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(Free early copy via the author's newsletter.)

As always: collections are a mixed bag. Most of these stories I liked, some I loved, and some (with overlap) made me very, very uncomfortable. These are dark - in part very dark - but they also have a strong tendency towards good endings; there's despair and hopelessness, but just about every story also features eventual triumph, mostly via reclaimed power.

Because mine is an early copy, I don't know if the included content warnings (for each individual story, via footnote) are final, but: "violence" is listed in just about every one, so if that's a problem for you you're better off skipping the whole collection. They also tend to be very broad, and certain things were either omitted or, I guess, covered under "violence": loss of autonomy figures prominently in several stories, rape is mentioned in at least one and attempted in at least one other, and dogs have an unfortunate tendency not to survive.

It's this loss-of-autonomy -> reclaimed-power dynamic that really ties the collection together, at once the biggest warning and the biggest selling point. (Though also: plenty of varied queer representation! Interesting worldbuilding! What feels like an extended metaphor for autism via the social model of disability but could probably just as well be read as any other marginalisation!) It's bleak and cathartic and grimly hopeful, and might haunt someone for years or might save someone's life. I suspect it may be one of those books where how it affects you, and whether it does anything for you at all, depends heavily on who you are and what you've experienced up to reading it.

Anyway, overall I liked it.

Despite my edition's somewhat misleading tagline (380 realities; 8 chances to survive) this is not an interactive chooseable-path book, but an ordinary novel. But: it is a good novel! I'm most stricken by the strong voice and the tone of it: dark and gritty, with distinct Mad Max vibes: pretty much a (gritty) action film in book form. (This is not to say that it'd work better in videographic form; it does use the medium of prose effectively.) The protagonist is relatable in an irreverent sort of way - I'm somewhat reminded of Murderbot - and, again, has a good, strong voice.

And for all that dark-and-grittiness, it is in some ways surprisingly gentle and hopeful, which a) seems like quite a feat to pull off and b) makes it a comforting read inside a not-very-comforting (sub)genre, which is, well, neat.

A thing I especially liked was the way it dealt with sex work: a nuanced and wholesome depiction. A thing I was less sure of was the way it dealt with religion. There's not a whole lot of detail gone into as far as religious worldbuilding goes, but the impression I got was that in this future, all religion is kind of thrown onto the same pile - not even in a "morphed together into one big superreligion" sort of way, but in a "people of this subculture are super pious but the details of that are up to them" sort of way. Which is an interesting approach, for sure, but not one I find particularly convincing.

Selling points: astute social commentary in a fun actiony wrapper; gritty setting and cynical protagonist but with a hopeful core; queer rep, including a bi/pan narrator

Warnings: domestic violence, abusive power dynamic in the context of employment, class disparities + classism (by characters, not the narrative).

There is so much neurodiversity in this book, and it is excellent. This book focuses mostly on Outside madness in various forms - which resembles regular mental illness, especially trauma disorders - and there's special attention given to plurality in particular. Only with the addition of eldritch magic powers. This straddles a magical disability line, but man, it is really nice to see a team of nine people of which eight are mentally ill. Of course they're not all given the same amount of development (that would be too many characters!) but their illnesses aren't minimised, and the book does a good job of exploring the way people interact with each other. Especially: harmful things are done with the intent to protect, and it's handled really nicely.

(Also: the mental illnesses being paired with magical abilities feels more like it's nerfing the abilities than that it's making up for the mental illnesses, and mental illness (and neurodiversity in general) is absolutely shown to exist in this universe entirely apart from the eldritch powers; these things do a lot to mitigate the magical disability thing.)

I do want to put one major warning on this book: it is one of those in which a person does something which will cause unpleasant consequences if they are caught at it, and being caught at it seems very likely.

Selling points: neurodiversity!!!; resistance and revolution; eldritch magic; backstories on several major things introduced in The Outside (Enga, Elu, the Morlock wars); people working out relationship problems in a good way

Warnings: honestly kind of a stressful read: you can see things going wrong well before they actually do

I've been wanting to read this book since before it came out, and while I wasn't totally sure of it at first - it is a bit slow to get going - it got better and better as it went, and I'm delighted to have finally read it. This book has layers.

