Simone and Her Books

…in two categories.

Back in April, I decided I would dedicate my time to reading the Hugo Award nominated books from two categories; the Novels and Novellas. I wish I could have read all of the stories, but I am a simple human and didn’t want to be beholden to too many books especially when there’s other books to read and review. So I decided just these two categories will be enough for me.

Let me first start off by saying this was most definitely a challenge. Not only was I reading six extremely big and unapologetic sci-fi novels, but then I was reading five novelas that were small but mighty in their story power. Sheesh! The other challenge was that I didn’t own most of the books in these categories and being on a big old book buying ban, I didn’t want to buy them either. So I borrowed all of them from the library. Some had much longer wait times than others, so I was getting them in slowly and then all at once.

Each book was a completely different world to immerse yourself in. Each of these authors deserves some sort of medal for writing these stories. I’m honestly impressed with these nominees and I will be reading more from each of these authors in the future. Aside from Gideon the Ninth and Becky Chambers, I had never read any of these books or authors.

So the rules of my book challenge was to read all the books from the Novel category and 5/6 of the stories from the Novellas category. I didn’t end up reading In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire because it was a story in the middle of a series. While everyone told me that it’s fine to read this one because they’re standalone, I’m not the kind of person who’s reading books out of order. I must read the other books first and that’s my credo. Live by it. Die by it. So I didn’t read all the books from the Novella category, but I figured Seanan McGuire was also nominated for the Novel category so I did that.

Then I read the books. Phew! I went to space. I went to January. I went through two doors with a girl named January. I was in a parallel universe. I had a twin. I went to Alternate Cairo. I swam with mermaids who were born from the pregnant enslaved Africans who were thrown overboard from their ships. I played chess. I turned into a ball of light. I was an ambassador from a mining town. I died for my necromancer. I lost a friend in a time war.

All of these are elements from the stories I read. They were all complex and engrossing. Each of them brought something interesting to the table. I wasn’t a fan of maybe two of the stories, but the rest were ::chef’s kiss:: So let’s finally get down to my own personal choices for a Hugo Award…

INTRO MUSIC

VO: Folks of the science fiction and fantasy universe, welcome to Simone’s Personal Hugo Awards! [wait for applause]. With your host, Simone and Her Books!

ENTER SIMONE. SHE’S WEARING SOME KNOCK OUT DRESS WITH SEQUINS AND MAYBE A TENTACLE AND SOME SORT OF HEADDRESS THAT’S MADE OF STARDUST AND ALCHEMY.

Simone: Thank you so much! I’m so happy to be here to host my very own Hugo Awards! [pause for applause]. This year’s nominees all brought some interesting ideas to the table. Other worlds, parallel dimensions, monstrous beings, and mermaids alike! There was no end to the massive creativity and breathtaking life these authors put into their work. I’m so honored and privileged to have read these books and share these books with you all.

But without further ado, let’s re-introduce the nominees.

For the Novel category, our nominees are:

• The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan)
• Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
• The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley (Saga; Angry Robot UK)
• A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
• Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK)

The winner for best novel is…

[DRUM ROLL]

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Middlegame is a book I can’t get out of my head. Twisting and turning, the story of Roger and Dodger was so complex and well thought out I was breathless by the end. It truly was the most magical urban fantasy I’ve ever read in my life. Using alchemy as its main source of magic, Roger and Dodger were a set of twins created by a man who believed concepts in our reality can be personified into real people. However, they’re not perfect beings and split from each other at birth, it was only time that would eventually bring these two together. This book was so genius (in my opinion) that there’s even a book of the book within the book. MIND BLOWN. I cannot wait to read Over the Woodward Wall (out later this year) and I’m most definitely a lifetime fan of Seanan McGuire.

Simone: That was quite beautiful, don’t you think? And now onto the nominees for the Novella category:

• “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador))
• The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Gallery)
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
• In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
• This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books)
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)

The winner for best novella is…

[DRUM ROLL]

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Honestly, this was a tie between To Be Taught, If Fortunate and The Deep. The reason why I’m giving it to The Deep is because while TBTIF was a very straightforward space opera, The Deep went even further with the story Rivers Solomon creates.

First off, the story is based off a song by clipping. It talks about a world where the enslaved African women who were pregnant on the African slave ships were tossed overboard. Their children were born in the ocean growing gills and fins and learning to live in the deep. Rivers Solomon brings to life Yetu, a young woman who’s sole responsibility is to keep all the memories and history of her people. Every year, she would unleash these memories to her underwater tribe and they would all remember where they came from. But Yetu wanted more than just a life as a living history book. So she runs away searching for her identity when she comes across a little island off the coast of Africa.

While the story itself is pretty short (it is a novella after all), I thought Rivers Solomon’s way of sharing identity with history was so powerful. The lessons Yetu learns in her time away from her people made so much sense to me when I was reading it. And the lesson at the end made me cry to know about the hope in the future and learning our shared histories. It was incredibly moving.

Thank you all for coming to our little awards show. GOOD NIGHT!

