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I recently finished The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi and really enjoyed the hard scifi detective-based story. It isn't a mystery, but uses the thief/detective as a framing to tell a very interesting story about people and a world.

It was a little challenging to get into with many custom words and a lot of worldbuilding to wrap your head around, but a great story with strong female protagonists and some queer side characters.

commented on Power to Yield and Other Stories by Bogi TakƔcs

Bogi TakƔcs: Power to Yield and Other Stories (Broken Eye Books) 5 stars

Power to Yield is a collection of speculative tales exploring gender identity, neurodivergence, and religion ā€¦

I added this to the SFFBookClub poll for the month of January because I super enjoyed it.

If you don't know about it, the SFFBookClub is our informal fediverse science fiction and fantasy book club. I figure that folks from bookwyrm probably might be more interested in reading and talking about books so I wanted to post this here as well. We vote, read a book together, and then discuss via the #SFFBookClub hashtag over the course of the month. Take a look if any of these books sound interesting to you and you want to read along with others.

See: weirder.earth/@picklish/113660284130610947 for January poll

See: sffbookclub.eatgod.org/ for more general details

reviewed City in Glass by Nghi Vo

Nghi Vo: City in Glass (2024, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

A demon. An angel. A city.

The demon Vitrineā€”immortal, powerful, and capriciousā€”loves the dazzling city ā€¦

City in Glass

4 stars

This novella is a story about memories, transformation, and love; it follows the demon Vitrine, whose best love is the city Azril that she writes about in a book kept in the glass cabinet of her heart. When angels raze the city to the ground, she curses one of them with a piece of herself, and gets to the work of rebuilding the city into what she remembers.

This is an interesting book to pair with Kalpa Imperial from the #SFFBookClub this month. The way Vitrine remembers the ghost of the old city interspersed with what the new city is becoming feels like it could be a chapter from Kalpa Imperial. Subjectively, there's sort of a similar lyrical style between the two as well.

I continue to love Nghi Vo's writing, and the way this book juxtaposes the fantastic with the literal rebuilding of a city brick by brick. However, ā€¦

reviewed Counterweight by Djuna

Djuna: Counterweight (EBook, 2023, Vintage) 1 star

On the fictional island of Patusanā€”and much to the ire of the Patusan nativesā€”the Korean ā€¦

Counterweight

2 stars

Overall, this book didn't work for me. After finishing it, I found out that Counterweight was originally intended as a low budget scifi movie and it feels like it. The characters are thin, and there are almost more characters talked about off page than we see on page. The book emits its ideas in a smoke cloud of cyberpunk chaff without engaging deeply with any of their implications.

This is a clichĆ© critique, but most of what didn't work for me was how much this book told instead of showed. There's an entire chapter midway through where the protagonist dumps the backstory of the old LK president's misdeeds that they've chosen not to share with the reader until that point. The book continually laments how AI will slowly run more of the world and humans won't be necessary, but we see little evidence (and directly very little of AI in ā€¦

Itā€™s the Narratess Indie Sale! Over 300 incredible speculative fiction books discounted from August 24 through 26. Tess always does an amazing job with the filters to help you find what youā€™re looking for.
https://indiebook.sale/

@fantasy @scifi @horrorbooks

11 columns, 3 rows of book covers with a banner over the middle saying: Indie Sale Fantasy, sci-fi, & horror August 24-26 2024

I'm 48.27% into my ARC of MOONSTORM by @deuceofgears and I love it so much šŸ’™ the characterisation is top-notch, and taking the time away from šŸ‰ news and household work (chronic illness flare-up! again!!) to read this depiction of war and trauma is, oddly, proving to be rather cathartic. This is my first read of a book by this author, although I'd heard of them before, and now they've got my attention.

@bookstodon

Hey bookish folks, I'd love your help! How do you find new-to-you books to read?

I'm trying to figure out where to advertise my books now that I have a fourth book out ( https://buy.bookfunnel.com/vxvlyi6b0v ). I'm rather unknown so can't spend big $$ but it's hard to know where is best to find readers. And yet, it's hard to have a budget without readers, too!

@bookstodon @sffbookclub @fantasy