Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

I know I’m late to read this, but in all fairness, it has been sitting on my shelf since publication. I pre-ordered it and just never got around to reading it after it showed up—life is like that sometimes.

Then Geo and I came back from a road trip and decided to catch a movie, knowing nothing about Project Hail Mary in the slightest. We loved it, of course. I dug into the stack of books and pulled my copy out, leaving it well within reach. 

Of course I loved everything about this.

Weir does science fiction supremely well.

What makes science fiction work isn’t the science. All stories, to be successful, have to rely on the universal truth of humanity: love, loss, life, ambition, deception, success, companionship, betrayal. And what science fiction is uniquely suited to is stories of universal truths that are arranged around problem-solving, one of the most fundamental elements of human existence. We’re alive; we solve problems. It’s what we do. For what it’s worth, this is why the  Star Trek series succeeded so well, and why the first Star Trek movie failed so spectacularly. Grand sweeping shots of the outside of the ship, or of technology in general, aren’t a story. 

Anyway, I loved everything about this book, and of course you knew I would. 

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

Khaw weaves ancient tales into a beautiful and haunting tapestry of horror, power, domination, and all the ways the world makes monsters of us. And yet we live and love and forge connections, craving, striving, being.

All that is on display, with a prodigious and masterful, lyrical command of language that worms its way in to the darkest corners, unapologetically redecorating as it goes.

I loved this.

But then, I would.

Light Chaser by Peter Hamilton and Gareth Powell

Sometimes I think science fiction is just lost on me. I tend to get a bit glassy-eyed when authors talk about the tech they have envisioned as though I’m going to be as enamored with it as they are, and frequently I’m simply not. Tech itself doesn’t impress me any more than a dial tone in a phone receiver would. The story of how tech is used, though, is compelling. 

Hamilton and Powell almost get it, here, but ultimately fell short for me. 

This is well-enough written, and if you like tech, you’ll like this. It’s a bit of a swashbuckling, rage-against-the-machine by the end of it all, and again, it’s a bit sophomoric for my tastes.

The stories on the various planets are pretty cool, and the underlying premise is solid. 

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

 Turning the last page of A Prayer for the Crown-Shy while sitting under a darkening sky, the waves lapping their way up the abandoned shore on the last night of a week spent on this small patch of sand between islands, was just perfect. 

The second in the Monk and Robot series somehow managed to worm its way into my soul even more so than the first. 

I don’t know how to be, most days, and Chambers manages to weave that up into whole persons with deftness. I really liked this book.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

The Shipping News is delightful. Proulx gives us a protagonist who is down on his luck, down on himself, and adrift at the whims of others—mostly in the form of a mean girl wife. When the wife dies and he loses his on-agin-off-again job, he reclaims the ground he has ceded. A life of sorts becomes available, and he claims it in pieces and parts, with increasing confidence and guided, always, by love and the need to be useful to those he loves. 

I cheered, of course, but also, I fell in love with Proulx’s prose, her wit and wonder, and her beautiful way with words. Bonus for getting to read this while on vacation in a small maritime island town, though not nearly as far north as our protagonist. 

Ragged Alice by Gareth L. Powell

Ragged Alice is one of those rare tales that delivers just enough. Just enough words, just enough character flavor, just enough supernatural. The pacing is spot-on, giving just enough introspection between exactly the right amount of happenings.

The world needs more 100-page mysteries, and this one serves it up with a cracking cup of tea. I love that Powell chose Wales for this tale. 

Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews

I have loved horror since I was a teenager, the weirder the better, especially when it allows us to give voice to the ways in which we don’t fit the world, and the ways in which we might. 

This book came into my life when Geo pressed it into my hand and said “I love this book so much; you have to read it,” and so of course I did.