Books shelved under “Netgalley”

Every so often I read a book I had convinced myself I was excited to read only to discover I wasn’t. Not “I was excited but this book let me down” but rather “I thought I was excited, and now I realize that excitement was something else all along!” That, unfortunately, is the fate of Queen Demon by Martha Wells. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for a review, and I…

Just because you’re an expert doesn’t mean you can write a popular political science book…. That, unfortunately, is the lesson I take away from So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump. Elizabeth Buchanan is nominally an expert in polar geopolitics. However, her book about the contentious history of Greenland’s settlement and sovereignty is anything but interesting. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Melville House in exchange for…

I requested the eARC for Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World purely on the basis of its title, and Mark Waddell did not disappoint. This is a book that delivers exactly what I expected—which is to say, I knew going in that this book would not be groundbreaking in any way, and that’s fine. It was exactly the kind of absurdist fantasy I was hoping for.

Colin is a low-level employee of Dark Enterprises,…

Humans have screwed Earth and the only option is to rush outwards into the stars, ad astra per aspera style. Oh wait, you’ve heard this one? Synthetic Eden really hopes you haven’t. Alexander Titus and Sean Platt have crafted a space colonization narrative that isn’t so much planetary romance as it is planetary horror, with a side order of social breakdown thriller. It has its moments, and I kept reading until the end because I…

Um, OK. Wow. Rude. Seriously, it’s so inconsiderate of C.L. Clark to just go and write a gut-punch of a concluding volume to this incredible trilogy. This is one of my favourite modern epic fantasy series, and if you haven’t picked up The Unbroken or The Faithless yet, then run, don’t walk to your nearest indie bookshop or library because wow. I’m giving this book five stars and actually retroactively want to go back…

Unexpectedly healing and wholesome, Lessons in Magic and Disaster is queer, witchy, and compassionate in just the right amounts. Anders manages to acknowledge the effects of intergenerational trauma while at the same time holding characters to account for their individual bullshit. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for a review.

Jamie is a graduate student writing her thesis on a fictional novel (Emily) by a real eighteenth-century novelist (Sarah…

I was intrigued by the description of Sam Kean’s latest book. I love learning about history in various new ways! So I was pleased to receive an eARC of Dinner with King Tut from NetGalley and publisher Little, Brown and Company. Indeed, one cannot fault Kean for his scrupulous commitment to embodying experiential archaeology—this book reads like a Discovery channel series, back when Discovey channel was good.

Kean is upfront and warns us that the…

Sometimes I couldn’t tell you what drew me to a book if you asked. When I saw A Magic Deep and Drowning on NetGalley, where I received review copy, I was intrigued, but I’m not sure why. It might be the setting—the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century—or that it’s a very loose reimagining of The Little Mermaid. Whatever the reason, as I started reading, I deflated: I wasn’t enjoying it. Then … suddenly…

Like most kids, I went through a dinosaur phase, though perhaps somewhat less obsessively than some. I always have trouble picking favourites, so I can’t tell you I had a favourite dinosaur. What fascinated me, like so many I suspect, was their extinction. The idea that entire species can disappear—wow. The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs is Riley Black’s attempt to chronicle how these incredible animals evolved, how they lived for hundreds of millions of…

Although I was charmed by Melinda West: Monster Gunslinger, I was also wary. I want to challenge myself when it comes to the subgenres I read, yet I recognize I often have good reason for not reading those subgenres—and there is nothing wrong with having preferences! That might be the case here. On the other hand, I also think this is a novel that could be much, much stronger. I received an eARC of…

Every so often I need to dip into philosophy, mix in some math, and sprinkle on some science. Give me that interdisciplinary trip, please and thank you! Proof: The Uncertain Science of Certainty, by Adam Kucharski, seemed like just what Dr. Kara ordered for herself. Indeed, it’s illuminating enough, though it has a few flaws that prevented me from enjoying it more. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Basic Books in exchange…

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., this book is not. I didn’t make this comparison—the book’s promo does, along with comps to Neil Gaiman (booooo, by the way), Douglas Adams, and Terry Pratchett. Indeed, when you see a book compared to so many heavy hitters, you should probably increase your skepticism rather than you hype. Acts of God is an inchoate mess of a novel, though I rather suspect Kanan Gill might welcome such an excoriating statement, and…

Hate to DNF an eARC (from NetGalley and publisher University of Chicago Press), but I just cannot with Battle of the Big Bang. It’s written like a fever dream of a science book, and on every page I was left asking, who is this book for?

Niayesh Afshordi is a cosmologist; Phil Halper is a science comms YouTuber. Together, they’ve teamed up to write a tour of cosmology. They trace the various theories of…

The perfect trans YA novel does not exi—

OK, it might be a stretch to call One of the Boys perfect. For one thing, there can be no One True Trans YA Novel because there is no One True Trans Experience, of course. What we need is a plethora of diverse experiences. But I have to say, considering I never played any sports in high school and know nothing about football and transitioned at…

Nuclear war is … bad. That’s a premise on which most of us can agree. However, for the past eighty years, nuclear war has been possible and—at various times, including this past week as I write this review (looking at you, India and Pakistan)—more or less likely. In Six Minutes to Winter, Mark Lynas catalogues the potential scope and consequences of nuclear war—including the dreaded but much-misunderstood nuclear winter—and then makes a passionate plea…

The Tetris movie was an unexpected delight when I had three months free of Apple TV+. I had never heard of it before, and I was so skeptical going into it—yet it was a surprisingly solid movie. Part biopic, part historical drama, it somehow managed to sensationalize and lionize the bringing of Tetris from Russia to other markets. So when I heard Henk Rogers had decided to tell the story in his own words, of…

Time travel, like any subgenre of science fiction, shifts in response to the anxieties of our time (pun intended). These days, a lot of time travel focuses less on visiting the past or fixing one’s personal past and more on the existential anxieties we have about where humanity is going. Travelers, a Brad Wright series on Netflix, capitalized on this idea quite expertly. Hive, by D.L. Orton, reminds me a lot of Travelers…

Two years ago I read an interesting little novelette by Ai Jiang and was intrigued. Now I’ve got a review copy of A Palace Near the Wind courtesy NetGalley, and I remain intrigued. Jiang once again harnesses her incredible talent for descriptive prose and layers atop that an impressive, tender style of characterization. I wanted to like this more than I did—and will explain why I didn’t—but I did like it quite a bit.

Liu…

Hot on the heels of writing about why space is awesome, it feels fitting I turn around and consider the downsides of space travel. Well, in this case, it’s more like space labour. Sunward Sky offers a near-future, hard science fiction take on the perils of spending too long away from Earth’s surface. Henry Neilsen weaves social commentary in with mystery, conspiracy, and action. While not entirely successful, in my opinion, this book raises…

Space is so cool, and I love reading books that explain how we learn the stuff we know about space. That’s exactly what Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger delivers in Alien Earths. This is the story of how we look for exoplanets—worlds orbiting stars other than our own Sun—and specifically, how we might determine whether those exoplanets can support life similar life on Earth. Along the way we learn, as Kaltenegger did, so much more about…