My October Reading Log

Posted on November 5, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Scandal in Babylon by Barbara Hambly is a reworking of her fantasy novel Bride of the Rat God as a straightforward historical mystery set in 1920s Hollywood. I was always sorry there weren’t sequels to Bride of the Rat God, so this made me very happy, and I hope it turns into another series. British scholar Emma Blackstone was widowed by World War One and lost her parents and brother to the 1918 influenza pandemic; she now works as a secretary for her sister-in-law, lovable and extravagant silent film star Kitty Flint/Camille de la Rose, as well as caring for Kitty’s three Pekinese. Emma has a budding romance with calm and competent cameraman Zal Rokatansky, who’s clearly head over heels for her but patient with a slow paced relationship. The mystery revolves around a murder that seems a clear attempt at framing Kitty; so clear, in fact, that it’s suspicious. I enjoyed the mystery but was really in it for the delicious specific details of making silent films, from “motion picture yellow” foundation makeup to editing of title cards to vivid cameo appearances by Gloria Swanson. Like in Hambly’s Benjamin January series, the ensemble cast is catnip to me as well.

I read a galley of The Misfit Soldier by Michael Mammay because I really enjoyed Planetside, his debut military sf/mystery. The new book, out in February 2022, is essentially a military sf heist novel, except the heist is organized to rescue an abandoned soldier from the war zone, and also to accomplish [a spoiler]. The first-person narrator, an unenthusiastic soldier who joined the military to hide from gangsters, has a knack for choosing the right people for the right job and is always a few steps ahead of the plot.

Doll Bones by Holly Black was this month’s TBR Challenge book for the theme “Gothic.”

Fanfiction:
nor need we power or splendor by shellybelle is a long novel about the three-way romantic relationship between Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), and Laura Barton, using some elements of MCU canon and others from the comics, so I couldn’t always predict what was going to happen with some major events. The story jumps back and forth in time, sometimes easy to follow and sometimes a little less so. The writer took a realistic approach to the characters, their evolving polyamorous relationship, and their raising of the Bartons’ three children.

The Arithmancer by White_Squirrel is an AU of the Harry Potter series with Hermione Granger, a mathematics prodigy, as the lead character. Given that this first story alone is over 500,000 words, I am not sure if I will read the whole series, which is more than a million words long. It’s clear that it was its own phenomenon in the fandom. The author looks deeply into how magic might work if approached with science and mathematics; also how events might have turned out if there was more consent and more safeguarding of children than in the canonical series. For instance, why in the world would Hermione’s parents let her keep going back to Hogwarts, if they knew what happened to her there? Sometimes this works, sometimes it works less well, but it’s interesting to be along for the ride, especially from a meta-commentary point of view. What fascinates me most about this series is the application of math and science to magic in ways that are clever, fit with how the magic was shown canonically, and which actually make sense to me. I am not terribly invested in Hermione’s rise to prominence as a youthful arithmancy genius, but it’s really cool to watch the author delve into how spells might actually work in the real world.

Nonfiction:
This blog post by my friend Lorrie Kim, about the new J.K. Rowling book, engages with reading it while knowing “Rowling is very much on the wrong side of the vicious and bewildering campaign of bigotry against trans people.” She wrote about the issue in more detail here: The Changing Politics of Reading Harry Potter in the Post-Trump U.S..

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Dutch translation!

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

My World War One romance “Under Her Uniform” has been translated into Dutch! The ebook has been collected in the anthology 5 Tinten verder historisch 6 – een trio, 6 February 2018.

Original English version, Under Her Uniform:
Isobel Hailey disguised herself as a man to fight in the British Army in WWI. Only a few people know the truth, including her pair of officer lovers–so why can’t she stop thinking about handsome Corporal Andrew Southey instead? Isobel has to keep her wits about her and her fantasies hidden so she doesn’t blow her cover. But when she and Andrew find themselves working closely on a mission, their attraction–and the truth–is impossible to deny.

