Saladin Ahmed’s THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON and 4000 words on why I couldn’t finish it

THIS POST IS PART OF DIVERSITY PROGRAMME WHEREIN I REVIEW A MALE WRITER WITHOUT EXPRESS PURPOSE OF THRASHING HIM, HOWEVER MALE WRITERS WILL BE EVALUATED UNDER MICROSCOPE AND SUBJECTED TO HARSH JUDGMENT JUST LIKE WOMEN WRITERS

The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, land of djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, Khalifs and killers, is at the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings:

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, “The last real ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat,” just wants a quiet cup of tea. Three score and more years old, he has grown weary of hunting monsters and saving lives, and is more than ready to retire from his dangerous and demanding vocation. But when an old flame’s family is murdered, Adoulla is drawn back to the hunter’s path.

Raseed bas Raseed, Adoulla’s young assistant, a hidebound holy warrior whose prowess is matched only by his piety, is eager to deliver God’s justice. But even as Raseed’s sword is tested by ghuls and manjackals, his soul is tested when he and Adoulla cross paths with the tribeswoman Zamia.

Zamia Badawi, Protector of the Band, has been gifted with the near-mythical power of the Lion-Shape, but shunned by her people for daring to take up a man’s title. She lives only to avenge her father’s death. Until she learns that Adoulla and his allies also hunt her father’s killer. Until she meets Raseed.

When they learn that the murders and the Falcon Prince’s brewing revolution are connected, the companions must race against time–and struggle against their own misgivings–to save the life of a vicious despot. In so doing they discover a plot for the Throne of the Crescent Moon that threatens to turn Dhamsawaat, and the world itself, into a blood-soaked ruin.

The decision to review this book germinated when Saladin Ahmed tweeted a negative review and said he felt bad, so I offered, “I could try to out-negative her if you like!”

It was a joke.

If you liked this book, stop now. If you wrote this book, really, really stop now.

 

Thanhha Lai’s INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN

No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.

For all the ten years of her life, HÀ has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by . . . and the beauty of her very own papaya tree.

But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. HÀ and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, HÀ discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape . . . and the strength of her very own family.

This is the moving story of one girl’s year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.

This book is an onion. It has many layers and it induces tears.

Good tears, okay?

But let me say first that I share no common experience with Lai, or any of the experiences depicted in Inside Out and Back Again. I’m not an immigrant; I live in a country where I’m part of the ethnic majority–though that doesn’t mean, no, that I’m immune to racism (as you know, Bob…)–and that I am not going to review this book as though I have any right to talk about the experience of a Vietnamese girl fleeing Saigon for the US. There are some points of commonality (and cuisine!) that resonated with me, though.

 

STEAM-POWERED 2 – more lesbian steampunk stories!

The formatting of the ebook is, unfortunately, kind of rubbish. I’ve half a mind to reformat it and reconvert back to the Kindle format, but meh. But it really is rubbish. So much so that each story’s title isn’t formatted any differently from any other text (no bolding, no up-sizing), there is no table of contents, and sometimes there’s text that must have been meant to be italicized but… isn’t. It’s a shame. A crying shame.

It’s probably fair to disclose that I’m a) not a fan of steampunk (in that I have no real interest in it as a subject or sub-genre) and that b) I’m not generally into multi-authors anthologies due to their natural unevenness in quality, and I always prefer longer stories over short ones, which makes it a little tricky to appreciate many of the pieces in Steam-Powered 2 since some tend toward the shorter end of the scale. But despite all that, in the end I found many of the stories contained in this anthology amazing, moving, affirming. This is the kind of collections we need, the kind of material that should exist and be encouraged to thrive, and I can’t praise Joselle Vanderhooft enough for making it happen.

 

SKIN FOLK: Nalo Hopkinson’s collection of wonders SF, F, and fairytale-esque

A new collection of short stories from Hopkinson, including “Greedy Choke Puppy,” which Africana.com called “a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf),”"Ganger (Ball Lightning),” praised by the Washington Post Book World as written in “prose [that] is vivid & immediate,” this collection reveals Hopkinson’s breadth & accomplishments as a storyteller.

This has quite a lovely cover.

Skin Folk is, like most short story collections, somewhat hit-or-miss–but it’s Nalo Hopkinson, so the ratio of hit to miss is firmly skewed to the former, and when a story hits it can hit hard. Beware: I’m going to wax rhapsodic about this book.

 

thoughts on Octavia E. Butler: LILITH’S BROOD, FLEDGLING, etc

I feel it would be superfluous to quote summaries of these books, Octavia Butler’s works being what they are–well-known, celebrated, and deservedly so. So I’ll just say that I think these covers are so very pretty. Butler is one of those writers who underpin the genre, and black presence in the genre, to the point that no publisher today will ever dare to whitewash covers of her books, because they know that if they do all hell will break loose and no amount of PR bullshit will save them. This is a Good Thing and makes me tingle.

 

THE STORIES OF IBLS is weeaboo bait but not totally awful

Hiroshi Yamamoto: The Stories of Ibis In a world where humans are a minority and androids have created their own civilization, a wandering storyteller meets the beautiful android Ibis. She tells him seven stories of human/android interaction in order to reveal the secret behind humanity’s fall. The stories that Ibis speaks of are the “seven novels” about the events surrounding the announcements of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the 20th and 21st centuries. At a glance, these stories do not appear to have any sort of connection, but what is the true meaning behind them? What are Ibis’s real intentions?

 

Nalo Hopkinson’s MIDNIGHT ROBBER is unadulterated beauty

On the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint, Carnival is a Lollapalooza of music and dance, a Mardi Gras, a masquerade; and the Robin Hood of Toussaint legend, the Robber Queen, is just another costume, Tan-Tan’s favorite. Then Tan-Tan’s corrupt politician father commits a crime that sends them into exile on the extradimensional planet New Half-Way Tree, Toussaint’s untamed quantum twin. As she struggles to survive the violent criminals, mysterious aliens, and merciless jungles of New Half-Way Tree, Tan-Tan finds herself taking on–or being taken over by–the mythic persona and powers of the Robber Queen.

You know how I fell in love with this book? By reading the first page. It goes like this:

Oho. Like it starting, oui? Don’t be frightened, sweetness; is for the best. I go be with you the whole time. Trust me and let me distract you little bit with one anansi story:

It had a woman, you see, a strong, hard-back woman with skin like cocoa-tea. She two foot-them tough from hiking through the diable bush, the devil bush on the prison planet of New Half-Way Tree. When she walk, she foot strike the hard earth bup! like breadfruit dropping to the ground. She two arms hard with muscle from all the years of hacking paths through the diable bush on New Half-Way Tree. Even she hair itself rough and wiry; long black knotty locks springing from she scalp and corkscrewing all the way down she back. She name Tan-Tan, and New Half-Way Tree was she planet.

 

Karen Lord’s REDEMPTION IN INDIGO

Paama flees her gluttonous husband, Ansige; two years later, he hires the master tracker Kwame to find her. Kwame reluctantly takes the job to finance his own wanderlust. These events draw the attention of the Indigo Lord, one of the powerful spirits called Djombi. He wielded the power of Chaos until it was taken from him and given to Paama, and he wants it back. An unnamed narrator, sometimes serious and often mischievous, spins delicate but powerful descriptions of locations, emotions, and the protagonists’ great flaws and great strengths as they interact with family, poets, tricksters, sufferers of tragedy, and—of course—occasional moments of pure chaos.