sophia_sol | Entries tagged with author: naomi kritzer

Here's how I'm voting for the Lodestars! None of these books was a book I had zero reservations about, but they all had at least something worthwhile going on. Links to my full reviews in the titles.

1. A Snake Falls to Earth, by Darcie Little Badger

I loved the two stories that this book was telling, but I found that the way in which they were put together didn't quite work for me, because the switching back and forth was SO rapid.

2. Iron Widow, by Xiran Jay Zhao

Too dark for me to love it unreservedly, but I found the story and the characters very compelling!

3. Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko

Loved the characters, thematic focuses, and worldbuilding, but the uneven pacing, heavy-handed elements, and some real over-simplification of issues meant that it didn't live up to what I hoped from it.

4. Chaos on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer

A fun read, but the degree to which you have to turn your suspension of disbelieve WAYYYYYYYY up is just...a lot.

5. The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik

Good themes, does many things that I OUGHT to like, and written very competently, but I just couldn't care about any of it.

6. Victories Greater than Death, by Charlie Jane Anders

Perfectly good at being exactly the kind of book it is, but I found it a tedious read. The only book on this list that I really struggled to actually get through.

Sometimes I finish a book and groan a bit at the thought of writing it up, because I don't know how to organize my thoughts into coherence, but I know I'll be happier if I do because then I'll have a better handle on my own understanding of the book!

So this is a sequel to Catfishing on Catnet, and after the exciting events of that book Steph and her mom are trying to settle down and live a "normal" life, now that the threat of her dad is gone. But because of a number of reasons, including her friendship with the AI CheshireCat, Steph gets drawn into trying to save the world from another AI. Among other things.

There's a lot that's good about the book, and I really enjoyed it a lot, when I wasn't totally stressed out with worry about what was going to happen to these kids. I felt so much for Nell, doing her best to escape the fundamentalist religious cult she was raised in but not yet sure how to feel confident in who she is outside of it. And Steph and her mom are doing their best after the chaos and trauma of the last many years but still struggling to learn healthy ways of relating to each other and to the world. And they're all in SO MUCH DANGER! As well as Nell and Steph's respective girlfriends, and their various other friends, and tbh most humans??

But one thing that made me laugh was how much I enjoyed all the adults in this YA novel......signs you've gotten old, I guess. (other signs you've gotten old: I just realized I referred to the main characters as kids in the previous paragraph.) But hot damn, Nell's dad's polycule! Steph's grandmother! the random lesbian activist in whose house they take refuge at one point!

I appreciated that there were understandable explanations for why a lot of these kids would not feel comfortable going to the adults in their lives for help, and also about interference in communication when they DID try, so that various excellent adults could be present and part of the story while still allowing for the usual YA thing of making sure the teens are the ones to save the day. Nicely done.

However. A lot of the plot in this book is kicked off because of all these people using what are honestly EXTREMELY sketchy apps, and it takes people forever to be like "hmm maybe there's something concerning about this app" EVEN AFTER it's convinced them to do all sorts of things that any reasonable person would be suspicious of. The cult's app, sure, it's a cult, that checks out. But the other apps???

Anyway as long as I turned up my dial in suspension-of-disbelief alllllll the way up, I think it was a good book. But that was a heck of a lot of belief to suspend, tbh.

Okay was this review helpful to me? might it be helpful to you? idk on either point but here we are.

Hugo novelette review time!

I don't love the selection in this category overall, I must say. Though I also didn't nominate a lot -- perhaps there's just less out there in the novelette category? Or at least less in easily accessible venues. I nominated only one novelette, Power to Yield by Bogi Takács, which I really wish had made it onto the finalist list :( Oh well.

Here's the stories that were finalists, in the order I'll be voting for them.

1. Helicopter Story, by Isabel Fall
I read this back when it was first out and causing a hue and cry, but it's taken down now so I can't reread it. From what I recall, I found it fascinating and sharp and worthwhile and not for me, but not for me in a way where I really admired what it was doing.

2. Monster, by Naomi Kritzer
Compelling, interesting, well-constructed. The slow build toward the reveals as well as the incidental details included are great. Still not sure if I like it or not, but it's a good one.

3. Two Truths and a Lie, by Sarah Pinsker
Oh, I remember this one, and I remember finding it creepy in a very unpleasant way, and I do NOT want to reread it! Which isn't to say that it's a bad story, just a story that's emphatically not for me. This is not the first time I've had that reaction to a Sarah Pinsker story either, as I recall. Sorry, Sarah Pinsker, it's not you, it's me!