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#TBRChallenge – Gothic: Doll Bones by Holly Black

Posted on October 20, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Doll Bones by Holly Black is Middle Grade, but more than spooky enough for my tender sensibilities.

What I love most about this book is that it’s really about making stories, and the power of making stories.

Narrator Zach and his friends Poppy and Alice play complex imaginative games together with coherent fantasy worldbuilding, self-made props, and an array of dolls (Zach’s are “action figures”), including a terrifying, valuable antique Poppy’s mother keeps locked in a cabinet. Zach is twelve and has recently shot up in height and begun playing basketball; though he loves playing the game, he’s beginning to feel a little embarrassed that his best friends are girls, a feeling exacerbated by his father’s discomfort with his son’s interest in things other than sports. Poppy, the child of neglectful parents, wants to lead and control their games, and gets uncomfortable when the others put their own spin on her ideas. Alice, who is sometimes cruelly teased, struggles against her immigrant grandmother’s strict rules about her behavior. All three children are keeping important secrets from each other, while being more honest than they know while playing the game.

For such a short book, I found it emotionally intense and, as an adult reader, immensely poignant. I loved the creepy doll plot with its realistic historical elements. Excellent reading for October!

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Smashwords Interview

Posted on October 15, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

I recently interviewed myself via Smashwords, which was sort of fun!

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My September Reading Log

Posted on October 8, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
The Factory Witches of Lowell by C.S. Malerich is historical fantasy set in nineteenth century Lowell, Massachusetts, which at the time was a factory town full of textile mills. Many of the workers in those mills were young, single women. Mill workers Judith and Hannah are using magic to help them lead a strike for better conditions, using methods that absolutely strengthen the novella’s representations of solidarity, female relationships, and the evils of capitalism. I give bonus points to the author for making sure to show how the textile barons in the north were irredeemably intertwined with enslaving cotton-growers in the south. Here is a post on the author’s blog with a list of some research reading, including the classic The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist.

The Devil in the Details by James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle, a story linked to The Apocalypse Door, a wryly noir spy universe featuring a modern Knight Templar, Peter Crossman, and Sister Mary Magdalene of the Special Action Executive of the Poor Clares. The voice is pitch-perfect for vintage noir, which to me makes it hilarious.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, while cutting a little close to the bone with its political plot, was a lovely romance between the son of America’s first female president (elected in 2016) and the grandson of the queen of England. Alex believes he can’t stand Prince Henry, who was rude to him at their first meeting, but that changes, and by the time their texting turns to heartfelt emails, I was fully invested in them finding a way to be together. I liked that the challenges they face are more than simply a prince coming out as gay and a president’s son as bisexual. Henry’s loss of his father to pancreatic cancer is still affecting him and his relationships within his family years later, while Alex’s Mexican-American father, a senator, and Alex’s hero, gay Mexican-American senator Rafael Luna, offer different perspectives on the life in politics Alex wants, particularly for those who are not white. Plus, Henry’s friend Pez, sister Bea, Alex’s sister June, and June and Alex’s friend Nora, granddaughter of the vice president, are all terrific characters; June and Nora in particular are a huge part of the story, given that Alex is the point of view character. It was fun!

Fanfiction:
No Misunderstandings by eretria for murron and auburnnothenna is an intense look at the relationships between Peggy Carter, Bucky Barnes, and Steve Rogers. There’s romance and sex, but there’s also some backstory for Peggy, and more focus on painting her relationship with Bucky than I usually see; meanwhile, Steve gets nuanced characterization as well. It’s set during WWII, and knowing what canonically lies ahead for the three of them lends a melancholy beauty to their closeness and intimacy.

Never Leave A Trace by copperbadge is a fantasy AU of White Collar with some very cool worldbuilding. The story was rewritten as an original novel, Trace by Sam Starbuck, which I’d like to check out.

Bodyguard by Sholio for scioscribe is a Netflix Iron Fist AU in which The Hand assigns Colleen Wing to be Ward Meachum’s bodyguard, to protect him from the Iron Fist. Nothing really goes as planned. I love Ward’s point of view; in that show, he is living in a completely different reality from everyone else, and this story reveals that. Ward and Colleen were my favorite characters in that miniseries, so I would have happily read a whole alternate series branching off from this story.

