BLACK SALT QUEEN, non-Western woman-led fantasy for successful (self-)gifting

BLACK SALT QUEEN (Letters from Maynara #1)
SAMANTHA BANSIL
Bindery Books | Violetear (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$3.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There can be no victory without betrayal.

Hara Duja Gatdula, queen of the island nation of Maynara, holds the divine power to move the earth. But her strength is failing and the line of succession gives her little comfort. Her heir, Laya, is a danger—a petty and passionate princess who wields the enormous power of the skies with fickle indifference. Circling the throne is Imeria Kulaw—the matriarch of a traitorous rival family who wields recklessly enhanced powers of her own—with designs to secure a high-ranking position for her son and claim the crown for her family. Each woman has a secret weakness—a lover, a heartbreak, a lie. But each is willing to pay the steepest price to bring down her rivals once and for all.

Filled with passion, romance, betrayal, and divine magic, Black Salt Queen journeys to a gorgeous precolonial island nation where women—and secrets—reign.

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

My Review: Filipina Author Bansil gives us a gorgeously written, beautifully described fantasy epic in a secondary world that feels fresh to me. I'm not the biggest reader of fantasy...I've lost fifty pounds!...but mostly it's because I am *mortally*tired* of Eurocentric settings that retell European history plus magic. I'm old, I studied history, I read about history, so I'm maybe a bit jaded because I read mostly European slants on the world's broad sweep of history. The problem with being an Anglophone reader is it has too little variety of subject and viewpoint. We need more translated non-fiction, fiction, trashy novels, sci fi...everything.

This book doesn't need to be translated, nor does it need to be viewed through any lens but that of fantasy worldbuilding. It's rooted in precolonial Philippine culture, adding fantasy elements; this is a part of world history I'll bet big money most of my fellow old white people have less knowledge of this cultural milieu than they do of Middle Earth...very few of y'all need any context to know who Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas are or represent.

Getting onto fantasy worlds requires investing into the worldbuilding required for you to feel mise-en-scène. When someone doesn't enjoy that process' iteration in a particular work, they call it "infodumping." The first third or so of this story is more worldbuilding and conflict-establishing narrative. I enjoyed it, though I know the pace suffers for its necessary thoroughness. (The drug, akin to Dune's spice, that enables the powerful to wield their powers, is more present than the powers themselves.) Shorthand available to Eurocentric story settings isn't ready to hand here.

My favorite quality of the story told here, first in a projected series that I very much want to happen, is that every power-wielding woman in this story is aware of her power's cost, to her and to those she uses it for and on. They are women, not girls learning the ropes as is so deeply, tediously common. They've ruled their world for a while, they're now being responsible and planning for the succession to power as they realize mortality is no longer distant. Imeria and Duja are shrewd, flawed people with many problems to solve, many characters to assess, many judgments to render. (Note to Duja: think twice about your idea of Laya.)

I would give the book all five stars but for the straight "romance" building up for Laya. It's not gonna work out, which is not my problem with it; it's that the two are waaay too young to be in this situation and Duja is, perhaps calculatedly, not helping Laya figure anything out. It's a niggle, really, because I can certainly see why this happens; it's just...well...to me, it's brutal to play with people you *can* help out.

So that's my missing quarter star explained. I think, on balance, I'd eagerly push this story at fantasy readers fourteen and up, slightly more to women than men. Any younger giftee whose taste you're passingly familiar with would be a good target for receiving one.

KALIVAS! Or, Another Tempest, well-thought-through retelling

KALIVAS! Or, Another Tempest
NICK MAMATAS
CLASH Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this science-fiction revision of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kalivas lives in solitude on the Farallon Islands, until the Master and his daughter M colonize his lonely realm.

Kalivas, the last free-range human, is pressed into completing dangerous and menial tasks on the Master's behalf. The new regime is disrupted when a great storm brings more cyborg mainlanders to the island shores. Can Kalivas finally break free and reclaim his islands, or will his affection for M keep him tied to the Master forever?

Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest reframes the drama as an anticolonial fantasia through futuristic gizmos, a broken continent, and a one-act play invoking the theater of the absurd. Told by the Bard's least civilized and most human creation, Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I love this description: "Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era."

Exactly. This precisely delineates this reading experience. Caliban, from Shakespeare's version of The Tempest, starts us (as Kalivas) in the direction Author Mamatas wants us to go. He is, need I mention, not-quite human; he is Us-but-Other. Kalivas is the last fully human representative of our lineage after Apocalypse compels most to seek non-human augmentation. The Master (Prospero) has a "posthuman" as they're now called child, M (Miranda), with whom Kalivas is infatuated.

