Books shelved under “Science Fiction”

So I have had mixed results with Matt Haig to date: I adored How to Stop Time but disliked The Humans. In both cases, I appreciated Haig’s perspicacity and philosophy, but the overall storytelling in The Humans didn’t work for me, whereas How to Stop Time was cute and romantic and poignant. So I was looking forward to The Midnight Library acting as a kind of tie-breaker to tell me if I should keep…

The idea of the multiverse is captivating, no? The thought that there are infinitely-many yous out there, that at any moment the choice you make diverges you from them a little more. I do so love parallel-universe fiction and other, similar, world-hopping stories, so I was excited for The Space Between Worlds. The fact it has a queer protagonist of colour? Even better! Indeed, Micaiah Johnson isn’t just telling a multiverse thriller here. This…

I was not expecting to fall for this book quite as hard as I did. If you asked me how Earth Girl ended up on my to-read list, I could not tell you. But my library had a copy (I love my library!). The description is lacklustre and didn’t make me too excited, but within a few pages I was on Jarra’s side, and within about 3 chapters I was loving this book. It made…

Well, this book lives up to its title: they definitely take the long way around. Although nominally space opera, if you were hoping for sweeping galactic politics and high stakes, you might want to look elsewhere. The Wayfarer is in the middle of a tense diplomatic situation for sure, but this story isn’t about that. This story is about the Wayfarer crew, their journey rather than their destination, and the things you learn along the…

There must be some law about how, the longer an author is allowed to play in their sandbox, the worse their stories get. At some point, every author who has a long-spanning saga feels encouraged to go back and fill in gaps in the chronology, creating that wonderful dichotomy of possible reading experiences: publication order and chronological order. L.E. Modesitt’s Recluce saga is one of the most notable modern examples. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is…

For some reason I thought this book seemed way shorter than the first one, but I’m realizing now it’s just that I read Too Like the Lightning in hardcover, so it seemed thicker and more imposing. That being said, Seven Surrenders was less exhausting and easier to digest than the first book. At first I thought that was because I was just used to Ada Palmer’s writing, but now I think it’s also because this…

When I learned after finishing this book that Kimberly Unger is a video game designer, much more about this book began to make sense. Nucleation is a science-fiction novel that wants to wow you with its video game–like aesthetic—this is a novel that craves the label of cinematic for its descriptions of how its protagonist virtually manipulates robots in another star system in high-stakes, high-pressure situations. Nevertheless, even if such moments capture your attention (I’m…

Turns out I remembered almost nothing of Stars Uncharted, the first book in this series (duology?). As I began Stars Beyond, very little of the overall story came back to me. I contemplated re-reading Stars Unchartd, but by that point I was 50 pages in and felt committed. Fortunately, as I forged onwards, the plot of this volume cohered into something pretty easy to follow. Or should I say … plots? Because,…

From women writing subversive TV now to women inventing time travel! The Psychology of Time Travel is a quirky part mystery, part love story. As the title suggests, Kate Mascarenhas focuses more so on what it would be like to be a time traveller rather than on the social, historical, or future repercussions of mucking about with a timeline. Along with bringing up the usual questions of free will versus determinism, etc., this book seeks…

A little over a year ago, I curtailed my review of Embers of War because of my broken elbow. I have now returned, stronger than ever, to review this sequel, Fleet of Knives. I finished this book in a single day, taking a break only to make dinner and watch Mean Girls (because it was October 3). This book is like candy to me. It is an invigorating space opera that balances grand, epic…

Look at me, finishing a series within a year! Who even am I?

The Stone Sky is the last book of The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. She give us answers to some of the questions from the first two books, as well as closure—of sorts—for most of the main characters. I’m not sure I would call the ending satisfying, but it is certainly thoughtful. This is how I’ve come to regard…

Let’s pause for a moment and savour the feeling of completing a series. That’s not always an easy undertaking, especially when reading them entirely through the library! After five books, this series is ready for a conclusion. Elizabeth Moon delivers everything you might think you want—tension and build-up to a big, fancy space battle, and then a little resolution—but I’m not sure always delivers it how one would want. As always, this series has hovered…

Let me tell you how I thought this review would go. As I began reading The House of Styx (which I received free via NetGalley and publisher Solaris), I thought that I would enjoy this book, for sure. Derek Künsken had, after all, reignited the faint embers of my love for posthumanism with The Quantum Magician and then fanned those flames with a dose of time travel in The Quantum Garden. However, I also…

I simultaneously enjoyed and loathed reading Foundation and Earth. This might be the best Foundation novel yet also the worst. I know I called Foundation’s Edge the best, but this one surpasses it in terms of plot. Asimov does as amazing a job of ratcheting up the tension surrounding the search for Earth as he does a terrible job of avoiding the objectification of women. Moreover, when we look at this novel in the…

I didn’t realize until I started reading that The Relentless Moon, while technically a sequel to The Fated Sky, is more of a spin-off in the series. Mary Robinette Kowal writes from the perspective of Nicole Wargin, a white woman who was a side character in the first two books. She is one of the original astronauts (or astronette, ugh) alongside Elma York, the Lady Astronaut and narrator of the first two books,…

Like so many time-travel stories, This Is How You Lose the Time War is frustratingly, endearingly, eerily beautiful. It takes a special kind of talent to write time travel well—you need not only that non-linear perspective that many writers find necessary even for linear plots, but you also require a certain level of sheer, Lewis Carroll-like madness to conceive of a multiverse so vastly alternative to our tiny slice, or strand. Amal El-Mohtar and Max…

This might be the best Foundation novel yet?

Foundation’s Edge departs from the formula of the previous installments in the series: instead of related novellas, this is an actual, honest-to-goodness novel. It follows two, parallel stories: Golan Trevize is a Foundation council member who suspects the Second Foundation was not actually destroyed, and he strikes off (not exactly of his own accord) to investigate; meanwhile, Stor Gendibal is a Second Foundation council member who believes…

I had finally caught up on my NetGalley reading, so I went on the hunt for more books to request, and Aethon Books was kind enough to grant my request for Black Sheep: A Space Opera Adventure. The description sounded very promising, and for the most part I would say that Rachel Aukes delivers on that promise. The protagonist is also disabled! Content note: the book contains ableist language, which I will discuss shortly…

Yet again I feel like I steered myself wrong on NetGalley!! The Sound of Stars, courteously provided to me by Inkyard Press, didn’t win me over. What should have been a tale of survival and starcrossed love set in the aftermath of an alien invasion of Earth proved to be a somewhat boring adventure across open country full of exposition and underwhelming action. It’s not all bad—Alechia Dow does her best to give us…

Relativity can be awful sometimes. You get in your spaceship, leave a planet, and you come back a few months later only to find that years have passed and your family is old or dead and all your plants died because YOU COULDN'T WATER THEM LIKE I ASKED, KEVIN?

Anyway, most science fiction stories use a trope, like faster-than-light travel, to avoid dealing with relativity. Not so R.W.W. Greene. In The Light Years, the…