2025/196: The Naughty List Manager — Remy Fable

"...Go see what this young man is really like. Then come back and tell me if he truly deserves coal in his stocking."
It was absolutely against protocol. It was wildly inefficient. It was a complete deviation from two centuries of procedure.
"I could leave tomorrow," Noel heard himself say.[loc. 61]

Short sweet Christmas m/m romance novella: Noel Frost, an elf, has been managing the Naughty List Department for over two hundred years. For the last decade, he's pulled the file of Ezra Vince, street artist and befriender of stray cats, who's been on the Naughty List for the last ten years. Noel is something of a stickler for the rules, but Mrs Claus sends him to investigate whether Ezra is actually Naughty or ... the other thing.

I was suffering from a surfeit of pre-Christmas crowds and hecticity: this was the perfect antidote. Nicely written, sweet, humorous and fun. There are more in the 'Claus Encounters' series...

2025/195: Voyage of the Damned — Frances White

She’s cutting off the weak to save the strong. No, not even that. Cutting off the poor to save the rich. [loc. 6441]

There has been peace in Concordia for a thousand years: the twelve provinces are united against the threat of invasion, and each province has an heir who's been granted a magical gift, a Blessing, by the Goddess Herself. Voyage of the Damned begins just as Ganymedes ('Dee'), the representative of Fish province, is desperately trying to avoid embarking on the eponymous voyage -- to a sacred mountain, on the Emperor's own ship -- with the other eleven Blesseds. Dee has spent most of his time as Blessed playing the clown, alienating his peers, and overeating. Also, he has a secret which mustn't come out: he doesn't actually have a Blessing.

On board despite his best efforts, Dee comforts himself with the thought that at least he'll get to spend time with his love interest Ravi, the Crow Blessed. But on the very first night of the journey, one of the most popular of the twelve is murdered ... and she's only the first of the victims.

Aided by the six-year-old, sugar-crazed Grasshopper Blessed and the terminally-ill Bear Blessed, Dee is determined to unmask the killer -- if only to save his own life. He's not cut out to be a hero, he insists: but perhaps heroism is in the eye of the beholder.

I didn't quite get the hang of this novel. It was fun and twisty, but sometimes too silly: Dee is rather annoying at times, but more likeable as he opens up and displays his vulnerabilities: the worldbuilding is fairly basic, but there are lots of fascinating details. Not all of the characters are especially rounded, but each has secrets, flaws, allegiances and handicaps. It's a novel about outsiders -- being one, helping others -- and about self-doubt: and it's very much about class.

Despite my reservations, I did enjoy this novel, and I shall look forward to White's next book, due next year.

2025/194: The Year's Midnight — Rachel Neumeier

Tenai had come into Dr. Dodson's care raging with a fury so tightly contained that a casual glance might have judged her calm. She was not calm. Daniel did not need to be told this. He knew it from the first moment he saw her. [p.2]

Daniel Dodson is a gifted psychiatrist who's mourning the death of his wife, and struggling to raise their daughter Jenna. He's also fouled his professional record by whistleblowing an abusive colleague. Now he's working at a smaller institution, Lindenwood, where his first patient is a mute 'Jane Doe' who was found on the highway, threatening vehicles with a sword. She cannot be identified, and nobody can communicate with her.

Daniel persuades her to speak. Her name is Tenai, and the tale she tells is a fantastical account of another world where she made a bargain with Lord Death and avenged her family over a lifespan of centuries. Dr Dodson, eminently sensible, diagnoses her thus: "I think you encountered something in this world that you couldn’t live with, and so you invented another world to be from." He doesn't seem to notice the bursts of static that accompany her flashes of rage, or the way she only picks red flowers, from beds where no red flowers are planted. But the reader knows more than Daniel from the very first page... I'm still not sure if that's a good thing or not!

I was drawn into Tenai's story, and into her therapy, and into her growing respect and liking for Daniel Dodson. Sadly, that's only the first half of the book: the second half, though interesting -- Tenai, released from Lindenwood, becomes a martial arts instructor -- wasn't as interesting to me. I think what I liked most was the sense of worlds colliding, of Daniel's mild-mannered rationalism and Tenai's dark, epic history. She was less interesting when she'd faced the truth about her emotions.

I'd read more, though: there are another five books in the series, and from the brief excerpt included with The Year's Midnight, I believe Tenai will be going home. Or back.

2025/193: The Darkness Outside Us — Eliot Schrefer

Nowhere is truly empty. The thought makes me feel lavishly alone. Somehow, space is so deeply melancholy that it’s not at all sad, like a note so low it ceases to sound. Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant. [loc. 161]

Ambrose Cusk wakes up on a spaceship, the Coordinated Endeavor. The ship's operating system (OS) informs him, in his mother's voice, that the ship is well on its way towards his sister's distress beacon, on Saturn's moon Titan. Ambrose has been in a coma for two weeks, says OS, and has fallen behind on important maintenance tasks. Ambrose, who feels dreadful, can't remember anything about the launch.

But as he regains mobility and memory, he realises that OS is not being completely honest and open. For instance, he's not alone on the ship as he expected: the Fédération ship Endeavor has been connected to another ship, the Aurora, funded by the Dimokratía -- a rival nation, which seems to have evolved from Russia/China. Ambrose's fellow (rival?) spacefarer is Kodiak, who is laconic and imposing and has some amusingly retro ideas. Opposites, as they say, attract.