FADE TO BLACK

Before I leave you all, I do want to share my other honorable mentions. I won’t go into details why they were good, but they were good. The best part about this challenge is that I got to explore so much from this genre. I have new favorite authors and books I wouldn’t normally pick up. It was such a great experience that I will never do again. Honorable mention goes to:

• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
• The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P Djeli Clark
• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

“I live the city.” – NK Jemisin

I was first drawn to The City We Became because of NK Jemisin. I loved The Broken Earth series and couldn’t wait for her next book to arrive. And when it did, I knew I would love it too. Very different from the Broken Earth trilogy, The City We Became explores not only a New York born from the people who inhabit it, but a force that’s determined to keep people of color down. Before diving in, I’ll share my content warning. There are also many spoilers in this review. I tried to keep it to the need-to-knows before you dive into the story, but I couldn’t hide everything.

CW: This book contains racist depictions for the sake of the story. They were pretty difficult for me to read, so I wanted to note that because it will be frustrating for those who it affects. I will also mention there is a Neo-Nazi in this story as well (and from my personal experience on Long Island most definitely exist in real world New York). This book also has sexual harassment, domestic and verbal abuse, and alcoholism.

First off, the love letter to New York. As a native New Yorker who grew up on Long Island but spent weekends in the city, I knew my expectations were already high. I’ve read so many love letters to New York and while they were all fine, it was always some other person’s experiences with New York. New York on the Upper West Side. New York in SoHo. New York on Fifth Avenue. And these are fine parts of the city, but they weren’t my city.

My city was Queens for a while. And so was Brooklyn. I lived in New York for a total of six months under a sublet and was kicked out because our youthful friends would come over and bother too many of the older folks already living in these apartment buildings. I would visit Bronx from time to time because I went to Fordham University and I took classes on campus. I even went to Staten Island a few times because my only friends who had a house with a pool lived out there. When you live in the city and you know someone with a pool, you go wherever that pool may be. Even to Staten Island.

Which is why I loved NK Jemisin’s love letter to this city. It captured the entire city from borough to borough. The faces of the characters matched the multiple cultures and people who live there. New York is where so many immigrants from so many countries made their passage. New York is where so many individuals found refuge in the small communities.

But this was more than just a love letter to New York. This was much more than that.

I love urban fantasies like this one; taking real world places and adding that magical element that takes the story to the next level. Quantum mechanics? Alternate realities? Non-Euclidean geometry? Sign me the heck up! The City We Became is literally what this book is about; the birth of a great city. The characters introduced are each representatives of a borough. Their job was to find each other and then find the primary avatar; the great New York City. Because there’s a big threat that’s already settling plans in the city. There’s something bigger about to be born and terrorize baby New York. I don’t want to give any more away, but the way that it moves is so insidious and evil that it literally scared me.

“Representative” feels dual in this book because not only are these people representatives of their borough, but they are also representatives of people of color. Bronca is Native American from the Lenape tribe. Manny is a light skinned Black man with a dark past coming to New York for an opportunity to make something of himself. Brooklyn is a dark skinned Black woman who had a past as an MC and now works as a politician. Queens is a young Indian girl studying tech in hopes of helping her family out back home. And these aren’t even everyone. There’s also gay representation, trans representation, Asians, Latinx, and white. If there was one thing I didn’t like about the love letters to New York, it was that they left out everyone who lived in it. The multiple faces of color you would see on an average day is far more than I see now in my little town in California.

While this book is most definitely a science fiction novel or an urban fantasy (whatever you want to call it), it’s also a book on racist ideas in all of us. In the story, we’re introduced to our antagonist; the Woman in White. She’s not named until the end of the book, but she infects New Yorkers. She places her “tendrils” into people nudging something out of them.

There’s no real name given to these tendrils, but it shows up in places and on people in a way that can only be described as white superiority. This self appears to be the racist ideas that root into everyone. Based off of prejudices, stereotypes, and the like, you see Jemisin’s characters do battle with these people. It’s the white woman in the park who threatens to call 911. It’s the alt group that spreads hate on the Internet and through “art.” It’s the unassuming kid who looks normal, but strategically places tattoos of white supremacy across his skin. It’s the bank telling someone their apartment building has been foreclosed to make room for some gargantuan high rise of outrageously expensive condos. It’s the police officers you believe to be good, but will gladly put a kid doing nothing in jail on account of suspicious behavior.

And NK Jemisin is unapologetic. She dives straight into the racist ideas that we see everyday. She even notes HP Lovecraft and the racist remarks he made about people of color. The number of Lovecraft references in this book is pretty high. I’m not a reader of Lovecraft, so I had to google a lot of things Jemisin brought up and almost everything was linked to HP Lovecraft in some way.

The only issues I had with this story was that the ending was abrupt. I know this is a trilogy and this isn’t the end of the story, but I wasn’t a fan of how it ended. Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker and we all know New Jersey doesn’t count.

I keep thinking about this book. Seriously, I can’t think about anything else because NK Jemisin brings so many concepts and ideas and subtext to her story that you can’t help but to think about it all the time. The science fiction stuff will make you think, but so will the way its presented. The city these folks became and what they fight for feels so real. This book was timely and I don’t know if Jemisin knew that by the time this book released we would be living in a pandemic world learning about systemic racism and fighting injustice. But somehow, she knew.

Rating: 4.5 stars

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