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Wasn't actually sure what I was getting when I ordered this, but I'm no an infrastructure kick so this one came as a double-purchase with Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works" (that one's a couple of books down the queue still).

"Hidden Systems" is a graphic telling of the stories of three things we depend upon utterly, but probably spend little time considering how they work in real-world concrete terms: the internet, electricity, and water.

Easy to read, beautifully, and simply designed, and providing a genuinely superb sense of both the scale of these systems and how their many parts inter-connect, "Hidden Systems" is very much worth your time (and it won't ask too much of it, though there's plenty here to look back over more than once).

Nott's explicit goal is to allow us to think in clear and honest terms about the physical and human efforts, costs, and outcomes of the various systems in which we are embedded and live our modern lives. It contains lots of surprising details, sharp, insightful metaphors, and interesting perspective on these things. Will have me pondering it more, and coming back to the book too.

Highly recommended.

It's been a long time since I dipped into the epic fantasy genre (I burned out on the meanderings of the Song of Ice and Fire after A Feast for Crows, and don't think I've been back since).

There is a lot to like about this book. It is epic, and it is fantasy, and the world-building is both rich and not beholden to the standard tropes of medieval (or even early modern/17th century-esque as this seems to be) societies. It's a world that doesn't have the typical misogyny or homophobia by which some authors announce the authenticity of their settings, and is better for it. Nothing about such things really adds realism to a setting, while realistic relationships between people certainly does.

The point of view characters are for the most part sympathetic and sometimes noble, though sometimes a little too much so.

While I welcome the overall positive tone, I think the balance has been missed, and it's here that we also see some of the real weaknesses in the story. Shannon has built a very rich world, but while some fantasy authors would trap you in it for seven books and force you to wallow in every tiny detail that they've invented, Shannon spends several hundred pages setting out the basic ideas of the world and beginning a number of threads of narrative, but then is in such a rush to tie them off in a single volume that she hops, skips, and jumps across geography and plot to get the job done. A wealth of mythology and background is dealt with in sudden exposition dumps to get characters up to speed and quests done without having to work for them.

Normally I'm wishing the author would stop dragging things out for eight books, here I was wishing she'd taken some time to break this into three, and develop the plot a little more. There are so many quests to get through and so little time to do so (because it's a standalone book), there is no real sense of risk or jeopardy in them. Things go really well most of the time, and the supposed injuries or danger never feel real - it all ends up feeling a little like a beautifully written (and it is beautifully written) Saturday morning cartoon for grown ups. The world feels deeper, but we're not given time to really take it in and appreciate it, despite how thick the thing is!

I won't get into the international politicking for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but this is again somewhere that could have had richness of narrative, but doubles down on the lightness.

All in all, Shannon's imagination and writing skills are on display, and to be admired, but the book is much less affecting and involving than it could or should be, I feel. Lightness like this for three or four hundred pages would be great, and I'd probably chew through a series of it. Eight hundred pages of it leaves things unsatisfying, and not terribly interested in returning to the world (there are other books set there, but not I think continuing this story).

Jemisin has a talent for characters you can care for and care about, and a smoothness to her writing that makes difficult ideas and abstract notions seem intuitive. All of that is on show here, and at a pace to get a story done before the world (our one) takes itself to pieces.

Its predecessor, The City We Became is a better book. It takes more time to develop the characters, their cares and arcs, though we barely get to see one of the most interesting ones (I won't go into too much detail in case you haven't read that one). We see them here, but mostly in small snatches of narrative and events rather than as a full point-of-view thread through the book. This is still a rollicking good read and a full, rich story, though. That the book isn't quite what it could have been is just made clear, partly by Jemisin's fluency and pace.

I get the feeling that's because Jemisin was in a rush - something she notes in the Acknowledgements at the end. What I had thought was a clear reaction to Trump and the white supremacy he allowed to push through from the depths all over the surface in The City We Became seems to have been more prescient, she was working out implications to come in the writing that were more clear everywhere by the time got through the publishing process. The real reaction was in this book, but the violence and crappiness of the world Trump unleashed seems to have been a bit much for both the story and the author (and who can blame her?).

While there are some superb stories and working out of key threads in this book, the disjoint between the humanity and the other-worldly machinations means that several key events gets a 'real-world shittiness' followed by a roll-for-random-Lovecraft-encounter feel it to. The weave isn't quite as tight was it was in the first, because there isn't time.

In the final third, there's a sprint finish which gets things done, and wraps things up, but the pace leaves some (by no means all!) of the humanity behind.

It's very cool, and very well worth it. And I really want to know what games Jemisin plays.

What was to be at trilogy is now a complete duology, and I cannot wait to see what she brings next.