This book, just wow. Chanel Miller is a powerful and precise writer, and she puts the perfect words together throughout this book to proclaim a message that inside my heart is just an incoherent jumble of emotions and anger. If I were the highlighting type, at least half this book would be neon. I love every single thing about this book, except the circumstances that made it possible and necessary for it to be written. I know I’ll read anything Miller writes next, and I wish her the widest open space in which to choose what that will be. This book has my highest recommendation, please take care of yourself reading it, especially if you’ve been sexually assaulted.

The Giver is a middle grade dystopian about a boy who, upon receiving an unusual work assignment at age twelve, discovers his perfect community is hiding some huge flaws beneath the surface. To anyone who knows my taste in books today, it’s likely no surprise that this book was one that I loved back then and that stuck with me ever since. Rereading as an adult, I was more conscious of how simplistic some aspects of this story are. While I think that’s probably par for the course for most middle grade, my only recent middle grade experience is reading Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, which I felt was vastly more sophisticated. I also got bogged down on a few picky details, which was honestly unnecessary but I couldn’t help myself from getting annoyed.⁣
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This book is only about 150 pages, and it packs quite a bit into that space, building out Jonas’ world swiftly and detailing a full year in his life. It asks interesting questions about the comparative worth of individuality vs sameness, and order vs emotions. I wish the resolution was more drawn out, and for more nuanced explorations at times, but I think the book accomplishes its aims admirably, especially for young readers.⁣

This book proclaims itself to be a novella, but I would argue it’s really four connected short stories. Each story is set in the late 30th century/early 31st century on human-colonized Mars and focuses on one character. Humankind is perhaps less advanced than you might expect for a century in the future, in fact some diseases, such as ALS, are now vastly more prevalent. However, we’ve terraformed Mars, leveraged genetic mutation to create “Superior” humans, and have begun to dabble with the “outsiders”, recently encountered aliens, whose DNA may provide further opportunities for genetic advances.⁣
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Erin had prepared me for this book to be a struggle, and a few pages in she was apologizing as I wrote “I’m so confused I could cry”, but then somehow it all melted away and I found myself really loving this book? It’s worth noting that it could have used additional editing. The sentences vary in how successfully they meet English grammar standards, but I think if I’m being honest those issues were small quirks to stumble past, almost never enough to prevent understanding the intention of a sentence. Where I experienced greater confusion at times was differentiating moments happening now vs recounted memories, but also people with flawless English fail that test all the time, and I’m generally one who’s willing to reread until things click into place. ⁣
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One choice I find most interesting in this book is the order in which the stories are presented, which is not chronological, but serves to explore multiple facets of humankind teetering on the brink of, and toppling over into a new world containing both humans and outsiders. We first meet the outsiders in the first story, through the eyes of a genetic researcher studying possible applications of splicing together human and outsider DNA, then we skip forward to see the initial fruits of this labor, following a Superior-outsider boy who’s born blind and physically disabled. The third story skips back in time, told predominantly in the second person, as if the narrator is writing a letter to his deceased wife, filling in additional details about the uncertainty initially adopting of Superior genes. The final story takes place as humans encounter the outsiders for the first time, somehow circling back to prepare the way for the stories we’ve already read, and illuminating our fears on the brink of this thrilling turning point. ⁣⁣
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Yes, this wasn’t a completely straightforward book to follow, but my head feels full in the best way from the experience. I love the ideas at play here, and the feeling of being on the precipice of a new world was sorta timely if you think about it.

