Michael Barnes

This is a sequel to “Meru” which about the protagonist's parents and the circumstances that led to Akshaya's unique hybrid biology I think you could read Loka as a stand alone novel but then you would miss out on how much her own mother Jayanthi is reflected in Akshaya character and how much her mother has to have grown to change her decision.

It was very readable and the changing environments and different challenges kept the pace. Warning there is a death of a loved character that I kept expecting to appear later by miraculous rescue but never came.

I enjoyed seeing how the book approached medical disability of Akshaya's sickle cell disease I also love the way S.B.Diva's engineering approach came in with the use of the breather masks to help Akshaya's crisis.

A short sharp and amusing tale. Deploying all the standards for the Victorian Governess stories but with the twist that the governess is deeply disturbed. Imagine Charlotte Bronte's eponymous hero but psychotic.

A revenge tale that is okay because like many Victorian antagonists they are all terrible human beings.

I bought Sinopticon after reading editor/translator Xueting Christine Ni excellent 2024 Sinophagia and like that amazing collection this one didn't disappoint either (obviously Xueting Christine Ni now joins the category for me of will read anything with her name on it) . Also don't be concerned if you aren't familiar with Chinese culture or history that you won't enjoy these stories. I know very little and these stories still resonated with me.

There are 13 stories all worthwhile and those I choose to highlight are more a personal choice than any literary criteria. As a fan of the zombie genre Flower of the Other Shore was as beautiful love story that shows the genre can still provide new stories. As a westerner who had the great good fortune to be in mainland China during a Qingming Festival I really felt The Great Migration, by Ma Boyong. Also The last Save by Gu Shi is what great science fiction is built on a single idea explored to its ultimate conclusion.

Like Sinophagia the stories end with a notes about the author’s background and context on the story. The only drawback is it meant I went down rabbit holes to find the other works by the author mentioned in the notes. Also the balance of authors gender and new and established authors is a mix other anthologies would do well to follow.

The Folded Sky, is the third in Bears White Space space opera, following Ancestral Night and Machine. It takes place roughly in the same time period as Machine, thus some time after Ancestral Night (the actual Ancestral Night ship makes a brief cameo in the novel). If you will recall, these novels revolve around a spacefaring community of aliens, humans among them. If you enjoyed those books this one has everything those have and is just as enjoyable.

"Sunya is a researcher traveling to the edge of the galaxy. She studies information and the collection and interpretation of information, and a cache of ancient alien information is the biggest known. But her arrival there is not easy. Pirates are blockading the system. The star that the cache is orbiting, as well as the space station for the researchers, is probably going to go supernova any time now. And then there are the attempted murders. And just what are those mysterious things Sunya is seeing in the corner of her vision?" - Paul Weimer at Nerds of a Feather

You don't need to have read those two books to enjoy Folded Sky but seriously why wouldn't you they are great. Its a great story a ancient mystery, space pirates, AIs of various levels of snark and did I mention cats.

In an opening note, Johnson acknowledges that it is a book born from rage. You can feel it pulsing out of the pages as you read. Its is angry, it is visceral and it is in every sense of the world righteous.

The world crafting for Wiley town and Ashtown, are amazing and where where those same dynamics are negotiated with violence.

Adrienne Martini at Locus magazine gives us this beautiful description

"What kicks Mr. Scales’s story off is the grue­some murder of a dancer, who is essentially turned inside-out in front of a room full of pay­ing customers. Mr. Scales – all of Ashtown’s enforcers are Mister, no matter what their gender identity is – is sent into Wiley City for answers. And those answers only lead to more questions. ‘‘I fix things, I guess. It’s what I do,’’ Mr. Scales says. Ultimately she does, but not in the way anyone would anticipate.

While Mr. Scales’s arc is tightly plotted and powerfully rendered, what stands out more is how Johnson plays with the idea of what we use stories for. Do we use them to find something true? Or heal something broken? And how can we do that while negotiating what we see in our actual lives when it comes to power and class? What do we do when the stories we know are proven to be built on lies?"

But it isn't just about the justified anger but about using rage to build something better.

This one is for all of those postgraduates who at 2am in the morning after having finished marking, subsisting on instant ramen, wondering how bad the mold in their shared rental is, and trying to remember what day it is…who have had that dark moment of the soul and think is this worth it? This one's for you.

Saberin C at grimdark magazine summaries it thusly Katabasis is the story of two PhD students who travel to hell with the sole purpose of rescuing the soul of their advisor, Professor Jacob Grimes, who exploded in a freak magical accident that may or may not have been one of the post-grads’ fault.

Alice Law is a graduate student in Cambridge’s Department of Analytic Magick and her drive is if she works hard enough, is clever enough, unrelenting enough she can win that elusive prise an ongoing position in academia.

Along for the journey to hell is her ex Peter Murdoch, her only significant academic rival (indeed grimes the asshat plays them off against each other). Peter is charming, brilliant, seemingly maddeningly unbothered by the stress and strains of post graduate work (don't worry we learn this is all surface) —and equally desperate to bring Grimes back, if only for reasons he refuses to disclose. Thes two are fully developed and painfully relatable. Finding relatability in a character who can cast spells and hold multiple degrees isn’t easy, but Kuang makes Alice feel completely relatable

The world building of the magic system and hell is brilliant and would make the book worth it for that alone, but the character study of these two souls is equally satisfying. The hell we visit is syncretic—Greek, Chinese, Hindu, and modern theoretical magick all blend together into a believable metaphysical dark academic architecture.

