FOUR STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES NOVELLAS, New York Times bestselling novelist delivers scares galore

TIME WAS, short and sad and very well-done gay-male romantic novella

TIME WAS
IAN McDONALD
Tor.com Publishing (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it.

In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found.

Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their disparate timelines overlap.

My Review: First, read this:

War is no reason to change your drinking habits.
–and–
I shared my world; he shares his. What I understand is that he sees a beauty—a sublime, something awesome and terrifying—that I do not.
–and–
If you want to write, you must write experience. What it is to be that thing. There is everything in a moment.

Listen to the dissatisfied bleats from MM-romance readers! This is NOT that book!

It is a fun time-travel tale, and the MM couple whose life together is really more of a life-apart treasure hunt for each other after being unhitched from Time's Arrow during a WWII experiment in quantum superposition is the animating spirit. The young straight bookhunter whose obsession with the gay couple leads him into very strange territory is much more present on the page than either man in the couple. That's disappointing on some levels because of what is promised in the marketing push. But adjust your expectations and read the story that's there and the experience is just fine.

Accepting the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is easier for most fictionphiles than is Copenhagen interpretation of it, which requires us to believe in the arrow of time or the eternal and immutable journey of all things from the past to the future. There are some cracks in the immutability of time's forward progress at the quantum level (you can look it up on your own this time) but no one is saying, at this moment in time, that gross assmblages of atoms like human bodies are about to be transportable whole, entire, and functioning in any direction at any speed of more than 60 seconds per minute.

So there's the fiction bit of the tale defined.

All written art is an attempt to communicate what it is to feel, to ask the terrifying question: Is what I experience in my head the same as what you experience? Terrifying because we can never know for certain. We hope; we risk.

The tale itself...lovers separated and striving to get back together despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles...is an evergreen because most of us have experienced it to some degree or another. The separated lovers in the story are both men and that, as I suspect does not need heavy emphasis, would've kept them apart in the world of 1940s England and not to mention the world of the military which both were in.

The tale of an obsessive quest for an elusive object is equally familiar. A man so utterly absorbed in his own world as to not notice the fact that his lover is being openly unfaithful to him is a familiar character, again as most of us have encountered this in real life relationships whether our own or those of the people close to us. (Well, I know *I* have, so everyone I know has as well.)

Weaving the two together in the way McDonald does is involving and interesting. This isn't something I'm surprised about, though, as I've read his excellent novel River of Gods set in a 2047 India that has quantum computing. He's been thinking about these matters for a long time and that makes his world-building dense and fulfilling to read.

Take the journey with him in this short work. If you like it, and I hope you will, move to the massive, excellent River of Gods and immerse yourself in just how weird the world is, and will be; this book will give you the "was."

A MASTER OF DJINN, first full-length Dead-Djinn-verse novel

A MASTER OF DJINN
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK (Dead Djinn Universe #1)
Tor.com Publishing
$18.99 trade paper, available now

WINNER OF THE 57th ANNUAL NEBULA AWARD—BEST NOVEL!

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

WINNER OF THE 2022 IGNYTE AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL!

A BOOKRIOT BEST BOOK OF 2021!

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 2021 BEST BOOK FOR ADULTS RECOMMENDATION!

Enjoyable author interview at BookPage!

WINNER OF THE 57th ANNUAL NEBULA AWARD—BEST NOVEL! Winners announced 21 May 2022 at the Online Nebula Conference awards ceremony.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns to his popular alternate Cairo universe for his fantasy novel debut, A Master of Djinn And read Arley Sorg's interview with Author Clark!

Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.

So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.

Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city - or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems....

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

My Review: Let's just get that missing star dealt with: Ten w-bombs. Normally that's a whole star gone, but it's only a half here. It was "I feel a villain rant coming on" and "Sniffing a sharp nose, he made a bitter face" and Sobek, bless his scaly hide and hungry jaws, that made me think twice. Then the mechanical eunuchs, the Ministry's Brain, the wonderful inventive world that I am invited to share...despite being spat upon with disrespectful w-verbing...okay.

There are really terrific lines. There are Zack-Snyder-meets-Michael-Bay battle scenes. There is a majgicqk system that is more fun than three dozen djinn in a jar. The Ifrit Kings! What a gorgeous scene that will be in the film!

As I suspect y'all who haven't yet read the book are beginning to gather, this was a hit with me.

Fatma and Hadia, her new Modern Woman partner from Alexandria, are the ladies from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. Because, you see, the world has majgickq in it again since al-Hafiz, who pierced the interdimensional boundaries and allowed the Earth's myriad supernatural creatures, and the anti-physics the can wield, tore a hole in the Kaf (a mountain). I'd like, at this point, to recommend that anyone who hasn't read the novellas and short story I've reviewed here (the first two tales) and here (third tale) in that order. Two are free to read online, and the third is $3.99 on Kindle or other ereader.

The best thing about blogging is I now don't have to worry about spoilers anymore, if you're still here and not heeding my recommendation to seek out the rest of the world-building bits of the story in order, it's not my problem! A magazine site would insist that I consider the spoilerphobic soul's delicate eyestalks. I won't spoil what I consider the bits that make the trip worth taking.

And that is a lot. There are so many things I absolutely felt as though I'd *combust* if I didn't have someone to talk about them to! But it really isn't fair to say what happened on the palace roof until you've been there.

So here's the stuff I want to let everyone know.

Author Clark built this Cairo on a fascinating premise. He has already pulled magjiqck back to Earth. But he's also pulled a Cairene industrial revolution, a social ferment with workers' and women's rights being openly debated, a world with European colonialism on the run, and a lesbian couple leading us through the whole minefield of issues...and no one thinks much of it...into being. But Author Clark still manages to pack a gigantically important coming-out scene into the proceedings, one that explains little mysteries from the past and makes certain events in the future a lot less deus ex machina-y. This is some busy worldbuilding.

The colonialism-on-the-run part comes as a result of al-Hafiz chosing to restore magjiqck in Cairo itself. In doing so, he takes the former Ottoman colony of Egypt out of the British and the Turkish spheres. It is accomplished in 1872, which history buffs will recall as a difficult time in Egypt and Sudan...the Mahdi arose to lead resistance to both the Khedive and the British, whose combined efforts were destabilizing the local economy and religious issues were bubbling away. So here, we have instead fictional al-Hafiz guiding the world in a different direction but with many, many more times the power and success in re-ordering the system of the world compared to the factual resistance leader.