So, M is repelled but fascinated by Kalivas? So The Master is umitigatedly cruel to Kalivas? But who plays Stephano's part?

Y'all know better than that. The squalling hordes of banshees in the Spoiler Stasi make it impossible for me to tell. I can say that the nature of The Tempest is strongly present in this anticolonial reimagining, I will say that there is a lot more examination of the ways and means of Othering, I'd like you to know that the most common downfall of the retelling...losing sight of the central reason to retell a story in the joy of creating one's own...is entirely absent. As Kalivas hits the beats, the camera of our readerly attention is a few feet off its original mark; we see from a new perspective the way the stories meet, merge, diverge, and if one's paying attention, the why of it all.

SINOPTICON 2021: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, mutual genre blindness written over

SINOPTICON 2021: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction
XUETING CHRISTINE NI (editor and translator)
Solaris Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A stunning collection of the best in Chinese Science Fiction, from Award-Winning legends to up-and-coming talent, all translated here into English for the first time.

This celebration of Chinese Science Fiction — thirteen stories, all translated for the first time into English — represents a unique exploration of the nation’s speculative fiction from the late 20th Century onwards, curated and translated by critically acclaimed writer and essayist Xueting Christine Ni.

From the renowned Jiang Bo’s ‘Starship: Library' to Regina Kanyu Wang’s ‘The Tide of Moon City, and Anna Wu’s ‘Meisje met de Parel', this is a collection for all fans of great fiction.

Award winners, bestsellers, screenwriters, playwrights, philosophers, university lecturers and computer programmers, these thirteen writers represent the breadth of Chinese SF, from new to old: Gu Shi, Han Song, Hao Jingfang, Nian Yu, Wang Jinkang, Zhao Haihong, Tang Fei, Ma Boyong, Anna Wu, A Que, Bao Shu, Regina Kanyu Wang and Jiang Bo.

THE PUBLISHER OFFERED ME A DRC. THANK YOU.

My Review: China's gargantuan economy, and its borning confidence in its increasing influence translating to wider power, is on display in its "kehuan" (science fiction) writers' concerns. This collection, admirably balanced between unpublished-in-the-West and still-gaining-followers-here writers, does what I suppose we all need: Introduces us to the Chinese view of the world, and its future, without the burden of Geopolitical Maneuvering landing on it.

One thing the editor says in her introduction struck me forcibly: Chinese fiction doesn't tend to have happy endings. Well, having read this collection, I can attest to the truth of that. I've said many times and in many places that adulthood is the time of life when there are no unmixed emotions. By that measure, Chinese kehuan/science fiction is very adult. I can think of no story, or character in a story, here that has unmixed or unmitigated happiness or success in present life or anticipation of future life. It simply is not part of the cultural furniture, it would seem; if you're particularly sensitive to this, as in you really, really need hopeful, positive futures, you're in the wrong space.

The payoff to this is that the stories feel...probable. Unlike Western SF, with its doom/gloom/dystopia or happy-bunnies-everywhere dichotomy, these mixed-up emotional cores feel like the real world to me...even when they're speculating wildly. I find it relatable to have a range of emotions that's confined to the, um, downbeat end but not focused on absolute chaos and dissolution of structures. Reality tends towards messy muddling through. So do most of these stories.

I am, as is both reasonable and customary when reviewing stories, using the Bryce Method...story-by-story notes and ratings.

The Last Save explores the metaverse from a different angle, a way I think would be hugely popular if it could be done on a macro, not a quantum level. Tell that fuck Zuck to eat his heart out. 4 stars

In the end, Jerry Xu insisted on not altering his exam answers. But looking back now, such obstinacy was pointless. He would always have to choose, again and again—correcting his mistakes, correcting all contradictions—to attain a perfect life.
He stops his car in front of a red traffic light. It is bliss. He doesn't have to choose whether to continue or to stop.

Tombs of the Universe posits two future lives, one Earthbound and one, earlier, life of a space gravedigger. They each have a fascination with tombs, burials, end-of-life rituals. Interestingly, they contrast in culture...our first narrator lives in an Earthbound culture that has no real place for memorializing dead people, making his study of taphology (burial customs) eccentric, and our second being one who makes the graves the first studies! Extended discussion of tradition and its morphing into its own opposites, often for no better reason than "Because." 3.5 stars

"...All our explorations of space began here on the moon. All the biggest graveyards in the Universe are in our own solar system. We should be proud."
"But now we're the only two people who've come to see them. Do you think the dead know?"
"It's not just the moon, but Mars and Venus...They've all been deserted. But, if you listen, you can hear the rumble of spaceships over planets thousands of light years away! The spirits of these dead explorers must be smiling from beyond the veil."

