Psychological splatterpunk. Rez Noir. Gore with more.

And now the literary crowd is making "get-up-and-leave" noises. No, no! Sit down. This book isn't another exploitation of "Noble Savages Get Revenge Via Folklore" (seriously, go to Goodreads and search "the wendigo" to see what I mean about exploitation...monsterporn galore and white people writing from their deep personal knowledge of Native American life as far back as 1910). It is #OwnVoices do horror. The point of #OwnVoices is moot if it is construed by the very white people who celebrate it so vocally if it can't be applied to *sniff* mere genre fiction. (And for the record I'm all down with white people reading more Otherwork. I just find the labeling a bit depressing and not a little bit condescending. Do y'all really need roadmaps to find an interest in people who are-but-aren't like you?)

You are defined by the worst thing you've ever done. We all are. But what if the worst thing you've ever done offended not only the social norms and personal dignity of the community you live in, but the very powers of the Universe your community resides among? (There are different powers in every community...?) What the hell is wrong with you, first...you can't not know what you're doing is offensive when you are sneaking around...and second, when you're going against the Universal powers that little sick feeling in your gut should tell you to break the hell off, abort, and go back to where you were before. I speak from experience. As does our point-of-view character, Lewis. One of four buddies who need to get their freezers full before winter hunger attackes their families, these goofuses trespass on the Elders's land to bag an elk. They do that, alright, so strike one. It's a female, strike two. She's pregnant, strike three. The game police, the tribal councils, AND the Universal powers are all lined up to take turns beating up these criminals.

Yes, criminals. They violated laws and customs galore. But the law and the tribe are, in the end, the least of their worries. One of the lads is killed outside a bar, and that fact barely registers. It's a year or so after the perps committed their crime, but it doesn't feel like it's Retribution. It's sadly common for an Indian man to die violently outside a bar. So no alarm bells go off. Fast forward a decade or so, and Lewis begins to tell us of his slow realizations that Something Is Hinky in his life. His white wife (the epithet "Custer haired" is used and, sad old sexist that I am, that made me laugh out loud) starts to worry about his sanity...Lewis is pretty sure he doesn't have any for her to worry about...and slowly comes to think the crack-up she's experiencing vicariously is more than just the sudden onset of midlife dumbfuckery that almost all men go through.

The actions Lewis performs, and I use the term advisedly, all are geared to show his unseeable enemy that he sees her, he knows the pregnant she-elk and her calf are behind the escalating weirdness of his life even if his wife isn't figuring it out. His entrapment of a possessed workmate, and his subsequent means of dealing with her, is extremely and amazingly revolting, and exactly right: Can a sane man, which we've been building up to wondering if Lewis still is, do that?! And that's the point where a hack writer would just go on and show you his cards. Not so Author Stephen. Your suspense is not lifted. In fact, your suspense is not lifted any time soon.

Then along comes THE SHIFT. Suddenly we're in the elk-spirit's point of view. At first this disgruntled me. I wanted to know Lewis's fate! But in short order, events occurred that caused my attitude to switch back to trusting the author's structural capabilities. While the effect is jarring at first, I suspect that's actually the reason he does it. "Get out of that familiar, comfortable groove, Lazypager, and THINK about this story I am telling you!" When that shift, from passive experiencer to active reader, is accomplished, the story's outliers (Lewis's fellow perps) are served their just deserts in a way that merely toddling along behind Lewis would never have been able to accomplish. Now, there *is* a structural issue I have with the book, the long delay in the elk-spirit's getting revenge after her initial rage; and yes, Author Stephen does indeed provide a reason for it in the text but I find it a bit like a mea-exculpa instead of a reason. From my own point of view, it came across like an "oh SHIT I forgot about that!" add-on. It is a small thing, but pobody's nerfect and I have been yodeling my fool lungs out to convince y'all to get this book and do it NOW, so it's only fair to say it's not the beau ideal after all.

I'll warn you sensitive fleurs that the initial scenes of violence are not isolated events. I'm not going to go into their particulars. I will say this, passionate animal lovers should not even *think* about buying this book. The gore is not, however, ladled on the plate with the abandon of the cafeteria lady gravying your biscuits. It is where it is for solid structural and storytelling reasons. And, believe it or not, this genre trope...the threats to/from animals...is evergreen for a reason: we invest a lot of love in our companion animals, and we work off considerable rage at Life pursuing game animals. These are the two sides of the coin Author Stephen spends. Each, in its proper place inside this narrative, expands the reader's understanding of the true horror of this story. I could pepper this review with quotes from Author Stephen's wry, self-deprecating humor-laden writing, and it's a struggle for me not to, but there is one and only one quote I want you to take away from this inducement to buy and read this book for Halloween:

Death is too easy. Better to make every moment of the rest of a person’s life agony.

