2024 books: 5-8

[the_siobhan]

Next batch of titles.

Apocalypse Nix by Kameron Hurley I think I must have gotten this as part of a Humble Bundle. I fucking loved the world-building in this book. It takes place on a mostly desert planet with two suns and the current culture strongly implies that the original settlers were from Muslim countries. Both the food and the technology is based on bugs - one assumes the main organisms that can survive in a desert. In fact most of the tech appears to be biology based; they can rebuild a person out of spare parts, contagious diseases are used as weapons, and the insects are bio-engineered to be anything from a data chip to a fuel source to a grenade. The storys are very grimdark - if by grimdark you include environments that feel oppressive because of the intense blinding light and heat. The culture has been at war for over 100 years and life is cheap. The plot is just a series of "jobs" taken on by Nyx and her team of mercenaries and bounty hunters. Every single person in it is heavily traumatized by generations of war and apparently therapy had never been invented. I didn't really buy the nascent love story because Nyx is an incredibly unlikeable character, but it also kind of works just because everybody else is equally messed up, so.

An Illusion of Thieves by Cate Glass No idea where this once came from either. It's the first book in the Chimera series. My first reaction to this setting was that it was the X-men set in medieval Europe. (Italy, I think.) A tiny minority of people have magical powers, all of them different. Being able to use magic is punishable by death, and the government enslaves those they can capture alive to be "sniffers" that detect other magic-users. The main character hides her abilities as much as she can but is occasionally detected by other magic-users who are also in hiding. They live in an uneasy truce that could be betrayed at any time. Then about halfway through it turned into a Leverage plot - seriously, several of the characters get involved in a heist and fall into the roles of grifter, hitter, thief, and counterfeiter. Which I did not expect, but enjoyed immensely. Honestly this book ended up being so much fun and I may look for the rest of the series.

Welcome to Boy.Net by Lyda Morehouse I bought this one because I was curious. A cyberpunk trans space marine adventure story! What's not to love about that? Lucia Del Toro is the space marine in question and the story starts with her and her wife (who is descended from space hippies, no really) doing odd jobs for cash. In spite of the need to stay very far away from the military that Del Toro used to marine for, one of their jobs get them accidentally get caught up in an inter-planetary plot. I have to say, the idea of taking gender dysphoria and adding in the detail that your body is literally owned by a soulless military organization that can just upload a patch whenever they damn well want to is the kind of body horror that would never even occur to me, so wow. Add in the dodgy memory and degrading hardware aspect and that it could have been a very grim story. Instead I ended up being completely charmed. The world-building is great, the action is fast, the characters are hilarious. It would make a fantastic TV show, there is tons of action and an evil military colonial power and quirky people. And also found family, and I am a complete sucker for a good found family story.

Witch King by Martha Wells I am one of the many people who completely devoured all the Murderbot stories, so when Wells delved into a new genre I was very interested in checking it out. This books takes place in a fantasy universe rather than an SF one. The "Witch King" of the title is Kai-Enn, a demon. In this universe, demons aren't necessarily evil, they just happen to be denizens of an alternate universe known as the "underearth" by humans. They do however, have the ability to possess people. The story opens with Kai-Enn waking up in a trap and possessing a recently dead body in order to escape. The story jumps around in time a lot. In order to find out who imprisoned them and where their missing companions are, Kai-Enn and friends have to retrace their steps through an old conflict with a people called the Hierarchs. Nobody knows much about The Hierarchs or where they came from other than that they are ruthless and capable of destruction on a massive scale. Real Sodom and Gomorrah levels of badness. I really enjoyed the world building in this book. My impression is that it's intended to be the first in a series and that's good because there's a lot to explore. Kal-Enn is also a really likeable character. He has real affection and loyalty to the humans he interacts with, especially the adoptive human family who first brought him into the mortal world. Found family out the yin-yang, and like I said earlier that is very much my trope.

 

Comments

[sylvanwitch]

Ooooh! "Welcome to Boy.net" looks really awesome! I've just bought the ebook via B&N. Thanks for the review!

[the_siobhan]

I really enjoyed it. There is so much dystopian potential and she managed to make it fun and affirming instead.