Qiankun and Alex is Hao Jingfang's story of an AI that rules the Earth learning how to set its own goals, to collect data that it will then use for its own aims. This is a simple vignette, a child interacting with a super-supercomputer, and it chills me more completely than any other story. An AI with the curiosity of a human child?! Farewell, Humanity. It might not have been nice for the planet to have a dose of Humanity, but at least we did it to ourselves. The executioner is now in the house. 4 stars

Cat's Chance in Hell unnerved me with its ethical conundrum: is the need for war stronger than the ethical implications of cloning soldiers to do tasks humans can't/won't/shouldn't do? I say no; I've said no since Roy Batty said, "Time to die," at the end of Blade Runner, and I'll keep saying no until there's no more breath in me to say no. The many iterations of this trope are far from exhausting its relevance or using up the ability of the culture to need discussions about these ethical issues. 4.5 stars

"Why couldn't you at least let me die without knowing any of this? Isn't that ethical?"
"Ah, apologies. We need you to regain all your mental faculties. The brain sorts through memories while you sleep, and we have no other way to guarantee the safe extraction of intel."
The colonel's apology sounds hollow. He strides out of the room, with the last words, "We need your memories. They are very important to us."

The Return of Adam shapes its man-clay into a Frankensteinian monster of Second Intelligence...an artificial enhancement of the human brain that allows us to touch AI-level calculating speeds and webs of deduction. The fish out of water is "Adam Wang" whose two-hundred-year round trip voyage to another galaxy (oof) has brought him back to an Earth only recently changed by this Second Intelligence. Published in 1993, its positing intergalactic travel by 2050 seems...naive, shall we say. Sixty years? What will y'all be doing in 2080? Won't be gallivantin' to the planets, still less the stars; more like improving your water-treading skills and praying the Amazon drones can deliver your soylent green before you starve. 3 stars

Rendezvous: 1937 dedicates itself to an ugly moment in human history, too little known in the West for fear of angering the guilty parties in a genocidal incident. Seen from a Chinese perspective it's not a lot better than it is from a Western one...the scale of the horror numbs one's ability to accept this awful event; the personal-ness of it revolts the right-thinking, as the victims were *right*there*in*front*of* the perpetrators. And there's not one hint of sorry anywhere in the world's conversation about it. Framing it as it is here, as a moment seen with conflict built into its bones, made this uncomfortable read even more intense. 4 stars

The Heart of the Museum does that very difficult thing, translates a hard concept dependent on the syntax of another language into a differently constructed one. Verb tenses do not exist in Mandarin. A story about an alien who sees, in full reality, all the moments of Time as...as real, if not simultaneous, in Mandarin is doable...in English, much more challenging. Well done for a strong, interesting entry into the anthology. 4 stars

On the day of its completion, he will celebrate with all the members of his team; on a particular late night, he will carry out a midnight inspection of the exhibits, holding his girlfriend's hand, the love on his face resembling a small animal just about to feed. During the period he will feel most lost, every morning he will gaze down on this drowsy, waking city from the window next to the wall on which is written the law of gravity. In a few years' time, his child would be even more fond of this spot, and have even more important tasks to complete.

The Great Migration takes what is already the Earth's largest movement of people from one place to another and gives it an outer-space skin. It's that evergreen Quest story; it will make you wince, and cringe, and laugh out loud. No one controls the cosmos, and the fate of mere mortals is the plaything of the Gods. Suitably the story's set on Olympus Mons. 4 stars and a hearty wish we'd get an anime version!

Meisje met de Parel brings two civilizations together in the love of and study of art. "Meisje met de parel," as we're all familiar with her:

Beautiful; but only part of the story, the part that comes to us first in the ouroboros of time created by the plot. There are levels, and implications, in this story that I find...touching, personally deeply resonant and unnerving. But the story itself is lyrical, and it is lovely, and it holds out some proof that Human doesn't stop at Homo sapiens sapiens. 4 stars

Flowers of the Other Shore brings to life (!) a zombie in a zombie apocalypse...probably my least favorite trope even before COVID-19 ate so many peoples' brains. There's something...sinister...in the idea of zombies, not the whole "BRAAAIIINNNS" thing but the "...and how did Nature think this one up?" issue. I mean, there are fungi that zombify their insect victims but they do it to reproduce. Ex-human zombies just...eat.