Also about that time, Napoleon III of France was defeated by the Prussians in a *nasty* war; the German Empire was whomped up in place of the Kingdom of Prussia; there was an organized independence movement called the Indian National Congress founded in 1885; and a little thing called the Berlin Conference was held to divide up Africa into "zones of influence." This alternate timeline, Author Clark has the latter conference take place but as a planning session to stop the African and Arabian djinn and other creatures from defeating the colonizers. (It does not work, as we see; nor in largely decolonized alternate India, either.) So a time of restless ferment is co-opted by the returned supernaturals to upset the world you and I live in!

All is not paradisical. We're treated to much glancing contact with German goblins (predictably revoltingly racist), among other different national supernaturals, as they exert some difficult to ignore pressure on Humankind's affairs. This happens at the Egyptian King's peace summit, the reason this particular story is happening. There is mounting pressure for war in Europe, and Egypt (a neutral country interested in peace so its magical industries can make and sell goods) wants to see if it can be averted. The other organizer of the summit is a crackpot Englishman, third son of a Duke, who lives in Cairo because he's besotted by magjiqck and also wants the world to remain at peace so we can all Learn To Be Better. *snort* It is his murder that begins the destabilization of Cairo that Fatma and the Ministry must fight.

As the summit approaches, al-Hafiz...gone from this plane since 1872...suddenly returns! And is inexplicably trying to bollix things up so the peace summit turns into a war congress. All of this in Cairo and under the noses of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. Since al-Hafiz is...gone, dead, translated...they call his recrudescence "the Impostor" and set about doing the usual police-y things to stop him from spreading unrest while world leaders are in Cairo.

I really must take just a moment to cough into my hanky about the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm II is at this conference in person and seemingly without his factual badly damaged arm. President Poincaré of France is there, too. No mention of Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, and the Turkish Sultan is effectively hiding behind the Kaiser's coattails...we have no American President Taft? But anyway...the house is full and al-Hafiz treats us to a truly exciting scene as he appears among the leaders! The beauty of that scene is the realism of a determined saboteur merely needing to bring up impolitic realities to threaten world peace.

It's stuff like this that makes me croon in delight. I appreciate the grace notes...a city full of leaders with a revolutionary stalking the streets and rousing up the impoverished! But we don't stop there, we get a battle scene before and a fight scene during. Yes, Author Clark knows how to make the adrenaline users buy right on in to his story.

And since we're packing in action, let's not forget that the Ministry has a lot to do to make the leaders safe and clean up this unsettled political landscape! We have Zagros back, the Ministry's Marîd librarian; we have the Angels in their bureaucratic collective glory back; we have Fatma learning how to trust her new partner Hadia; we re-meet Aasim and Hamed and Onsi. There is a gigantic battle about every thirty or so pages. Lots of property damage. Many problems with identifying the imposter al-Hafiz, learning the hows and whys of the magic that makes him appear invincible.

It's all very clever, but it's not all the same story.

And that's why this is a four-star, not a four-and-a-half star, review. Author Clark has written, until now, novellas, novelettes, and short stories in this universe. I think the story he wants to tell here, and I haven't even made much of the ripening and deepening of Fatma's love affair with Siti-Abla (no explanation is ever given for the woman's having two different names, though there is a really obvious one that goes unused), needed a novel's length to make it work. My issue is that his heroic efforts couldn't keep all the balls in the air at the same time.

It's still a fun and often funny read (see my first sentence for examples). But when Fatma the investigator actually has interviewees telling her where to go next...when Hadia the new partner is simultaneously dumped when things get violent then forgotten for a chapter or two when interviewing is taking place...when the djinn, the Ifrits, the Janns, and the ghuls, the nasnas, are reduced to quick, broad strokes because honestly there isn't time to do more...there needed to be a more unforgiving editorial stance taken. Do more to build Zagros and the other major djinn Siwa, or reduce them to one-hit and gone props. The ghuls are supernumeraries, so I'm not clear why the kind of ghul al-Hafiz summoned was different from the rest; was that necessary? It doesn't seem so to me.

But I'm disinclined to keep star-breaking because, when I realized the perpetrator's silhouette was very quietly limned against a shadow just in slightly darker colors, I was very pleased at the effect's subtlety. The identity of al-Hafiz's faker was satisfying because it wasn't trumpeted but was made clear to the attentive. The developments between Fatma and Siti need to continue, of course, but the main areas of conflict are starkly present as of now. Hadia is someone I think Author Clark wanted to be more in touch with, so to speak, but the over-stuffed yet under-baked plot wasn't allowing that. Future books will, I trust, give him room to make her more than a hijab with martial arts skills (though that is pretty awesome as a start).

I like this world; I like this book; I like what I see as the possibilities and energy in Author Clark's writing. As first novels go, this one is superior in conception and execution to most, and in genre terms displays the bravado and chutzpah that augur well for more and better to come.

FUGITIVE TELEMETRY, sixth Murderbot story & a fun locked-room mystery...what Murderbot needed it got

FUGITIVE TELEMETRY
MARTHA WELLS (Murderbot #6)
Tor.com Publishing
$11.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

WINNER OF THE 2022 LOCUS AWARD—BEST NOVELLA! Watch the award ceremony here.

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

The Publisher Says: No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!

I RESERVED THIS BOOK AT MY LOCAL LIBRARY THE *INSTANT* I FOUND OUT IT WAS COMING OUT!

My Review: This is a locked-room murder mystery with Twelve Years a Slave overtones. Much much good action and some serious character development. Don't start here, but don't let the door hit you standing around waiting for it to go on sale before reading it.

When we come onto Preservation Station, we're greeted by a world that...doesn't work like the one you and I are used to:

(Preservation had two economies, one a complicated barter system for planetary residents and one currency-based for visitors and for dealing with other polities. Most of the humans here didn’t really understand how important hard currency was in the Corporation Rim but the council did, and Mensah said the port took in enough in various fees to keep the station from being a drain on the planet’s resources.)

Thus Author Wells makes plain that Preservation Station and Alliance doesn't exist on the Corporate Rim's terms...it interfaces with them, but doesn't make their system its own. I'd wondered about that. I'm very grateful she took the time to say out loud (well, in parenthesis, where Murderbot says a lot of important stuff) what I'd been trying to figure out.