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Finding Refuge available this week!

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

My new novella, Finding Refuge, is now available! It’s science fiction with lesbian romance, telepathy, found family, and trauma recovery.

They lost the revolution. But then, they found sanctuary—and hope.

After the fascistic Federated Colonies crushes their interstellar revolt, freedom fighters Talia and Miki have only each other.

Telepathic warrior Talia Avi lost her home planet, her people, and their psychic communion when the FC invaded, but thanks to Miki Boudreaux, she can glimpse a life beyond defeat. Genius engineer Miki lost Talia once to FC captivity and never plans to lose her again.

Miki will risk her life and her freedom to reunite Talia with the escaped remnants of her people, on a mysterious planet far outside of FC control. But the difficult part will be what comes after…when you’ve always been a guerilla at the sharp end of death, how do you learn to make a life?

Can two freedom fighters find refuge at last?

Excerpt:

When Talia opened her eyes on her last morning in her cell, the needled bulb which continually fed suppressant drugs into her veins was gone. She lurched to her feet, grabbing at the slick wall when her weakened legs failed to support her. The door slammed open and two Federated Colonies guards stepped smartly inside, their face masks distorting Talia’s reflection. A third and fourth, also armored, seized her arms and hustled her into the corridor, their gloved fingers painfully squeezing her flesh against her bones.

I’m to be executed at last, she thought vaguely. The miasma of drugs clouded her every thought, as well as the remnants of her Damarae telepathy. She’d been in this prison for a long time. She was sure any information she might once have had about Jon Churchill and his dissenter rebellion was long out of date. She hoped her death would be quick.

At the end of a forced walk long enough to make her pant for breath, a door loomed. Head drooping, she didn’t see it until she was hurled at it. It slid open and she fell through, collapsing onto the cold metal floor of another cell, easily identified by its inexorable white lights and tang of bleach and old blood. She tried to lift herself, but her wrists and elbows collapsed beneath her. Someone grasped her shoulder and helped to turn her over.

She defiantly lifted her gaze, staring with utter disbelief into the pale round face of Miki Boudreaux.

You can also find it on Goodreads, StoryGraph, and LibraryThing.

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#TBRChallenge – Unusual Profession: Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls by Matt Ruff won the 2003 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, now renamed the Otherwise Award, which “celebrates science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender.” I would also consider this novel to be a mystery or puzzle novel, on top of all the rest. I was glad to have the opportunity of the TBR Challenge, and a long weekend, to finally read it, the first work I’ve read by this author.

Andy Gage definitely has an unusual profession. He’s a soul, who along with many others, lives inside the head of a human being also named Andy Gage. Andy’s job is to keep all of the other souls in line, as they are a sort of squabbling family living in the same mental house. Original Andy’s self, but not his body, was murdered by an abusive stepfather; the Andy we meet was created through dissociative identity disorder, specifically because “somebody had to run the body.”

The other souls in his family have different roles in the imaginary landscape: Andy’s “father” built the eponymous House in which all the souls can interact inside the body’s mind, and created Andy to run it. Elderly Aunt Sam speaks French and makes art; teenaged Jake offers accurate judgements of people and personal interactions, while also craving beer and pornography. Meanwhile, oppositional Uncle Gideon is trapped in darkest Coventry in the middle of a mental lake, often obscured by metaphorical mist…and becomes important later in the story.

The plot may sound confusing, but it’s laid out very clearly from the beginning, and it’s easy to see how efficiently Andy manages shifting between his different souls while still coping with being, himself, both twenty-eight and two years old. “I was called to finish the job that my father had begun; a job that he had chosen, but that I was made for.” Andy then is introduced to Penny Driver, who has suppressed knowledge of her additional selves. Penny needs Andy to provide needed perspective, so she can recognize what’s behind her frequent blackouts, and find professional help. Later, Andy needs Penny’s help as well.

