Dystopian – Page 4 – Marked for Plot

Mistress of Lies

One of this year’s bingo squares is ‘Judge a Book by It’s Cover’ which challenges you to read a book without knowing anything other than what’s on the front cover. Mistress of Lies was my pick for my ‘published in 2024’ themed card. I thought the art was wonderfully evocative, and also visually distinct from a lot of cover art trends I’m seeing these days. Ella Garrett (designer) and Felix Abel Klaer (illustrator) did a phenomenal job.

The Premise:
In a country ruled by an upper class of blood mages and led by a deathless king, a young noblewoman kills her father. She wants to change society for the betterment of her brother, who is Bloodless, and relies on scheming and plots to do so. Meanwhile, a Bloodless commoner stumbles upon a murder victim that has been causing discontentment amongst the Bloodless people, fostered by whispers of rebellion. He finds himself dragged into noble society against his will. And lingering around it all is the Royal Bloodworker, forming a trilogy of attraction as the three struggle to find an equilibrium in the newly unsettled Blood Worker Society.

Read If Looking For: romantic tension, polyamorous storylines, moral ambiguity

Avoid if Looking For: political intrigue, books free of YA/New Adult vibes

Cascade Failure

I picked up Cascade Failure after seeing it compared to Firefly favorably in a few different places, and I am unabashedly a fan of the cult-hit TV show, even if I was rather late getting on the bandwagon. We’ve seen misfit underdog spacheship crews a million times before, but I enjoy books that tread familiar ground just as much as I enjoy those which innovate in the genre. While this book wasn’t particularly original, it does evoke the feeling of Firefly much better than anything I’ve read before.

The Premise:
The Ambit is a spaceship captained by an AI with only two other crew members: a war-torn veteran seeking escape and an augmented mechanic who likes her plasma torch a bit too much. Then Jal stumbles into their ship, on the run from his past as a deserter. On their way back to the central system, the ship gets pinged with an emergency beacon, and everything quickly falls apart. Expect to spend more time exploring crew relationships than the action, as family life on the ship takes center stage until the final parts of the book.

Read If Looking For: found family, touching moments, AI characters

Avoid if Looking For: fast paced stories, in-depth Sci Fi worlbuilding

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.

The Premise:
Tharsis, once a martian colony and a now a full city in its own right, has separated significantly from earth. People have grown taller, more physically frail. They’ve also enacted a host of cultural changes to reform the issues the see from earth, removing gender and religion. The leading cause of death is accidental homicide from the stronger earthborn. A single bump is is enough to cause death. January, a refugee from earth, finds himself a second class citizen, forced to work in a water factory despite being the principal dancer at the London Ballet. He finds himself linked to Aubery Gale, a senator running for Consul of Tharsis on the platform that earthborn are exceedingly dangerous, and should be forced to go through the dangerous and debilitating naturalization process to make Mars safer for those who braved the journey generations ago.

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

Avoid if Looking For: quality queer representation, healthy

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.

The Premise:
As an anthology, there’s no single pitch I can make for this book. All I can say is that, in general, the stories tend to focus on the intersection between technology and belief, oftentimes centering Nigerian characters, cultural beliefs, and societal concerns. It also has more than a few stories examining consciousness and memory. There were also a good number of near-future stories that felt scarily plausible, and examined how the impact of our actions today will primarily affect those who were least responsible for creating them. There was also a moderate amount of queer representation, which was much appreciated (I’ve found it’s usually an all or nothing thing in short fiction anthologies).

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

Avoid if Looking For: a novel,

Welcome to Forever, by Nathan Tavares

This is a book that I picked up more or less on a whim. Another book by this author (which I haven’t read yet) was recommended to me, and when I saw this was being published in 2024, I committed to picking it up for my bingo challenge. I was not prepared for a story that would make me cry, force me to sit with my emotions for about a month before I could read anything with any depth whatsoever, and rocket into my all time favorites.

The Premise
Fox is a memory editor. He tinkers in people’s heads to delete trauma, raise contentment, and smooth out rough patches. He’s also recently been left by his partner of 16 years, Gabe. After a traumatic brain injury, Fox is at a memory rehab facility, struggling to call back his past and figure out who he was, only to discover that he doesn’t necessarily like that person very much. And then there’s Gabe, who seems to be at the center of his world, but whom Fox can barely remember at all. As Fox explores his memories and the brambles of his relationship with Gabe, Fox is forced to confront his past and carve a new path forward.

Read if Looking for: experimental books, weird memory stuff, complex characters, crying

Avoid if Looking For: straightforward writing, characters making good decisions, plot focused on action and/or external conflict