Alice by Christina Henry

 

So, I've recently kinda fallen for Christina Henry's writing, in a more explicitly Horror context, though I've known she'd written some novels that were spins on older stories that are generally thought of as "for children" (though I'd submit that Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have pleasures for adults) and it's possible The Girl in Red is one of these, though that doesn't have much in common with "Little Red Riding Hood" past a couple of signifiers about the main character. This is definitely one, though: There are references to the book/s all through this, though this is absolutely not some sort of crypto-sequel, or some sort of thinly reskinned retelling. This is a novel that works on its own, and probably would for a reader who somehow knew nothing of the original novel/s. It's grim and grimy, and it reminds me a lot of some of Alix Harrow's work, especially The Once and Future Witches with its vaguely alt-historical setting. The prose here moves beyond solid into borderline magical, with some elements actually managing to be heightened without detracting from the story; the characters--especially the mains--are thoroughly considered and well conveyed, and the story itself fucking rips. There's a wide feminist stripe running through the novel, but that's not a bad thing; the novel clearly has things to say about power differentials and male gaze and plausibly things like animal rights (the Rats of NIMH Easter egg was ... unexpected) as well as things like the rich keeping the poor firmly under the soles of their boots. Really, really good stuff, here.

Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

 

Grabbed this in spite of my not preferring series fiction, because Block is usually fun to read, and good for a few chuckles. This hit those marks pretty precisely. The novel is copyright 2008, so it's not wildly obsolescent in terms of the technology at play (though I think Block whiffed on the cameras at tollbooths). The story is ... a little indirect, the POV spends a lot of time on the run, then settling down, before he has his revenge on the people who framed him for a very public killing; the fact the POV is a hitman complicates the morality, here, at least a little bit. He's not a horrible person, but he's capable of being very much not a good one, either. There are layers here and much to be interested. This isn't Block at his funniest, but there's still wit and sparkle all over, here.

Time's Undoing by Cheryl A. Head

 

This was a novel that I really wanted to like, about the long stain of racism and how its victims have struggled to have lives and loved ones they cherished, and about answering questions about your family older than your parents. Alas, it's really not a very good novel: The prose just lies inert on the page, with no sparkle or joy and barely any signs of life; the story is kinda obvious, especially once you twig to the author's premises and priors; much of the incident that *isn't* about racism in policing in the Deep South strikes me as amazingly implausible; the fact one of the POV characters turns out to be a ghost is something like cheap; the multiple timelines end up serving little purpose, the heart of the story is in the present, not the past, the events of the past probably would have been better served if they'd been reduced in number (and in overall length). This is a novel that wants to use its story to say something, and I agree with what it's trying to say, but the story itself completely fails to carry the weight, here.

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

 

This is not a novel I would have expected from Rekulak, the fact it's his first might be connected to that (though causality might point any possible direction). It's not really a thriller or crime novel, it's a pretty straightforward bildungsroman set in 1987 New Jersey, where the main characters (and his ... I guess they're his friends) live the hellish lives of high school freshmen--high school freshmen who for various reasons don't really fit in anywhere than each other's company. There's some relatively minor crime, and some awkward early love, but the primary story is the main character realizing he's good with computers, even though he's tanking in all his classes. (He seems to have maybe something like ADHD, but that's never mentioned--and it wouldn't have been in 1987.) It's not a horrible novel, but it really didn't do a whole lot for me. I guess the disjunction between the main character's knack for computers and his failure to thrive in school just didn't work for me, and though my high school years were various kinds of unpleasant they weren't the same kinds as happen to the characters here. I don't feel as though I wasted my evening, but oh comma well.

The Fireman by Joe Hill

 

Well, this was my reading this weekend, nearly 800 pages. It was interesting to read a plague-apocalypse novel that all happened in the apocalypse, no aftermathy stuff, no gods or devils or AIs playing at either: Just people trying to survive a disease with some traits that at least look supernatural on the surface (fungi are occasionally weird, but I'm not gonna buy spontaneous human combustion as a symptom, here). The characters are mostly distinct and believable, but there's some incident that skitters on the edge of implausible, even in a novel that at least gestures at the supernatural being possible in it. It's easy to point at precedents, here, but this mostly ends up standing on its own, and it's pretty good.

Trashlands by Alison Stine

 

This was really not a very good novel, clearly aiming for "kaleidoscopic" and landing on "scattershot." Way too many POVs, way too many narrative threads, way too little of anything more than the vaguest of throughlines. The setting being one in which all the environmental chickens have come home to roost, specifically on the already disadvantaged, does not make things better. Thuddingly bleak and depressing, to put it kinda mildly. On the micro-level, the prose, the dialogue and all-a-that, it's not bad, though there's not much sparkle or joy to the prose (arguably, given the setting and the thuddingly bleak and depressing overall tone, sparkle and/or joy would be out of place). I see the author has won a Philip K. Dick award for another novel: Given his glaring flaws as a novelist, one should probably take any award named for him with some skepticism. I kept wanting to tap out of this novel, but I figured maybe it would go somewhere, do something, that would be worth the while. It never did.

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams

 

This is an interesting little novel, more literary than anything else--at least as I see it--though there's definitely some SF-adjacent premise that needs swallowed before you'll enjoy the novel. Heck, probably before the novel would even make sense. The novel is structured a little weird, with pretty distinct individual story arcs that mostly resolve in sequence, though there are some throughlines, and there is some sense that the sequence of resolutions is necessary. There are some pretty strong messages percolating up from the subtext, about tech and business and art and happiness and conformity. There's probably something about all the lies we tell ourselves, or at least allow ourselves to believe, wrapped up in something that smells strongly like the placebo effect. The prose is smooth and practically invisible, the characters are remarkably well-defined, though some might be more reliable than others (I don't get the feeling any of them is wildly unreliable, but it's always worth remembering--especially in something that bends at least a little literary--that the characters might not be telling what's actually happening around them). I grabbed it in spite of some skepticism, and I'm glad I did, there's a lot to like, here.