As an aficionado of interesting Point of View techniques, this book is a master class. Andy is the reader’s guide, but he doesn’t know the whole story of Andy’s life and mental death, and he lacks a great deal of lived experience, which his father makes clear to him. Penny, meanwhile, has a number of different souls, but most of them are secondary to her central personality, called Mouse. She lacks total control of them, but they leave her notes and letters and lists to direct her actions, which she has to trust, even though she’s not always happy with what those other souls have done. The angry souls Maledicta and Malefica, for example, constantly get Penny/Mouse into trouble while trying to protect her, while organized Thread keeps her life from flying entirely off the rails.

Content warning for memories of domestic abuse suffered by the two point of view characters as children, resulting in dissociative identity disorder that is the main subject of the novel; there is also discussion of physical murders that happened before the story begins, and are tied into its plot.

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My August Reading Log

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
The Enigma Game by Elizabeth Wein, set mostly in Scotland during World War II, is a prequel to Code Name Verity. The main characters are Louisa Adair, a half-English/half-Jamaican teenaged girl; an elderly German immigrant woman who adopts the name Jane Warner; Ellen McEwen, a young woman who works as a volunteer driver for the airfield and hides that her family are Travelers; and a young pilot named Jamie Beaufort-Stuart, brother to one of the Code Name Verity narrators, who also makes an appearance in this book. As you might guess from the title, an Enigma machine is a large part of the page-turning thriller plot; I also got a lot of excellent specific detail on what it was like to serve on a particular kind of bomber plane, on particular sorts of missions. The whole story has an air of melancholy, as you might expect from a book about young men doing such dangerous work; there’s also a thematic tie, through the coins they left behind at the local pub, to all the young men who never came back from World War One. Plus there’s Louisa’s grief at losing both parents before the story begins, and the sadness of knowing Jane’s exceptional life is nearing its end.

A Deadly Education: A Novel (The Scholomance Book 1) by Naomi Novik is a commentary on the Magical School genre, aimed at a YA audience. First person narrator Galadriel, or El, is trying to survive her third of four years at the Scholomance, a dangerous and often deadly school for wizard children, who are trapped inside for four years with only other students and magical creatures intent on devouring their magic. The magical culture is hierarchical, with the powerful living in enclaves where they have more protection from dangerous mals, and everyone else either at high risk or subjugating themselves to the enclaves (for instance, as janitors) in the hope of gaining the same protection for themselves or their children. El’s affinity, or particular magical skill, is for languages and spells, but leans heavily towards destructive magic, which she must constantly fight against in order to keep from, essentially, turning into Darth Vader. She’s outcast from wizards who can detect this tendency. As you might guess, it’s a noirish story, not usually my preference. Eventually, El does make a few friends, and the ending is somewhat upbeat, with a sudden twist that presumably sets up the next book. Prior to reading, I had heard that a racially offensive paragraph about dreadlocks was removed from the book by the white author, who apologized for what she had written. For that reason, I was more conscious of how people of various races and national origins were presented in the story. The secondary characters originate from all over the world, many from rich and powerful enclaves, but the presentation of these characters did not include much cultural or linguistic detail. The first-person narrator El has no interest in the cultural concerns of her fellow students, which makes some sense for the character, but I wished for more depth here, perhaps a sense of things going on that the narrator was missing. “Enclaver” supersedes other affinities in this magical world, which led to classism being the primary issue addressed thematically.

Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer is a sequel to Catfishing on CatNet. I highly recommend this YA series. Set in near-future Minneapolis-St. Paul, there’s a lot of lovely local detail and hopeful possibilities for the future, such as a police force with a much higher percentage of social services, a rebuilt bookstore that was recently destroyed (in real life) by fire, and a plaza in memory of George Floyd. Queer and polyamorous characters are presented positively, as complex individuals. New point of view character Nell has been raised in a Christian apocalyptic cult, but after her mother’s disappearance is adjusting to living with her father, her stepmother, and their respective girlfriends, while worrying about the girlfriend she left behind. She is new to the same high school where Steph, protagonist of the previous book and friend of the AI Cheshire Cat, has also just begun; the juxtaposition of their lives is integral to uncovering the existence of a second AI, its creator, and their plans for chaos.

