Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson is a thrilling and creative exploration of the apocalyptic uprising of Artificial Intelligence, and the global human resistance to their efforts to destroy mankind. It’s a chilling vision of our near future, in which household servant robots, military technology, and self-driving cars quickly devastate human populations, but pockets of persistent survivors across the world resist by any means necessary. This book is tense, thought-provoking and action-packed, and I loved every minute.⁣
⁣
Wilson, a Cherokee citizen, populates this novel with numerous Indigenous characters, most prominently a father and son from the Osage Nation who join the war from far flung fronts. Popular dystopian media too often centers exclusively/majority white characters, but books like this one decisively deny that false vision of the future. And I love the way this book shows the fight against the robot uprising as a global struggle, skipping across the world to depict the war's complex diversity. Wilson’s Robotics PhD also shines through in his conception of the finer details of the strengths and weaknesses of AI. The tight chapters which zero in on key moments of a many year long war make the ending feel somewhat rushed, but overall I thought this book was completely awesome and I can hardly wait to pick up the sequel.⁣

Black Sun is the first in the Between Earth and Sky Trilogy, a new epic fantasy series by Rebecca Roanhorse, author of the Sixth World series and personal fave fantasy author. Besides having the most gorgeous cover of 2020, this book is brimming with exciting worldbuilding, dynamic characters, and epic scope. The narrative leaves the reader decidedly cliff-hanging, which, coupled with the aforementioned charming characters, has me doing major grabby hands for the sequel. This book crackles with energy and the pacing soars as Roanhorse weaves together the stories of four main characters and a world on the cusp of cataclysmic upheaval. The worldbuilding, based on the pre-colonization societies of the Americas, is expansive and exciting, with multiple unique magics that I can’t wait to see more of as the series continues. My attention span faltered at times in the reading, but I’m putting that on me, I really don’t have anything negative to say about this novel. Overall, highly recommended to all epic fantasy fans!⁣

When I Was Puerto Rican is Esmeralda Santiago’s memoir of growing up and coming of age in rural Puerto Rico and ultimately New York. I absolutely flew through this engrossing memoir, and especially loved Santiago’s spunky young self, always asking questions. This book deals with her parents’ fraught relationship and its impact on her, as well as with her sense of identity as she moves between different cultural contexts, both within Puerto Rico and finally in moving to New York. The ending of this book came so suddenly that I felt somewhat unmoored, dropped without warning out of her life. But Santiago has two more memoirs that I think follow her later into her life, so I’m definitely interested to check those out and experience her story a little longer.⁣⁣⁣

Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a quintessentially Daniel Lavery creation, and a total book of my heart. Lavery, one of the founders of my old favorite content website, The Toast, is a writer who’s odd humor always speaks to me, even if his references to various literature and media sometimes go completely over my head. This essay collection blends all his signature wit and power of hilarious observation with more personal dissections of his experience grappling with a sudden and unavoidably nagging question ‘what if I was a man, sort of’, and his subsequent transition. The way Lavery discusses his experiences and thought process is simultaneously so powerful, funny, and profound. I especially resonate with how he continues to use stories from scripture in his conception of self and the world, even as his relationship to the religion of his family/youth has been transformed. This book is so good, reading it made me feel all the things, and I’m so happy to own a copy with Lavery’s “third and final name.” I know it’s kinda weird to be proud of public figure people who are basically truly strangers, but whatever, I am.

What an absolutely devastating, gorgeous novel. Monkey Beach opens with the discovery that Lisa’s younger brother Jimmy has gone missing at sea. Her parents set off to search, and the majority of the novel follows Lisa as she drifts in memories of her life so far, recounting the various major griefs she has grappled with since childhood and her fraught relationship with spirits, most notably the little man who visits at night as a warning of impending loss. Young Lisa is my favorite sort of protagonist, a scrappy kid who charmed me with her big heart. One of the most tender, precious parts of this novel for me was Lisa’s relationship with her large extended family, especially her Ma-ma-oo (grandmother), from whom she learns pieces of the Haisla language and stories. Robinson, whose father grew up in Haisla territory near Kitamaat Village, incorporates informative sections describing Haisla history and traditions, and her attention to evocative details made the Kitamaat Village setting come to life around me. Overall, this is a heavy, haunting novel and was often a difficult read (see cw’s below), but I loved reading it and I know it’s one that will stick deeply with me for a long time. If you recently loved Transcendent Kingdom, I highly recommend Monkey Beach, as the two are in rich conversation, at least in my mind.⁣
⁣

Cw for death, suicide, rape, domestic abuse, incest, alcoholism, residential schools

In essays about topics ranging from her relationship to her sister, to her love of music, to embracing herself as she is, Brown speaks passionately about her life and our world. Her words are a call to action for greater representation for disabled people, which she’s actively embodying with her writing, advocacy, and visibility. She’s honest about her struggles, both past and ongoing, and gives the reader a look into her journey for self love and peace with her body. She doesn’t shy away from the tough details, like dealing with jealousy because of her disability, and the way that hurt her relationships as a younger person. Reading this book feels like hanging out with your talkative new best bud as she tells you her life story and all her thoughts on making the world a better place. Some of the essays get a little long and the collection can feel repetitive, but Brown has a lot of important things to say, and I’m glad to have had the chance to listen.

Cw for suicidal ideation, self harm, disordered eating

Thank you to Counterpoint Press for reaching out and sending me a copy of this book, which has been one of my most anticipated 2020 debut novels.

