cahn

The Saint of Bright Doors (Vajra Chandrasekera)

Fetter, raised as a child to kill his father, escapes his rural cult upbringing to live in the big city... but his past haunts him in more ways than one.

...I feel like that is a terrible way of describing this book. Perhaps if I say: it has the sensibility to me of a magical realism book, set in a world that has a lot in common with ours (email! committees!) but is not quite ours (devils, the mysterious bright doors of the title), or perhaps is not yet ours -- is that any better a description? Maybe not. Anyway, I thought it was trying to play with some interesting ideas and themes and I like seeing that kind of thing in the Hugos. On the other hand, I kept putting it down and not feeling any kind of impetus whatsoever to pick it up again. I felt rather as if there were short bursts of Important Plot Things Being Revealed interspersed with long passages where maybe something happened but it was not compelling or entirely comprehensible (sometimes because it was waiting for the next flash of lightning of Plot Things Being Revealed). Even something like 85% through (at which point you usually don't get any sense out of me until I finish the entire book), I ignored it for an entire day and on seeing my Kindle the next day was like, "oh, right, I haven't finished that book yet." Which I feel speaks to some fundamental problem with being able to sustain being compelling, or at least being compelling to me (it could well be a me problem).

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty)

The title is basically what it's about, the adventures of the formerly-ex-pirate Amina al-Sirafi. She is hired/blackmailed into looking for her ex-crew-member's daughter, who studies the occult and may be mixed up in helping a Frank [European] get access to a powerful magical artifact. She starts gathering her old crew to help her in her quest, and they all start having adventures...

I liked it, it was easy to read, and I totally appreciated that the main character was a middle-aged mom (and most of the supporting characters were middle-aged as well, for that matter). I also appreciated its taking place in the Muslim world, and occasionally had a rather embarrassing epiphany, like realizing that I'd actually never really thought about the Crusades from the Muslim viewpoint. I don't think this was meant to be a super profound book and I think that's OK; sometimes you want a rollicking adventure that makes you think differently about some things, and this fit that well.

In the Imperial Radch universe, Enae's life gets upturned from sie's previous circumscribed existence as sie is given the task to track down someone who has been missing for a couple of hundred years; at the same time, Reet struggles with never fitting in, and Qven grows up in a milieu that is alien to a human POV.

So for some reason, the only part of this I knew before starting was a little bit of Enae's opening dilemma. It was a much more complex and fascinating book than my priors made it sound! Which I should expect from Leckie; I love about her work that it always has a whole lot of threads running through it.

It's the sort of book where there are so many things I could talk about, but it turns out that I really only want to talk about a couple of things enough to type it out:

a) I really really like alien books from the POV of the alien, which probably says something about me, but anyway, I really like the idea that things look very different from the alien's POV and that they might have very different motivations and imperatives than a human in many ways. (This is something I loved about the Ancillary books.) This book kind of did that superficially -- Qven's upbringing is certainly very, very different than a human's and I enjoyed reading that (unsurprisingly, I especially enjoyed reading Qven's viewpoints about human scripts) -- but as the book goes on, I feel like it becomes clear that e's upbringing is just flat abusive and there's just nothing good or acceptable about it, which makes it much less interesting to me.

b) There is one character in the book that was absolutely my favorite -- who does try to do the right thing to the extent they are capable of, for no other reason than that they feel it's the right thing, as they are likely to not have gotten any reward or happy ending from it. I am speaking, of course, of ( Spoilers. )

I'm really glad this was Hugo homework, because like everything I've read by Leckie it was very worth reading. I still prefer Some Desperate Glory for the Hugo because it played to all my tropes, engaged even more with questions that really interest me, and blew my mind in ways that TS didn't, but TS would be a worthy Hugo winner, and I could totally see others preferring it to SDG.

DNF. I tried to read The Spare Man. I really did! It's got a great title! However, I got less than 150 pages in (I think I made it to page 125 or so).

-In the first few pages I was informed that the heroine was named "Tesla," and she was an extremely rich heiress. Going to Mars. Like... seriously? I suppose at the time the book was published I didn't have nearly as many thoughts and judgments about another billionaire this might remind us of as I do now, but... still. That was a choice that aged even worse than its initial presentation.

