Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Red, White and Royal Blue

4/5. You guys. You guys! Someone wrote a queer romance basically to spec for me. Son of the first woman POTUS falls in instant dislike which turns into, yeah, you know where this is going, with the youngest Prince of England.

I started this on a NY to DC train yesterday and finished it this morning. I laughed. I sniffled. I sighed. It's an unapologetically wish-fulfilment* book about American politics and elections and blended first families, written by someone who has 110% read the fanfic classics in the modern British royal romance genre like Drastically Redefining Protocol and The Student Prince (the one I have deeply unpopular opinions about, but that's a whole other story). It's snappy and witty and extremely of the now, to a fault, maybe. And also about different experiences of queerness and power and family. And they write each other love letters emails. Did I mention this was basically written for me?

*Maybe too wish-fulfimenty? I don't know. I have this odd sort of flinch reaction sometimes to things that are this committed to making me feel uncomplicatedly good about a fantasy political timeline that didn't happen. IDK if that's healthy or not. I'm a realist to a fault, and I have basically no patience left for the people on twitter who are still (fucking still!) going on about what President HRC would be doing. I mean, jesus, over here in the real world we've got shit to do, maybe you could try, like, engaging with that in a useful way instead of this pointless wanking? But I respect the balls-to-the-wall commitment of this book – she's going to make you feel good about a 2016 election that wasn't, and she's not sorry.

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

Ancestral Night

3/5. Space salvage tug operator stumbles across a derelict that was part of a terrible crime, and gets entangled in complicated ancient alien politics.

I wanted some crunchy scifi with actual people in it, and this did well enough. This book is doing interesting stuff with cognition and memory: our narrator has had herself "right-minded" by her peacefully authoritarian government to edit out unpleasant memories and dangerous impulses, and the heart of this book is her conflict with a pirate who doesn't believe in neural tampering. It would be boring, but it's not a black-and-white question, even as our narrator cycles through different states of being altered and not. It's complicated and compromised, and the only truth anyone can come to is that there is still a self, still a you, no matter what.

So, nice enough scifi, and dealing with brain stuff I generally care about. But this didn't set me on fire or anything.

…Now let's see if the author inappropriately inserts herself into the comments of this review, as she has done to me before. Why why why do authors think that is ever a good idea? Aside from all the other issues, it sure was a great way to make me not want to come within spitting distance of one of her books for years on end.

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

Exhalation: Stories

4/5. I will admit this collection didn't knock my socks off in the same way his first did. I think I'm getting too good at spotting his technical weaknesses (dialogue, anyone?) but this is still full of strange and interesting ideas. No one can have a big idea, then reduce a novel down to its quintessence and write it in 8,000 words like he can. A few notes – links go to online versions.

"Exhalation": A strange and sad and beautiful story about how an alien culture might end. It's tempting to slap a lot of metaphors on this – it's about the environmental costs of existence! – but I'd rather just let it be what it is.

"Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom": Hadn't read this one before. A limited ability to contact your alternate universe selves opens up complex questions of choice and its meaning. A great idea, but I wish there was a little more meat on the interpersonal bones. There's something mechanical about the way this was pieced together that didn't work for me.

"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling": The introduction of artificial memory has sweeping interpersonal implications when you can't lie to yourself or others anymore about that thing you said in the heat of the moment. Painful, but hopeful in the end.

"Omphalos": A story exploring how a person could lose their faith in a universe where God actually did create the world 8,000 years ago and there is ample physical evidence for that. Science and religion and evidence and sexism. About as Chiang as it gets.