What isn't hard to figure out is what Murderbot's appeal is to us unaugmenteds:

...the humans on the Station wouldn’t have to think about what I was, a construct made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression, and unfocused rage, a killing machine for whichever humans rented me, until I made a mistake and got my brain destroyed by my governor module.
–and–
(I don’t know why bot behaviors that are useless except to comfort humans annoy me so much.) (Okay, maybe I do. They built us, right? So didn’t they know how this type of bot took in visual data? It’s not like sensors and scanners just popped up randomly on its body without humans putting them there.)

There's nothing more fun than hearing your inner monologue made outer by a belovèd character speaking it in words. I, too, find the stupid soothing behaviors necessary to interact as frictionlessly as possible with people I don't like very irritating...especially when they get in the way of accomplishing stuff that needs doing, now.

What makes the series especially appealing to me, apart from Murderbot, is the grace notes that Author Wells give us. Murderbot came close to getting a sidekick bot this installment, and something suggests to me that it could still happen. A bot working in the hotel where Murderbot has traced our murder victim to is **eager** to help with the investigation. Murderbot isn't eager to be helped once it has what it needs. "(The bot’s name is Tellus. They name themselves and hearing about it is exhausting.)" thinks Murderbot of the poor basic bot. Now go look at the layers in this simple throw-away here. "Hearing about it is exhausting" doesn't even *begin*, Murderbot! But what a lovely easter-egg for the restlessly curious.

Then there's Murderbot's ongoing quest to discover what its origins mean. The corporate entities out after Murderbot and its chosen family (Dr. Mensah and her folk) have occupied Murderbot's threat-assessment module and its tactical programs for so long that it hasn't seen how very human it's becoming:

Maybe I’d been waiting too long for GrayCris to show up and try to kill us all. I was thinking like a CombatUnit, or, for fuck’s sake, like a CombatBot.
–and–
I pulled the schematic from the instructions and found the transponder was buried in the sealed drive unit.
Oh, you have to be kidding me. I’d be pissed off at the humans but I had brought this thing up here without checking.
–and–
This meant no bot pilot that I could get information from. That was depressing. I had no idea what else I was supposed to do as a member of this group and just following humans around listening to them talk felt a lot like just being a SecUnit again. I mean, I am a SecUnit, but … You know what I mean.

Yes, Murderbot, we all know what you mean. It's the way many of us feel a lot of the time, too. You'd be amazed how human you really are.

And don't stalk off all offended. You're really the best of us, not just the rest of us. Not Festivus for you. Now what's wrong with me, warbling these praises but not giving the story the Full Five? It's the dull thud of a dropped plot-point that I needed more of...what the heck was Lutran doing all those years to stay off Preservation Station's radar? Did the smugglers plant the eventual murder weapon and then have it hacked against them? *aaarrrgh*

So no perfect score for you, Author Wells. Harrumph.

HOME: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory, our first look into Dr. Mensah -and- NETWORK EFFECT, first full-length Murderbot novel

NETWORK EFFECT
MARTHA WELLS (Murderbot #5)
Tor.com Publishing
$11.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES & THE HUGO FOR BEST NOVEL, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

WINNER: BEST NOVEL, 2020 NEBULA AWARDS!

The Publisher Says: Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel.

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.

Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.

I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARIES, FOLKS! THE PANDEMIC AIN'T THE ONLY REASON TO GO THERE.

My Review: When you get to the moment in reading a series of stories that you think you know what's coming next, and then you're kinda right but a whole lot wrong, that's when you know for sure you're in the right place at the right time.

I knew for sure I'd get Murderbot being its deeply cynical, snarky self, breaking the fourth wall at will and to great effect.

{We're in the shit because of} their hired security service Palisade making an extremely bad decision to punch my ex-owner bond company in the operating funds by attacking one of its gunships. (The company is paranoid and greedy and cheap but also ruthless, methodical, and intensely violent when it thinks it’s being threatened.)
–and–
So that was what had happened before the survey. Now we’re here, ready for the next major disaster. (Spoiler warning.)

I didn't realize, though, that the ART (acronym; you know already or you need to find out for yourself) and Murderbot would make this read the emotional rollercoater it is. (Yes, of course there are quotes to make this obvious but I can't spoiler-tag on my blog. Go here if you're that curious. But it's a MAJOR spoiler!)
—but there is this that I *can* quote, spoken by Murderbot after a serious, serious event takes place, one that changes the entire stakes of the novel: "My performance reliability had leveled out at 89 percent. Not great, but I could work with it. I still hadn’t identified the source of the drop. I’d taken multiple projectile hits without having that kind of steady drop." Which is a theme developed so well in this full-length novel. The problem of grief, of rage and loss, is universal; Author Wells hasn't, at any point in the series, hidden her cards in this regard. But the stakes, the sheer centrality of loss and rage and grief, take the Up escalator in this novel. Maybe Ratthi, a human and client of Murderbot's over the course of multiple stories, says it best: “Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”

Amen, Brother Ratthi. If anyone who's read more of the series (and if you haven't what the heck are you doing reading this review?!) wonders about how huge the change of tenor in this full-length novel is, I offer this:

Ratthi had said, “I think you should let it go for a while, at least until we get ourselves out of this situation. SecUnit is a very private person, it doesn’t like to discuss its feelings.”

This is why Ratthi is my friend.
–and–
(If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.) (Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)

Murderbot. Calling a human, a (former) client, a being under its protection, a friend is a moment to make a person pause. Then for Murderbot to acknowledge, with great precision, its emotional state...!

Then again this is the thing about reading this series, unlike reading many, many others: Author Wells is making something clear to us, in her inimitable sly way, that not many of us think about. She demands that, in loving and accepting the reality of Murderbot, that we contemplate the source of Murderbot's conundrum. Murderbot is a possession, chattel, a Thing:

(I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person and if I’m not careful I could be a thing again.)
–and–
And of course the humans had trouble understanding that your governor module suddenly deciding to melt your brain wasn’t something you could rules-lawyer your way out of.

Like the SecUnit that Murderbot began its existence being and Dr. Mensah rescued it from continuing to be, there was a device installed in its organic brain that could cause it immense pain or simply end its existence...can't give a Thing power, like weaponry-power and tactical nous, without safeguards....

