Author name: trishmatson

Educated as a physicist yet living as a journalist, Trish Matson is an award-winning writer and editor whose ever-expanding list of interests includes a lifelong love of SF/F, plus wordplay, libraries, games, music, dancing, audio drama, and podcasting. She’s listed as TrishEM on various fora, but you can find her most easily on Twitter.

Cover of The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek, by David Liss, featuring a stylized woman's face, with a patch of red against a blue-green face and arm in shadows.
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Book Review: The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek, by David Liss

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Once again, I veered off my TBR for an impulse read, and once again I was rewarded with a fun book. This bodes poorly for my self-discipline, but at least I am having a good time. Anyway, if you’re looking for a thriller with comfort elements that feels kind of like a contemporary science-fiction version of John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build a Nest In, combined with a mystery/thriller by Carl Hiassen or Andrew Mayne, then I recommend indulging in The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek, by David Liss. There are some intriguing issues of memory, identity, trust, and personhood here, with past trauma and current danger, but it’s still a pretty breezy and highly entertaining read.

Cover of Children of Owl, featuring a long-haired boy with wings /eyes of an owl above a mountain with a Lipan Apache girl with braided hair standing in front of a mountain.
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Book Review: Children of Owl, by Darcie Little Badger (illus. Abigail Rajunov)

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Having been a big fan of Darcie Little Badger’s previous books (see my review of Sheine Lende) and enjoyed her readings at WorldCon and Armadillocon, I’ve been looking forward to reading her new contemporary fantasy novel, Children of Owl, but events conspired against me, so I didn’t finish it until today, publication day. However, any time is a good time to read this one! It has several engaging young-adult viewpoint characters, really interesting interwoven storylines, and themes of friendship and perseverance through loss and danger. Furthermore, I love the charming illustrations throughout, including quite a few graphic-novel-style pages that carry the story forward in picture form! The other way the format changes throughout the book is that the text alternates between regular first-person past and present narrative in the voice of the main protagonist, and diary entries by her and her friends (indicated by appearing on what looks like scholastic-type lined paper and a handwriting-style font); I didn’t have any trouble following the viewpoint changes, and they offered useful perspectives on what was happening. Middle-grade and YA readers should enjoy this very much, but I also highly recommend it for adults.

Cover of Call Me Traitor, by Everina Maxwell, featuring two people in a face-off on a peak next to an ocean.
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Book Review: Call Me Traitor, by Everina Maxwell

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I yielded to temptation and skipped way ahead in my TBR lineup, to a book that’s not coming out until December. Unfortunately for my self-discipline, my impatience was amply rewarded, because Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell is amazingly good! I had seen it described as a romantasy, so I was expecting something similar to Maxwell’s previous science-fiction romances, Winter’s Orbit and Ocean’s Echo, where it was easy to ignore the somewhat handwavy worldbuilding because the lovely longing feelings took center stage. In Call Me Traitor, however, the worldbuilding starts with intriguing little hints, builds up as the action continues, and then starts getting a lot deeper and broader with flashbacks to an interrogation, until some truly horrifying foundational facts are revealed to the characters and the readers. There is romance, of course, and it is integral, but it doesn’t really manifest as a plot element until well along in the book. There is also horror, comfort, academia, exciting action scenes, some lyrical descriptive language, divided loyalties and identity conflicts, callousness and kindness, scary antagonists that may not be so villainous after all, and supposed allies that have terrible secrets. This is as good and deep as any great fantasy novel that I’ve read lately; it does a LOT, but it all comes together amazingly satisfyingly in the end.

Cover of The Asterist, by A.T. Sayre, featuring a man in a spacesuit walking on a rocky terrain; alien limbs are stretching out toward him. The astronaut, terrain, and alien are gray, but the sky is red.
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Book Review: The Asterist, by A.T. Sayre

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Knowing nothing about A.T. Sayre, I requested his new book The Asterist on NetGalley just because the description sounded interesting. Bill Jeffries was marking time at a remote outpost, there just in case there’s an emergency and a human was needed to give instructions to the computer that normally runs the relays, when an alien spaceship crashed on the asteroid: “Thrust into circumstances beyond his pay grade, Jeffries investigates the wreckage and makes the shocking discovery of a four-foot-long spider-like being inside. If the alien still lives, Jeffries and his superiors from light years away must decide if it should be treated as an ambassador, a test subject, or a threat.” This was an enjoyable read that reminded me a lot of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, except it was more focused (just over half as long), had lower stakes, and didn’t annoy me with misgendering of the alien. There’s a surly, isolated man as the main character, who ends up stepping into a bigger role than he ever imagined or wanted, there’s a very nonhuman alien, there is bonding, and there are hard choices.

Cover of A Wall Is Also a Road, by Annalee Newitz, featuring a woman's face and hear, tentacles, planets, and a spiral nebula, done with mosaic elements.
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Book Review: A Wall Is Also a Road, by Annalee Newitz

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I enjoyed reading A Wall Is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz, although the protagonist’s victories came a bit easier than I was expecting. The publisher’s description calls it “heartwarming” but, like Newitz’ Automatic Noodle, I would say its tone is closer to “cozy” despite a few passages where the protagonist feels fear, pain, and shame. It’s a science fiction/academia novel, but it’s also historical, since about half the book is spent in field-research visits to the Roman Empire. Science fiction, academia, research, and history are all interests of mine, and I did like the young protagonist’s curiosity, warmth, and, eventually, courage, despite a few stumbles, so I was quite satisfied with how it all turned out.

Cover of The Scarlet Ball, by Nghi Vo, featuring an Asian woman in a red ballgown holding a white mask, with spectral hands reaching out toward her.
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Book Review: The Scarlet Ball, by Nghi Vo

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If you’re like me, you should NOT do what I did and try to read a chapter or so of Nghi Vo’s new book, The Scarlet Ball, before bed. I ended up staying up into the wee hours reading this lush, sharp, scary, sexy, and utterly absorbing novel of manners and magic. It’s described as a historical dark fantasy, but it certainly verges on horror as well; however, it’s also amazing! If all you’ve read by Nghi Vo is the novellas from the Singing Hills Cycle, be aware that this book is very different from them. For one thing, it’s set in New York City in the Gilded Age; for another, it’s about desperate power struggles and making deals with demons. It has much more in common with Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful and its sequel, Don’t Sleep with the Dead. I adored both of those books, but they weren’t nominated for many awards, possibly because of being re-imaginings of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and what came afterward. (It’s even possible that they’re meant to be in the same universe as TSB, although later in this alternate history, since this book, like TCatB and DSwtD, refers to a drink called Demoniac.) I am hoping that The Scarlet Ball, with its completely original plot and characters, will win well-deserved recognition. From the publisher’s description:In exchange for enough wealth to outrun her past, Judith strikes a deal with the matriarch of the powerful Howard family: she will stand in for the missing Howard granddaughter, who was poised to make her debut when she disappeared. With Miss Iphigenia Marshall’s face stitched over her own, Judith is white, rich, and about to risk body and soul in the deadly games that determine which girls will find a match—and which will be devoured. If she can keep her wits and her life, her reward will be a husband with undreamt-of power who will be hers to command…so long as she can keep his infinite hungers fed. But to survive the season, Judith will have to seduce a storm in the shape of a man, before the night to which everything has been leading—the Scarlet Ball where the demons choose their brides.

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