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reviewed The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time (Hardcover, 2024, Simon & Schuster)

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …

The Ministry of Time

I really enjoyed The Ministry of Time.

I was frustrated with the protagonist for big chunks of the book for not realizing obvious things. The author repeatedly tried to defend this with "I bet you're thinking 'I would have realized this right away', but" and in a world where I know time travel exists, I absolutely would!

However, the writing is very good, and it kept me engaged. The combination of themes around time travel, colonialism, and refugee life really worked, and I feel like it allowed them to be explored from different angles.

I'm kind of let down by the inconclusiveness of the ending, but on the other hand they avoided most of the cliché time travel tropes, so overall I guess it balances out.

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commented on Countess by Suzan Palumbo

Suzan Palumbo: Countess No rating

A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which …

I really dig the premise, but the execution bothered me a lot. Maybe they were just trying to do too much in a novella length, or maybe it's just me, but everything just felt rushed and clumsy. 🤷

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reviewed These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein

Izzy Wasserstein: These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart (EBook, 2024, Tachyon Publications)

Security expert Dora left her anarchist commune over safety concerns. But when her ex-girlfriend Kay …

Short and bitter

These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart is a vignette about working through guilt and self-loathing toward self-forgiveness.

There's a lot going on in terms of themes: gender, transhumanism, anarchy and fascism, cloning, all mixed into a more standard crime plot.

Although the main thread is satisfactorily wrapped up, there's definitely room to explore the world further - I want more Dora!

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reviewed Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson (The Space Between Worlds, #2)

Micaiah Johnson: Those Beyond the Wall

Faced with a coming apocalypse, a woman must reckon with her past to solve a …

Those Beyond the Wall

A very different book than The Space between Worlds, but equally good.

While TSBW kind of revolved around the interworld travel premise, Those Beyond the Wall is firmly rooted in "Earth 0"'s Ashtown. Mr. Scales has a wildly different perspective on the Ashtown oligarchy and culture than Cara did, and it's kind of fascinating to see some of the blind spots the author built in. Despite the very different plot foci, there are similar strong themes of antifascism, anticolonialism, and the struggle for justice.

It's even more gritty than the original, yet potentially more hopeful as well.

I would strongly recommend reading TSBW first, because a lot of the setting is taken for granted here.

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commented on Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi Takács

Bogi Takács: Power to Yield and Other Stories (Broken Eye Books) No rating

Power to Yield is a collection of speculative tales exploring gender identity, neurodivergence, and religion …

I added this to the SFFBookClub poll for the month of January because I super enjoyed it.

If you don't know about it, the SFFBookClub is our informal fediverse science fiction and fantasy book club. I figure that folks from bookwyrm probably might be more interested in reading and talking about books so I wanted to post this here as well. We vote, read a book together, and then discuss via the #SFFBookClub hashtag over the course of the month. Take a look if any of these books sound interesting to you and you want to read along with others.

See: weirder.earth/@picklish/113660284130610947 for January poll

See: sffbookclub.eatgod.org/ for more general details