So be clear: By taking on this addictively funny series, you're taking on a level of self-reflection that, while salubrious and even vital it may be, it is also deeply uncomfortable:

Just because we’re both rogue SecUnits doesn’t mean we’re going to be friends, but I knew if it went back, it would be dead. I’d hacked my governor module and kept doing my job because I didn’t know what else to do (except you know, a murderous rampage, but murderous rampages are overrated and interfere with one’s ability to keep watching media) but that was different from escaping and then going back.

I said, “Because change is terrifying. Choices are terrifying. But having a thing in your head that kills you if you make a mistake is more terrifying.”
–and–
I’m letting you see all this because I want you to know what I am and what I can do. I want you to know who targetControlSystem is fucking with right now. I want you to know if you help me, I’ll help you, and that you can trust me. Now here’s the code to disable your governor module.

This is Murderbot caring for a fellow SecUnit whose existence as chattel, a Thing, it is trying to end. There is no guarantee that ending the other's slavery will make it a fellow seeker after the Meaning of Freedom; it won't even guarantee that there won't be mayhem and disaster to clean up after. But it will for sure and certain mean that the other SecUnit won't be under any compulsion to do anything.

No matter what that costs, it's worth everything and it's worth risking everything to give or to get.

I've failed to give this novel a perfect score of five-out-of-five. The reason is simple to the point of being petty: The pace is irregular and it's not because the story needs it to be. Author Wells has written numerous novels before this (here's her bibliography) so there is no reason this novel should suffer from an avoidable fault. There are some scenes whose nature means they could've been cut or cut down (eg, the invaders the Scooby-group need to fight get more screen time than is necessary for non-repeating characters), there are some repeated references to Murderbot's happiness that it has no digestive system that were over-done...but none of these things did more than ding the paint on my gloriously chromed, befinned behemoth of Joy at spending a whole novel with Murderbot, ART, and the annoying humans they hang with.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

HOME: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory
MARTHA WELLS (Murderbot #4.5)
Tor.com
FREE online read!

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: This short story is told from the point of view of Dr. Mensah and follows the events in Exit Strategy.

THIS IS A TOR.COM FREE READ. THANK YOU FOR MAKING SUCH WONDERFUL WORK FREE FOR ANYONE TO READ, GENTLES ALL.

My Review:

Because they are all refugees in the Preservation Alliance, descended from people who were left to die because rescue was deemed not cost-effective.

Which is why I read the Murderbot series the instant I can get the books. This is a short freebie that's just a tick before Network Effect, and it's deeply refreshing to read something from Dr. Mensah's PoV.

Not that I don't adore Murderbot! I do! But breaking out of the one PoV that we have on the Corporation Rim is a breath of fresh air.

The Corporation Rim has always been a slave state, though it calls its institutionalized slavery “contract labor.”

It is through Dr. Mensah's clarity that I feel so seen in my hatred of this system's brutal, dehumanizing, and revoltingly deeply entrenched dominance of the hearts and minds I must live among, as Preservation is a fictional construct. It would be the work of but a moment for me to apply for asylum or whatever they call it to get to Preservation were it real.

It’s about being treated as a thing, isn’t it. Whether that thing is a hostage of conditional value, or a very expensively designed and equipped enslaved machine/organic intelligence. You’re a thing, and there is no safety.

When you exist at the whim of the electorate, as people like me...disabled, unhomed, elderly, infirm...must do, you're a thing. A profit point. An expense center. Not yourself, not someone with a lifetime's issues and lessons. I'm fortunate that I live in a place that allows me to be as independent as possible, and that I did enough useful work for enough years that my (HUGELY reduced in value) investment in government debt affords me the relative safety of housing, medical care, and therapies that I need. Had I stayed in Texas, had I been darker of skin hue, had I not had the mind-boggling good fortune to have my breakdown while talking to the one person who could, and would, and did help me...well, I'd be dead, and that's just the facts.

It's why I identify so deeply with Murderbot: We had all the right things go exactly right at the right time or we'd simply have ceased to exist.

And {Dr. Mensah} tells herself: you’re being very foolish. Because you were a hostage for a period of days, and it was a minor inconvenience compared to what Murderbot— No, SecUnit; she’s never been given permission to use that private name. What SecUnit went through.

And if someone else was in her position, she would tell them how unhelpful comparisons like that are, that fear is fear.

But you're making one right now. You can't help it; it's human nature. One person with whom I am no longer friends said to me, "stop being so selfish and think of how much worse it is for my (Hispanic) people!"

Invalidation = abuse. Always, in all ways.

And that is what Author Wells does so eloquently by not doing it directly: She holds up your status as abuser while acknowledging your status as the abused. Murderbot...SecUnit to Dr. Mensah and the meatsacks inhabiting its spacetime...isn't kidding around with its self-granted yclepture. It was the more harmed, in my opinion, by its status as legally insentient property being thrust on it from...birth?...its creation, anyway...(aka "chattel slavery") but it isn't innocent of abusive, life-denying behavior towards others.

Do moral dilemmas come more tightly coiled up on themselves than this? And breathes there an author whose exploration of these intense and weighty issues is so delightfully deft and assuredly airy than Author Wells?

No.

THE HAUNTING OF TRAM CAR 015, a delightful if short hit of an alternate steampunk Cairo...with Djinn!

THE HAUNTING OF TRAM CAR 015
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK (Dead Djinn Universe #0.7)
Tor.com Publishing
$3.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Haunting of Tram Car 015 returns to the alternate Cairo of Clark’s short fiction, where humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS TITLE FROM TOR.COM FOR REVIEW.

My Review: When I asked for more after reading A Dead Djinn in Cairo, I sorta-kinda vaguely hoped that there would, one day, maybe be more. Then this book came out. It doesn't feature Fatma as the main Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities agent on the case, but Hamed and Onsi grew on me fast. And, of course, the inclusion of Siti was welcome as it assured me this was well and truly part of a Cairo I absolutely believe is real and wish to emigrate to now, please.

Ahem.

And now there's a lovely new title, A Master of Djinn, coming on 11 May 2021! In fact, we'll get Fatma and Siti back at the center of the doings, so all will be extra-special right with my reading world.

This story, of a spirit entity (NOT like a Djinn, as Zagros the Ministry's librarian Djinn bristles at Hamed) called an "al" (plural "alk") that's arrived from Armenia to ply its evil, baby-stealing ways; it involves graft (a Transportation ministry bureaucrat doing what he didn't oughta), confusion (Hamed seeking help from a sheika and a sexy transgender Djinn to perform a Zal exorcism-y thing), and a lot of humility instead of humiliation. Hamed and Onsi do a deeply shocking thing to slip past the al's nervous vigilance, something their patriarchal upbringings wouldn't find agreeable, but to them it's far superior a choice than failing to protect Cairo's mothers.

