This collection of stories share a central premise (there is a machine which, when provided with a blood sample, prints the user's cause of death on a small strip of paper) but take it in many different directions. Several of them depict ways that such a device might be used by governments, some involve aliens, and a few are very surreal. My favorites are “Old Age, Surrounded by Loved Ones”, “Zephyr”, “Lazarus Reactor Fission Sequence”, “Drowning Burning Falling Flying”, “Monsters from the Deep”, “Toxoplasmosis of the Brain”, “Cancer”, “Two One Six”, “Meat Eater”, “In Sleep”, “Not Applicable”, and “Peacefully”. It’s a pretty strong collection but sometimes there’s significant mood whiplash when reading straight through the stories. If you like stories about death and how people deal with the concept of death when given concrete evidence of their own mortality, check this out. The kinds of stories are broad enough that even if you don't care for every single story there will likely be one you'll love if you're a fan of existential sci-fi (there are a few fantasy stories as well). Some of the stories have a twist where the military or government can get more information than civilians can about upcoming deaths, or where the patterns in predictions are understood to reveal some broader event. Other stories focus on ways that people grapple with the temptation to try and avert the prediction, to beat the machine, but are unable. Yet still others posit societies where the machine of death is a part of life, not feared or revered but counted on for its surety.

This is a collection where, by definition, there's death either explicitly or implicitly in every story. I liked of them, but there was one where the way racism was handled (“Execution by Beheading”) was very disturbing, and while I’m pretty sure that story’s author was making a point about xenophobia and racism rather than it just being a problematic story, that didn’t make it any easier to read. That’s up to each reader, obviously, but I personally dislike this particular story enough that when I’m reading this book for pleasure instead of to review it I skip it. 

The structure of the anthology as a whole works pretty well. I especially like the placement of the first and last stories. "Old Age, Surrounded by Loved Ones" is a truly beautiful way to start the collection, establishing the premise with a heart-wrenching but relatively gentle story (when compared to some of the middle ones). "Furnace" is perfectly placed at the end for the reader to be very familiar with the premise, making the necessary connections quickly after reading dozens of other stories, only to watch the protagonists not understand what's going on in a way that's simultaneously a little bit funny and very sad.

I read this book expecting a story where two people die at the end. What I got was a tender, heartfelt, and sometimes exhilarating story about two guys connecting when they're almost out of time, sharing their friends and their last moments. 

I really like the narrative structure. The first part of the book stayed with the two MCs for a while, letting me really get to know them as characters and get a sense of the setting. Then, once they were established as MCs, it slowly introduces snippets from other characters' perspectives to give context, sometimes to get in the head of someone the MC's interacted with (or someone who knows someone they interacted with). It helped to ground their experiences and create this feeling of many people living their lives with all these connections, but always returning to the MCs and their growing bonds with each other. There were only a few places in this snippet of the world which were important, but even with these few locations and small selection of characters it made it feel big. They had time to visit places and return to a few key ones as things changed throughout the day, or sometimes only the reader was the one revisiting when the second glance was through another character's eyes. Many of the characters grew or changed in this one day. Not everyone, obviously, a mass epiphany or everyone becoming great overnight would have broken immersion, but enough for it to feel like a book where most people became a little bit better for having gone though this day, for having known each other. The way the central conceit was incorporated into the rest of the modern world was really smooth. When they first meet on the app I was laughing because it felt right, that's absolutely how this kind of app would have played out in 2017 when the book is set. Grounding this in a specific day on the calendar was very wise, since it means that even as the popular apps change it can still feel relevant because it's not pretending that technology is ageless or something. It also feels like it'll be resonant for a long time because it's specific and poignant without being self-aggrandizing.

I didn't expect the ending to blow me away, but it did. I mean, it's in the title, right? But this is a book that's fully about the journey, not the destination, and it has room to be fun, serious, contemplative, heart-pounding, sad, and wonderful, all in one day of the characters' lives. The seeds of the end were there from the beginning and I'm so sad that the book is over, even though I knew it had to end eventually. I love the ending. I'm very sad about it, but it's perfect for this book and these characters. If it really had to be over sometime this was probably the best way it could have gone about it.

THE WICKER KING is a tale of compulsion, mental illness, loyalty, love, and consent; finding how far a king and his knight can go to save the world without burning up.