4. No Award

5. The Pill by Meg Ellison
A treatise in the form of a story, which I find tiresome; I don't read fiction to be preached at, even if I generally agree with the subject of the preaching! Also I do not believe all the worldbuilding, which is clearly created to make a Point rather than to make Sense, and it bugs me.

6. Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super, by A.T. Greenblatt
I just feel so extraordinarily "meh" about this whole thing that I can't even muster up the will to write anything about it.

7. The Inaccessibility of Heaven, by Aliette de Bodard
Apparently an AU of the author's "Dominion of the Fallen" universe; I've tried to read things set in that universe before and just can't get into it. This one is no exception. It's inspired by the notion of the christian mythology about fallen angels, which is just....not at all interesting to me. And this story is ALSO a noir about a serial killer, which makes it even less interesting to me. DNF.

Here's my thoughts on the six short story finalists for this year's Hugos! None of my fave stories for the year ended up on the list, despite me nominating them and everything, but so it goes. I at least like this list better than the short story list from last year! There's even a story I like well enough to be voting it #1 without complaint!

I'm putting these down in the order in which I will vote for them.

1. Open House on Haunted Hill, by John Wiswell
Aww, I'm charmed by this! I love the pov of the haunted house, and the decisions it makes as it tries to bond with people. This is the only story on the list of finalists I hadn't already read before, since it's not published in one of the venues I regularly keep on top of, so it was a pleasant surprise.

2. Little Free Library, by Naomi Kritzer
I like it for what it is, but it's pretty lightweight and short, and feels more like an introduction to an idea/world than like a story that's complete in itself.

3. Metal Like Blood in the Dark, by T Kingfisher
It's interesting and I found it compelling, but I don't like it.

4. A Guide for Working Breeds, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Okay so I like the idea of robots rebelling against the capitalist framework they're trapped in, through the power of FRIENDSHIP, but the focus on cute dogs is not working for me, and the voices of the main characters feel pretty one-note, so the story didn't really resonate for me.

5. Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse, by Rae Carson
A decent story, but it's about a) zombies and b) giving birth, so I'm just not that interested.

6. The Mermaid Astronaut, by Yoon Ha Lee
The prose style feels so distancing to me that I just glaze over when I try to read this story. I think it's going for a fairy-tale feel, given that it is clearly inspired by The Little Mermaid, but it doesn't land for me. Sometimes when I push through to keep reading a story that is boring me at the start, it picks up eventually, but I skimmed my way all the way to the end of this one and never got pulled in. Which is too bad because I think the things it's trying to do are probably interesting.

Alrighty, next up on the Hugos ranking docket for me is the YA category. Technically speaking not a Hugo (it's the Lodestar Award) but voted for on the same ballot, so hey.

This was a strong category! A good proportion of the books in this one are worthy and admirable, even if not all of them are perfectly to my taste.

Here's my final ranking, with links in the titles to full reviews for the books I finished:

1. Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge
Amazingly inventive and captivating and just great all around and I love it.

2. Riverland, by Fran Wilde
Superbly written and effectively emotional.

3. Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer
A fun, quick, easy read.

4. Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher
Good and grounded and kind of upsetting (in an appropriate way).

5. Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee
Doesn't take the dangers faced by its preteen protagonist seriously enough, but an interesting setting/worldbuilding.

6. The Wicked King, by Holly Black
I read the first couple chapters and the last couple chapters and it's just not up my alley. It's about a mortal girl in Faerie and being involved in the various complicated backstabbing politics of that realm; so far so promising. But: a) as I feared there don't seem to be any characters I actually like, AND b) the mortal girl doesn't actually appear to be....very good....at the kinds of necessary machinations and manipulations. Which means that I don't have any reason to want to hang out in her head, if I don't like her and can't even get pleasure from watching her be really good at being bad. So I didn't bother reading the rest.

A number of years ago Naomi Kritzer wrote a short story called Cat Pictures, Please about a baby AI trying to figure out morality and how to interact with humans. It was very popular and won awards. I liked it a lot too!

This book is something of a sequel to that story. It's a near-future YA novel about a teen girl named Steph whose mom is constantly on the run from her abusive ex-husband but won't tell Steph hardly anything about the situation. Steph, because of all the moving, gets most of her social interaction online on a site called CatNet where she has a group of good friends. One of whom is secretly the slightly-less-baby AI from the short story!

A quick, easy read. I don't have a lot to say about it but it was an enjoyable way to spend an evening. Also: lots of queer characters, for those for whom that's a draw.

My one complaint is that the ending is more of a set-up for a sequel than a satisfactory ending on its own. Dangit, don't end books with brand-new game-changing information that you're not going to address in that book!