This Town Sleeps is a book I gratefully went into having only skimmed the blurb, which alludes to the awakened spirit of a dead dog, the untangling of a long past murder, and a young gay Ojibwe man named Marion Lafournier as the throughline. There’s a lot going on in this slim novel, and I was immediately entranced by the writing and the exciting defiance of genre, eagerly flipping pages to put the pieces together and anxious for the next Marion chapter each time the narrative strayed away. The pacing of the many intertwined narratives was deftly handled, making this a novel I couldn’t stand to put down until I reached the end.⁣
⁣
Hard to describe but rewarding to read, this is a book I’m so looking forward to dipping back into again and again as I read others’ reviews. The smush of genres here makes it a book I’d recommend quite broadly - fans of contemplative literary fiction, explorations of family legends and life in a stiflingly small town, or lovers of a story that dips into but doesn’t wholly linger on a murder mystery, plus anybody who likes a book with a splash of the speculative, I encourage you to add this book to your TBR!

Thank you to Henry Holt Books for reaching out and sending me a free copy of Paying the Land by Joe Sacco. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Paying the Land is a nonfiction comic about the Dene, a broad term for a vast group of Indigenous people who’ve lived in what’s now Canada’s Northwest Territories since time immemorial. The book discusses the effects of colonization, their changing way of life, a history of fraught struggles with the Canadian government over land, resources, and fracking, and the intergenerational trauma of residential schools. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Joe Sacco is a Maltese American cartoonist and journalist, best known for works of comics journalism such as Footnotes in Gaza. (I was not familiar with him before being approached with this title, but nonfiction comics are very much in my wheelhouse.) I will always support #OwnVoices works over ones, such as this one, which are not written by authors from the community they are describing. For that reason, I read and highlighted This Place: 150 Years Retold, a collection of Indigenous-created comics about their history, before this. Please also check out that excellent book; if you only read one of these titles, I recommend it be This Place. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Paying the Land differentiates itself by being a more singular dive into only the Dene. I am not Dene (or Indigenous) so I may have significant gaps in my reaction to this book, and I don’t purport to speak to how well it represents the Dene. In creating this book Sacco clearly began from a foundation of significant research and interviews of Dene from multiple communities. Although Sacco is present at times as a character in the story (he frequently depicts himself in the interviewing process and his travels), the bulk of the narration is composed of quotes from those he’s speaking to. He includes differing perspectives and opinions on many topics, so the overall impression from this book is not a single story, a fact which I deeply appreciated. However sometimes it could be difficult to ascertain what the more popularly held belief might be, since there would usually be a handful of interviewees for a topic, sometimes with just one person for each side of a debate. ⁣
⁣
This book is a quick read for one so densely packed with information and heavy topics. Sacco is skilled with the comic medium, and ultimately I’m quite glad I read it. ⁣⁣⁣

Thy House has a fascinating premise, but takes a while to get rolling for me. I think/hope? this is the first book in a series, and much of the novel feels like it's setting up the world, the characters, and the central conflict for a larger story. I enjoyed the four narrators, and although their voices felt somewhat undifferentiated at times, they had very different personalities and aspirations. I resonated with Joseph's fight against how his world is structured, and couldn't help loving Keiko, the book's only female narrator. I read this book in fits and starts and then finished most of it in a few sittings this past week.

Thank you to the author for sending me a free copy.

The Four Profound Weaves is R. B. Lemberg’s first printed novella set Birdverse, a setting they describe as “an LGBTQIA+-focused secondary world with a Bird deity.” Since I rarely read isolated short stories, I was excited for this novella to serve as my introduction to their writing, and this world. The story brims with strange magics, the most central being the eponymous four profound weaves, magical tapestries created from wind, sand, hope, and death. We follow two elderly trans protagonists who together journey to find a master weaver, one in order to finish learning the skills of the weaves, and the other in search of a new name post-transition.⁣
⁣
My expectation from the description of the world as “LGBTQIA+-focused” was that this would be a world where queer and trans characters were completely accepted and commonplace, however that wasn’t exactly the case. Instead, the Birdverse is a complex world with multiple different cultures with their own norms regarding gender, sexuality, and family composition. Although it was heartbreaking that the characters in this world deal with transphobia (I’m not sure about homophobia, which was not on the page in this story), Lemberg’s decision to feature this diversity within their world was ultimately a better choice in my opinion, and it gives them space to explore stories of characters who face challenges both mirroring those in our world and completely different. One of the central arcs of this novella was one of the characters grappling with his recent transition after a life spent coercively remaining his birth gender, and my favorite parts of the story included how he explored his complex feelings about his change, how to now relate to his family, and how to forgive his late partner who for years discouraged him from transitioning.⁣
⁣
For me, this novella served as a great introduction to Lemberg’s setting, with intriguing worldbuilding and a pair of great characters. The story was a little plodding at times, one relevant issue being that I have a personal quirk where I dislike stories with a lot of traveling for some reason. Also I’m not sure how much I felt that the two protagonists were truly in their sixties, a fact which I kept forgetting and grating against whenever I was reminded by the text. It felt like they had a lot of backstory about when they were young people and then didn’t do much for many intervening years, which lessened the weight of their supposed age. I was glad though that I didn’t feel lost at all for having read no previous stories in their Birdverse repertoire, but I’m probably not intrigued enough to start digging into their short fiction at this time, mostly because short stories aren’t my favorite unless they’re already collected into a larger volume, but I’d definitely buy a Birdverse short story collection whenever such a thing exists. The book itself is super beautiful, and I especially loved the illustrations within its pages.