-On the very first page we're informed that Tesla's wedding ring is "platinum-iridium---just like the historic kilogram standard, because her spouse knew she was a nerd."
...Or maybe just because 90/10 platinum-iridium alloy is a pretty standard one for platinum jewelry?? I mean... I guess there's been a move towards platinum-ruthenium, especially for cast jewelry. So does that mean her ring is hand-fabricated, which would be rather cool?
...The point here is that, although I fully understand this is kind of a stupid example and only one that bothers me because I actually am a nerd in this area, I have the same problem with Tesla that I did with the Calculating Stars heroine: that she is supposed to be this big engineering nerd, but she doesn't actually think about things the way an engineering nerd would think about them. Or she does for the one paragraph where the plot requires her to do something nerd-like and then goes back to her non-nerd ways.

-Tesla's poor service dog Gimlet seems to be less of a service dog and more of a tool Tesla uses for social engineering (e.g., getting other people to talk to her by softening them up by petting a cute dog), which I feel like is maybe not the message one wants to be sending about service dogs...?

-Most importantly, there is something I found deeply, deeply classist about this book where the super-mega-rich billionaire takes great, great delight and righteous anger in punching down on people who have to work for a living and who are freaking trying to do their jobs. It's not even that I liked the space liner security folks, but when Tesla spends some astronomical sum of money to get her super-awesome lawyer to verbally punch out the head of security Wisor who, let us remember, has a lot of evidence at that point that Tesla's spouse Shal is the murderer -- that left a really bad taste in my mouth. Wisor is wrong, sure, and he could be more emotionally intelligent, sure, but the way Tesla throws her weight and money around so that she and her spouse aren't inconvenienced is just something else. (And her name, evoking another billionaire who likes to throw his weight around, doesn't help.)

We even get this from her POV: "There was a limit to how hard she could push without being a privileged asshole. To Josie. She'd definitely been one to Wisor, but he deserved it." No! That doesn't make it okay!

(I am weirded out how this got on the ballot with so many other works of the form "People in power SUCK," because this whole book is from the POV of someone in power who SUCKS.)

-I have no idea what her spouse Shal is like. Literally the only thing I knew about him 100 pages in was that he had formerly been a detective, because this is brought up kind of a lot. He seems to be bog-standard romance novel love interest, handsome and polite and considerate and probably it would be trivial to program a robot to respond exactly like him. At one point Tesla is asked, "How well do you know your spouse, anyway?" (because of all the preponderance of evidence against him) and instead of maybe thinking about that question? giving us some insight into how well she does know him?? anything??? she instead defaults to punching down on the person who asked it, because of course she does. I liked Shal, especially because he seemed to try to get her to do less of the punching down, but I didn't feel like I had any idea of why she was in love with him or why he was an interesting character or really anything about him! Oh, wait, there was one bit where he was able to make deductions like an ex-detective that was really cool, but again, just like Tesla, he turned that on briefly and then it wasn't plot relevant any more so we didn't get that any more. It would be cool if he made deductions about Tesla... and even more if that was why she loved him, maybe because she had no secrets from him? but... that's not what we got.

If you want me to care about your character's recent marriage, you kind of have to make me care about the spouse, and I just didn't.

-By page 100 I was only hate-reading to see what things I would hate next, but by page 125 I couldn't take Kowal's prose any more. There's a certain quality of compelling writing that Kowal just doesn't have for me.

Hugo nominees are out, and I have a bunch of stuff on hold and have also read the short story and novelette nominees that are available free and in English. I will post again if there is a packet with the other stories translated into English.

I think this year the theme is "people in power SUCK."

Short stories

“D.I.Y.”, by John Wiswell (Tordotcom, August 2022) - This is a story about a world in which the analogue of Hogwarts is a corporation with lots of power and it SUCKS. I... actually rather liked this one, in a way where I don't think it was being particularly subtle or saying something particularly profound, but it was satisfying to read.

“Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022) - hey, I read this before nominations! This is a story, clearly inspired by this last year, about how people in power SUCK when it comes to abortion. (I found it powerful and heartbreaking because uh apparently this is my single issue. It is also the story's single issue. Just so you know.)

Hmm. I think maybe DIY>Rabbit for me (possibly because Rabbit is a bit of a sore spot for me) but I could easily go the other way.

Novelettes

“The Difference Between Love and Time”, by Catherynne M. Valente (Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance, Solaris) - This is one of two stories I've read so far that didn't have the theme of People in Power SUCKING. Instead, it is about the space-time continuum embodied as a person, which is a conceit that I hated Very Very Much. I think I have to come to the conclusion that whenever Valente wants to even mention concepts that are physics-related, I can't staaaaaand it, it sets off something in my brain that's all "noooooo that's not right! that's not even wrong!"

