A PSALM OF STORMS AND SILENCE is the fantastic conclusion to an excellent duology. One of many places where this shines is in its portrayal of trauma and aftermath, but especially in its portrayal of a kind of lingering pain from ongoing emotional abuse. The characters have room to make bad decisions in ways that are completely understandable. I was never frustrated by the choices they make in a narrative sense because the narrative itself made sure I knew whose manipulations, lies, and control of information were driving those bad decisions. It deftly uses a thousand years of self-interest and old grief, showing how they shape the characters' present, even if ways they hadn't realized were connected. It's about how accepting present power with a legacy of past power means both acting responsibly with the power in the present and accepting responsibility for the legacy of harm caused by that power in the past. How a chain of people accepting enormous power but eschewing responsibility for the harm caused by the power lead to even more harm. These layers of trauma, aftermath, resolution, acceptance, and restitution play out within their own lifetimes and on the scale of kingdoms as they try to stop the world from breaking with the grief of a goddess and the fruitless scheming of a dead king. 

Karina and Malik's relationship is complicated, with lies and misunderstandings from A SONG OF WRAITHS AND RUIN meddling in what ought to be a simple case of one hunting the other to try and stop the fall of the kingdom. Farid is a well-written manipulator, wrapped up in his own plans and unable to see the difference between someone agreeing with him and one who's just placating him to avert his anger and disappointment from falling on them. His frustrations make sense with his character and circumstances, his increasingly complicated plans hum along in the background of everything Malik and Karina try to accomplish.

This wraps up more than one major thing left hanging from the first book. The main storyline starts here and was only lightly present previously. There are several major things that are both introduced and resolved, and as part two of a duology it’s an immensely satisfying ending. The main characters are the same and they’re consistent with their portrayals in the first book. This might make sense if someone tried to start here and hadn’t read the previous book, it does a good job of referencing prior events without devolving into a full recap. It was definitely enough to pull me fully into the story even though it’s been a while since I read A SONG OF WRAITHS AND RUIN and my recall was initially fuzzy. I'd basically forgotten what happened before and it gently reminded me at gradual intervals as various previous events became relevant. The current stakes and past drama are clearly communicated, and the emotional context is vibrant.

The ending is excellent. There's still a lot of work to do and a lot of life for the survivors to live, and it's okay that this story stops here since it had to stop somewhere. I love the framing device, it satisfied my need to know what happens next.

COMFORT ME WITH APPLES is a story of trouble in paradise, when Sophia finds something out of place and begins to question everything she knows about her life.

The worldbuilding is amazing, deftly layered through lists of community rules and the details of Sophia’s explorations. Sophia is a bit saccharine as a character, I prefer more of an edge to protagonists, but her sweetness is important to the plot and is used very well. 

I love the ending, it ties things up neatly in a way that suits the story as a whole.

ANNHILATION is built on twin pillars of grief and uncertainty, as the biologist of a four-woman expedition into a strange land begins to mistrust her present she tries to reassess her past. 

There are many obvious analogies to draw in the way the biologist's ruminations on her history are driven by her attempts to analyze her increasingly disturbing present. For me they land in this strange middle zone of, on the one hand, being fairly obvious comparisons to draw in a novel and thus feeling a bit boring, and on the other hand they completely make sense for the character to have pondered and journaled in this situation. They're so perfectly fitting that it seems obvious, but nevertheless I was rarely bored. 

I ended the book feeling like I knew a great deal about the biologist (but never her name), and not very much about Area X itself. What she was able to convey was confined to a few (very cool!) areas within what is implied to be a much larger space. 

I'm intrigued enough to move on to the sequel. There are a lot of little moments I love, tiny descriptions and ways of thinking about the world, and I would happily read more of those.

It felt like I was wading through adjectives and clothing descriptions to get to the glimmer of a plot. I don't like the style, it's just not for me.

As a controlled dose of strangeness and unsettling feelings I heartily recommend this. It's a 1950's vision of a bunch of pretty strange futures filled with invasions, aliens, and the strange insistence that calling the planet "Terra" will somehow disguise the fact that it's definitely meant to be some version of "Earth". The titular story, “Minority Report” is only lightly related to its various film adaptations, at once more nuanced and interesting, making it easy to see why science fiction keeps pulling PKD's work for adaptation. 

I read PKD when I want to feel a bit paranoid, a bit off-kilter. Paranoia and unreality suffuse his work, and this is no exception. This of course comes with the caveat that if unreality, paranoia, or "the creeping sense that maybe everyone (or at least a lot of people) are lying to you" is going to make you have a bad time... you probably won't enjoy PKD's writing. “Second Variety” uses this in combination with ideas of the contemporaneous Cold War to create one of my favorite stories in the whole collection. “The Electric Ant” and “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” round out my top three. 

As a reader over half a century removed from its publishing date I find myself hard pressed to determine whether the large cast of female characters in supporting roles are part of the social commentary or just a background hum which undergirds the actions of the male protagonists. Viv in "Oh, to be a Blobell" points to the former, while characters like Kathy in "What the Dead Men Say" leave me unsure as to sexism and suddenly concerned about ableism. I have no reason to think that any of these is less a commentary than any other, especially when a story like "War Game" is very unsubtle in its allegory.

SNOW CRASH is a cyberpunk fantasy starts with a high-stakes pizza delivery and ends with some cool explosives, taking a path that leads through many burbclaves, at least one cult, and a lot of exposition that relies on fascinations explanations of ancient Sumer to discuss a computer virus that's messing up brains. 