The Henchmen of Zenda by K.J. Charles revisits Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda through the sardonic eyes of mercenary Jasper Detchard, who narrates the True Events and ends up romantically involved with Rupert of Hentzau, though I’m not sure he ever admits to the romantic angle. Lots of swordfighting, good roles for two female characters, and a happy ending.

Faithless in Death by J.D. Robb is fifty-second in the Eve Dallas near future science fiction/mystery series, and I think this installment has come the closest of any of them to addressing current events. Content warnings for racism, misogyny, domestic violence, sex trafficking, and anti-gay therapy in the context of a religious cult run like a mega-dollar business by a charismatic self-involved man and his children. Justice is achieved in the end, but there’s a lot of nastiness that’s uncovered first.

Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner had the feel of an grand finale to the entire series, complete with epic, overwhelming battles, tragedy and betrayal and redemption, and the feeling that All is Lost until All Isn’t Lost. I read it on a day off, and was thus able to immerse in the familiar world made unfamiliar with a new first-person narrator, Pheris Erondites.

It Takes Two to Tumble: Seducing the Sedgwicks by Cat Sebastian is a goodhearted, sweet romance between Philip Dacre, a widowed British naval captain, and the vicar of the small English village, Benedict Sedgwick. I think the time setting is the Regency, but am not sure. The plot owes a bit to The Sound of Music in that Captain Dacre’s three children have run wild since his wife’s death, while he was away at sea. The vicar ends up semi-looking after them; having grown up with a negligent poet for a father, he prizes order but also understands the children. Initial dislike leads to, surprise!, desire and love. At some point previously, I read the second book in this series, A Gentleman Never Keeps Score, and belatedly recognized some of the characters.

Nonfiction:
My Broken Language: A Memoir by Quiara Alegría Hudes feels like music while still being prose. Her themes are contrapuntal, even before she reaches the point in her narrative about her musical training. Hudes is a Pulitzer-winning playwright, and the co-author of the musical “In the Heights.” She grew up in Philadelphia in the 1980s and 1990s, when I first encountered the city, so much was familiar to me. Just as much was unfamiliar, as she is “Philly Rican” and experienced North Philly and West Philly while I was still beginning to learn Center City. The memoir brings together subjects from her experiences being mixed race and mixed culture to the meaning of family. She draws exquisite portraits of her family members. She explores cultural touchstones from Lucumí to salsa, and juxtaposes her upbringing with the mostly-white world of her undergraduate studies at Yale and her graduate studies at Brown. Highly recommended.

Art from the First World War by Richard Slocombe mainly made me want to see the actual paintings reproduced within, as I am sure I was missing many details. I had seen an exhibit of World War One art at the Smithsonian in 2018, but this book had some artists I had not seen before. It was a pleasant afternoon’s reading and viewing.

Fanfiction:
Life Happens by Cdelphiki is a very long Batfamily story, positing that Tim Drake (Red Robin) and Damian Wayne are thrown into a universe where all superheroes are comic book characters. Teenaged Tim uses his hacking skills to establish himself as ten year old Damian’s guardian, making a life for them while hoping for rescue. Time is flowing differently in the two universes, and the story got pretty intense at times. I found it gripping.

Escargots by Nary is a very satisfying little mystery solved by Rose Vitrac January, a character from the Benjamin January mystery series by Barbara Hambly. The story was written for Yuletide 2014.

stay inside til somebody finds us by napricot, a Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson romance, deserves special mention because it’s set during a pandemic lockdown, in an alternate version of the MCU and of our world. Sam is Steve’s upstairs neighbor in D.C., and while Bucky and Natasha are away, Steve falls into conversation with him as they both spend time on their balconies. Meanwhile, Bucky and Natasha are trying out a range of pandemic hobbies while trapped in a safehouse, somewhere in Europe.