From the cover, I imagined I was getting an 'enemies-to-lovers' M/M romance in an SFnal setting. The hints and clues of wrongness (ancient blood traces on a dented panel, oddities during a space walk) just served to bring Ambrose and Kodiak together. Only when something truly catastrophic happened did I realise that there was also a serious SF thriller happening. I was surprised by the twist, and impressed by the ways in which the two protagonists (three, if you count OS) reacted to further developments. And though I initially found Ambrose rather annoying (he is a teenage boy) he did develop and mature over the course of the novel. Lovely prose and poignant details: I especially liked Ambrose's violin, of which Kodiak says "You were wise to bring this violin to remember Earth. To remember forests." [loc. 1397]

Recommended: I will probably read the sequel quite soon: but I'm not going to link to it here, because the blurb is a massive spoiler for The Darkness Outside Us.

2025/192: The Summer War — Naomi Novik

Summer stories had a rhythm and a pattern to them, and she knew in her belly exactly how that one should have ended: with the summer lord rising healed and radiant from his bed to catch the hand of the heroic knight who had saved him... [loc. 556]

The Summer War has the beats and the ambience of the most classic fairytales: a king with three children, a curse with unexpected consequences, a bargain with the fae (in this world known as 'summerlings') that hinges on wording, a heroic princess. Celia -- the youngest of King Veris' three children -- accidentally curses her eldest brother, Argent, after he declares that he's leaving home and going to the Summerlands. The middle brother, Roric, has been the odd one out: as King Veris sinks into depression, Celia and Roric vow to care about one another. And when Celia sets out to marry a prince, it's Roric whose music and wit comes to the rescue.

Hard to discuss this one without spoilers! It's a story about the stories we tell ourselves and one another: right from the start, with Veris paying a songwright to write a romantic song that reinvents his story, there's a theme of propaganda, (mis)interpretation, the pattern of stories and how to fit one's life inside those patterns. Told in third person from Celia's point of view, we come to understand what's happening as slowly as Celia herself. And it subverts several fairytale tropes: there is no triumphant wedding, and no punishment of the villains. (Indeed, as a friend observed, no actual villains.)

A gorgeous novella, with a fascinating world lightly sketched, a queer love story, and an eminently capable heroine. 

2025/191: The Future Starts Here — John Higgs

The real problem is that a species that lives inside its own fictions can no longer imagine a healthy fiction to live inside, and this failure of the imagination stops us from steering towards the better versions of our potential futures. [p. 19]

The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next is a cultural analysis of how we view the future, focussing very much on the positive. The book ranges from an overview of why colonising Mars is a daft idea to explorations of the Knebb rewilding project, of natural versus artificial intelligence (and why Higgs feels his cat is smarter than Alexa), and of the ways in which virtual reality can be more than just entertainment. Higgs explores ideas such as reality tunnels, emotional intelligence, the Half-Earth biodiversity project, the utopian tropes of Star Trek and the benefits of Universal Basic Income.

I particularly liked the explanation of the 'circumambient mythos', the underlying narrative mode of a civilisation. He suggests that medieval Western culture's narrative was 'Voyage and Return' (coming from and returning to God); that was replaced by 'The Quest', a journey to a better place (via technological advancement), from the Renaissance onwards. Now, he thinks, our mode is Tragedy: doomed by a fatal flaw. 'But there is also a narrative plot which, for the characters living it, appears to be identical to Tragedy. That plot is Comedy.' [p. 16] Comedy, unlike tragedy, isn't fatal: it can be resolved. Much later in the book, he writes: 'Sitcom, then, is the best metaphor for our future. Humanity, our digital creations and mother nature attempt to get along, while trapped together on the third rock from the sun for untold years to come.' [p. 210]

Higgs is more or less my contemporary; we probably know some of the same people. I certainly felt seen by some of the anecdotes, such as the one where he uncovers 'a box of abandoned gadgets and pieces of technology, which were about 10–15 years old... None of this was cheap to buy at the time, so it wasn’t thrown away when it became redundant. Instead, it was carefully stored away for years, until the day finally came when it was rediscovered in the back of the wardrobe. Then it was thrown away.' [p. 298] Higgs makes much of generational change, and how differently the 'digital natives' of Generation Z view the world: the importance of networks, communication, self-definition. Writing this book, Higgs experimented with his own network: he only talked to people he knew well enough to meet for a drink regularly, and who lived within walking distance from his house.

It's worth noting that The Future Starts Here: An Optimistic Guide to What Comes Next was published in 2018, pre-Covid, pre-Trump2, pre-Ukraine, pre-Gaza, pre-Starmer... It feels to me as though the world has got worse: but I still want to hope for a better future, and so does Higgs.

2025/190: Yvgenie — C J Cherryh

... wizards he knew about sold curses and told fortunes. They did not crawl about inside one's heart and talk from other people's mouths and compel them... [loc. 2560]

Reread: I first read this in the 1990s, I think, and recall liking it: this was before I reviewed everything I read, so I don't know what I thought about it then. This time around, without having reread the two preceding novels of the 'Rusalka' trilogy, I was confused and unengaged.

Ilyana is fifteen and has a secret friend, of whom her overprotective mother Eveshka (a wizard) would absolutely not approve. The friend happens to be a ghost, and he has history with Ilyana's parents and her uncle Sasha. Meanwhile, a young aristocrat -- the eponymous Yvgenie -- appears in the middle of a storm, just as Sasha's house burns down.

Cue lots of running around in dark woods and 'wishing' -- magicking -- possibilities. The novel seemed to ... just stop, and there were some rather troubling plot developments, too, including a potential romance between Sasha and a very young woman connected to Ilyana's family.

I considered rereading the first two -- which I also recall enjoying -- and then giving this another try. Frustratingly, I then discovered that Cherryh effectively rewrote this novel back in 2012. But... the publisher website is 'offline indefinitely': and Cherryh (who's in her eighties now) has posted about illness: and there is no trace on the internet of this new revised version, for which I would happily pay money.

sob