Books shelved under “Netgalley”

Much like author Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell discusses in the preface to this book, I adore wearing dresses (and skirts, though I find them slightly more difficult because you then need the right top). She’s preaching to the choir when she talks about wearing them pretty much exclusively. For me as a trans woman, dresses are my way of embodying and expressing my femininity (they are not, of course, the only way to be feminine). I’ll talk…

Did you expect 2022 to be the Year of Tanya Huff for me? Neither did I! But when Into the Broken Lands became available on NetGalley from DAW, I couldn’t not request it. I picked up some of her earlier secondary-world fantasy (Sing the Four Quarters) from the used bookstore but haven’t read it yet, so my experience with Huff has been limited to her urban-fantasy offerings. So I leaped at this chance…

Last year I reviewed The Jasmine Throne and concluded with “Will I read the sequel? Not sure yet.” Well, thanks to NetGalley and Orbit giving me access to the eARC, the answer proved to be yes! I’m pleased to report that The Oleander Sword improves upon much of what I already liked about Tasha Suri’s first novel in this trilogy.

We pick up some months following the end of the first novel: Malini is prosecuting…

Stakes that are neither too high nor too low. Facing discrimination and prejudice as a refugee who belongs to an ethnic minority in their new city. Dealing with the complicated history of one’s culture, one’s past. Pushing back against for-profit healthcare. These are all powerful elements in The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia. Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC!

Although novella-length, this book brims with plot. Firuz, a Sassanian refugee, joins…

A new Alastair Reynolds novel is always a cause for celebration, even if my enjoyment of them is inconsistent. In Eversion, though space is a part of the setting, time is far more important. Reynolds takes your classic science-fiction trope of a time loop story, and he spins it just enough to keep things fresh. Thanks to Orbit and NetGalley for the eARC!

Silas Coade is the assistant surgeon (well, only surgeon) aboard the …

Famously, I was told the internet is for porn. That can’t be true, of course, because as far as I am concerned, the internet is for writing book reviews! Anyway, The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Obscene Obsession is yet another entry in a long line of books that looks at how people have lined up against one another to support or oppose the creation, distribution, and consumption of pornography. Some…

Virtual reality in all its various imaginings always holds attraction for us. The idea that we can enter the world of dreams is as old as dreaming itself—many Indigenous cultures privilege the dreamworld and use it as a source of stories and even wayfinding. The Extractionist joins a very long line of science-fiction novels, then, that contemplate what happens if you get stuck in a dreamworld or virtual reality. Kimberly Unger imagines a world where…

Somewhere along the way—likely from Inferior, but I can’t remember—I learned that women are excluded from most clinical trials for medication because our hormonal cycles are considered “too complicated” and they might throw off the trial results. Consequently, most of the medicines that make it to market have only truly been tested on men. Then there are inevitably—you guessed it—complications in some women who take these drugs, except doctors are just as likely to…

Although I read fewer murder mysteries these days than I did in my youth, I still have a soft spot. Add in the allure of an alternative world in which Europeans never colonized what we call North America, and … yeah, I’m into it. The Peacekeeper is both a satisfying mystery and a thoughtful work of science fiction, and as such, it works for me on multiple levels.

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher 47North for…

Dinosaurs grabbed me, as usual, when I was a kid, but I wouldn’t say that my fascination has endured as it has with some. Nevertheless, at some point last year, I had a moment where I decided to seek out more information on these creatures and their extinction. This is not the first book I added to my to-read list, but it happens to be the first book I’ve read, mostly thanks to getting an…

Once again I find myself wrecked by Louise O’Neill’s ability to tell stories about how our society messes up women and girls. I expected this. I’ve pre-ordered this book but was delighted to receive an eARC on NetGalley because I could not wait. Shout out to the Sam Miller I knew when I taught in England (aside from being a blonde white woman, she was nothing like this Sam Miller).

Sam Miller is a wildly…

Something about the description of this book made me give it a chance even though I’ve been turned off generation ship stories lately. Perhaps it was the fact that the story is confined to a single generation, rather than attempting to span the multiple generations of the ship’s journey. Adam Oyebanji uses the setting to tell an interesting story of political intrigue and cover-ups, mystery, and some intense action. While there are parts that don’t…

There is a story going around about Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time wherein his publisher told him that each equation included in his book would halve the book’s sales. Consequently, Hawking chose to include only Einstein’s equation from special relativity, E=mc^2. The book was beyond successful for any book about theoretical physics in its day (and I quite liked it when I read it, especially the special illustrated edition). Michael Dine has…

Let me begin by saying that everyone who says this book’s illustrations and layout are beautiful is absolutely right. As a print book, I suspect this would be gorgeous. I received an eARC from NetGalley and MIT Press, and it was a little harder to read on my phone screen, but that isn’t why I didn’t finish Rewilding. Rather, as beautiful and perhaps comprehensive a review of this subject as it is, I found…

As I reflected in my recent review of Children of Time, I’m not really in the mood for grimdark science fiction these days. I get that humanity is facing yet another existential crisis, this time thanks to climate change, and that this makes authors eager to write about us evacuating the planet and whatnot. But I just find it so bleak, and I yearn for hope. So when I first heard about Arkhangelsk…

New trilogy from one half of the James S.A. Corey duo? Definitely interested. Disclaimer: I don’t think I read beyond Leviathan Wakes in The Expanse series, but maybe I’ll go back one day. For now, though, let’s talk about Age of Ash. Abraham sets us up to expect heists, recrimination, and plenty of intrigue. I would say that this book mostly delivers, though I could see how there is room for disappointment depending on…

This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Did you know that I host a Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls? So when this book came up on NetGalley, I jumped at getting an eARC—and I was also fortunate enough that Hachette sent review copies to myself and my podcast co-host for us to promote on our show. And what an easy book to promote: Evan Ross Katz’s…

Much thanks to NetGalley and Angry Robot for the eARC.

Rig is a Nightbird, a rebel who does odd jobs—like rescuing refugees—to eke out a living beyond the control of the three factions fighting over the control of the galaxy. She is also Kashrini, a species whose homeworld and culture have been nearly annihilated by her former faction—Pyrite—and now Rig does all she can to preserve any Kashrini artifacts she can get her hands on.…

This book crossed my radar and I was ambivalent. On one hand, the description didn’t do a lot for me: it read like your fairly standard fantasy novel with the twist that the society is matriarchal rather than the mostly patriarchal ones we see. On the other hand, I was feeling some epic fantasy, and I wanted to see if Scorpica might pleasantly surprise me. You might say I am an optimist. Well, G.R. Macallister’s…

To say that I windmill-slammed the request button on NetGalley for this book is an understatement. Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century promised something very tantalizing: a look into a cultural phenomenon that took the world by storm a hundred years ago. Christina Riggs does not exaggerate when she talks about the “Tut-mania” that swept the world over and over throughout the twentieth century, literally inspiring so many people like her to become Egyptologists. Though…