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psocopteraWant, Cindy Pon. One of this year's Norton finalists (the Nebula YA award). I read her first novel, Silver Phoenix, years ago but wasn't especially into it as I recall.
Want is near-future SF set in Taipei, and, honestly, in a lot of ways Taipei was my favorite character. Some really nice rendering of place and how that place has changed over its future history. The actual plot bordered on eye-roll territory (plucky young people trying to take down an evil corporation, protag goes undercover as upper-class and learns that the rich are people too) but was saved by good writing (scenes, details, etc). This is not "big" scifi the way, say, Summer Prince is, but it's solid "smaller" scifi (and bravo for something vaguely cyberpunk with actual Asian protagonists instead of Asian settings or an Asian "aesthetic" that mysteriously have no Asian people in them).
(In general, I feel like good YA scifi is harder to find than good YA fantasy? I mean, most of the time I just talk about "sff" to avoid having to make that distinction, but in my head there is definitely some sff that I find appealing *as science fiction*, by which I mean some sort of grappliness with technological/historical/social trajectories, or something. Some YA SF ends up feeling to me like the world is entirely constructed to be a dramatic backdrop for one character (and her one to two male love interests) in a kind of flimsy way, that doesn't have purchase on anything, in a way that I guess I don't mind so much in "fantasy". Anyways, I think this leaves me extra-appreciative of YA SF that does work for me as science fiction.)
Want is near-future SF set in Taipei, and, honestly, in a lot of ways Taipei was my favorite character. Some really nice rendering of place and how that place has changed over its future history. The actual plot bordered on eye-roll territory (plucky young people trying to take down an evil corporation, protag goes undercover as upper-class and learns that the rich are people too) but was saved by good writing (scenes, details, etc). This is not "big" scifi the way, say, Summer Prince is, but it's solid "smaller" scifi (and bravo for something vaguely cyberpunk with actual Asian protagonists instead of Asian settings or an Asian "aesthetic" that mysteriously have no Asian people in them).
(In general, I feel like good YA scifi is harder to find than good YA fantasy? I mean, most of the time I just talk about "sff" to avoid having to make that distinction, but in my head there is definitely some sff that I find appealing *as science fiction*, by which I mean some sort of grappliness with technological/historical/social trajectories, or something. Some YA SF ends up feeling to me like the world is entirely constructed to be a dramatic backdrop for one character (and her one to two male love interests) in a kind of flimsy way, that doesn't have purchase on anything, in a way that I guess I don't mind so much in "fantasy". Anyways, I think this leaves me extra-appreciative of YA SF that does work for me as science fiction.)