One of my favourites which is what I have come to expect from R.F Kuang an author who I can guarantee I will read anything she publishes.

If you have read the first in the duology The Scarlet Alchemist and you enjoyed it, then you should read this one as it resolves the story in a consistent and satisfying way even if it made me want to skip ahead to find out if character had died like it looked in the story.

Don't worry Durian is okay.

Sophia Rose over at Caffeinated Reviewer has a good summary "For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations.

For Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe. For Vaha, Jayanthi’s alloy pilot, it’s a daunting yet irresistible adventure to find success as an individual.

As the journey challenges their resolve in unexpected ways, the two form a bond that only deepens with their time alone on Meru. But how can Jayanthi succeed at freeing humanity from its past when she and Vaha have been set up to fail?"

I enjoyed this ultimately hopeful novel and non anglo centric space science fiction stories are alwyas welcome as some say Infinite Diversity Infinite combinations. I will certainly read the next in the series about Jayanthi and Vaha's offspring Loka.

This is a pandemic novel and written in 2022 carries all the experiences, learnings and failures that that period held. There is an out break of plague (infact its THE plague) but its not an outbreak/zombie book. No shade on anyone else that's one of my favorite genres but this isn't one of those stories. This one begins a few days before the outbreak at The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center. We meet the teens dumped there and how they respond as they learn they are abandoned by their private company, guards and adults and when they try to leave are met with a police barricade enforcing a lockdown. How they try to organise, develop and survive is the story.

Told from three points of view: Logan, who communicates via a sign language she and her twin sister developed between them; Emerson, a new resident of Hope who’s also nonbinary; and Grace, a girl with some big anger issues who winds up reluctantly in charge of the group.

In many ways reflective of how the world responded to the COVID-19 outbreak it highlights that we as a community could have learned much from that experience.

Having just finished this author's recent and amazing 'Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng' I was worried that this tale would suffer in comparison I was pleased to find it was just as engaging for me. Kylie Lee Baker has joined R.F.Kuang as an author who works I will priorities reading.

The Scarlet Alchemist ticked all the right boxes for me

• Set in an alternative Tang Dynasty China
• Rich chemical/alchemical lore
• Class consciousness where the rich can live forever consuming alchemical gold and the poor can't ( and of course are consumed to make it)
• and 100 year old ethereal, cunning Wu Zetian fast becoming a favouite of mine for stories (see Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao)

This is the first in a duology and I can not wait to dive into the next The Blood Orchid.

This is one of my most page turning novels I have read so far this year. I have been a fan of Kylie Lee Baker and this novel only adds to my desire to read more of her work.

Be aware this is a COVID pandemic novel and does not shy away from the fear and horrific culture of racism against Asians (like racist arsehats distinguish between Chinese and other Asians minorities) during this period (which still hasn't ended).

Cora Zeng is a biracial Chinese American crime scene cleaner. Some reviewer describe her as a germaphobe, I describe her as someone who is taking perfectly reasonable precautions. Cora grew up with her half-sister Delilah. Delilah's mother is Chinese and she grew up speaking several dialects. Cora struggles with Mandarin, as her mother is white. So already we know Cora struggles with her identity. Fair warning the book begins where her sister is pushed by a racist white man shoving her off a rail platform and Delilah’s head meets a train and this will not be the only horrifically described gory scene in the book. Cora Zeng now works as a crime scene cleaner, and she and her coworkers (who are also of Asian heritage) have noticed a scary pattern of Asian American women being brutally murdered and having bats left at the crime scene.

Oh and Cora thinks her sister is now a hungry ghost.

I also appreciated the well craft twist and the misdirection's that lead up to this twist. So much so I went back a reread the novel to see how well these details had been crafted.

But perhaps Bat Eater’s most remarkable achievement is its seamless weaving of horror with incisive social commentary. It's full of uncomfortable truths: the fetishisation of Asian women. The book includes Cora's observation "Everyone wants Asian girls to look pretty. No one wants them to talk.” The sharp sting of systemic racism, racially motivated hate crimes, police brutality, media manipulation and copaganda. Baker handles these topics with both sensitivity and brutality, crafting a narrative that is as unsettling as it is necessary.

Needless to say much of this is confronting and reflecting the horrible racist culture we have in our culture and I can understand why some might not want to read this book. Like Monika Kim's "The eyes are the best part' this is a remarkable book giving a window into the impact our B.S cultural narratives have on Asian minorities that a lot of non-Asians (like me) would benefit in being forced to confront.

It's book 3 and the writing, characters and world building all becoming more assured. Further characters stories are developed as are the relationships. If you have enjoyed the other books in the series this will certainly satisfy however minor caution I had thought his was a trilogy but the cliff hanger ending and reveal means I hope this is an ongoing series so prepare yourself for that. Hitting a short chapter that concludes this step in the narrative only to have it end and the last 30 page an except from the first novel was a frustrating.