Asking the Wrong Questions

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...

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I write about comics rarely, and about media tie-in fiction not at all, so I hope the fact that my latest review at Strange Horizons is of a book that is both of those things will, in itself, be a sign that this is a book worth looking at. Written by Ryan North, with art by Chris Fenoglio, Warp Your Own Way is a story set in the world of the just-concluded, animated Star Trek series Lower Decks . Also, it's a Choose Your Own Adventure-style story. The reader follows series lead Beckett Mariner on her day off, making decision as trivial as what beverage to order from the replicator, and as momentous as how to fight off Borg invaders. Which might sound amusing but slight, but before long Warp Your Own Way begins to hint that there is a meta-narrative at the root of this branching decision tree, and by its end the book reveals itself as a puzzle the reader must solve. I was so excited by Warp Your Own Way 's ingenious use of the CY...

As climate fiction becomes a more dominant flavor in the literary field, a common set of tropes and preoccupations seems to have emerged. Often, these books are about middle class people experiencing sudden, vertiginous downward mobility, losing the financial (and eventually, physical) security they had taken for granted, discovering the indifference and cruelty that the poor and working classes are routinely subjected to. At first glance, Julia Armfield's second novel Private Rites seems to have this topic as its focus. Our first introduction to the Carmichael sisters stresses their professions and living situations, in a brief but impactful illustration of how quickly life and career expectations for people of their class have shifted, in a near-future UK in which rising sea levels and changing weather patterns have produced near-constant flooding. Isla, the eldest, can still work in her chosen profession of therapist, but has little to offer in the face of her patients' ove...

It's been a very long time since I've posted one of these roundups, which I suppose is related to my pandemic-altered moviegoing habits. I watch more movies on streaming these days, and rarely very soon after their release, so talking about them feels less urgent. By chance, however, I've managed to watch three movies that, while not all still in theaters, are definitely still being talked about. And as it happens my conclusion about all three is broadly similar. They each have profound faults that are made up for (to greater and lesser degrees) with storytelling verve and a strong sense of the writer/director's personality and vision. Not all of them are good movies, but all are worth a look. The Substance - Coralie Fargeat's buzzy horror-comedy, winner of the best screenplay award at this year's Cannes festival, wastes little time in establishing its conceit. Former Hollywood star turned fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is informed, by her odious, ...

Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, in which a stretch of Florida coastland is transformed into a weird, otherworldly space, leading to repeated attempts to comprehend and control it, is a fascinating instance of mid-career breakout, in which a writer who had seemed like a well-kept secret suddenly became a household name and public intellectual. In the decade since, VanderMeer has gone from strength to strength, and so his decision to return to Area X with a new novel is an additional, unexpected twist in the tale. I review Absolution at the Guardian . Much of what made the original Southern Reach books powerful and disturbing can be found in this new volume. Once again, VanderMeer produces a near-seamless shading between the weirdness and danger of Area X, and the natural environment that preceded it. Old Jim is rattled by a stand of trees left dead by the inland incursion of seawater, seeing in it a hint of the unearthly, while a superintelligent alligator who is the Ro...

Oh, how the tables have turned. Now it is the reviewer who is reviewed! Happily, the reviews for Track Changes so far have been very positive, and perhaps none more so than Ian Mond's in the August issue of Locus . I mentioned this review already in my appearance on the most recent episode of Critical Friends , and I'm glad to be able to share it in full online . In her introduction, Nussbaum explains that the title, Track Changes, captures the book's intent – to not only "track changes in the world – in the fields of science fiction and fantasy, [but also] my own growth as a writer and critic." To achieve this, the book is structured into five sections – "Space", "Systems", "Places", "Bodies", and "Tales" – with the reviews in each section placed in chronological order. I want to say that I saw significant shifts in Nussbaum's style and concerns across the decade and a half these pieces cover. But the realit...