First off, it's Lovecraft but science fiction; which, and this is important, is not the same thing as cosmic horror in space. It takes all that Lovecraftian weird horror stuff and looks at it through a science fiction lens, with an eye to practical analysis. So, for instance: Lovecraft's habit of describing things as "too horrible to describe" (and then proceeding to describe them in detail anyway) is translated here as things being literally indescribable; defying description; not looking like anything; "light" being just a human brain's way of trying to interpret something that it literally can't. Looking at Outside stuff too much or interacting with it will make you go mad, so the cyborg angels augment their vision to just black it out. I know people like to say that what's implied is more horrifying than what's said outright, but this "there's something going on here but it cannot and will not be described" effect isn't horrifying at all - it's matter-of-fact, practical, sci-fi-y; so if you're looking at this book like "I like Lovecraft (despite or except for the racism) because he's Spooky so this is probably a good spooky book also!" then this is definitely not the book for you. It is not a spooky book.

What it does with the concept, though, is amazing. The details are spoilery, but it weaves this cosmic horror stuff into something that blends physics with magic with spirituality in a way that's beautiful and resonates, deeply, honors the ... awe, I suppose, that is the line between worship and horror.

Then there's the way it goes into religion - there are a lot of aspects of it shown here, from "organized religion as a tool for control of a population" to "prayer as a means to an end" to "worship (for lack of a better word) as Knowing and Understanding" to "rapture is its own reward", and so on. The AI Gods don't resonate (for me, anyway) the way the Outside does, but from a worldbuilding standpoint they're fascinating. They reap souls, arguably eat them (in general, this book does an excellent job of taking usually-abstract religious/spiritual things and treating them as physics facts in a science fictiony way) in order to maintain their Godhood, which for the humans is a guaranteed afterlife of becoming one with a God - which as long as it's not Nemesis is considered, culturally, to be a good thing; while a single, almost throwaway line about alien linguistics makes it clear that at least some aliens are deeply horrified by this practice. Which makes sense! Souls being an inarguable science fact is only going to make this sort of religious argument higher stakes!

Yasira isn't especially religious; she's "no good at Gods" (which she feels vaguely guilty for, the way an authoritarian theocratic regime which is with 100% certainty going to judge your soul when you die will do) and her interactions with Outside are more in line with horror and, then, necessity than rapture. She's not culturally neutral; the mores of the AI-God-driven society are pretty well ingrained in her; but because she's not super invested in them as Holy and Sacred, the reader has space to form their own opinions of all this nuance.

And then there's the autism. (And neurodiversity as a whole.)

Riayin, Yasira's home, is a disability-rights-forward sort of place, which is neat both because it allows for a realistic spectrum of reactions (across people from different cultures) and because it's a hopeful vision of the future. Yasira had neurotutors growing up, to teach her how to work with her neurotype - which I love. The Gods, meanwhile, have fancy technological therapy tools. They are very concerned with Yasira's sanity - Outside being madness-inducing as it is - and this means neurofeedback games of which Yasira doesn't know how they work, it not being her area of expertise and all. I love this - I love that something seven centuries in the future has these developments, that fancy therapeutic technology is a thing. I also love that thought is given to the trauma and general well-being, including psychological, of a biological alien spaceship.

The "madness" induced by the eldritch horrors is also interesting from this perspective - Yasira objects to the word at once, of course, given her background, but it still sticks. It... isn't a mental illness, exactly, but it mimics them. It also kind of feeds into gaslighting: a person whose perception of reality doesn't match what it's meant to is labelled mad, even if their perception is, in fact, more correct.

There are several autistic characters, and they balance each other out a bit, if only by showing that a character having a trait doesn't mean all of them do. There's Yasira, the protagonist: a math/physics/engineering genius (prodigy) with hypermorality and a tendency to explore; there's Dr Talirr, a major antagonist, who has flat affect, violent meltdowns, strong social difficulties even with other autistic people (Yasira, despite a history of knowing her), and a focus on her goal that totally bypasses morality; and there's Enga, a minor character whose autism is never named but who definitely reads as autistic. She's certainly neuroatypical in one way or another: a transhuman cyborg angel with a computer for a brain, whose ascension was botched, nonverbal and with futuristic accommodations (she speaks via text and has a text-to-speech translation device when necessary).