I loved reading this. The two main characters are so intertwined, so vivid and resonant that it took me half the book to realize that only one of them was actually a POV character. The way the story is told in one to two page sections made it feel like I could take a break anywhere if I needed to, if it ever got too intense for me. Instead I barely paused, inhaling it in a single sitting. 

The story is very focused on the MCs and their intense relationship, but has a few secondary characters and devotes enough time for them to feel like full characters. In a book so focused on the interior worlds of just two people it would be easy to have other characters be ill-defined and mere window-dressing. Instead their reactions to the MCs both established the secondary characters in their own right and helped to build up the MCs by commenting on things they were unable or unready to consider. Some of the secondary characters are also love interests, and they're handled in a way that maintains their agency even as they are allowed less and less space in the MCs' world. The photos, documents, and slowly darkening pages helped with world-building and mood, but even without that assistance this story is absorbing and fascinating. There were two worlds to build, and both were excellently laid. 

This is primarily about someone having difficult telling apart fantasy and reality, and the best friend doing his best to help. There are voices of reason trying to provide stability at various points, but the extent to which they do or do not succeed is crucial to the story, so take care of yourselves and check the CWs before proceeding. 

THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS is a slow burn murder mystery steeped in a slightly fantastical but still brutal vision of colonialist France, recasting human interests as Fallen ones with the specter of lost heaven at their backs. For a story so detailed and complex, there's actually a low number of major players carrying out the machinations. This allows for political maneuvering that's fairly easy to follow (for a multiple-POV multiple-murder mystery, at least). The end result is an absorbing world and a very satisfying resolution, setting the stage for greater things still to come in the rest of the series. It's full of legacy, caught between trying to forget painful histories and claiming present power on the basis of past struggles. I like the characters even when I hope they'll lose in the layers of deception, the weight of history, and the game of Houses.

The world-building is really good, it explicitly rejects assumptions that the colonizer's magic (to the extent that the Fallen are French if they're from any nation at all) is the only kind. Most of the characters disagree with each other about something, and the combination of those disagreements builds a fuller picture of the world even as it informs who they are as individuals. The perspective shifted between the MCs frequently enough to keep the story moving but not so often as to be confusing. 

I loved reading this, it tied off this book's plot rather neatly while transforming the stage for further power struggles. It's definitely not a cliffhanger, and yet I need to know what everyone does next. I will definitely check out the sequels.

These stories play with math, language, and science, situating their more technical aspects within various strange and internally consistent rule-sets which stretch into the fantastic while wearing the clothes of the scientific, all to tell deeply moving stories about people in strange worlds which are almost like our own. From a literal interpretation of the Tower of Babel wherein they reach to the heavens, to a mathematical formalism so destabilizing that it drives the theorist to despair, to a contemplation on beauty and appearance which refuses to ever quite take a side on its central question. One of the strengths of this collection is the worldbuilding, the way the details vary from story to story but they're all extremely immersive, exploring the strange corners of each premise while still feeling complete and focused. My favorites were "Tower of Babylon" and "Understand", closely followed by "Story of Your Life" (upon which the 2016 film, "Arrival" is based). Several of them were uncomfortable in a good way, but that experience will obviously vary widely. 

YOUNG, GIFTED & QUEER puts the Cute Mutants through a lot of blood and violence in order to get to someplace that's hopefully better than where they started. The MC is wonderfully snarky without being mean, the bonds between the characters (mutant and non-mutant alike) are complex and changing throughout the story, and the shadowy government organization trying to control their every move is pretty dang shadowy. Everyone's abilities are growing without making them feel overpowered (at least not yet), and they have much to figure out as friends, warriors, and fellow mutants. Also I like the MC's new weapon, both as a character and as a nice way to illustrate her growing abilities (not all of which are under her control).

I'm using "she" for the MC because those are her pronouns in this volume, but she's starting to maybe think about some gender stuff and I'm here for it, however many volumes that takes. 

This book two of a series so it's time for the sequel check. It wraps up several big things left hanging from the previous book, and it has a pretty major storyline that starts here and wasn't present in the other book. It has several things which were introduced and resolved in this book, and it's not the last book in the series so I'm happy to report that it's explicitly left a lot of things which could get resolved in later books (but without feeling like a massive cliffhanger). The MC is the same. There was a very positive change in her narration since in the first book she used a lot of casually ableist language and most of that is gone here. It's at a level where I'd barely notice it if I hadn't been on the lookout after the first book. But, generally, she sound like the same person from book to book, so there's definite continuity of narrative style. Finally, there's enough context and explanations here that I think someone could pick this up and understand almost all of it. But really, this is book two, rather than starting here it makes sense to go back for book one. This series is poised to work well with an episodic style and the groundwork is excellently laid, even this early on.