The really irritating thing about this story is that I got to the end (only because it was Hugo homework!) and I actually... I actually liked the ending, I could see how it would be moving if I had, even a little bit, been able to buy into this whole space-time continuum personification thing (NO) (WHAT) (THIS IS SO DUMB) and ugh I can see why people might like it and why it got nominated! I just... I can't, okay. I won't vote for it below No Award but I will just complain about it a LOT here.

“If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You”, by John Chu (Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2022) - People in power SUCK when it comes to superheroes. I liked that this story had an Asian superhero! That was cool! Otherwise I admit that lifting weights, which was a major setting of the story, is not super my thing. But the story was still fine.

“Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness”, by S.L. Huang (Clarkesworld, December 2022) - this is a story about how the rich and powerful SUCK but there may be a shadowy AI that is doing something about that. I had read this before nominations. I liked it but not enough to read it twice.

“We Built This City”, by Marie Vibbert (Clarkesworld, June 2022) - this is a story about how the uncaring corporate government SUCKS when it comes to people who are just trying to do their jobs and make things work. That's the story. It was fine.

“A Dream of Electric Mothers”, by Wole Talabi (Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Tordotcom) - Two hours into the third session of our fourth cabinet meeting on the border dispute with the co-operative kingdom of Dahomey, my colleagues finally agree that we need to seek the dream-counsel of our electric mother. Oh YAY, a story that actually has a reasonably interesting speculative element, is not a story about how people in power SUCK!, and does not involve the personification of the space-time continuum!

Mothers > everything else, I'm not even sure how to vote on the rest of it (mostly because "Difference" is screwing up my thoughts; I had more of a reaction to it than the others but that reaction is both negative and positive!)

I guess nomination season is beginning, thus also my annual panic of "huh, I haven't really read anything published in the last year..." Fortunately sophia_sol had a post that inspired me to read/post about a couple of things! But this will be short because I am writing this during E's math competition - we'll see whether she finishes first or I do ;) [I did, as you can see!] I loved all of these and they are going on my ballot for sure. In the order in which I read them:

A Garter as a Lesser Gift (Gray, novella?) - 3+/5 - rec from skygiants - I really, really liked this. Basically there was no chance I was not going to like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Arthuriana in a WWII AU :D It's quite well done the way the characters are both all their own selves and their doubled Arthuriana selves, so that a character does something and I would be like, "ah, of course that's how that person acts!"

The Sadness Box (Palmer, novelette) - Dystopia, with nanobots and artificial intelligence. I forget who posted about this (I could have sworn it was psocoptera, but I don't see it in any of their posts) but, like. Palmer is my jam when she writes about robots/AI. I wouldn't call this story particularly deep, I don't think? but I love it anyway, okay, and it's also about people, and relationships, and what makes us human, as the best robot/AI stories are.

Unraveller (Hardinge, YA) - 3+/5 - This is my third full Hardinge, and so far she's three for three on unsettling worldbuilding, lovely prose, fascinating ideas, deeply dysfunctional relationships, and hope despite all those things. Here, the idea is that people in this world, when they are angry enough at someone else, grow "curse eggs" inside themselves that, when hatched, spring a curse on the one they're angry with. You can see what kinds of ramifications this might have, both good and bad, and so does Hardinge.

I thought it was great, but it didn't knock my socks off like Deeplight did. I think partially that I wasn't in the right frame of mind for reading about dysfunctional relationships right now. In addition the structure is a bit episodic -- they need to find clue X, so they go to place A to solve problem A'; that helps them find X, so then it's time to find Y, which takes them to place B to solve problem B'; and so on. Some of the characters do reappear, and there's certainly a through-arc, but there was a certain amount of "huh, I just got attached to this character, but now it's time to move on."

Now reading: Spear (Griffith, novella) - I absolutely adore Griffith's writing (I should read more by her) and also I just got to the (first?) reveal (!!), and I am dying to see what she does with this, and I forgot to pack it on this trip and I am kicking myself so hard (though I guess if I had I'd be reading it now instead of posting this, so there's that)

How much time do I have before nominations close? I could probably knock down one or two more...

So I read some YA for the Lodestar.

Victories Greater than Death (Anders) - 3/5 - Girl grows up on Earth knowing she's not actually a human, but the avatar of a great alien hero who will someday go to space and be great and heroic. The one recognizable as YA because the fight against terrible evil etc. is just about as important as whether your crush likes you back. It was readable, unlike the last Anders where I quit about a third of the way through, and I liked it -- just very YA.