I love Enga. She's minor and not especially sympathetic - she's disdainful, certainly not on Yasira's side, and tends to solve problems with violence - but I love her. She has a clicky device in her super-fancy prosthetic arms just to stim with.

Dr Talirr is a villain, but one whom I immediately found sympathetic, possibly partly because whenever the word "heresy" comes up I automatically side with the heretic. It's great to see a villain with flat affect whose affect isn't equated with her villainy; part of the reason this works is that Yasira can read her body language. Her disregard for human life is partly because of the way she perceives the world because of Outside, but also partly because of her autistic sense of priorities; she isn't so much inherently amoral as she just bypasses morality completely in pursuit of the goal she's focused on. This, too, wouldn't work as well without Yasira's hypermorality to balance it out. She has also got an extremely understandable villain backstory, more on that in a bit.

As for Yasira herself - she's a well-drawn autistic protagonist, relatable, melts or shuts down in unexpected and stressful situations, likes to tinker, has lost her passion in an all-too-relateable way but still has the skills, etc, all good; but where the representation is really excellent is in that of her autistic traits, it's not the way she's an utter genius at physics that really matters. I mean, that's very plot-relevant, but only in terms of what she can do and what others want to use her for. In actual climaxy bits, and in her character in general, it's the hypermorality that saves - not just the day - but Yasira's whole sense of self.

(And it's not just a question of making correct choices, the way heroes tend to.)

Where things start to get dodgy, but in a really interesting way that I'd love to discuss with someone if the ideal discussion partner existed, is in the way autism reacts with Outside. Basically: some people can sense it; some people can even interact with it. Dr Talirr is one of these people. So is Yasira. Both are autistic.

Dr Talirr operates on the assumption that it's not just autism, that not all autistic people have this quality, but the book provides no concrete evidence of this either way. (Enga would be a valuable data point here, except that a) she's not confirmed autistic in text; b) she's never shown to attempt any non-violent interaction with it; and c) as an angel on this mission, she almost certainly has the blacking-out-all-Outside-stuff program installed over her vision.) Dr Talirr's villain backstory involves this ability being noticed when she was a child, and described as "presenting as autism". Attempts were made to torture it out of her using a method suspiciously similar to ABA.

I'm not sure if this is just a narrative parallel or if there's a connection being drawn here. The thing is, autism often does involve perceiving things which others do not (but which are nonetheless real). And it does involve pattern-friendly thinking. Yasira eventually perceives Outside as a complex fractal pattern; does she interpret it that way because she's autistic, or does the fact that it is like that make it easier for her, an autistic person, to interpret?

I'm reminded of Gemma Files' Experimental Film, another book that seemed to straddle the magical autism line, which I also wished I could have had someone to discuss with.

One final thought: I really liked the handling of Yasira's girlfriend, Tiv, who was absent for much of the book and served no narrative purpose except to give Yasira emotional motivations - but who nonetheless felt like a complete person (despite the way Yasira thinks of her - with a great deal of love, yes, but also some condescension), and whose relationship with Yasira nonetheless felt real and complete.

Selling points: autistic protagonist; varied autistic representation; lesbians; sci-fi handling of cosmic horror; transhumanist cyborg angels; so many layers

Warnings: very long chapters; unreality; gaslighting; torture; self-injury; nonconsensual drugging

This is one of those books with lots of characters, lots of names, lots of viewpoints, and complicated plot including political shenanigans. Sometimes a new viewpoint character is introduced (along with everyone in their vicinity at the time) only to die at the end of the chapter; sometimes a new viewpoint character is introduced and turns out to be very important and not someone to forget. All of which is to say: if you read very slowly or have trouble with concentration and memory, this is maybe not the book for you.

It has a lot going for it, though: excellent worldbuilding, complex characters and relationships, revolutions, a rot and a religion that combine blood with foliage (and personally I'm always going to be interested in something that involves bleeding trees or, for that matter, flowering veins. This has both). I don't have much specific to say about it right now, but I'm certainly looking forwards to the next one.