I think my favorite thing in this series is the way it can make even cliché parts of a queer teenage mutant's journey feel fresh and important. The MC is very genre-savvy, and aware of which genre she's in, which is crucial, but she doesn't anticipate everything and there are some pretty heart-wrenching things that she didn't predict and wasn't ready for. It's a delicate balance to write a genre-savvy character without having them feel either omniscient and boring or like a Cassandra (always right but never believed), and I think this book nails it. It's not hard to guess that "shadowy government organization is shadowy, does not great stuff with their knowledge of mutants" was a likely setup after the first book, but where this volume takes that premise was both exhilarating and heartbreaking. It's a strong sequel that I like even better than the first book, I'm very happy about this one.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

As a trans person this was stressful and difficult to read. Not because of inaccuracies (the dysphoria felt extremely realistic and very draining), but because it spends so much time dwelling on all the stuff that sucks and how dysphoric the MC feels that I didn’t feel like I got to know any of the other characters. I wish I'd gotten a sense of who his friends are separate from how they did or did not help him come out. Even conversations which weren’t about gender would often fade into an internal monologue as the MC either couldn't pay attention or actively tuned them out. Later on when he's a lot less dysphoric the non-transition conversations would get summaries and the transition-focused conversations would get full dialogue. When he finds a supportive space and starts to have other trans people to talk to him it felt good at first, but then it became clear that the book was setting up tension between him and his girlfriend by him not communicating well and her thinking that his friendships with the trans group were a threat to her relationship with him. For a book so good at depicting how to navigate various medical aspects of a transmasc experience it felt like it sacrificed any attempts at modeling healthy social transition. His girlfriend would probably have felt a lot less isolated and threatened by his new friendships if he’d been able to communicate more clearly with her. I understand that part of it is he's a teenager, and teenagers not doing the right thing is part of writing realistic teenagers, but I find it hard to believe that in the hours and hours of transition video footage he didn't look up anything on how to come out to his family, come out to friends, or come out to his girlfriend. Even a few lines about how he'd seen those and they weren't any help might have fixed it (I read an ARC, so I don't know if the final version has changes like this). 

It felt like the narrative had a very medicalized focus on transition. Pronoun etiquette aside (I appreciated that), almost every conversation about being trans had some piece about his body, trans bodies generally, binding, hormones, etc. And that’s a huge part of some people’s transitions, sure, but it meant that often the book felt like it was being trans 101 more than a story. But also, if you don’t know what I mean by “trans 101” “dysphoria”, “medicalized... transition”, or “pronoun etiquette”, then give this a try. It’s pretty accurate to one way transitioning can look and I hope it helps people. I read this as an ARC so it's possible some of my reservations were addressed in the final edit, but it would gut the book and turn it into an completely different narrative to refocus it away from the medical aspects of transition since that is so much of the plot.

Overall I'd recommend this as one transmasc perspective on navigating a lot of the more stressful parts of coming out, even if the MC isn't perfect at it. Seeing some things not work but it mostly ending up okay is really important. I do give the warning that there's a lot of dysphoric ideation and so this might be a stressful read for anyone with dysphoria or certain kinds of body dysmorphia.

This a quiet and powerful Cinderella retelling with a focus on the MC's interior world rather than the exact details of the vaguely antiquated setting. It's a fairy tale steeped in fairy tales, discussing strange bargains of dubious origin as the MC first is connected to her departed mother then seeks escape from her abusive stepmother via fairy tales. It portrays the MC's two romantic options of a sort in a way that makes them obviously two different paths, two different ways the rest of her life could go, not just two people she cares for. Even the possible pairing which looks straight at a glance feels queer in the way that two bi people dating is unquestionably queer even if it looks straight to an outsider. The sapphic pairing made me want to scream for them to kiss already, I'm not kidding about this being a slow burn all around.

On its merits as a retelling, I enjoyed how a lot of what is usually the main story is kind of happening in the background (e.g. the prince's search). It stands on its own and doesn't require any familiarity with the original or some of the more famous adaptations. If you are familiar with the basic tale there are references to anchor it without feeling like its wholly retreading ground. 

Overall it's a lovely mix of vibes, yearning, queerness, and fairy tales with undertones of grief, loss, mourning, and moving on.