SCI-FI & FANTASY
GAMECHANGER by L.X. Beckett (St Martin’s Press, $48)
Eighty years from now, the Bounceback generation lead simplified material lives, saving enrichment for Sensorium, the virtual reality in which they spend much of their time, as they continue to try to mitigate climate change and environmental degradation. Rubi Whiting is trying to balance studying law with her commitment to sea rejuvenation, her standing in the multiplayer games she loves and her sometimes unstable father’s fascination with conspiracy theories. When a client with multiple anti-social strikes refuses to meet with her in real life, she starts to worry that he might be an emergent AI, an uploaded human or something even stranger. Beckett constructs a future layered with complications, from raising kids around the all-pervasive VR to navigating a world with no privacy, and builds to an in-game showdown with much larger ramifications. Gamechanger is an engrossing read in the vein of Neal Stephenson and Melissa Scott and I very much recommend it.
MIDDLEGAME by Seanan Mcguire (St Martin’s Press, $48)
Everything Seanan Mcguire writes is eminently readable, but Middlegame is her most ambitious novel to date. Roger and Dodger are twins, neither identical nor fraternal and created through alchemy to be a power incarnate. Because the tropes the story draws on are from horror as much as fantasy, they are not chosen ones, they are just possibilities and if they don’t manifest according to plan they will be replaced. Born in a madman’s lab, raised apart in the real world, they will find each other again and again, but their survival may play straight into the plans of the alchemical genius who conceived them. Middlegame is about growing up different, immeasurable powers, split loyalties and sibling bonds and is a story that works on many levels at once; you will want to reread it. The book within the book, Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker, is due out later this year.
GODS OF JADE AND SHADOW by Silvia Moreno-garcia (Quercus Publishing $25)
Gods of Jade and Shadow is an intriguing quest narrative that traverses from southeast to northwest Mexico in the 1920s. Reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Rebecca Roanhorse’s Dinetah series, it takes for inspiration the Mayan Popul Vuh myth cycle. Casiopea Tun is the poor relative at her wealthy grandfather’s Yucatan hacienda; she is treated like a servant and bullied by the pampered grandson of the house but she rejects the Cinderella narrative for herself and makes plans for her emancipation. When she finds and accidentally reanimates the bones of god of death Hun-kame, he declares he requires her help to find his missing body parts and reclaim his underworld kingdom of Xibalba. What follows is a fascinating adventure that averts the typical fantasy power showdown for a more interesting and satisfying conclusion.
THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY by Alix E. Harrow (Orbit, $35)
January Scaller is 7 years old when she first opens a Door — to “a world made of saltwater and stone” — while on a trip to Kentucky with her mysterious guardian, Mr Locke. But the Door is soon closed to her and she grows up feeling confused and out of place, another exotic treasure in Mr Locke’s house, like the artefacts her father sends back from his constant far flung trips. She is 17 when she receives a book that explains the doors — and much more that she did not know about the unusual power she possesses and the secrets that have constrained her upbringing. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is an often unexpected narrative; a portal story that largely takes place in this world. Harrow’s central thesis is that stories are a necessary escape, and she supports it with beautiful prose in this tale of friendship, lost love and endurance.