Selling points: lesbians; desi-based fantasy; excellent worldbuilding

Warnings: imprisonment, nonconsensual drugging; sibling abuse; lots of violence

I want to be clear that I enjoyed this book. I liked the way it dealt with Purpose, and I liked the flavour of the setting - especially in the style of the stories and songs that appeared within it.

That said, I have a hell of a lot of - mostly small - quibbles about it, and they tend to point in the same direction: inconsistent worldbuilding, or the consequences of things not being fully thought out.

Biggest, most-likely-to-affect-other-readers quibble: this is a sexism story, one of those where a girl goes out and does things and claims her rightful place at the side of men and reduces the sexism of the setting by breaking ground and whatnot. I... have really mixed feelings about this style of story in general. On the one hand, I can definitely see their value; on the other, if you read a bunch of them, especially at an impressionable age, they sort of cement the idea that women are lesser as default and something needs to actively change in order for that not to be the case.

The weird thing about this one in particular, and where it hits into the inconsistency, is that the sexism is only in a very, very particular place. Female council members are expected to bear the emperor's children, and priests reduce them to their childbearing capacity. But - they have real political power, no less than that of the male council members, and specific roles aren't assigned based on sex. The emperor is always male, and that's definitely an actual sexism which I don't mean to reduce, but at the same time - the emperor is an individual, the position is passed down by blood, so sex feels like the smallest factor in "most people are excluded from being emperor". And aside from objectifying priests and some revisionist history, the sexism doesn't feel like it really trickles down from that one particular position.

Then there's the way it plays into the imperialism in general. The empire is shown both to have a deeply immoral origin and to violently erase culture, but this isn't presented as "empire bad" but as "empire inadequately ruled". I... can't really complain about this, because I know there's a sequel out there and I haven't read it, so maybe this is better addressed there, but it does feel a little bit... flattened?

Most minor quibble, which doesn't really matter at all but I mention because a) it's bothering me and b) it's another example of the consequences of worldbuilding not being totally followed through on: people of the emperor's lineage are described as being visibly Oluwan, but by rights they should be visibly isoken (mixed race). There's one council member per realm, the emperor's children are borne by female council members: the emperor's mother has not been Oluwan in many generations.

And the quibble that's actually bothering me the most, but that is going to make this review sound really weird: this book has a gaping plot hole in the shape of an orgy.

To be clear, I don't think an actual orgy would have improved the book at all, but that fact that one was never mentioned as an expectation or even a possibility is a glaring omission. You have twelve people who are soul-bound together for the remainder of their lives and become physically ill if they don't have physical contact with one another for too long, growing into and out of puberty together, and they... are all expected to be celibate, with the exception of the emperor and Exactly One Female Council Member, Who Is Not To Be Singled Out From The Others, Except That She Is To Become Pregnant.

This feels unrealistic; this feels like worldbuilding not thought through. The reason it's bothering me so much, though, is that this is basically a giant polyamorous marriage Except Not Really. And this "...but not really" leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

All that litany of complaints aside, though, I did enjoy the book, and it's definitely nice to see fantasy with a black lead and Afro-centered setting.

Selling points: black girl protagonist; multicultural, African-flavoured setting; asexual representation; very nice representation of oral storytelling.

Warnings: enslavement and rape (not of the protagonist; the sexual part isn't graphic, but the lack of consent very much is); parental child abuse; inconsistency in the worldbuilding; somewhat over-convenient plot resolution.

I really, really love Yoon Ha Lee when he writes for adults (Machineries of Empire). I don't like him nearly as much when he writes for children (Dragon Pearl). I figured young adult is closer to regular adult than to children, so gave Phoenix Extravagant a try, and, well... it's not nearly as extreme as Dragon Pearl was, but the things that bothered me about it are in here too: it feels kind of... dumbed-down, overexplained, with a strong tendency towards rhetorical questions. I enjoyed it anyways overall - some great concepts in here and a fantasy robot dragon whom I adored - but the writing style is really not my favourite, and I might have to restrict my enjoyment of Yoon Ha Lee to his work for adult adults from now on.