Another nearly perfect short story collection by one of my favorite authors, Ken Liu. The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is an exciting compilation of Liu’s writing, leaning heavily into science fiction and exploring family, culture, and the Singularity in stories both interconnected and stand-alone. ⁣
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Liu blends our history and his ideas of the future into stunning works of art. Some of my favorites: in the story Ghost Days he envisions humanity’s descendants, bred with an entirely different biology to allow them to survive on a new planet, grappling with maintaining memories of a human race they are nothing like, and the inheritance of a new planet and its deceased former inhabitants. Maxwell’s Demon is a chilling imagining of World War II, where a young Japanese American girl is plucked from internment and sent to Japan to become a spy, and ends up conscripted to leverage her connection with the spiritual realm for military tactics. Several interconnected stories explore the world on the brink of and following the Singularity, the vastly different world created as a result of technology able to upload human consciousness. Wildly creative and scientifically engaging, these stories are also tender and emotionally rich. I nearly cried reading Memories of My Mother, a wisp of a story about a girl whose mother, dying from an incurable illness, makes the decision to travel at high speeds to prolong her life through her daughter’s, seeing her for a few spread out days rather than just the two young years she’d be afforded otherwise. Liu did more to my heart in those few pages than some writers can do in an entire novel.⁣
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I had high expectations for this collection and it absolutely delivered. Fans of science fiction especially will love this book, but it may find a home for readers less inclined towards the genre too. However if you’re not a sci-fi fan, I would recommend Liu’s first short story collection, The Paper Menagerie as a better place to start with his work.

For whatever reason I’d decided this would be a breezy sci-fi romp that I could fly through in a few days despite being a solid NOV at 567 pages, but I should have heeded the Neal Stephenson comparison in the blurbs and realized I was in for a book dense with world building, tech details, and a whole lot of plot. None of which is a criticism! I thoroughly loved this book, it’s just definitely got the most complex world building I’ve read in a sci-fi novel in a minute, and I spent a lot of time digesting details and drawing together connections. ⁣
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Set in the near future where humankind is fighting their way back from the brink of environmental collapse, Gamechanger is pumped to bursting with details of our imagined future, with deeply integrated virtual reality and artificial intelligence taking center stage. The novel follows a sizable cast of characters, helmed by environmental activist, legal advocate, and semi-pro video gamer Rubi Whiting, her famous musical genius with a troubled past father Drow, and her genderqueer gamer rival/love interest Gimlet (naming your kids after retro alcoholic beverages is a hot trend in the future). Tbh Gimlet’s storyline, surrounding taking care of their nine year old daughter Frankie as their polyamorous marriage dissolves, with one partner receiving cancer treatment and another bailing under the pressure, kinda stole the show for me. ⁣
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Come for the complex and richly imagined world building, stay for the lovable cast of characters and the white-knuckled struggle for the fate of humanity played out in a giant VR video game, which somehow manages to not feel contrived once it’s fit into the context of this brilliant and delightful novel. The whole thing ends beautifully, but I’m clamoring for a sequel. Will settle for more Beckett novels.

As is often the case with short story collections, and especially with anthologies collecting multiple authors, I found the stories in this volume to be very uneven. I do wonder whether some of the stories would have connected more had I been familiar with the storytelling traditions they were riffing on, and I acknowledge that I’m not the best reviewer here since I’m not the target audience. Although not my favorite collection of late, this book was pretty different than any I’ve read previously, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend picking it up if you’re into diverse speculative fiction. ⁣
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My favorite stories were Two Women Worth Watching by Andrew Drilon, which started the collection off brilliantly with a tale of two women having dinner, one a famous actress and the other a nobody who nonetheless has an enormous captivated audience of loyal ghosts who follow her life story; and The Stranger at my Grandmother’s Wake by Fidelis Tan, an intriguing story about an old woman waiting on her deathbed for the reappearance of an old friend she met only once, years earlier at her grandmother’s wake. The story that will perhaps stick with me the longest, mostly due to our present circumstances, was The Perpetual Day by Crystal Koo, which envisions a global pandemic in which the ability to sleep is suddenly lost

Review to come

This story of grappling with your sexuality and meeting friends for the first time who understand has me charmed. I have some questions and I'm excited to keep reading! Cw for homophobia, bullying, suicidal ideation.

I continue to care so much for these characters. This volume was tough to read emotionally and watch them struggle. Cw for homophobia/transphobia.