Silver and Red by BurningTea is a sweet Leverage story set during the Christmas season. Eliot is protecting Peggy Milbank from a potential threat, while Hardison and Parker wonder how they can show Eliot how much he means to them. Peggy’s outside pov is fun.

Four Cups of Wine by borealowl is a Good Omens story in which Aziraphale makes friends with a Jewish book collector, which leads to Aziraphale and Crowley joining her family for various Jewish holidays and becoming part of her family and arguing about theology in satisfying ways.

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#TBRChallenge – Author with More Than One Book in TBR: The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Coincidentally, like last month’s TBR Challenge book, The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages is set during World War Two and revolves around a friendship forged between two girls. However, these girls are ten years old, and the story is set almost entirely at Los Alamos in New Mexico, where a cadre of scientists created the first nuclear bomb.

The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages, and its sequel, White Sands, Red Menace, have been patiently waiting on the TBR shelf for quite some time. As Klages now has a third novel out, I decided it was time to move forward.

It’s 1943, and eleven-year-old Dewey Kerrigan is en route to New Mexico to live with her mathematician father. Soon she arrives at a town that, officially, doesn’t exist. It is called Los Alamos, and it is abuzz with activity, as scientists and mathematicians from all over America and Europe work on the biggest secret of all–“the gadget.” None of them–not J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project; not the mathematicians and scientists; and least of all, Dewey–know how much “the gadget” is about to change their lives. This book won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, the New Mexico Book Award, and the Lopez Award for Children’s Literature.

Though some historical figures do appear briefly, Richard Feynmann and Dorothy McKibbin among them, the two point-of-view characters are children. They and their families are fictional. Dewey Kerrigan’s father is a mathematician, a former Harvard professor. Suze Gordon’s parents are both scientists, with her mother Terry, a chemist, having a larger part to play in the story. Given the ages of the two protagonists, I would call this a Middle Grade book, but as an adult, I found it engrossing, reading most of it in one day.

I loved this book’s meticulous period detail. I was not alive in 1943-1945, but for the duration of the story, I felt that I was there (and I was reminded of my own pre-internet childhood). I could almost taste the dust and feel the New Mexico heat. The adults all seem to smoke, all the time, everywhere. The kids walk to the PX to buy a cold coke or a comic book; they build treehouses and explore the junk tossed into the Los Alamos dump. For security reasons, nobody has a phone (and of course there were no cell phones), which adds to the feeling of being disconnected from today’s world, as the inhabitants of Los Alamos were mostly disconnected from their own world.

Dewey is a budding engineer who’s suffered too much loss in her life. Suze is gradually discovering her artistic talents and how to be a friend. The book, I feel, somewhat rides on their relationship, which begins antagonistically, at least on Suze’s part. It’s immensely satisfying when they begin to open up to each other. To these children, that is the plot. I loved that as an adult reader, I could feel the world around them holding its breath for the coming explosion that changed the world.

Though Dewey and Suze know their parents’ work is secret, and related to winning the war, they have no idea of the scope of it; first, they’re children, and no one tells them anything; second, they can’t see the future we live in, and have no idea what is being wrought. It’s impossible for them to understand the scope of what has happened; I wonder if we truly understand the scope, even today.

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My July Reading Log

Posted on August 13, 2021 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Demon Fighter Sucks by Katherine Crighton is short fiction at Apex Magazine. It’s speculative fiction about YouTube and grief.

After the Gold: A Twin Cities Ice Book by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese is a contemporary romance whose protagonists are a pairs figure skating team. They’ve known each other since they were children, but their brief romantic fling ten years ago was followed by a messy loss in a big competition, so they skate with other partners for a time. When the book opens, they’ve reunited and are about to compete in the Olympics. It’s not a spoiler that they win, given the book’s title. Brendan Reid has been in love with Katie Nowacki for a really, really long time; but Katie, who struggles with anxiety, has never really thought about what she’s going to do when she can no longer skate. Plus Katie has always felt Brendan’s well-off family in the city of Minneapolis looks down on her for coming from a Wisconsin farm, an issue Brendan has to learn to understand. I liked that the characters had realistic issues as people, to contrast with their near-symbiotic relationship on the ice.

Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer is an utter delight. I had read Kritzer’s story Cat Pictures Please back when it was nominated for a Nebula Award; it didn’t win the Nebula, but did win a Locus and a Hugo. CatNet is a social media site created and run by an Artificial Intelligence; Steph is a teenaged girl whose friends are all online on CatNet, because she and her mother are on the run from her violent father. The story begins with yet another sudden move to a small Midwestern town, but this time Steph makes a new friend in meatspace, artist Rachel. Then the rug is pulled out from under Steph when her father locates her, and it’s up to the AI and Steph’s friends to keep her safe with very little adult assistance. So much Found Family! So many robots! I enjoyed this book all the way through, and felt it really earned its happy ending. Highly recommended.

Star Wars: The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre is a media tie-in from 1995, which I finally read because of the McIntyre memorial guest of honor panel I will serve on at the 2021 online Readercon. I am not hugely familiar with the vast and complex Star Wars Extended Universe, but I was easily able to follow this story. Set during the New Republic after “Return of the Jedi,” Han and Leia have three children under six: a pair of twins and a younger son, Anakin, all able to manipulate The Force. The novel opens with the children being abducted, while Han and Luke and See Threepio are away on a mission to find more Jedi, and Leia is practicing politics. Leia and Chewbacca and Artoo Deetoo go after the children in Leia’s ship, Alderaan. The older children have their own plotline as they use their Force abilities to help them escape. Eventually, the plots link up, and in the course of the rescue, a threat from the old Empire is defeated. Among the elements of the adventure plot, McIntyre created several alien species and made use of some astonishing astronomy that would be a fabulous CGI creation if it were a movie today.

Enterprise: The First Adventure by Vonda N. McIntyre is a Star Trek tie-in which I read several times after it came out in 1986; however, I don’t think I’d opened the book in the last couple of decades at least. The story begins with the promotion of Captain Christopher Pike and the appointment of a young, recently-promoted Captain James T. Kirk to be captain of the starship Enterprise, whose crew is not expecting a young war hero to be competent. Expecting the “five year mission” of exploration, instead Kirk is assigned to ferry a vaudeville company on a tour of starbases, both to improve morale and to demonstrate a presence to the nearby Klingon empire. Original characters include Lindy, the young woman who manages the company and cares for a genetically engineered winged horse; Stephen, a Vulcan attempting to experience emotions; and the primary antagonist, a Klingon woman from the Rumaiy minority who is not fond of either Starfleet or the Empire. Sulu and Uhura have good roles. As you might imagine, the simple mission turns far more complex, and includes First Contact. This time around, I especially noted the theme of aliens who could speak to humans but nonetheless be so far beyond them, real communication is impossible.

Superluminal by Vonda N. McIntyre is one of my lesser favorites by this favorite author, mainly because I wasn’t terribly interested in the central plot or its conceit. To achieve superluminal (faster than light) travel, Pilots have their natural hearts replaced by mechanical ones, which they can adjust via practiced biocontrol; what they see and experience during the superluminal transit time is unknowable to unmodified humans. Unmodified humans who serve as crew must be unconscious during transit, or they die…until one human crew member does not. There are a lot of intriguing ideas in this book, but as when I first read it, I really only cared about Orca, a human Diver, from a group genetically modified to live underwater and communicate with The Cousins, who are killer whales. The Divers are in the midst of a discussion about further genetic changes to move farther away from land dwellers. Luckily for me, McIntyre also wrote about Divers in her four-book Starfarers series, and they even make a cameo appearance in her adaptation of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. However, reading these two books in sequence, I found they had the theme of impossible communication in common. In this iteration, some humans can perceive dimensions that others can’t: “I was trying to explain. But I don’t have any words you can understand.” Also, a blue whale speaks to a human, and he becomes driven by the need to understand her.

