Sally Strange stopped reading Island Queen by Vanessa Riley
It got slow and someone else wanted to borrow it. I may return to it later.
Reviews and Comments
Interests: climate, science, sci-fi, fantasy, LGBTQIA+, history, anarchism, anti-racism, labor politics
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Sally Strange started reading After The Revolution by Robert Evans
What will the fracturing of the United States look like? After the Revolution is an …
Re-reading this book because it's so much fun.
Sally Strange started reading The Big Roads by Earl Swift
A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl …
An interesting coincidence: on July 7, while listening to this book, I learned that Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower, then aged 28, set out with the Army Motor Transport Corps Convoy on a cross-continental trip from Washington D.C. to San Francisco CA on the historic Lincoln highway. On July 7, 1919.
Much of this "highway" was unpaved, so the convoy averaged less than 6 miles per hour all told. They had constant breakdowns and traveled with a blacksmithing and machining capacities in order to repair broken vehicles. They also crushed, and then rebuilt, dozens of wooden bridges.
They arrived in Oakland on Sept. 4 and took the ferry to San Fran the next day.
Sally Strange wants to read Rediscovering Turtle Island by Taylor Keen
While Western accounts of North American history traditionally start with European colonization, Indigenous histories of …
Seems like a book that would be best appreciated as a paper volume with all the accompanying maps.
Sally Strange wants to read The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. …
Was told that this fantasy tale is "very much about militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka," but that one doesn't need deep knowledge of that history or politics to grasp the story. Color me intrigued!
Sally Strange stopped reading Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled …
Too slow-paced for me. For the moment at least. Pretty, though
Sally Strange commented on Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase
This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid’s Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, …
Every page brings a new and disturbing meditation on bodily autonomy, personhood, memory, colonization, gender politics, or something else along those lines. It's a fucking lot. Like, we haven't even gotten to the event that changes the course of things for the main character, and we just had a reveal that her love interest (who's not her husband) has a nephew who is actually, secretly, his great-grandfather decanted into a new body with memories intact. Since the word on the street is that people lose their memories when they "body-hop," the MC suspects that this is a convenient fiction that makes the less privileged easier to control. And don't even get me started on this book's imagined politics of body-hopping across borders.
Sally Strange started reading Hiding in Plain Sight by Sarah Kendzior
Sometimes you just gotta dive into the shit.
Sally Strange wants to read Keeper of Lonely Spirits by E. M. Anderson
find an angry spirit. send it on its way before it causes trouble. Leave before …
New queer paranormal found family fiction!
Sally Strange reviewed Dreadnought by Cherie Priest
A decent follow-up to Boneshaker but with a slow start
3 stars
I will say, first off, that the final scenes at the end are thrilling.
The slow start that I mentioned has to do with us getting to know a new character, a young widow who's a nurse in a Confederate hospital. In this alternate timeline, the Civil war lasts for decades instead of 4 years. She journeys across the continent from Tennessee to Seattle, and along the way, she gets a bit of anti-racist education. My main critique is that the author takes too long to make it clear to the reader that she's not trying to build up sympathy for the Confederacy, and there's one moment where Nurse Mercy stops herself from calling a Black character she's just met the n-word, but Priest doesn't stop herself from writing it out. It's just my opinion that if it's inappropriate for the character to speak aloud to a Black character, then …
I will say, first off, that the final scenes at the end are thrilling.
The slow start that I mentioned has to do with us getting to know a new character, a young widow who's a nurse in a Confederate hospital. In this alternate timeline, the Civil war lasts for decades instead of 4 years. She journeys across the continent from Tennessee to Seattle, and along the way, she gets a bit of anti-racist education. My main critique is that the author takes too long to make it clear to the reader that she's not trying to build up sympathy for the Confederacy, and there's one moment where Nurse Mercy stops herself from calling a Black character she's just met the n-word, but Priest doesn't stop herself from writing it out. It's just my opinion that if it's inappropriate for the character to speak aloud to a Black character, then it should be inappropriate for the author to speak to her readers, which is what she did.
Other than that, it's a decent travelogue with steampunk adventure and dashes of horror. Train enthusiasts will especially appreciate it.
Sally Strange reviewed The Chromatic Fantasy by H.A
Jules is a trans man trapped in his life as a nun. The devil that …
Lovely queer fun
4 stars
A tad bit white considering that it takes place in a fantasy world chock full of anachronisms. But it is colorful, sensual, and meaningful.
Sally Strange reviewed Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (The Clockwork Century, #1)
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike …
An interesting steampunk world to explore
4 stars
Swashbuckling middle-aged mom of a teen boy battles zombies in steampunk Seattle. What's not to love? Satisfying ending in that the battle with the Big Bad isn't easy but also isn't the book's main attraction and doesn't get dragged out.
Sally Strange finished reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (The Clockwork Century, #1)
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike …
Monochromatic but fun.
Sally Strange finished reading Dreadnought by Cherie Priest
Excellent adventure writing; it's a bit slow to build up but the final showdown on the rails through the Rockies is campy steampunk excitement. The protagonist being a Confederate nurse counts against it, unfortunately; her journey to racial tolerance includes her thinking but not saying (and thus telling the readers but not the Black character) the n-word about a Black character. I say, if she wouldn't say it to a Black person in 1887, then surely the author should not say it to her readers.
Sally Strange wants to read Galactic Hellcats by Marie Vibbert
Ki is a petty thief. Her best friend wills her his solo-flyer--call it a space …
This just looks like fun.