Two books since the last time I posted:
- The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden. She’s most famous for her Russian-folklore-fantasy The Bear and the Nightingale. This book is significantly different: it follows a Canadian nurse sent home from the Great War after a terrible injury, who receives news of her soldier brother’s death, and goes to investigate. The fantasy is a slow burn, but I absolutely loved it: Arden’s prose is gorgeous, the characters were compelling, and the fantasy blended with the history in the best way. One of my favorite books of the year!
- Someone You Can Build a Nest In, by John Wiswell. I was hooked by the second paragraph, when the narrator talks about eating her siblings in the body her father. Weird alien point-of-view characters are fun. By 25% of the way through the book, I’d transitioned to hate-reading it. This alien organism who barely has any contact with humanity–much less with GenZ social media–is constantly talking about “abuser personality” and “holding people accountable” and “being in denial” and “consensual touch” (keep in mind, the alien obsessing over consensual touch also eats people and absorbs their skeletal system). The author’s note talks extensively about being disabled, and the book was a very thinly veiled allegory for growing up neurodiverse, and it missed the fucking mark so bad. For a much better take on a similar idea, check out Ann Leckie’s brilliant Translation State.