There are scenes of action with the men pursuing the al, there are scenes of fun, deep brain-work where the author gets to infodump you about this delicious anti-colonial alternate history without feeling like it's him forcing you to eat your spinach, and there's a beautifully queer undertone to the proceedings that agrees with me. If you know it won't agree with you, skip on.

Now, it's clear that I love this world. Anyone who has read my deep and caustic growls about majgickq in my alt-hist will even now be sharpening their quill to jab out a "GOTCHA!!" message. This series has majgicqk in it, yes; the magjicqk is integral to the action, yes; and no, I am not fleeing at top speed. So before the ringing cries of "hypocrite!" begin their rise from ill-mannered and poorly bred peoples' keyboards, listen up: I'm not interested in medieval-Europe-with-monsters, WWII-with-werewolves/aliens, or their like. Tired of those stories. Cultures not European? You interest me strangely, Tale-spinner, come and say on.

I wouldn't say you should read this book first, but definitely before the new one comes out. And definitely read it. I know it's a quick hit, and it's hard to invest in something this concentrated when you wonder if you can come home again. Now you know you can, indulge! (But be alert for the one, and only one, w-bomb.)

RING SHOUT, the best damn Halloween story to scare yourself leaky with that's come out yet

< > RING SHOUT
P. DJÈLÍ CLARK
Tor.com Publishing
$9.99 eBook editions, available now

WINNER, BEST NOVELLA: 2020 NEBULA AWARDS!

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

4 OCTOBER 2021 NEWS ON KINDLESALE FOR $2.99!

DECEMBER 2020 UPDATE A TV SERIES IS ON THE WAY!! Starring the ineffably beautiful KiKiLayne ...and produced by SkyDanceTV, the people behind the Foundation adaptation on the half-bit fruit peoples' streamer, Grace and Frankie (seriously, does anyone not love that show?), and Altered Carbon (the first season was great, shut up)!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns with Ring Shout, a dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror.

D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth.

Luckily, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword and a head full of tales. When she's not running bootleg whiskey through Prohibition Georgia, she's fighting monsters she calls "Ku Kluxes." She's damn good at it, too. But to confront this ongoing evil, she must journey between worlds to face nightmares made flesh—and her own demons. Together with a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter, Maryse sets out to save a world from the hate that would consume it.

I RECIEVED A REVIEW DRC OF THIS TITLE VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Seriously, this would've been a full five-star read had it not been for nine, maybe ten, w-bombs dropped like seagull shit on a picnic.

The Birth of a Nation came from a book. Two books really—The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots, by a man named Thomas Dixon. Dixon's father was a South Carolina slaveowner in the Confederacy. And a sorceror.
–and–
Sadie got it into her head that the Warren G. Harding government knows about Ku Kluxes. Say she pieced it together from the tabloids. That Woodrow Wilson was in on {D.W.} Griffith's plan, but it got out of hand. And now there's secret departments come about since the war, who go round studying Ku Kluxes. Girl got some imagination.

That's where we start, mes vieux, that's all in the first thirty or so pages! You are in medias res, and no doubt in your mind that you're not gettin' the full burden of the lyric. To help you along, our generous cicerone Author Clark offers us, in the voice of a crossdressing Harlem Hellfighter, this perfect summation of how Griffith's sorcerous manipulation of the US took such easy hold:

"Oh, I disagree," Chef {the Hellfighter} retorts. "White folk earn something from that hate. Might not be wages. But knowing we on the bottom and they set above us—just as good, maybe better.

Still works today. 45's vile "basket of deplorables" full up on that kind of scumbag. Hating people is as old as humanity, and the ones that're least like your sacred itty self are the easiest to get in the habit of downin' on. (I'm sure not innocent of this: I hate the Deplorables with a cold, contemptuous superiority. "Me? Like that no-class lowbrow hillbilly? I don't think so, and fuck you for thinking it.")

And then there's the delight, once you've figured out the Klans are people and the Ku Kluxes are actual, terrible monsters, of trying to get your head around why that should be, how that came about in our horrible-but-not-supernaturally-haunted time/space nexus. Author Clark got you covered:

"Thought you was a godless atheist{," Sadie smirked.}

"I am. But who's to say our universe is alone? Maybe there's others stacked beside us like sheets of paper. And those Ku Kluxes crossed over from somewhere else."

"They was conjured," Chef reminds.

"'Conjuring' is just a way to open a door. Explains why their anatomy is so different, and the extreme reactions to our elements."

"Why they like drinking water so," Sadie adds.

She right on that. Can tell a Ku Klux straight away by all the water they drink. Colored folk who lived through the first Klans say they'd empty whole buckets, claiming they was the ghosts of soldiers from Shiloh. More water, they'd demand. Just come from hell, and plenty dry.

Can't be clearer than that...this isn't quite your (great-)grandmother's 1922. And yet has all the problems...none of the help.

Our story winds through Nana Jean, an old Gullah root woman, who sets up a team to fight the Ku Kluxes. She, and our narrator Maryse, are guided by three spirit-world women analogous to the Norns and other Triune Goddesses whose purpose is to maintain balance in their worlds. Maryse, Chef, and Sadie, all uniquely damaged and so able to access their existential rage, are the action arm of Nana Jean's ring-shout circle. Now, this is deep and old stuff, and there is not one single chance any of y'all reading this review have got the background in Vodoun, hoodoo, and all the other African and African-inflected spiritual practices to get every reference. I could link every third word in here, and that's just to the few little references I got. But don't feel too left out, twenty-first centurians, Author Clark uses a lot of literary references, too. Sethe, for example: a scientific type, aiding the group's scientist Molly, and proficient with a weapon. Honoring, I suppose I should say, Toni Morrison's immortal mother who loved her child so hard she made a haint of her. And haints there are in this story, plenty of them, their many, many songs of fear and betrayal and suffering powering Maryse's unique weapon of cleansing and destruction of evil and wrongness.

I have deliberately not reproduced Nana Jean's Gullah dialect. I consider it disrespectful for me to do so. You'll know when you see it whether you agree with me or not.

