Izanami's Choice

Adam Heine, 2016
(November 2016)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. Robots and ronin. Solid action, but not much else.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Yiyun Li, 2017

(March 2017)

I am, once more, rendered incoherent by Li's writing. I genuinely can't fathom how anyone is capable of producing anything simultaneously so precise yet so supple, so pitiless yet so profoundly humane. Just extraordinary.

Viriconium

M. John Harrison, 1971-85

(March 2017)

  

A full compendium of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium stories, originally published separately (as three short novels and a short story collection) between 1971 and 1985. I’ve previously written about how superb Harrison is as a stylist, and while that’s clearly evident here, I also suspect that reading all these stories together like this didn’t really do them many favours.

  

The Stars Are Legion

Kameron Hurley, 2017

(February 2017)

Very good, very meaty (figuratively and literally), but I also read this with an increasing sense of déjà vu.

The Wolf Border

Sarah Hall, 2015

(February 2017)

A wonderfully written book, this, but one that took me far too long to read.

Norse Mythology

Neil Gaiman, 2017

(February 2017)

Asgard reimagined as the prototypical frat house. Which is not such a departure from the source material, to be honest.

The Steerswoman

Rosemary Kirstein, 1989

(February 2017)

  

Continuing what has become an impromptu ‘Competent Women’ season here on this is how she fight start, we have the first volume of Rosemary Kirstein’s long- and glacially slow-running Steerswoman series.