C0smic Occurence

The Mars House

Sometimes there are books that have an enduring impact on me, where my first impressions of a linger and solidify. Other times my opinions about books shift radically the further I get from them. The Mars House is one of those books. It’s a book that had been on my radar, and I got a gentle nudge when I stumbled across it on my library’s shelves. It was a roller coaster of loving it, and slowly falling out of love with it the longer I’ve been away from it.

Read If Looking For: interesting moral questions, grounded science fiction, talking mamoths, neat and tidy endings

Avoid if Looking For: quality queer representation, healthy

The Brides of High Hill

I’ve got a great love for The Singing Hills Cycle, and picking up the newest release was a relatively easy decision for me. The series of novellas focuses on a historian cleric on various adventures, collecting the stories of the people and creatures of their world, which has clear Chinese and Mongolian influences. Storytelling, perspectives, and the meaning of truth are running motifs throughout the series, and they can be read in any order.

Read If Looking For: gothic horror, haunted houses, light mystery elements, quality prose

Avoid if Looking For: deeply thematic works, traditional fantasy storytelling

A Deadly Education

I grew up in the era of Harry Potter. I dragged my parents to bookstores, standing in line for midnight releases. I went to Harry Potter themed summer camps. I asked for my mom to knit me scarves with the colors of each Harry Potter house. And while I’ve soured on Harry Potter for a variety of reasons – Rowling’s raging transphobia being only one of many – A Deadly Education plucked at the joy of magic school stories, which is something that’s never going to entirely vanish from my fantasy reading habits.

Read If Looking For: brutally fast pacing, snarky narrators, magic dystopias

Avoid if Looking For: characters growing in power, grey morality

Siren Queen

Nghi Vo won me over with her novellas in the Singing Hills Cycle, and I was curious what her writing was like outside the quiet reflective stories of those novellas. And so I turned to Siren Queen, put in a loan for an audiobook, and spent hours putting together a puzzle so that I wouldn’t have to stop listening.

Read If Looking For: magical realism, entrancing prose, character studies

Avoid if Looking For: happy queer stories, plot points that all resolve neatly

Empress of Salt and Fortune

I credit my relatively newfound love of Novellas to Empress of Salt and Fortune. I used to be the type of reader who loved doorstopper books – and I still do! – but had a ‘more is always better’ approach to books. Now, I think that the length of a novella gives space for writers to do really interesting, focused stories. I tend to find them more cohesive on the whole, and Empress of Salt and Fortune is a great example of Novellas at their finest.

Read If Looking For: framing narratives, the human impact of rebellions, emotional stories, character studies

Avoid if Looking For: traditional action and politics to happen on screen

Convergence Problems

I don’t read a ton of short fiction, but I’ve been trying to pick up more anthologies after loving Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Convergence Problems features the story A Dream of Electric Mothers, which is one that had been on my list to try out. What I found was a book of stories I burned through in a few afternoons.

Read If Looking For: anthologies, gorunded Sci Fi, parallel storytelling, the link between cultural beliefs and technology,

Avoid if Looking For: a novel,

Hyperion

Hyperion is one of those classic fantasy stories that’s genre defining, and often makes ‘must read’ lists. I have a rather thorny relationship with lots of these books. I find Lord of the Rings frustrating and Dune rather boring. I tend to gravitate towards lesser read early works, such as those by George MAcDonald. Hyperion though, is a classic that really captured my imagination and ran with it.

Read If Looking For: gorgeous prose, deeply fleshed out characters, classical references

Avoid if Looking For: books without men writing women problems, books with a singular driving plot

Masquerade

I’ll be honest that Masquerade was a bit of an impulse purchase. Heterosexual romance focused books aren’t something I read a ton of, but the idea of a Persephone story in precolonial Africa was intriguing.

Read If Looking For: romance with a twist, competent characters, evil characters

Avoid if Looking For: high fantasy

A Conspiracy of Truths

My love for framing narratives will likely become a running theme on this blog. When executed well, I find they make stories come to life, and they inherently channel the oral storytelling traditions that the fantasy genre calls home. A Conspiracy of Truths is one of the best of them. This book was an impulse purchase from Half Priced Books, and it gave me not only one of my favorite books of all time, but an author whose catalog blows me away.

Read If Looking For: unique protagonists, political manipulation, the power of storytelling

Avoid if Looking For: stories where the main character can leave a prison cell to actually take part in what’s traditionally the ‘plot’ of a book

Walking Practice

Translated Novels tend to be some of the more unique reads. It’s easy to forget how much cultures have self-reinforcing patterns in their writing, even across subgenres. Walking Practice is a great example of how translated fiction can be an engaging experience that confronts your notions of how stories go.

Assuming you’re reading in English and not Korean, I highly recommend reading Victoria Caudle’s translation notes, which will provide key context for what the hell is going on with this book’s typesetting.

Read If Looking For: horror with deep themes, gruesome depictions of bodies, gore, and sex, utterly alien narrators

Avoid if Looking For: something like what you’ve read before