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Review: The Sentence by Gautam Bhatia in Locus

Gautam Bhatia might best be known to science fiction and fantasy fans as the editor in chief of Strange Horizons , and as the author of the intriguing, Ursula K. Le Guin-meets-China Miéville novels The Wall and The Horizon . In his everyday life, however, Bhatia is a lawyer and a scholar of the Indian constitution. These specialties come to the fore in his third novel, The Sentence , which takes the surprisingly rare step of examining how laws, constitutions, and trials play a role in fantastic worldbuilding. Set in a city that emerged from a bloody civil war with a tentative, shaky arrangement held in place by an order of lawyers, The Sentence examines how a single legal action might end up impacting on a whole society. My review, which appeared in last month's Locus, is now online . Nila – and her trusty roommate and sidekick Maru – discuss both the facts of the case and the merits of their legal strategy. Should she try to impugn long-accepted testimony, or take a purely proce...
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The 2025 Hugo Awards: My Preliminary Hugo Ballot

The nominating period for the 2025 Hugo awards, which will be handed out this summer in Seattle, is now open, and will continue until March 14th. Members of the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow, Scotland, and those who became members of the Seattle Worldcon before January 31st, 2025, are eligible to nominate. There are instructions for how to log into the nomination website, and how to contact assistance if you're not sure about your eligibility, at the Seattle Worldcon site. Before I get into the works I'm planning to nominate this year, I'd like to mention that my book, Track Changes: Selected Reviews , is eligible in the Best Related Work category. I'm very proud of the work I and Briardene Books publisher Niall Harrison did on this book, and its reviews and public reception have been gratifying—earlier this month it appeared on the Locus Recommended Reading List and the longlist for the BSFA award for non-fiction. If you're nominating in this category, I hope you...
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Recent Reading Roundup 62

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Usually when I put together a recent reading roundup, I try to come up with some sort of common thread or guiding principle for the books discussed. This time around, we've just got a grab-bag of some of the best reads from the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. Two of these books are short, weird exercises in pushing at the very edges of what fantastic fiction can do. Another is doing the same thing to literary fiction. One is core science fiction, and another plays fascinating games with what core fantasy can be. And the last one is a prototypical plotless, closely-observed literary novel, and a reminder of how great that can sometimes be. In other words, whatever you're in the mood to read next, you might find something to suit your tastes in this post. The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball - The first half of Ball's short, disquieting novel plays out like a familiar near-future dystopia, with shades of 1984 , The Trial , and Squid Game . A large group of people have been s...
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Track Changes is on the Locus Recommended Reading List and BSFA Longlist

In all the uproar of this past weekend, it has probably been easy to miss that both the Locus Recommended Reading List (which compiles the recommendations of the magazine's staffers and contributors) and the BSFA longlists (from which the shortlist and eventual winners of the BSFA award will be selected) were published. I'm pleased to report that Track Changes , my collection of reviews, has been chosen to appear on both lists' respective non-fiction categories. The BSFA award is voted on by members of the British Science Fiction Association. Voting for the shortlists will conclude on February 28th. The Locus Recommended Reading List is used as a primer for the Locus poll , which is open to subscribers of the magazine as well as non-subscribers (though the latter's votes count for half). The poll will be open until April 15th. Track Changes was also mentioned by several of the contributors to Locus 's 2024 in review. Graham Sleight calls is "a long-overdue ...
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Review: The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn in Locus

It's slightly old news by now, but as of December of last year I have joined Locus as part of their stable of reviewers. I'm still working out how this is going to work—the monthly schedule is a bit intense, and as readers of this blog know I have never felt obliged to review books as soon as they are published, which Locus prefers to do. So expect a bit of a ramp-up as I figure out how often, and on how many topics, I feel comfortable writing about for them—while, of course, continuing to post on this blog, at Lawyers, Guns & Money , and writing occasional reviews for Strange Horizons . My first Locus review appeared in issue 767 (there's usually a month's delay between print publication and when reviews are published online) and discusses Gabrielle Korn's The Shutouts , a sequel and companion volume to 2023's Yours for the Taking . Both novels take place in a post-climate-collapse US and focus on the fallout from a billionaire's plan to rescue a se...
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Against Transformation: Thoughts on the Films of 2024

Making a movie is a complicated, time-consuming endeavor. Releasing a movie—especially with an eye towards the major film festivals and awards circuits—is arguably even more so. The game we critics like to play, therefore, in which we grab at several movies released around the same time and try to identify a common theme, is more often the product of marketing decisions and pure chance than a true reflection of prevailing cultural trends. Nevertheless, as I watched the closing credits of Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man , I found myself comparing it to The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat) and Emilia Pérez (dir. Jacques Audiard) and asking an uncomfortable question: why is it that 2024 seems to have delivered not one, not two, but three different movies all riffing on the idea that transformation is bad, impossible, and that if you nevertheless do attempt it, you will probably die? The Substance and Emilia Pérez are among last year's most lauded movies. When the Oscar nomin...
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2024, A Year in Reading: Best Books of the Year

I read 190 books in 2024. That is, I think it's fair to say, a lot of books. And yet somehow, when I come to make my year-end summary, all I can think of are the books I didn't get to. The series I meant to start. The reading projects that I've been putting off for months. The awards contenders I still haven't given a fair shake. The impulse buy I haven't gotten around to. The ARCs that are piling up in my kindle. So what did I end up reading in 2024? I caught up with a lot of 2023 publications (but not, of course, all the ones I wanted to get to). I read all of Patricia Highsmight's Ripley books (some of them are decent, but you can stop with the first). I went a little deeper than I previously had into Tolkien marginalia (one good thing to come out the increasingly turgid Rings of Power ). I started Ryoko Kui's delectable manga Delicious in Dungeon (I have almost reached where the first season of the excellent anime adaptation lets off). I read a lot of G...
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