A quick, fun short story set in the same world as Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang's In Real Life. You can read it for free at the url in the description.

I picked this up because it had a short story by Jen Wang in it. As are many short story collections, it's a mixed bag.

This is a sweet, quiet, surprising book. Considering that it just tops 200 pages, it packs more a of punch, and more of a twist ending, than I was expecting. It starts with an orchestral performance at a church, in which Christine plays violin. She tries hard to be everything her parents want: academic, musical, and serious- never painting her nails, taking Chinese language lessons and extra math after school. Then Moon and her mother move into the granny unit behind their house. Moon is a bundle of contradictions: vegetarian, Buddhist, funny, loud, good at drawing, obsessed with K-Pop, uncool but supremely confident. She's less feminine than Christine but she wears nail polish, she watches youtube instead of studying but does well on her tests. She and Christine quickly become best friends, and Moon talks her into signing up for the talent show together. But when other people being to befriend Moon and hang out with her when Christine isn't available, she gets jealous and does something that might sabotage their friendship forever. Will they be able to mend it? And what about the visions Moon sometimes mentions, of celestial beings who say her real home isn't on planet Earth...? I picked up a black and white advanced reader copy of this book at BookExpo 2019. I can't wait to see what it will look like in full color, because the art is already wonderful. While you wait, go pick up any of Jen Wang's earlier books (In Real Life, Koko Be Good, or Eisner nominated The Prince and the Dressmaker) because they are all amazing!

This is a book with some really gorgeous elements and passages, but also some flaws. Its likely going to linger with me for a while, because it clarified some questions I have been pondering about female characters in books written by women but focused on men. I don't want to say more about that just yet, but after having read two Natasha Pulley books back to back I can say that she's very interested in writing about emotional friendship/relationships between men interrupted by tragic circumstances... which is a thing I enjoy reading about... while also feeling conflicted when female characters are pushed to the margins of the narrative. To get to the actual plot, this book is set in London in the 1880s. Thaniel Steepleton is a telegraph operator in a government office whose life has shrunk to encompass little more than his job, his commute, and sending money back home to his windowed sister- until the day he comes home to find a mysterious gold pocket watch left in his bedroom, which ends up saving his life during a terrorist bombing of Scotland Yard. He seeks out the watchmaker and finds Keita Mori, a Japanese immigrant and genius inventor. His shop on Filigree street is full of mechanical birds, glowing fireflies, a clockwork octopus and some of the most beautiful watches Thaniel has ever seen. He ends up befriending the lonely watchmaker, which complicates matters when Mori falls under police suspicions. Thaniel is asked to spy on his new friend... which might be impossible, as Mori is also a clairvoyant who can read pieces of the future with startling accuracy.

Pulley has done her research, including spending 19 months living in Japan on a scholarship to study that country in the tumultuous late 1800s. I hope that this means her representation of Japanese people and culture is fairly good, but I am not knowledgeable enough personally to say. This book is her first, and there are places were the plot drags- it takes 150 pages for all of the principle characters to finally met, and there are some other pacing issues in the conclusion. I enjoyed this book more than I might have because I had read her second novel, The Bedlam Stacks, already - its set in the same world and has one overlapping character, but is overall faster paced, more urgent and more magical. I'm not sure if I would have had as much investment in this one if I had read it alone. Overall, I'd only recommend it to people who enjoy a slow and strange read- people who liked The Essex Serpent and A Conspiracy of Truths. Don't read it if you get impatient with a debut author.

This book's central themes are grief, depression, and lost love. I tend to be historically resistant to books on grief, probably because I am unfortunately over-skilled at compartmentalizing my own emotions. This book came very highly recommended to me, but I was a bit wary about starting it, because I was worried I wouldn't like it. However, it had some surprises in it (including a queer relationship) that I ended up really appreciating. The main character is Marin, a college freshman, who suffered a severe and shattering loss just before leaving her home in San Francisco for her first semester of college in New York. The book opens on the first day of winter break. She has only just begun to regain her emotional equilibrium, but is fearful that a visit from her high school best friend will bring back a tide of unbearable memories. The author weaves together scenes of the visit with pieces of the girl's last year of high school, filling in the background of their families and their friendship. It's a somewhat simple story, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I hope all the readers who need this book find it.

I have read this book two previous times, in 2003 and 2006, and enjoyed it- though my favorite Earthsea book has always been Tombs of Atuan. Very recently I got a chance to watch a fabulous new documentary about Le Guin, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin directed by Arwen Curry. If you get a chance to see this film, take it! It's extremely good, but is only showing in very select film and lit festivals currently (you can find the schedule on the website, here: https://worldsofukl.com/). One of the things Le Guin talks about in the film is the moment it was pointed out to her that Earthsea, as celebrated as it is, has almost no female characters of agency in it. Le Guin considered herself a feminist, and really had to sit with this realization and think about it for a while. Many of her later books grapple with gender in very explicit and exciting ways, but she hadn't quite got there yet when this (her fourth published novel) was written. I wanted listen to the audiobook again both because it had been a really long time, and also to experience it through the lens of all the new things I learned about Le Guin from the film. Hopefully I have time to make my way through the rest of the series as well!

This is a very good, smart, effective book about an infectious disease quickly taking over a whole Southern California town, and the local and nation response to the spread of the virus. It's also a philosophical book which ponders on the nature of dreams, the scale of time, and whether we can ever truly know if something is happening in real life or is just a vision, a blurring of past, future and imagination. It's also an emotional book about several individuals at very different points in their lives dealing with personal crisis. Mei is a shy, introverted, 18 year old college freshman. Her roommate is the first person to be struck down by the virus. Soon, several more people from her dorm fall ill and the whole wing is put on quarantine. Nathaniel is a biology teacher at the college who thinks they are making too big a deal of it when all school classes are suspended until further notice. He hasn't been paying much attention to the news, worried about his husband who has become unresponsive in a nursing home. Ben and Annie are adjunct professors who moved to town recently with their new baby. They are horrified when they learn that the donated milk they have been receiving might be contaminated by the virus spreading in the hospital, striking down nurses and doctors as well as the families who gathered at the bedsides of the ill. Catherine is a doctor who is trapped in the hospital when it too is put on lock down. Sara and Libby live next door to Ben and Annie- they decide to hide alone in their house after their paranoid, survivalist father falls ill. Each of these characters and more must get through an interconnected series of worst scenarios, but the book never feels hopeless or horrific. It's tone is compassionate and sympathetic towards each character, all of them just people doing their best in the middle of a terrible situation.

I was very impressed by this collection of LGBTQ genre stories. Some standouts include one in which a teenage boy summons a demon to help him decide if he is gay; one of a Viking being reunited with his lover in Valhalla after a heroic death; one about an asexual and aromantic necromancer; one about rival food delivery service people (so much more at stake when you are racing against your ex); one about a nonbinary dentist to magical creatures who befriends a werewolf; and one about queer graffiti artists who live in a virtual reality. I contributed one illustration to this book, so I'm not exactly unbiased, but I think it's a very strong anthology!