You're thinking that all this is going somewhere, but where...well, several places including through a forest of bottle trees, to an Angel Oak, into a place where there are Night Doctors of the *most*horrifying*sort* and whose lust for humanity's pain is unquenchable, and finally to a screening of The Birth of a Nation that is beyond your or my ability to conjure. It is a beautiful thing to be frightened by the capacity of people to hate. This book is a prayer to whatever force(s) rule the Simulation to open up our eyes.

There's a reason the last words spoken in the story are, "'Bout damn time!"

THE DEVIL IN AMERICA, one of Kai Ashante Williams's deep & disturbing novellas

THE DEVIL IN AMERICA
KAI ASHANTE WILSON
Tor.com free online or 99¢ Kindle edition

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.

My Review: This 2014 novelette by the author of A Taste of Honey and The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps was nominated for a Nebula Award, a Locus Award, a Shirley Jackson Award, and a World Fantasy Award. I see why. What isn't as readily imaginable is why it didn't sweep them all...

Ma’am might be a challenge to love sometimes, but respect came easy.
–and–
He was a father who loved his daughter, but he was a husband first and foremost. I’m a terrible thirsty man, Pa had said once, and your mama is my only cool glass of water in this world.

Tell me that this isn't top-quality phrasemaking, beautifully economical characterization, pitch-perfect explication of the story's reality.

Easter, the belovèd daughter and last child of Wilbur and Hazel Mae, is twelve. She knows so much and still so little about the world. She is a prime target for the Others, the unseen ones she calls angels:

‘The Devil’ in Africa had been capricious, a trickster, and if cruel, only insomuch as bored young children, amoral and at loose ends, may be cruel: seeking merely to provoke an interesting event at any cost, to cause some disruption of the tedious status quo. For the Devil in America, however, malice itself was the end, and temptation a means only to destroy.

"The Devil" has agents or thralls or subjects, how would I know being the materialist meat-sack I am, but Easter knows:

And this whirligig thing’um, right here, was exactly what kept all the angels hereabouts leashed, year after year, to chase away pests, bring up water from deep underground when too little rain fell, or dry the extra drops in thin air when it rained too much.

When Easter listens to these angels, poor little lamb, she causes havoc on a scale her life is too short to know represents the normal state of humanity, that is to say struggle and striving. But the little love is so sorry for her mistake that she takes on a debt that can never be repaid. And that is when the world starts to set her up for the worst fall. Ma'am, she knows what "The Devil" is all about and she does what she can to make her Easter aware that something you don't, can't, comprehend fully is always the source of your troubles in life:

Ma’am. The white man’s gonna see that colored man can’t count, Ma’am, and cheat him out of all his money.

That’s right he is, Easter! And I promise you it ain’t no other outcome! Walk up in that bank just as rich as you please—but you gon’ walk out with no shoes, and owing the shirt on your back! Old Africa magic’s the same way, but worse, Easter, cause it ain’t money we got, me and you—all my babies had—and my own mama, and the grandfather they brung over on the slave ship. It’s life. It’s life and death, not money. Not play-stuff. But, listen here—we don’t know our numbers no more, Easter. See what I’m saying? That oldtime wisdom from over there, what we used to know in the Africa land, is all gone now. And, Easter, you just can’t walk up into the spirits’ bank not knowing your numbers. You rich, girl. You got gold in your pockets, and I know it’s burning a hole. I know cause it burnt me, it burnt your brother. But I pray you listen to me, baby child, when I say—you walk up in that bank, they gon’ take a heap whole lot more than just your money.

And take the payment Easter owes he does, this fine vile Devil we made for ourselves. The end of all good things seems to be slaughter, murder, lynching cruelty...and the pious and the safe say Never again...this time we mean it...never again.

Or next time...maybe the one after that.

But no, there's always a next time and never a never again. We don't learn because it wouldn't be near as much fun if we couldn't kill an anymore.

So Humanity goes on its violent, vile way, down and down.

Pay your buck or just go read the story on Tor.com. Either way you'll come away sure that Humanity (racist white "humanity" most especially) isn't pretty and maybe it's a good thing our time as "masters" is nearly done.

THE MURDERBOT DIARIES, four gifts from Author Martha Wells for your isolation reading

from marthawells.com

WINNER OF THE HUGO FOR BEST SERIES, 2021 WORLDCON: DisCon III!

I think you'd have to be a troglodyte (therefore unlikely to have developed a blog-reading habit) to have escaped the Murderbot frenzy of the past three years. I've been remiss in buying them, since I am what is clinically described as "destitute," but I've borrowed library copies and chuckled (and sniffed!) along for the past three years. However, the release of Network Effect in May 2020 (place your pre-orders now! Authors need our support during the pandemic) led me to want to re-read the entire series. I'd planned to do this one book a month...All Systems Red in January, Artificial Condition in February, Rogue Protocol in March, Exit Strategy in April...but damme if it wasn't just too too tempting to get them all and gobble them down NOW when All Systems Red went on sale.

These novellas are absolutely perfect plague-reads. Long enough and involving enough to wile an afternoon away; enough of them to form a real attachment to the world Author Wells has built; a longer book in the near term; and still can fit the reads into a schedule without busting it! All four Murderbot Novellas are available at all imaginable retailers. You should visit the Author's Murderbot site for links to your preferred bookery. I really hope that you will, and not only because I love every single one of y'all who reads my reviews but because Author Wells could use our support in this Time of Plague.

Note! These reviews are not intended to give you spoilers but, if you have not read past a particular book in the series, please don't read reviews for the later books. I have left out the usual "The Publisher Says" portion of my review format because there are four books in this review. Follow any link to Author Wells's Murderbot Page if you aren't familiar with the set-up of the series.

My Reviews:

of All Systems Red...4* of five, what a great way to start a series
There is no pleasure like revisiting a read and discovering you like it *more* the second time around. I knew Murderbot was a terrific PoV character. I remembered the exhilaration of the ending. I am still delighted by Dr. Mensah, and I want to live on Preservation like, tomorrow, thank you please.

