The void is my friend.
Pages: 523
Purchased from: Kobo
I couldn’t put this one down. Intrigue, family drama, romance, fantastical creatures, magic, this book’s got it all and the author keeps it moving at a breakneck pace that is just right. I also really enjoyed the Chinese mythology fantasy setting for this book and I am looking forward to reading more of Sue Lynn Tan’s work in the future.
Pages: 586
Purchased from: Kobo
A very intriguing world with interesting characters. However, this one had the problem that first books in a new series sometimes have which is that about half the book is essentially doing worldbuilding. That is not to say that events did not happen in the first half of the book but it definitely felt everything was happening to the service of explaining some aspect of the world. It felt a bit weird.
Regardless of that I would definitely love to read the next book in the series to see what the author does with this world and characters now that a lot of the world building is out of the way.
Pages: 503
Purchased from: Kobo
This one is just a delight, fun and interesting characters in a steampunk Egypt where various kinds of djinn live side by side with humans and magic is just a part of everyday life.
Oh, and the main character is queer as fuck and a colonizer gets her comeuppance at the end of it all. What more can you ask for?
Pages: 607
Purchased from: Kobo
This book deals with so many different sci-fi oriented topics and yet it manages to tell a story that is compelling all the way to the end. The folly of human behaviour, the burdens of the passage of time, fracturing of identity over millennia, language, religion, evolution of species and its interaction with a species on the brink of extinction. Tchaikovsky weaves an intricate web using all of this and yet keeps the story easy to follow with distinct and clear perspective shifts that are never out of place.
That is an extremely high level overview of what the book deals with in the course of its narrative. I can’t go into further detail here without entering spoiler territory and this is a book I really don’t want to spoil for folks. If you enjoy reading sci-fi at all, you should definitely put this one on your wishlist/to-read list.
Pages: 376
Purchased from: Kobo
I think is the first book I’ve read this year that has a explicitly trans main character and it’s also written by a trans author! And folks the book is pretty good! A weird sci-fi plot backdrops the main narrative mixed with elements of magical realism. Ryka makes all of this work wonderfully.
Ryka’s reasons for writing are also important to make people aware of, from a piece from Publisher’s Weekly from 2015:
I am a born writer; I can’t imagine doing anything else. Just as a trans pianist does not limit herself to trans composers, nor a trans doctor to trans patients, as a trans writer, I would rather not limit my stories, my imagination, and my craft. One of my writing professors had a favorite saying: “Writing is a public act.” I take this lesson seriously, prescriptively. In a world where queer, and especially trans people are dehumanized, I think we need more public acts, not merely as demonstrations but as affirmations that our stories, as different as they might be, are exquisitely human.
If a trans musician can make the audience cry by playing Chopin, how else, but as a human, can she be regarded? And if a book written by a queer trans Asian American can make you think of your own beaches, your own sunsets, or the dear departed grandmother you loved so much and even now find yourself speaking to, then what more powerful statement of our common humanity can there be?
Well said. Ryka achieves this with this book as well.