Book 27: In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

There are times when I know that it's less that the books I'm reading aren't good, and it's more that I'm reading them badly. This is the fourth book in the Wayward Children series, and the second one that focuses on one character's experience before they make it to the school. The main character in the story is Lundy, and the world she found the door to is the Goblin Market. 

The entire system of the Goblin Market is built around the concept of fair value - if you ask something of someone, you need to provide them fair value in exchange, and if you're unable to, you are in their debt. The debt in this world (and in our world, if you leave) is a physical change; once you are too far in debt, you lose your humanity and become a bird. Lundy tries desperately to have her life in the Goblin Market without giving up her life at home, especially for her younger sister. But she is unable to properly calibrate the fair value required for such a thing. It is a sad story that feels extremely unfair, perhaps especially because it is a world that presents itself as being completely in balance, and I had a hard time with it emotionally. 

Grade: B

Book 26: An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner

Another free Tor novella about humans and robots! This one fucked me up less regarding the pandemic, but did slightly fuck me up in terms of issues around legal rights and so forth, so it is possible that it is the world that's fucking me up rather than the fiction I'm consuming. Who could have guessed. 

This one centers on a woman named Aiya, who is a lawyer living on a space colony. She works for a program that is designed to rehabilitate robots who have committed crimes, but then she ends up representing one who has been wrongfully accused of murder. It deals with lots of questions about agency and control and who we hold responsible for various elements in society, and once again it was a story that was hard for me to engage with at the moment. But I found it very interesting overall. 

Grade: B

Book 25: Unlocked by John Scalzi

This was a free Tor download, and I've been meaning to read something by Scalzi for a while, so I thought sure! I'll give it a shot! And then discovered that it was a novella written in 2014 about a respiratory pandemic that overran the world and eventually resulted in some people's bodies no longer working, but their minds still did, so people invented a robot to interface with the people's minds to become that person out in the world, and it turns out I just cannot handle this particular story and the way politics are depicted right now! I found the things that were accurate to be just as upsetting as the things that weren't, and yeah. I have no idea how to objectively rate this, so take this grade as being more of a reflection of what I can handle reading rather than a judgment on the quality of the writing or storytelling. 

Grade: C

Book 24: In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Another portal fantasy! And another book I have owned for a very long time and kept waiting for the "right time" to read, for some reason, even though I have read many other things by this author that I've enjoyed. And shockingly, I enjoyed this one, too!

Elliot is thirteen when he first crosses over into the Borderlands, and discovers that in this magical portal land, there's a training camp where everyone either learns how to fight or how to engage in diplomacy. But no one is actually very interested in using diplomacy as a means of resolving disputes among humans and elves and trolls and banshees and mermaids and so forth, at least not before he arrived. He also immediately falls in love with a beautiful elf named Serene, and in hate with a beautiful boy named Luke Sunborn, who comes from a famous family of warriors. And then it's adventures and battles and multiple romances and misunderstandings and family of origin woes and found family woes and comings out and pining and, of course, a unicorn sighting. It is a delight, in other words, though I think the pacing could have been tightened up a bit in the second half of the novel, but even when things seemed to go on a bit longer than they actually needed to, I had a great time reading it. 

Grade: A