Also feel like the ending needs a mention. I'm not really sure how to feel about it - on the one hand it's subversive in a way that really highlights the way things don't actually always work out in a clean narrative way, on the other that cheapens everything that came before. I suspect this is, in fact, the point. So - not a satisfying read, but that's maybe not a bad thing? I'm not sure.

Selling points: feels like the exact opposite of science fantasy (this is a sci-fi story with fantasy trappings; the dragon is a robot, which is more important than that it is a dragon); nonbinary protagonist; various queer representation; Korea-inspired setting; emphasis on art; sciencey application of magic

Warnings: destruction of culture, removal of autonomy, torture

Loved this book. Gorgeous prose, excellent worldbuilding, interesting and compelling characters, nifty magic system involving a signed language that is holy. Imperialism and systemic oppression given the weight that they deserve. Something something strength in femininity - I'm not the best qualified to speak on this and every attempt to put it into words is failing, but I've rarely if ever seen something like this where womanhood itself, trappings and all, is depicted as strength - even in a patriarchal society - without being reduced to something like "because women can affect men". I may have seen this before in trans narratives; if I have in cis narratives, though, not as well as I have here.

Two things I'd particularly like to highlight: one, the persistent emphasis on choice and boundaries and consent, even (or especially) in a situation where these things are very, very hard to come by; and two, the fact that even when Mehr's situation is desperately bleak - which it is for a majority of the book - there are moments of hope and humanity sprinkled regularly throughout. Small moments, overshadowed by the hopelessness of the situation, but all the same they allow the reader - and the characters - time to breathe. Which is absolutely crucial, especially in a novel like this.

Selling points: bi-cultural protagonist; excellent worldbuilding; Indian-inspired fantasy; just all-around excellent really

Warnings: slavery / abuse / near-absolute lack of autonomy; abuse of religious power; forced marriage

This book was a fun read with great worldbuilding and nice characters, and some interesting moral/ethical quandaries (which, however, failed to really acknowledge the way that these quandaries existing at all was a result of the way the society was built up, putting all the moral weight on the actions of individuals).

However, two things about it: one, it did that thing where the reader and the character have all the same information, and yet the character completely fails to notice something which I, as a reader, found extremely obvious. This was built up like a murder mystery, but because the murderer's identity was clear from pretty early on - though not to the assassin-turned-detective - it turned into a murder dramatic irony. This is an effect I generally do not like. I'll make exceptions if it's deliberate for characterisation reasons, and in this case I could see that being so if Amastan refused to acknowledge/consider the murderer as an option rather than just failing to, but honestly that is not how it read.

Two, I found the romance kind of heavy-handed, but that's probably entirely on my end.

Selling points: gay romance, allo-ace protagonist, nifty worldbuilding, ethical quandaries, murder mystery but fantasy and gay.

Warnings: not very mysterious as mysteries go; casual depiction of slavery as part of worldbuilding; fails to acknowledge societal impact on ethics.

This book is the best sort of magical realism - soft, slow-paced, rife with gorgeous imagery that is sometimes metaphor and sometimes real, and always means something. I wouldn't want every book I read to be like this, but as an occasional treat it is delightful.

I'm at a loss to say much about it, though, except that although it is a story about teens in love, it isn't a teens-fall-in-love romance: rather, it's about teens navigating emotional intimacy in a relationship that already exists, which I find considerably more compelling. Also, while this the emotional core of the book, it's not the whole of it.

Selling points: soft prose; magical realism in the best, most magical way; truly excellent imagery; Pakistani rep; Latina rep; trans rep (a boy and a woman, both major characters); lesbian rep (notably: homosexuality as a redeeming characteristic); love in many forms, notably a patient and supportive mother.

Warnings: trauma, parental child abuse (past), self-harm; peer abuse; transmisia: in dialogue from antagonists, deadnaming, misgendering and threats of outing; in (very limited third person) narration, deadnaming and misgendering when referring to the past, considering a person's past and present selves as separate people; also the cover of my paperback edition has a very strange, unpleasant texture.

These stories aren't especially deep, and sometimes they're a bit cheesy, and because the whole concept of the collection is "prophecies subverted by transness" a few of them are pretty predictable - but none of that really matters. No Man of Woman Born doesn't try to be anything more than what it is: light, escapist high fantasy aimed at younger audiences. And it does that admirably, while being extremely affirming all the way.