Iron Widow (Zhao) - 3/5 - Retelling of the rise of Empress Wu Zetian only with a bunch more giant robots. This is the one recognizable as YA because you can tell the good guys by the fact that they are the only ones spouting enlightened twenty-first century viewpoints, while everyone else is really, really into subjugating the wimmenfolk in archaic Bad Guy ways that are definitely not sympathetic at all, and if you ever feel the faintest inclination to sympathize with anyone who isn't one of the heroes, that's the signal for the narrative to make sure that person does something even worse. Meanwhile, the heroes also do bad things, but hey, it's just because people were mean to them first, and at least they're not subjugating women! (I do think this part is going somewhere and is not necessarily considered good by the narrative, but we won't see until the next book. Relatedly, I should mention it ends on a cliffhanger.)

I should say that this was a quite compelling book -- Zhao is not a bad writer, and this was not at all a bad first book in terms of plotting and pacing. But in terms of characterization and worldbuilding, what I wanted it to be was either She Who Became the Sun with giant robots, where everyone had more consistently period-ish viewpoints, or something that leaned into the giant robots part and had everyone be super with-it futuristic internet cyber personalities. Either would have been fine!
But what I actually got was some sort of weird mishmash of the two, where everyone clomped around with giant robots and internet social media, but also literal bound feet, and it was hard for my head to reconcile all of it. Even when you don't count the part where I kept getting thrown out that the good guys all sounded like they had come from tumblr and everyone else sounded like generic One-Note Bad Guys.

Chaos on Catnet (Kritzer) - 3++/5 - Sequel to Catfishing on Catnet, but with a much better title. Hijinks with Catnet's AI and their friends which rapidly turn into a thriller. This is the one recognizable as YA because the YA character downloads a completely random social media app in the first few chapters just because a classmate tells her to. (I have definitely done my share of dumb things as a teenager, so I could have rolled with this -- except that with Steph's and her mom's history, I cannot believe her mom never told her not to download random social media apps?? Without even clearing them with her first?? Like, my kids know they're not supposed to do that and we have never had someone after us, much less for years.)

Anyway, I loved this book, which continues to have the comfort-read strengths of Catfishing in a very strong friend group and a very strong celebration of friendship, both internet and otherwise, as well as is an extremely compelling thriller -- and adds more strengths in the varied and awesome adult characters, and I was so glad when Steph finally told her mom about what was going on. The book ended really abruptly, though! Not in a cliffhangery way at all, just in a "OK, we won over the big bad, now we'll have a couple of pages of epilogue to wrap up, the end!" and she had managed to ratchet the tension high enough (she's really good at that!) that my heart was still racing and I was still all "so is anyone still after them?? Is something else going to happen?? Oh... it's the afterword? Oh, I guess it must be all OK then."

Definitely I would recommend reading Catfishing first, so as not to spoil it; if you don't like Catfishing, there's no reason to pick this one up, as it's more of the same, but if you do, this one is good too! (with the mild caveats above)

I have in fact been doing my Hugo homework in bits and pieces, even though Babylon 5 is way more compelling (btw, I am now at the beginning of S4, aaaaaaaaaaah)

Fireheart Tiger (de Bodard) - I found this piece on princesses and power struggles and a fire elemental more readable than her Fallen series, and all of those things are relevant to my interests! But it didn't really stick with me after I'd finished.

The Past Is Red (Valente) - Okay, um - this is actually pretty good! It's about the post-climate-apocalyptic society that forms on the Pacific Garbage Patch, which by this point has melded into a large island, and Tetley, a girl who grows up there. It's clearly fabulist/fantastical and not supposed to at all be in any way a realistic depiction of dystopia (say I to the part of me that kept going "but it wouldn't work that way!"). It's about optimism and hope and also about the dark sides of those things, especially when they intersect with the dark parts of the human psyche -- but Tetley herself is clearheaded as well as hopeful.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Chambers) - In this novella, Dex, a tea monk (a monk who serves tea while people talk to him about their problems) meets a wild robot, Mosscap. They go on a long hike. That's pretty much it. I think I was supposed to get more out of it than that, but I didn't really. Dex seems to angst a lot for reasons that just didn't resonate with me at all. I think something in me is just not temperamentally suited for Chambers?