The Starfarers series by Vonda N. McIntyre [Starfarers and its three sequels, Transition, Metaphase, and Nautilus] posits a near-future expedition, sort of a college campus in space, intended to explore other solar systems. The idea originally came from McIntyre making up a fake science fiction television show for a convention panel. The crew of Starfarer are hampered by politics on Earth as well as internal politics, but soon there is interstellar travel, leading to encounters with aliens. There are many realistic details concerning the sort of ship that would work best in these circumstances as well as the issues they might encounter. The first book in the series came out in 1989, and the ongoing influence of the Cold War is evident in planetary fears of the “Mideast Sweep.” The computing is also a bit dated; the ship has a sort of AI web called Arachne, which hints at the internet we have today, but also strongly resembles the computers in contemporaneous cyberpunk novels. Starfarers is notable for its explorations of intersectionality. The characters are from a range of races, countries, and backgrounds; three main characters are part of a polyamorous family group; and there’s even some exploration of class issues. It’s not perfect by any means, but I still feel it’s an important marker in the historical development of the genre. Like the other McIntyre books I re-read this month, her Sense of Wonder about the universe comes through clearly, even though in this series that’s a bit cluttered up with a large cast of characters. Their interpersonal dramas can be a bit too real, or perhaps like the tv miniseries Starfarers never was.

You can read more about Vonda McIntyre in A Brief Guide to the Extraordinary Fiction of Vonda N. McIntyre by Meredith Smith, at Tor.Com.

Nonfiction:
Making Comics is by Lynda Barry, author of “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” which I used to read every week in our free local weekly print newspaper. Remember those? Free weekly newspapers?

Barry also teaches comics, and importantly, her students are not necessarily artists; she points out that a lot of us mostly or entirely stop drawing in childhood, which definitely describes me. Barry talks a lot about drawing in the moment, and she often feels that drawings are “alive” even when the artist is not satisfied with their work. I found her approach very heartening.

This book collects exercises she uses in class. Though I didn’t actually follow along with all the exercises on this reading [many required multiple people], I did do some drawing in a nice notepad shaped like an elephant, using some of her methodology. It was fun. I am pleased with the results, and will keep drawing for a while.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande is about aging and death, particularly in the United States, and how doctors aren’t always the best at handling inevitable decline. I wasn’t sure I wanted to read this, but I felt I needed to. And it helped me start making some decisions about what I want my life to be like towards its end.

In their desire to fix things, to solve people’s overwhelming health problems, doctors can recommend treatments that harm a person’s quality of life rather than enhancing it. The most obvious example is courses of chemotherapy for late-stage cancers that debilitate far more than they help; Gawande talks about how doctors are mostly not trained to talk to patients about their death, so they tend to offer more treatments instead, even when they are sure those treatments will likely not extend the patient’s life. Obviously, it can be difficult for the person’s family, or even the patient, to talk about end of life as well. While discussing the inevitable process of aging, Gawande discusses the origins of assisted living, whether in a housing complex or remaining in one’s own home and receiving necessary services there. He also talks about the origins of nursing homes and how monetary concerns and safety regulations often completely overrule quality of life, for instance forcing a person who has a high risk of falling to stay in a wheelchair rather than walk, so the nursing home can avoid liability. And he talks about hospice care, which I knew about from personal experience with my parents. Mostly, what I got from the book was I need to talk about my end-of-life preferences with those who are close to me. It’s always better to have those desires known to someone, just in case. Recommended.

Fanfiction:
got no reason to smile by Lies_Unfurl is, on the surface, about Bucky Barnes’ birthday, but it’s also about both Bucky and Sam Wilson being left behind by Steve Rogers at the end of Avengers: Endgame, and about what makes our lives worth living. It’s sweet, but also poignant.

(hold on) when you get love by AugustaByron is a full-on sweet soulbond story, with poly relationship and a lot of kindness. You could probably enjoy this without canonical knowledge of Check Please! or the relevant characters Kent Parson (a professional hockey player), Larissa “Lardo” Duan (an artist and college student), and “Shitty” Knight (soon to be a law student).

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