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R. F. Kuang: Babel (2022, Harper Voyager) 5 stars

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, …

Everina Maxwell: Ocean's Echo (EBook, 2022, Tor Books, Tom Doherty Associates, Macmillan Publishing Group) 5 stars

Ocean's Echo is a stand-alone space adventure about a bond that will change the fate …

Brilliant second novel

5 stars

The second novel from Everina Maxwell is just as delightful as the first. She builds a complex world with a background of competing factions and layers of politics.

One of the things I really love is that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are viewed the same and gender identity is just something personal and people can control the level they share. Huge strides have been made for #LGBTQ progress but from growing up in a world where you are still treated as other to seeing one where it is not even a concern is a subtle but poignant paradigm shift.

If you like Becky Chambers then definitely read Everina Maxwell!

#bookstadon #SFFBookClub #LGBTQBooks

Sequoia Nagamatsu: How High We Go in the Dark (Hardcover, 2022, William Morrow) 4 stars

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …

How High We Go in the Dark

4 stars

A series of bleak, gritty glimpses of what's in store for us over the next few decades.

The tone is lightened a bit here and there with injections of optimism, but I think it works against itself a little when the optimism feels unwarranted.

The way that the characters from the different stories are linked reminds me a bit of Cloud Atlas (although I only saw the movie (sorry)).

#SFFBookClub

Sonia Nimr, Marcia Lynx Qualey: Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands (Paperback, 2020, Interlink) 3 stars

Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award.

In a tent …

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands

3 stars

I enjoyed the setting, and some of the substories were compelling, but as a whole it was too rambling and incohesive for me.

I feel like it would have worked better as a series of stories about different people from the same village or whatever instead of repeatedly being like "despite being in the middle of this incredibly urgent life crisis, the main character decides to spend six months teaching an older woman to fold laundry" or "despite having a very bad outcome two chapters ago, the main character decides to engage in exactly the same dangerous behavior with no additional precautions"

#SFFBookClub