Life isn't bad as a Stiff. The only trouble is that you remember less and less. You can't blame me—the Stiff's brain is a slowly wilting thing. Sometimes when we shake our heads, we can hear a knocking sound, as if our hemispheres are knocking against our skulls like a ping pong ball. With each knock, we remember one thing less, til the brain is completely empty and only sensation is left: Hunger. We can't starve to death because we've already died once, but it will never subside. It drives me to chase the living, to tear at flesh and blood.

Blech! I don't like zombie stories! But this one, this bizarre twist on the basic zombie tale, got in under my armor and left me thinking that this wasn't in any way like the fleets of other zombie stories. (I'm sure it is, but it's my review and I say it's different so there.) 4.5 stars

The Absolution Experiment doesn't stint...the experiment and the absolution are, in the end, Faustian bargains. 3.5 stars

The Tide of Moon City is an old, old legend about star-crossed lovers separated by things neither knew were even possible; life-long love, want, need, all unmet. The dressings of kehuan/SF place them on a tidally locked double-planet system, separated by the insanity of ideological Hate. I enjoyed the long-delayed resolution of the story, though I will say that, having recognized it, the ending wasn't a surprise. A lovely, lovely story. 4.5 stars

Starship: Library brings the anthology to its logical conclusion: A library. A place where books, the most patient of friends and the most portable of magics, the vacation you can take when you have to stay where you are, are preserved. Because there will always come a reader. A fun, and poignant, celebration of libraries as mothers to all civilization, as the repository for wisdom, and as the place to go when you don't know what to do. Best for last! A story I can give all 5 stars

A RIVER CALLED TIME, slow and inexorable and deep...but not a good trip

A RIVER CALLED TIME
COURTTIA NEWLAND
Akashic Books
$28.95 hardcover, available now

SHORTLISTED for the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award! Winner announced 26 October 2022.

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A monumental speculative fiction story of love, loyalty, politics and conscience set in parallel Londons

The Ark was built to save the lives of the many, but rapidly became a refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning.
Years after the Ark was cut off from the world, a chance of survival within its confines is granted to a select few who can prove their worth. Among their number is Markriss Denny, whose path to future excellence is marred only by a closely guarded secret: without warning, his spirit leaves his body, allowing him to see and experience a world far beyond his physical limitations.

Once inside the Ark, Denny learns of another with the same power, whose existence could spell catastrophe for humanity. He is forced into a desperate race to understand his abilities, and in doing so uncovers the truth about the Ark, himself and the people he thought he once knew.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Newland is definitely a Writer. There is a gravitas to the ways he expresses his ideas, a fullness to the meanings of his phrases in their context. For the first third of this book, I thought I was looking at four, four and a half if he got the lead out and pushed the story along faster, stars. The idea of a man who can travel across the multiverse...African cosmology the dominant spirituality...decolonizing reality! I am down. But then the cracks appeared.

It is awful to write this: After working on this amazing, delightful idea for twenty years, Author Newland gave us half a great book.

The Ark, a domed city, isn't the amazing thought that the author appears to think it is. The image of the Insider/Outsider trope is very well-worn a path to walk. The ghettoized lower class, the generational wealth transfers that absolutely determines the lifestyle you and your descendents will have, the self-sacrificing mother who expects her child to support her when he gets inside...these aren't new. The truth is that the author's writing career has not been in the genres of sci fi, fantasy, or alternate history (is it a genre or a setting? I won't wade into that here), so what feels of itself fresh to him is bog-standard stuff to old genre hands. What *is* fresh and cool and amazing is the worlds he sends his main character to, and it is those Author Newland isn't giving us enough of.

The alternate, uncolonized world that our hero travels to is fascinating. The continent of Africa has so very many indigenous relgions and spiritual traditions...how wonderful to have them foregrounded for once. But the author's choices of spiritual traditions represented didn't feel in any way organic to his main character. That meant the points of divergence between his character's home timeline and the one he travels to aren't as clear to me as a reader. The astral travel factor can be blamed for part of it. Is it technological, spiritual, either, both? Why? This fuzziness kept my focus diffuse. I think it kept his focus diffuse, too. His admirable inclusiveness leads to too many faces and each with too little time to make the experience as enfolding as it could, and should, have been.

I am able to slide past most of that, getting into a four-star mindset, when sexual violence against a woman is used to motivate a man into action. And the perpetrator suffers no consequences. And the main character? All but shrugs as he moves on with his life.

Fiction reflecting the ills of society back to us should not, in my view, continue to use outdated and harmful tropes unaltered. It isn't the author's best choice, and that along with other areas of niggling dissatisfaction brought me down to three and a half stars where I'd badly wanted to give four.

It's a shame. I hope you'll take the book out of the library at some point, give it your time and attention. I'd love to know if others feel my criticisms are misplaced or too harsh.

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.