this is how she fight start

Monday, 29 August 2016

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Ken Liu, 2016
(May 2016)

Reviewed over at Strange Horizons. It's very good.

Monday, 22 August 2016

United States of Japan

& The Man in the High Castle
Peter Tieryas, 2016

Philip K. Dick, 1962

(August 2016)

The first time I read The Man in the High Castle was way back, before I ever imagined I might end up living in Japan. Reading it a second time, it became apparent that there was a hell of a lot I missed, in terms of both the Japan-related stuff and just as a side-effect of being younger and dumber. The plan, however, was merely to refresh my memory before moving on to United States of Japan, which is something of a tribute/homage/reimagining of Dick’s seminal work. I wasn’t really going to talk much about the latter, except to the degree it informs USJ.

Voyage of the Basilisk & In the Labyrinth of Drakes

Marie Brennan, 2015 & 2016

(August 2016)

I’ll refer you back to my previous comments about needing a bit of a breather after reading The Vegetarian, and what better way than with Marie Brennan’s Darwin genderswap mind candy? I mean, it’s a superior sort of mind candy, certainly, but it’s exactly the sort of world you can sink into without having to challenge yourself to analyse every detail, should you so wish. And I so wished.

The Vegetarian

Han Kang, 2007 [Deborah Smith, 2015]

(August, 2016)

Neither a pleasant nor an easy read. Extraordinarily well written, but in many ways that just makes it worse.

The Devourers

Indra Das, 2015

(July 2016)

Early (well, more like halfway through) contender for book of the year. There is so much going on here, so once I’ve given due prominence to the utterly raw and visceral nature of book as a whole, I’m going to retreat into a bit of philosophising while I try to get the rest of my thoughts in order.

Saga & Sex Criminals

Saga, Vol. 6

Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan, 2016

Sex Criminals, Vol. 3: The Hard Way

Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

(July 2016)

I continue to love Saga. It is, as befits its name, now a sprawling soap opera of a thing with supremely engaging characters and at least two or three genuinely laugh out loud moments in each volume. Ghüs remains a joy every time he appears on the page, and god help me but Prince Robot is somehow hilarious, despite having proven to be an utter bastard.

Ambient

Jack Womack, 1987

(July 2016)

The first of Womack’s Dryco series, or at least the first one he wrote. Ambient is the book to which Random Acts of Senseless Violence serves as a prequel, and while that story described polite society’s shockingly rapid descent into dystopia, the one we’re talking about here gives us the shit show already in full effect.

Karen Memory

Elizabeth Bear, 2015

(July 2016)

A hugely enjoyable steampunk western, which inevitably leads me to draw comparisons with Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion, not least because that too was driven by a queer woman in her teens with a gloriously engaging narrative voice.