VAGABONDS, first English-language novel from Hugo-winner Hao Jingfang

VAGABONDS
HAO JINGFANG (tr. Ken Liu)
Saga Press
$28.99 hardcover, available now

JUMPNAUTS (book 2) reviewed here

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A century after the Martian war of independence, a group of kids are sent to Earth as delegates from Mars, but when they return home, they are caught between the two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with their experiences on Earth in this spellbinding novel from Hugo Award–winning author Hao Jingfang.

In 2096, the war of independence erupts when a colony of people living on Mars rebel against Earth’s rule. The war results in two different and mutually incompatible worlds. In 2196, one hundred years later, Earth and Mars attempt to initiate a dialogue, hoping a reconciliation is on the horizon. Representing Mars, a group of young delegates are sent to Earth to study the history and culture of the rival planet, all while teaching others about life on Mars.

Narrated from two perspectives: Luo Ying, an eighteen-year-old girl from Mars who has spent the past five years on Earth, and Ignacio, a filmmaker in his late twenties from Earth on a job to document the delegates from Mars. Both Luo and Ignacio are trapped between worlds, with critics all around, and always under suspicion, searching for where they truly belong.

THE PUBLISHER APPROVED A DRC OF THE BOOK FOR ME VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: It will come as no surprise to any regular reader, or in fact anyone I've interacted with in the past decade-plus, that end-stage capitalism such as has gifted us with the badly botched, lethally disorganized COVID-19 plague response is not high on my list of Good Things in the old-fashioned Martha Stewart sense. Quite a lot of people (over fifteen) in the assisted-living facility where I live are dead thanks to this money-grubbing ethos. So yes, I began this read fully expecting to approve of the Utopian Martian colony and its collectivist politics.

Well, it's comforting (I suppose) that I consistently never learn....

Hugo-winner Hao (Best Novelette, 2016) builds two competing Utopias. Neither sees the beam in its own eye but focuses on the mote in its symbiotic sibling's; so much easier to sell the distortion and misperception necessary to see any human-made system as anything other than dystopian. Earth's hypercapitalism has continued to devour the planet; its existence is always precarious, always threatening to collapse. Mars's collectivism is dependent on inputs from the fragile, worn-out Earth; its people are not natural innovators, never striving to Do More because, well, why? You don't get more, and there is limited support for striving.

A side note to shout out my dead father, whose aperçu about economics I quote frequently: No system will thrive that either ignores or exalts greed.

This book assumes that Earth remains viable in 2196, and is willing as well as able to continue to support its former Martian colony. I question this decision...but then I remind myself of Ursula K. Le Guin's magisterial The Dispossessed which treats similar themes in a similar setting. The use of a less sophisticated narrator in this book makes it possible for Author Hao to run the lessons past us without the dreaded "As you know, Bob..." locutions. Of course there's information to be dumped, these are STUDENTS! It worked well for me. Quite a lot of the cultural interchange between the rival systems seems, well, far-fetched is as close as I dare come. Eko, an Earth character, has come to Mars to make a documentary; he wants, in his heart of hearts, to grow closer to his dead mentor the Marsophile. Luyuang, our principal Martian character, has returned from her exchange period on Earth where she studied...wait for it...dance in the three-times-greater gravity of Earth! Mm hmm.

I don't want to get into the story's twists and turns for two reasons: Spoilers are impossible to avoid, and your experience of the storytelling voice is the best barometer of your eventual pleasure in the read that you can find. I enjoyed reading Translator Liu's gilded words and finely wrought arabesques. You might not. But download a sample, and if that unique voice isn't your jam, don't go any further. This book clocks in at over 600 pages. Writing that isn't simply thrilling to you will rapidly devolve into a waterboarding session at that length.

While I'm discussing length...the last 100pp of the book are delightfully swift and deeply exciting. The middle 200pp should be severely chopped into, ballpark figure, 75pp. Book-bloat is as common in China as it is in the USA, more's the pity. But, for the reader who vibrates like a freshly-struck bell to this writing and this political tale, the experience is a top quality one.

I can't be clearer than: Try it; you'll know right away if it is for you, as it was for me.