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Cover of Shoeshine Boy and Cigarette Girl, by P.A. Cornell (cover art by Kim Herbst), featuring a dark-haired young man in a cap with a shoeshine kit and a smartly dressed blonde with a cigarette tray; they are looking over their shoulders at each other, with a futuristic cityscape behind them.
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Review: Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl, by P.A. Cornell

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If you’re in the mood for a quick, cozy, elegantly crafted story, Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl, by P.A. Cornell, may be right up your alley. It’s highly stylized, so this novelette certainly won’t be to everybody’s taste, and the speculative elements could be removed without altering the retro-futuristic near-noir romance plot much, but it also has a great deal of charm. It also has a female protagonist you can cheer for, a smart one, who knows what she wants and takes action to get it. Additionally, it has a male co-protagonist who is, unfortunately, a sap. He’s a fool for love, but also foolish in other ways, not only trusting the wrong people but taking terrible risks with his own partner’s trust. After I lost most of my patience with him, fortunately, the book focused almost entirely on her.

Cover of And Side by Side They Wander, by Molly Tanzer, featuring a woman's silhouette (with an art-museum filling) superimposed on a male silhouette (with circuitry filling) in front of mushrooms.
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Book Review: And Side by Side They Wander, by Molly Tanzer

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Molly Tanzer, whom I first became aware of through her new Jirel of Joiry story for New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine, has previously won recognition for her fantasy novels and steampunk historical fiction. Her new novella, And Side by Side They Wander, is her first longform publication in science fiction/space opera, but I certainly hope she continues writing in this genre, too! She explores interesting questions in an open-ended way, but neither the philosophizing nor some interstitial reminiscences slow down the interstellar art-heist plot significantly. This story goes down easily while leaving the reader hungry for more.

Cover of Mortedant's Peril by R.J. Barker, featuring birds flying within flames rising from a tree in the center of a city.
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Review: Mortedant’s Peril, by R. J Barker

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R.J. Barker’s Mortedant’s Peril fuses his effective  baroque and rugose sense of secondary world worldbuilding into a murder mystery and conspiracy plot. Irody Hasp has a problem. Sure, he can talk to the dead and using that power is making a living even if it’s a hardscrabble one. But, then a coincidental choice of client leaves his apprentice dead…and Hasp in the crosshairs. He’s on the hook for his apprentice’s death and if he can’t solve it, not only will Irody die, but the city he loves itself might suffer grievous harm.  This is the story of R.J. Barker’s Mortedant’s Peril.

Cover of Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford. A giant hand holds up a woman with a 1940s hairstyle, coat, skirt, and heels above a city skyline. The background is a blend of orange, pink, and yellow.
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Book Review: Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford

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I really liked Francis Spufford’s last book, Cahokia Jazz, as stated in my 2024 review, so I was very happy when my library app acquired his latest novel, Nonesuch. The protagonist, Iris, is fascinating, and it’s great fun to watch her machinations and verbal fencing; the setting, London during the so-called “Phoney War” and initial stages of World War II, has long held great interest for me; the book is full of lovely, lyrical descriptions, along with dread and occasional action scenes; and not only are there magic and time travel, but also, fights against fascists, and arguments that are sadly more relevant now than I would have believed possible 10 years ago. However, there’s a giant caveat: The comp that instantly leaps into my head after finishing it is Blackout, by Connie Willis. Not just because it’s set in World War II and there’s time travel involved; oh no: Nonesuch ends with the dreaded words, To be continued. If you hated the way that Blackout concluded with a cliffhanger, I need to warn you about this. Nobody warned me that this book was the first part of a duology — or maybe a series, but I really hope not, since the second book needs to go ahead and fix what went wrong at the end of Nonesuch, if that’s even possible. Please!

Cpver of Ignore All Previous Instructions, by Ada Hoffman, featuring a cartoonish rocket ship flying above Jupiter. The title lettering is tinted blue and orange, matching the predominant colors of the gas giant as pictured.
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Book Review: Ignore All Previous Instructions, by Ada Hoffman

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I’ve been a fan of Ada Hoffman since I ran across some of their stories on podcasts (I reviewed their collection Resurrections here) and read their trilogy that started with The Outside (reviewed here by Kate Sherrod). Some of those stories and especially The Outside trilogy dealt with artificial intelligence, but there the term referred to the older idea of supercomputers gaining intelligence (and sometimes ruling humanity). Hoffman’s new book, Ignore All Previous Instructions, out today, deals with generative AI (Large Language Models using predictive text) rather than true AI, but because one corporation has bought all the rights to all stories of the past, present, and future (at least for anyone who lives near Jupiter), it’s also about who gets to tell stories, what stories are allowed to be told, and what happens with some people whose lives don’t exactly fit into the greatest-common-denominator story framework. It’s a great book, with thoughtful explorations of ideas and what feels like great characterization of an autistic lesbian storyteller who thinks following the rules will keep herself and others safe, and her former best friend, a hacker who delights in breaking what he considers bad rules. It’s also an exciting adventure with heartbreak, passion, and piracy (stealing from the rich and/or evil to redistribute ill-gotten gains to the needy).

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