The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Songbirds & Snakes was published during the pandemic, and as much as I loved the original trilogy, I simply couldn’t pick up dystopian literature in 2020. 

Collins paints a portrait of our favorite villain that makes him three-dimensional, and at times we even root for Snow. This is a magic trick that is worthy of the Covey, and I love that Collins has woven the Covey into her tale. This enriches the world that she paints and deepens my love for the series and the author. 

One of the things we say is that the deck is stacked and the cards are marked, but even so, when you start to win anyway, they will try to change the rules. Because Snow must always, always, land on top. 

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

I love a good time loop, and Claire North really delivers.

Bonus points for bringing some sturdy philosophical ethical theories into the characters’ conversations and rumination, especially for calling out the oft-used “complexity is the reason for inaction”  argument against trying to live a life of consequence. 

But more than anything, I found the loves and losses—and even the eventual apathies—of Harry August to be compelling narrative. His fifteen lives, and the ways in which he creates and then unties a Gordian knot will stay with me long past the page.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow

I loved everything about this book.

Portals, stories, the story of the self, self-determination and self-discovery, the crafting of a life of meaning.

It’s beautifully written and, as El-Motar said, “unbearably beautiful.”

I love stories about the power of stories, and I think story is somehow inherently linked to the idea of freedom, and how we write the stories of ourselves, and how we reclaim that space and power when we have let others write that story, and why and how that matters.

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.