It's using and remixing available stereotypes to their limit to create cartoonishly distilled essences that allow for quick action in the partitioned but not wholly divided setting. There are stark boundary lines all over the place, governing laws, behavior, and life-or-death stakes for everyone within these borders, lit by each Franchise's signage and governed by their franchisee manuals. Where the grooves of life are so well worn around most denizens that they barely notice a disturbance to their routines, unless they’re the protagonist, Hiro Protagonist or perhaps the Kourier Y.T. There's a franchise for most things, and some of those things are racism. There's some fatphobia and scattered ableist language which seem to be regular levels of bigotry instead of forming the kind of pointed social commentary which underpins and incorporates the other -isms. 

Hiro’s biracial identity (Black/Japanese) matters to the story and exists for more than the surface-level excuse to name the main character “hero protagonist” with alternate spelling. There are several moments where he figures out things based on how someone reacts (or doesn’t) to his appearance and background. 

Y.T. isn't as introspective as Hiro, but she gets a decent amount of focus and her perspective is integral to the story, both as an active agent and as an observer with a very different point of view from Hiro, a non-hacker one.

As a cultural artifact, this feels more prescient than it perhaps has a right to be because a lot of people have tried to make things more like the world imagined here, and that's not always a good thing. Reading it now is strange because even something like the word "avatar" as a representation of one's physical self in a digital context was popularized by this book and so it doesn't feel new, though it was at the time. 

REDEMPTOR is a story of love, friendship, promises, and exploitation as Tarisai strives to end, once and for all, the cycles of poverty and violence that have heretofore been the social and economic underpinnings of the Empire. 

In the first half, because Tarisai needs to get her own council it felt like she was doing again something we already saw the first time around. Much of the early book is figuring out what she needs to do, accepting that it's really the same thing that happened in book one and then doing it, which made it the pacing drag for me. Also by adding a second council of equal number to the first, it made the character list feel enormous and meant I had trouble feeling like I got to know more than a handful. I'm not new to large casts in fantasy, but normally there's more stratification in how important they are to the main character(s). In this, there was text telling me how important they all were, but not enough room to show scenes of all of them being very important in a way that showed that connection rather than just telling. 

The second half is where it really shines, with answers to what was plaguing her in the first half, events moving more quickly, and a really fantastic ending to the duology. It proposes to answer immensely complicated questions in a very small space and finds a resolution to them which fits this context and characters. In a world where the Ray exists, it's a good answer. 

 The Underworld is interesting and well-described, the worldbuilding really shines there even though it's a relatively short section. The rest of the worldbuilding is very robust, with special care given to the descriptions of clothing from various parts of the Empire. It feels like a lived-in world, even in the small part of it that the story has time to cover directly. 

This wraps up a very major thing left hanging from RAYBEARER. It has a storyline which starts here and wasn't present before, with several major things that are both introduced and resolved in this volume. It is the last book of the duology and it wraps up pretty much everything left hanging while also giving a vision of what the basic trajectory is for these characters after the book is over. It feels finished, which is good since there aren't any more planned in the series. The main character is the same as before, Tarisai, and her voice is consistent in this book. This wouldn't make a lot of sense if someone started here without reading RAYBEARER. This is book two of a two-part series, so please start with RAYBEARER. There's enough explanation that someone could probably get settled enough to enjoy the ride after the first 20%, but really it needs the first book to be whole. 

It's the culmination of a great many things, a chance to happen upon trouble and help save the day once more. With nearly equal parts prep, stress, and investigating high treason, WHEN SORROWS COME is Toby and Tybalt's wedding (and it's about time). The wedding is beautiful, so much thought went into every bit of it, from the actual event in the book to just the right level of death and danger trying to get in the way. This doesn't develop much for Tybalt, since he's been ready for the wedding and Toby's the one who has to come to terms with this being a good thing she can actually have. It's well balanced between introspection and danger, with some tangible things for Toby to fight as she's having her internal struggle. Toby's relationship with Quentin gets examined in a new context now that Toby is around his family and former home. It changes and reshuffles things in a complicated but ultimately good way and leads to some of my favorite moments from this one.

This wraps up an enormous thing left hanging from... the last several books, and that's the wedding! For real, it actually, finally is happening, Toby is in a wedding dress on the cover and that's no lie. There is a major storyline which starts here and wasn't present before, though the underpinnings of it (as per usual) can be glimpsed in the older books. A major thing is introduced and resolved as part of that storyline. This isn't the end of the series, and it leaves the emotional arc of a really important relationship of Toby's in an unresolved place that I'm sure future books will address. It also sets up a positive trajectory to a few more relationships that had been in a precarious or downright negative place before this, and I'm looking forward to how all of those continue to play out, for good or for ill. The wedding and reception scenes made sure to hint very specifically at something that Toby hasn't given much thought before not but I'm pretty sure is going to become important within a book or two. Toby is still the narrator and her voice is consistent with the previous books. I think this would be an okay jumping-on point, but it'll definitely make more sense if the reader started at least as far back as A RED-ROSE CHAIN. For someone determined to move boldly onwards without reading the previous books, I suspect this will be an okay landing place because it clearly establishes the status quo of a lot of Toby's relationships through the framing of who is and isn't at the wedding and why (some of that happens in the included novella, so definitely don't skip that). The wedding itself will be a lot more satisfying to readers who have been along for as much of Toby's journey as possible, of course.