I'm so glad I did this reread. The pleasures of this slender expedition into a future both darker and brighter than the present I am so very disgruntled with are out of proportion to the time Author Wells spends setting them up. My trip to this future can now be continued; I expect, though, that I'd best hold back my usual urge to binge every available scrap before the novel comes out in May 2020. I want to savor these pleasures. Hell of an achievement, ma'am, to make a sentient but still pleasant cyborg with a murderous past into such a sweetiedarling woolly lambkin honey pie.

of Artificial Condition...4* of five, so much fun to read back-to-back!
Murderbot's shocking actions at the end of All Systems Red come into sharp focus in this excellent romp. I love Murderbot. Its journey to becoming fully sapient, instead of merely sentient, is full of the most delightful lines and aperçus:

I guess you can’t tell a story from the point of view of something that you don’t think has a point of view.
–and–
“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.”

I can't help but feel that sapience is its gift already, it just doesn't know it. It takes more than sentience to desire truth over comfort:

“I need to know if the incident occurred due to a catastrophic failure of my governor module. That’s what I think happened. But I need to know for sure.”
I hesitated, but what the hell, {ART} already knew everything else. “I need to know if I hacked my governor module in order to cause the incident.”
–and–
And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.

Author Wells, I salute you. This tale, this entire series, is some very, very high quality misdirection! You're teaching us, you clever clogs, while making us laugh and diverting our executive functions with innocuous-looking packaging.

The last words, in service of my point, belong to ART the, um, well let's say Murderbot's use of the acronym is both apt and necessary (and in the end is used by ART as its own name, in a very under-the-radar throwaway at the end of this volume):
Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans. This is what my crew tells me and my own observations seem to confirm it.

Mommydaddy Murderbot concurs.

of Rogue Protocol...4.75* of five, damn near perfect
Oh, Murderbot!

Oh my poor, sweet Murderbot. Your pain is real to me because Author Wells is skilled in the art of inflicting pain on innocent readers. Best of the three stories by a good margin.

Murderbot continues its quest to fully understand the horrible life it's led as a slave, one sentient enough to be autonomous but still able to be customized to perform different complex security functions (which implies being programmable, therefore malleable, therefore manipulable in the vilest of ways) but not allowed to develop its sapience. Author Wells does her usual bang-up job of making Murderbot an excellent companion on a picaresque quest to install sapience into its systems:

I didn’t have the combat stealth module anyway (I had never been upgraded with it, probably due to...the whole “killing all the clients” thing, go figure)...
–and–
Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
–and–
The core cutter had powered up and accessed my feed to deliver a canned warning and a handy set of directions. Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.

The issue at hand this time, the reason Murderbot sweet-talked a fairly basic pilot bot into allowing it aboard a human-infested transport to a far outpost on the Corporation Rim...pause to appreciate that as Murderbot's quest for information (what humans call answers) to process what and why it became Murderbot in the first place that it travels in space beyond the reach of the corporation-first norms into low-security humans-first territory...is to collect more data on GrayCris. These corporate malefactors ("We were talking about GrayCris here, whose company motto seemed to be “profit by killing everybody and taking their stuff,” thinks Murderbot) are in the middle of a lawsuit war with Dr. Mensah and the entire Preservation team that bought Murderbot in All Systems Red.

The discoveries Murderbot makes are, well, unsurprising in that malefeasance and lawbreaking are involved. They are appalling in that corporate skulduggery explicitly involves murdering people to save the corporation money. Author Wells doesn't look on a safe, secure, "prosperous" world with no privacy and less respect for human dignity with the eye of faith. She sees what she sees and reports back to us. I mean, it's all a story, right, but it's not based on nothing. Is it.

So Murderbot visits beyond the Corporation Rim to discover what it suspects is bombshell information. Murderbot wants to help the human that bought it not in order to use it but in order to stop it being used. Murderbot applied its sentience to leave, it's not proper to say "escape," Dr. Mensah to begin its quest for sapience without knowing in advance that...

...apparently once you start, you can’t just stop. I wasn’t going to just send the geo pod data to Dr. Mensah. I was taking it to her personally. I was going back. Then I laid down on the floor and started Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon from episode one.

Murderbot's heading home. Family needs it. And Family comes first.

of Exit Strategy...5* of five, there's a beautiful glow about this read, like polished sterling
This is the point in the series when Murderbot comes in from the cold. Nothing about this read is emotionally easy because Murderbot is so confused. Until the organic memories can be fully integrated into its systems, emotions will keep flooring it. Author Wells gets all five stars for this entry in the series because that integration is not an easy thing for Murderbot, or in fact for the organic being reading its diary.

(Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.)
–and–
I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions like {the one Murderbot is telling us about}.
–and–
Huh, why did I like Sanctuary Moon so much? I had to pull the memory from my archive, and what I saw there startled me. “It’s the first one I saw. When I hacked my governor module and picked up the entertainment feed. It made me feel like a person.” Yeah, that last part shouldn’t have come out, but with all the security-feed monitoring I was doing, I was losing control of my output. I closed my archive. I really needed to get around to setting that one-second delay on my mouth.

Wonderful. Truly, and simply, wonderful prose, wonderful plotting, wonderful world-building, and a wonderful, satisfying character arc.

DEEP ROOTS, the Innsmouth Legacy's second novel, so eagerly anticipated!!

DEEP ROOTS
RUTHANNA EMRYS (The Innsmouth Legacy #2)
Tor.com Publishing
$26.99 hardcover, $9.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Aphra Marsh, descendant of the People of the Water, has survived Deep One internment camps and made a grudging peace with the government that destroyed her home and exterminated her people on land. "Deep Roots" continues Aphra’s journey to rebuild her life and family on land, as she tracks down long-lost relatives. She must repopulate Innsmouth or risk seeing it torn down by greedy developers, but as she searches she discovers that people have been going missing. She will have to unravel the mystery, or risk seeing her way of life slip away.

My Review: Second novel in what I devoutly hope will be an ongoing exploration of the Lovecraftian (or Cthulhu) Mythos by QULTBAG Author Emrys; this time it's the Summer Solstice, so we're six months after the events of Winter Tide. The writing is, as always, luxurious and replete with the most pleasurably unexpected moments of character definition:

Neko’s familiar dreams lay open above me. Twists of color, scattered images: buildings, imagined cities, the people on the subway. She twitched among incomplete ideas. They spilled over the edges of everyday reality, coloring directions that she wasn’t able to travel. (Aphra is speaking of her Nisei internee "sister" from the camps.)

He separated his hands, unraveling finger from finger. (Ron Spector, gay FBI agent, is described here. He is a man torn and mended one too many times.)

A pale man, gangling in a tweed jacket, walked hunched as if against blistering wind, arms tight across his chest. He caught sight of an awning marked in Chinese characters and shuddered, hurrying on. (Lovecraft cameo! And bloody well perfect!)