I wish I'd read this book when I was younger. And I hope that many, many people read it today, and going on into the future, who are at the age when it matters most. What age that is exactly I'm not sure - I'm terrible at guessing standard reading age - but preteens, certainly, and probably a good bit younger than that as well. Trans kids, of course, but cis kids as well, and especially - especially - kids who are not quite sure what they are yet, or who haven't been given the opportunity to consider it.

Please distribute this book to your children. (Or yourself.)

Selling points: trans protagonists across a wide spectrum of genders; background trans and otherwise queer representation; an aromantic protagonist trapped in a prophecy about True Love; in one story, interesting polyam family structures; all of this handled with respect; escapism.

Warnings: honestly, none - not only did I find it overall inoffensive and light, but individual stories are also prefaced with generous content warnings. There's a bit of a focus on Chosen Ones and also on monarchy, but these are kind of inimical to the concept and genre, and not every story in the collection goes this way. (Also, apparently there was a scandal about the author working for an arms dealer? This is not strictly relevant to the book itself but may be important to some people trying to decide whether to spend money on it.)

I wasn't sure about this book at first, for a few reasons - the biggest being the way it seemed to be setting up a romance between a woman from an oppressed minority (consistently referred to as a "girl" despite her 25 years), and a man who is her oppressor. He abducts her and does a bunch of horrible stuff, but as they travel together and are forced to rely on each other, she grows into lust for him and he becomes increasingly humanized. That's... not a dynamic I enjoy reading, nor one I approve of: it reads as regressive, and a good half of the book is pretty much devoted to it.

The good news is that as it goes on, it grows into nuance. People actually grow and learn, and while this dubious romance bit is critical to that - the humanization goes both ways - it's not just as simple as "falling in love with the enemy swaps everyone's ideology and solves all the problems". So that turns out to be all right. Sort of.

The other main reason is the writing style, which I'm not personally much of a fan of: very, very dense with description and figurative language, with absolutely constant use of active voice, to the point where there's no dynamic range to speak of. It's weirdened a bit further by the way it interacts with the perspective - first person present tense is usually good for immediacy and character, while the density of the prose has a distancing effect and the implication that Évike constantly thinks in this active-language-metaphors way is not really reflected or explored in the rest of her characterization. I could imagine there being a good reason for this, if it better reflects Hungarian speech patterns or something, but speaking as someone who knows no Hungarian whatsoever I can't tell if that's the case. Regardless: some dynamics would have helped.

The worldbuilding fits a weird in-between spot: I was expecting a world built around Hungarian folklore, but this is probably rather alt-historical. There are Fantasy Jews. There is Fantasy Christianity (but with a different, Fantasy Greek origin story). Fantasy Hungary borders on Fantasy Austria-or-Germany-or-something. With everything seemingly having a direct real-world analogue, I'm hesitant to call this secondary-world fantasy, but everything is also different enough that I'm not sure I've learned anything about any actual cultures, current or historical.

The one thing that I really, really like about this book, though, is the way it deals with religion. There are three main cultures/religions mentioned (a fourth is not gone into much detail over) and while the narrative to some extent pits them against each other, there's magic (though sometimes not called by that name) associated with each of them. I like the way that contradicting religions are all treated as... I want to say "true", but truth doesn't enter into it, not really; but as powerful, at any rate. The characters take sides, of course, but the worldbuilding itself doesn't favor any one religion and also doesn't favor atheism, which is a really neat effect and not one I'm sure I've ever seen before!

I also like the way that religion shapes the characters' worldviews and ideologies, even when you take away the beliefs and mythology and faith-based powers and whatnot. Culture is often reduced to things like food and clothes and how people celebrate which holidays, and that's all part of it to be sure, but this book did a great job of exploring the way it can shape people even aside from all those trappings.

Selling points: alt-historical if you're into that; interesting and fairly nuanced take on religion; casual lesbian representation (minor, almost background); (fantasy) Jewish representation.

Warnings: slightly heavy-handed romance with extremely unequal power dynamic; religious violence; moderately graphic violence, though I find the writing style somewhat dampens the effect of it; not enough passive voice.