Oh gosh, I have to rank these now, huh.
Elder Race > Past > Spindle > Fireheart > Grass > Psalm, I guess. IDK. I liked Elder Race the most, but besides that I feel like it's even more the vagaries of my personal opinion than usual. This category I found kind of workmanlike -- I liked a lot of these stories and felt like they weren't doing anything that I found super interesting or innovative, which is something I always like to see for the Hugo.

Project Hail Mary (Weir) 3+/5. D told me when I started this book that he'd heard it was Weir returning to form, and then I knew exactly what to expect!

And indeed this was a delightful book for a science nerd, full of delighted "Here's how the science would work for this!" infodumps and Solving Problems through Science!! Yeah!! It's basically as if a Randall Munroe book (or his blog) came to life and I am here for that. As you might expect from that description, there isn't any characterization or meaningful relationships or anything (with one exception, mentioned later on), but eh, that's for a different book.

One nice thing about the lack of characterization is that even though the Macguffin is that humanity is faced with eventual apocalypse that will just get worse and worse over time, it didn't really ping to me as a depressing book, but rather a joyful one, because what's the point of a Solving Problems Through Science book if you don't actually solve the problems, and everyone was definitely having a lot of fun with the science along the way.

Wow, though, I had to laugh at how simplified everything that wasn't ~Science!!~ was! If humanity were faced with mortal peril in ~30 years, by all means all countries would all work together without any fuss and they'd give one totally well-meaning person world-dictator-like powers to do whatever needed to be done to save humanity, and, yeah, it would totally work great like that, sure!

( Maybe mild spoilers? )

But yeah, this was definitely one of those books where if you were not warned ahead of time and if you weren't feeling like reading a book like the one this was, I can definitely see not liking it. Fortunately I was both warned and OK with reading this!

Light from Uncommon Stars (Aoki) - 3+/5. Katrina Ngyuen is a teen queer trans girl who runs away from her abusive family. She has a talent for the violin that attracts the attention of a great violin teacher, Shizuka Satomi, who's called "the Queen of Hell" for good reason, that good reason being that she has literally made a compact with hell that she will deliver them students who would trade their soul for being top-ranked violinists. Also, during the course of the book, they meet and befriend a starfaring family, the Tran family, who escape from interstellar war and buy a donut shop, from which they both make donuts and build an interstellar gate in the giant donut sign that is outside of the donut shop.

...As you can see, this is a book that goes a lot of places! And I enjoyed it! And there is a lot of good food in it, and a lot of music. I particularly liked this part:

Katrina: I have something super important to tell you, and you might not like me after I've said it.
Shizuka: OMG. You're going to tell me that you already have a violin teacher, don't you?? UGH. That's the WORST.
Katrina: What? No, I'm trans.
Shizuka: Okay. But seriously, do you already have a violin teacher?? Because that would suck, but we can work around that!
Katrina: Did you hear me?? I'm trans!
Shizuka: Well, yes, I heard you. But you were implying this was something negative...?

Because I just love that, and I know people who are like that -- even if they didn't understand exactly, it wouldn't occur to them to be negative, because what's important is the music. (And if they have to grab their student away from another teacher, haha.) Which is a lot of what the book is about, in fact.

I do think I feel like there is something about the book that feels shallow to me. I think there is so much going on that it doesn't seem to be delving into any of it very deeply, maybe. Personally, I would have loved more about the violin-competition world and the personalities and relationships and cross-currents involved, and I felt like I got just enough of it that I was like "...and that's it?? But you could have done so much more with it??"

And then there was Tamiko, who had the potential to be a really interesting character (she is in the running for Student to be Delivered to Hell, only for Shizuka to become interested in Katrina instead) and it looked like she was going to have an interesting arc but... then she didn't.

Anyway, I did like it! I think it's just that it wanted to be a poem and a fairy tale instead of a novel (it really is kind of a fairy tale in the way that Katrina and Shizuka find each other and help each other), and that wasn't what I thought I was going to read? That is, I think the majority of the difference between my reaction to Uncommon Stars and Project Hail Mary is simply that I knew exactly what I was getting into with PHM, heh.

I am hoping that I am now Done with the time-intensive parts of April church, which were a) giving a talk at church (this was very time-consuming, because although I now have deconstructed the process of how to give a very effective talk at church, I have to rehearse a lot and go through a lot of drafts to smooth it out) b) the "Easter concert" that was last night, and c) planning the Easter music for actual Easter.

