November is #SciFiMonth, hosted by Imyril @One More and Lisa @Dear Geek Place. So for this episode of catching up with my review folder, 3 sci -fi books!

Artwork by Tithi Luadthong from 123RF.com

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

I’d been meaning to read Ninefox Gambit for ages but never got round to it, so I was really happy when it was our mod book club pick. I ended up liking it and will probably continue the series, despite the fact that we got off to a really rough start. Yoon Ha Lee throws you into the thick of it with no explanation and a lot of sciency technobabble. I was really struggling to keep up till someone told me to think of it as magic and afterward I was fine.

There are two main characters in the story, and the second one only shows up close to halfway in. The first one is ok, she’s got some interesting skills and a good approach to problems, but the second one was what carried the book for me. He’s dangerous, mysterious, always plotting, always keeping everyone on their toes trying to figure him out.

The world is great, the magic system/technology used is sort of consensus-based, unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it’s great how the story constantly engages with the consequences this system has on society. Some of my favorite parts were seeing how these things had evolved over about 300 years.

r/fantasy bingo Number in title, Book Club

Planetfall by Emma Newman

I’ve been putting off this review since this summer, cause I don’t think I could do it justice. I loved this book, not in the usual way that I generally relate to books, but because of what it did to me, how it made me think, and how hard some parts were to read.

The book is about a small group of human settlers on a distant planet with a huge tree-like structure that they call God’s City. Past and present meld a lot, as an event makes the main character remember and relive a lot of her experiences from when they first arrived on the planet. I really liked how she knows more than the reader, but she’s blocking out a lot of memories, so both reader and MC are in it together trying to figure things out, even though she’s got a somewhat clearer picture.

The world itself and the mystery of God’s City are really cool, there were a lot of times when I was questioning what was real.

My favorite part of the book was how it dealt with mental health, healing, and how secrets affect people. I thought it was very cleverly done how I didn’t catch it at first, and then when “a thing” is made clear it hit really close to home for me. It was compelling to read, but I also had to put the book down and take a lot of breaks from it.

r/fantasy bingo: Big dumb Object

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

This was a weird book in a lot of ways, and I really enjoyed it a lot. For one thing, it starts off with a 50-page chapter about a character that is seemingly unconnected to the rest of the story. And then the next chapter is set 1000 years in the past. And only after these we start following the character who will take us through most of the story. I loved how it was apparently disjointed, but it all clicked together and made sense by the end, everything ended up mattering and being interconnected. (Most of) the story is set in a space-age world, where humanity has colonized a good amount of planets.

I really liked the characters, they’re each in their own ways very focussed and always searching for something. Fumiko is so dedicated to her work and I loved the choices she made and what consequences those come to have. Seeing all of Ahno’s slow development was great too. There’s some found family goodness along the way, but not in the happy Becky Chambers way, in fact, the entire book is quite a lot darker in tone. I’m only mentioning that because I don’t want “found family on a spaceship” to give you the wrong sort of ideas.

One of the strong themes in the book is critiquing extreme capitalism and colonialism. The entire economy of this space-age civilization is based on stripping people of cultural identity to produce one specific product. There are also these all-controlling mega-corporations and a lot of seeing people as disposable resources.  It was really interesting and not what I was expecting from the rural beginning.

r/fantasy bingo: published in 2020 H,

BLM Book Bingo: MISFIT: featuring found family, STARS: set in outer space