mirror image novellas

Some interesting coincidence of plot and theme in this pair of novellas. Each one is about a pair of siblings, one of whom has an accident that ostracizes them from their society, leaving the other sibling needing to figure out whether/how to support or help them.

In The Expert System's Brother, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, it's the POV brother who has the accident, and the secondary-character sister in the possibly-helping role, and their society is a subsistence community in an extremely hostile environment. The revelation of the details and nature of this hostility is the cool-big-idea of the novella, so I won't elaborate on that; there's also a Classic SF Plot which I enjoyed in a sort of cultural-nostalgia way. (If there's really a population of people who miss old-timey SF, I'd expect them to be all over this for the Hugos; afaik Tchaikovsky doesn't say bigoted things on the internet and in fact seems to be squarely anti-bigot, so he's not probably not suitable for their real agenda.)

The Million by Karl Schroeder is set in the same world as Lockstep - I think it's readable without it, but Lockstep is a much more exciting book (with really excellent imagined SF places), so why start here when you could start there. In The Million, the secondary-character brother has suffered a traumatic brain injury before the start of the novel, and the POV brother has to navigate their absurdly luxurious society when his brother is framed for a crime.

Obviously the outcome of each book comes down in large part to the exact nature of the antagonist(s) and situation, but I thought it was interesting that (spoilers) ( Read more... )

Overall I did enjoy both novellas - if I had read them in magazines I would cheerfully include both in my online sff recs - but I wasn't really excited about either. I think the only 2018 novella so far where I finished it and thought "okay I want to nominate this" was Binti: Night Masquerade, and maybe Murderbot 2. Luckily I still have several more novellas on my to-read list, plenty of time for a couple more standouts.

Trail of Lightning

I think I would have had my eyes on this whether or not Roanhorse won the Campbell, but I'm sure even more people do since she did. Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse, book one of a postapocalyptic urban fantasy series of unknown length, or possibly they're supernatural thrillers, I suspect there are finely-graded genre distinctions there that I don't have a handle on. I liked it but didn't love it - the setting and worldbuilding are really neat (and well-handled, in how/when she gives more details) but I found a number of character reactions and motivations perplexing. Some of which were early on, setting up a sort of ongoing sense of being thrown off, and some of which were in a big climax of "wait, what??" at the end. Also it's the sort of book with a scene where everyone has to get dressed up in their very most fan-art-able costume options and if you like that sort of thing you'll probably find that fun and if not eyes may roll. I liked the characters and their dynamic despite their confusing choices and I'm definitely going to read the next one. I would recommend this one to people who like supernatural thrillers/urban fantasy and are willing to roll with some plot arc wobbliness for nifty setting and use of Navaho mythology. (I really liked how things like the inclusion of Diné words was handled, and the daily-life details.)

Major warning for gore/graphic violence and child harm/child death.