I honestly don't really understand why people thought doing an Easter concert was a good idea, given that we sort of scraped by on the Christmas concert even though everyone had a good time. But okay. Except that the two stars, whom I guess I have called Operatic Music Guy Tenor and Smooth Music Guy Tenor before, both got super sick (not with covid -- one of them lost his voice and the other had a flareup of long-standing heart issues) and couldn't participate. (Smooth Music Guy Tenor was doing a trio of "Savior, Redeemer" with me on violin and our other friend on piano.) The lady running it is... umm... very intense, and she managed to persuade another of our mutual music-friends to sing in the place of Smooth Music Guy Tenor. The catch here is that the new singer was still in a walker because of a bike accident she had a couple of months back (which is why she hadn't been previously asked to sing). I would have said no! But she didn't say no, except that she couldn't walk to the stand. And then the special mike she had (because she couldn't walk to the stand with the usual mike) malfunctioned so this poor woman was singing unmiked to the entire audience. Fortunately she has a voice that carries pretty well, even if it's not super operatic, and I did a lot of volume modulation so as not to drown her out, but that was exciting. The good part for me is that all my brainpower was going towards how I was going to make sure that I wasn't drowning her out, with none left for being nervous, which usually I would be and which usually makes me play noticeably worse in concert than in rehearsal. But anyway, everyone had a good time and it went just well enough that they'll probably do it again next year, joy.

(The lady running it also sang, and... I... feel that someone needs to tell her that while it was fine ten years ago (the last time I heard her sing), she kind of needs to not sing at these events anymore.) (Hilariously, I'm pretty sure she was not asked for the Christmas concert.)

I am also super pleased that the music drama for this year ended both happily and in a way where I don't have to do anything, lol. So this was unforced error on my part -- I had agreed with Awesome Alto that she would sing "Savior Redeemer" at our ward at Easter and I would accompany her on piano, and then I had suggested the same song to Smooth Music Guy Tenor to sing with me at the fireside without thinking about it at all, and once I did, AAlto objected at doing the same one. Well, she found another song, but couldn't find it in the appropriate key, and there is no way I can transpose music on piano, especially (for me) difficult music like this was. Fortunately, Amazing Organist was just standing around randomly waiting for his wife after church (he's very often traveling for work, so this was doubly fortuitious that he was around this month at all), and I was like "I bet AO can do it, he's right there, let's ask him!" and dragged her over, and AO was like "Oh, I've played this before, and sure, I can't transpose it from the music but I can do it by ear." (I told you he was amazing. Gosh. I can do that on violin but there is NO WAY on piano.) So they rehearsed and now not only are we all set, I also don't have to spend all my spare time learning a new piano piece this week, which as you can imagine I am very excited about ;)

(If you've been following all my vague references, you may well be asking, why didn't Awesome Alto sing "Savior Redeemer" for the fireside? She could only sing it in another key, and this was like a few days beforehand so our pianist, who was not AO, wouldn't have had time to learn in the different key.) (Though I would have preferred it as the violin part is easier in the other key, lol.) And also she wasn't super excited about singing for it so might have just said a flat no anyway.)

...Very fortunately D. is on the ball with regard to, like, buying chocolate and hard-boiling Easter eggs for the kids to color and such, because that was not even on my radar.

Also Hugo nominations are out! I've read the short stories now, starting in on the novelettes, and at some point will Post My Decided Opinions, and have a couple of novels queued from the library. Anyway, She Who Became the Sun and The Last Graduate are on the novel and YA ballots respectively, which is really all I wanted :)

3/5. Read for "Best Series" Hugos.

...I got to this at exactly the right time; I would probably have bounced off its breezy shallowness a couple years ago -- no wait, ha, I did bounce off its breezy shallowness when I was supposed to read it for 2018 Hugo-reading -- and six months ago I wasn't reading much at all -- but I've started reading things again now, and I was in the mood for popcorn. Which this is. It hasn't got much in the way of substance, but it's fun light space opera. Well, the book deals with... a collapsing empire, and various people die, etc. so I guess in that way it's kind of dark? But the plot and characters are entertaining while also being shallow, so one doesn't have to care very hard about any of it.

The most hilarious part of it was what I think was supposed to be a major plot/thematic twist, but which really wasn't. ( I guess spoiler? although if you know anything about history -- even the super minimal amount I do -- it's not a spoiler )

First of a trilogy (so the story is only a third done at the end of this book), and against my expectations I actually ended up placing a hold on the next book right away. I wouldn't rec it unless you were in the mood for something pretty shallow where you don't have to care about anything you're reading about, but if you are, this is fun!