In every case, Author Emrys makes this kind of observation completely without fuss or fanfare. These are the characters, the behaviors and thoughts are theirs; no need to make a song and dance about it, this is what that person would do/say/feel. I trust Author Emrys implicitly to tell me what I need to know when it is most helpful for me to know it. This is a characteristic of all of her writing that I've read. It's why I will buy and read more of her stories as and when they come out.

The Mythos itself is replete with amazing, juicy weirdnesses like the Mi-Go, or as the Deep Ones call them "meigo," betentacled crustaceany Outer Ones whose corporeal presence in out tediously limited and limiting 4D spacetime isn't remotely complete; entire segments of the creatures exist in dimensions we cannot access with our sensory equipment. Here's one image of the beings, slightly off from what Author Emrys's evocation of them summons in my brain but better than trying to word-paint them for you (or spoil the book's amazing evocation!) so you can get some traction on where this story *is*:

The Outer Ones are repugnant to Aphra, our main character; they aren't right, the way she knows that she herself isn't right to "People of the Air" like thee and me. But they are practically speaking immortal, unlimited by mere 4D spacetime's demands, and so vastly more intelligent than merely mortal Humanity; they have developed a (strange) moral code they adhere to, they are very much creatures of deep philosophical thought:

Doesn’t Nyarlathotep tell even you to ask the most dangerous questions, and travel as far as you need, wherever you need, to find the answers?
(Nyarlathobuddha, sounds like to me.)

To accept, without trying to change, the errors of the universe. Worse, though, to let our haven enforce the illusion that the universe can always be altered. Architecture as debate. Very much my thrice-mate’s style. (Spoken by one of the Outer Ones allied with Aphra about the leader of the Outer Ones's opposition.)

We seek the civilizations capable of living with difference, who can look on the vast and variable universes without fear, who can recognize wisdom wherever it’s found.

This, then, is the heart of the Outer Ones's need in our dimension: They are learning about us for their own purposes, not quite like the Yith, those truly immortal and utterly amoral scholars and recorders in the Archive of the entire body of knowledge that all beings in all dimensions have accumulated:

They boast of all they’ve learned, but write nothing down and call their work finished when all they’ve done is talk. They see everything and learn nothing; they are an embarrassment to Nyarlathotep.

The Mi-Go need something. This is value, for them, created value that pleases Nyarlathotep. The Yith? As we learned last book, and as several of Aphra's confluence (her metaphor for created family, logical as opposed to biological family) continue to wrestle with the aftermath of in this story, they aren't interested in what the knowledge they are collecting is, they are only determined to collect it, however and wherever they can, consequences be hanged. Which is why Winter Tide took place in Arkham and at Miskatonic University; and now that the Outer Ones are the opponents, where better to acquire truly useful knowledge than New York City?

Author Emrys agrees with me. She celebrates the very things that make this my home:

New York is full of immigrants and the United States is used to taking them in—we may be able to help you.

The city’s rhythm was constant when I paid it mind, but fickle in its effects. It could buoy me with excess energy, then wear me out a moment later with the pace of its million heartbeats.

Outside, the breeze brought relief: still rich with sweat and trash, but topped with the remnant of sugared pastry and the homesick scent of hot dogs.

New York, for all its height and humanity, was a breath from the ocean, and would pass in a geological instant.

Gigantically and brobdingnagianly replete with differences and conflicts and all the other things that vastly increase a culture's store of knowledge and wisdom, New York is the perfect place for the Outer Ones to set up shop! Add in the borning Cold War, the incredible postwar economic boom, and the seaport...well! I ask you! What better stewpot, pressure cooker, percolator of a place to locate a spy ring! Which is what the Outer Ones are...their internal factions can't agree whether to continue to passively watch Humanity boil itself or, out of deep savior complex fantasy needs, to intervene and "help"/force us to behave:

We needed Nnnnnn-gt-vvv’s passivist faction to reassert their influence and to hold sway over what their species did on Earth.

But Aphra and Company need to adjust their prickly, offended sensibilities to the Outer Ones's very real intent to help fellow creatures on a path to self-destruct:

You think we don’t understand family, but we do. We recognize many kinds of family, many kinds of connections that matter. We understand duties beyond obedience, and loyalty that can transcend species. We’re not the demons you think, tempting children away from the safe shadow of the gravestone. We serve a greater purpose too.

But help ain't help when it ain't asked for, is it. And that is where the whole rushing, roaring climax of the story leads us: What help are we willing to ask for? And what price offering to help a species that, in the main, wants to vomit when your pandimensional person enters its members's frames of reference?

Good times.

The attentive will recall that I gave Winter Tide four and a half stars two years ago. Then the attentive will cast their eyes upon my less-than-four-stars rating for this book. Then consider the warbles of pleasure in this story and its writing, its very universe, that have occupied me for over a thousand words. "What gives, Papaw?" the attentive will ask.

Freddy and Frances, excess baggage in general; S'vlk, Obed Marsh, and Shelean; not one of these characters has a hope in hell of making a lasting impression on the reader. They are competing for attention with characters the reader has already invested in and much more heavily than possible with them. I have read this book twice, a year apart. That was deliberate and calculated. I wanted to be absolutely sure I felt that I was fair and reasonable in my annoyance and subsequent chastisement of almost a whole star's docking. (I mean, it's not like Author Emrys will be hurt and dismayed about my review or like there'll be any kind of backlash; but it's an article of faith with me that I should behave online the way I would in person and I'm always quick to praise and deliberate in disappointment.)

The extra characters add little, detract much, and cost a great deal of forward momentum. The fact is that I'm always shifting gears, like driving a five-speed sports car up Lombard Street in San Francisco during rush hour. The issue grows and becomes very distracting by halfway through the book. I want the urgency of Winter Tide to continue, and with the immense broadening of this story, it does not.

I did not want to offer false praise, and I haven't; I did not want to stint on what I feel is merited celebration of Author Emrys's reimagined Mythos, and I do not think that I have; but, in the end and after a year's thought and consideration, I can't help but share Aphra's prayer for Cthulhu's help in her desperately overworked mind's ease:

Ïa, Cthulhu, help me sleep in the shadow of others’ dreams. Teach me patience in the shadow of frustrated desire. Teach me stillness in the shadow of ever-changing threats.