Tag: Adult Science Fiction

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/8/26) – The Folded Sky (White Space, #3)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I got hooked on Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series back in January. I figured I’d order The Folded Sky (on Bookshop.org of course…if you’re still ordering books on Amazon, go here instead!! Your money goes to indie bookstores and not Bezos!) with some leftover birthday money. Like all the other installations in this series, The Folded Sky did not disappoint.

NOTE: The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, and while it doesn’t contain spoilers for books 1 and 2, it’s difficult to understand without the context that they give. For my reviews of the first two books, click below!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Folded Sky (White Space, #3) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Sunyata Song was supposed to live a quiet life as a historian. Her studies of the Baomind—an ancient, moon-sized artificial intelligence created by a long-dead alien race—have so far not disturbed this. But a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity to study the Baomind drags Sunya, her wife, and her two teenage kids out to the farthest edges of the galaxy. Sunya is elated, but she soon realizes that she’s in over her head, between the presence of her longtime academic rival, a potential murder plot, and the dying red giant that the Baomind orbits. In the midst of all this conflict, Sunya must make a choice as to what matters most to her—and all of the people around her.

TW/CW: kidnapping, child endangerment, gun violence, murder

Whoever was in charge of writing a succinct blurb for the back of this book needs a raise. Seriously. There is so much going on in The Folded Sky, and the blurb is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the giant alien AI, of course. But that’s not even the biggest plot point. You’ve got pirates. Incredibly heated historian beef. A murder mystery on a janky space station. Red giants with horrifying implications. Did I mention pirates?

Elizabeth Bear’s characters are the reason that the White Space series as a whole works so well. Book by book, she’s not only created an increasingly multilayered and complex world, but shown it to us through the eyes of people (and systers) who are refreshingly flawed and lovable. I was already sold on the concept of a sleep-deprived, slightly-too-committed historian and her long-suffering but patient alien wife as the protagonists already, but Bear developed them so far beyond that concept; Sunya was one of the series’s most well-realized characters. She’s somebody who tries so hard to be civil and unbiased, but is not-so-secretly very impulsive and prone to being hotheaded—it’s a funny combination, but more importantly, it felt so real. Anybody with a strong sense of justice who’s also incredibly emotional can relate—all of her righteous seething about Vickee was so relatable. Her family dynamic was so heartwarming; Bear could’ve easily gone down the “teenagers are so annoying, hahaha look at them being stupid” route, but I loved how Salvie points out that Luna’s outbursts are just versions of Sunya herself (much to her dismay). Salvie and Sunya were such a lovely couple, and their devotion to their children—and justice as a whole—was the novel’s beating heart. Aside from Salvie being an alien, they felt like a family you could meet any old day, and that’s what sets the White Space series apart as a whole—nobody makes aliens (and people) as real as Bear.

Just when you think the worldbuilding of the White Space series can’t possibly get better…IT’S ELIZABETH BEAR WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!! INCOMPREHENSIBLE MOON-SIZED AI, COMIN’ RIGHT ATCHA! I love her no-holds-barred approach to making the Synarche unabashedly weird, and she followed through on that mission in The Folded Sky. This novel takes us to the more backwater, less technologically-advanced parts of the universe, and the experience of seeing what’s considered backwater in the first place is. All of the new Systers that get introduced were delightful. (Dr. Nonsense was a favorite of mine…you know I love a cephalopod, but Bear did an excellent job of making it more than just a cephalopod in space!) The Baomind itself was so meticulously thought-out, and even after Machine, Bear really pushes the limits on how strange robots and AI can get; I loved the song communication, and the twists that Sunya discovers in her studies are too fascinating to spoil. Either way, it’s proof that Bear is a worldbuilder in her prime, and this series is all th better for it.

The main reason that The Folded Sky didn’t get the full 5 stars from me was the pacing; for a series whose books that I’ve routinely gobbled up hundreds of pages of in one sitting, The Folded Sky had a slower start. But once that hurdle was jumped over, this novel was excellently executed from start to finish. I mentioned the dozens of disparate plot elements earlier, and juggling all of them would be a Herculean task for any author (much less whoever had to condense all that into a blurb). What struck me about The Folded Sky is that out of all of those facets of the plot, none of them were treated as afterthoughts. They were all a critical part of the tangled web of the novel. The murder mystery was just as compelling as Sunya’s historical work, as was the rivalry she had with Vickee and the pirates and everything else. Bear made it look easy, connecting threads that I couldn’t imagine connecting. Of course, it wasn’t perfect—in addition to the beginning, the climax was more drawn out than felt reasonable—but for a plot this jam-packed with different elements, Bear pulled it off surprisingly well.

But I feel like the chaos that the characters are mired in was so crucial to the central themes of The Folded Sky. For one thing, there was the whole Folded Sky concept in a series, and its connections to integrative complexity (new concept that I learned! And they say that only nonfiction is educational…thanks, Elizabeth Bear!) and being able to see issues and their consequences from multiple perspectives, and not, as Dr. Nonsense said, a human binary of only two sides. That was already a very powerful theme, but the chaos also related back to Sunya and her family. Though I don’t have any firsthand experience with parenthood, I loved how this theme was written; you bring children into the world, and you want to protect them from a world that is often cruel and unpredictable, and while you can’t protect them from everything, you desperately want to try. And either way, Sunya and her family are able to keep somewhat levelheaded because of the love they have for each other, and the love that they foster in their community. Overall, The Folded Sky is an ode to the power of multiplicity and many perspectives, whether that’s community-building, family, or studying history.

One more bonus point—look, I know “Life On Mars?” is one of Bowie’s most well-known songs, but the fact that it was referenced in passing still made me giddy.

All in all, a poignant and deeply moving addition to one of the best space opera series out there today. 4.5 stars!

The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, preceded by Ancestral Night (1) and Machine (2). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/25/26) – Ode to the Half-Broken

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I found about Ode to the Half-Broken on Instagram via my best friend, who I read this a few days apart from. You know me—I love cozy sci-fi, and this seemed to fit my taste perfectly. Although it didn’t live up to all of my expectations, Ode to the Half-Broken was a solid tale of forgiveness, regret, and letting go.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Ode to the Half-Broken – Suzanne Palmer

Be was designed for war. Twenty years ago, they were created as an unstoppable killing machine and committed countless atrocities in the name of their master. Now, living in the overgrown ruins of the New York Botanical Gardens, they seek to live a quiet life, unencumbered by their past. But an attack that takes their leg leaves Be no choice but to search the ruins of New York City for answers—and what they find might signal another period of darkness for humanity. Joined by Atticus, a cyborg dog with a smart mouth, Be must come to terms with the changing world around them—and the fact that they have changed along with it.

TW/CW: violence, climate change themes/natural disasters, death, descriptions of injury, pandemic, suicide

Without a doubt, the most striking thing about Ode to the Half-Broken was its worldbuilding! Suzanne Palmer did an exceptional job of crafting a vision of post-apocalyptic New York City. Her prose when describing this setting created such a vivid image of an overgrown, partly-in-ruins city. But in terms of the worldbuilding, Palmer really put her money where her mouth was. Through a series of flashbacks spanning several decades, we get so much in-depth information about the climate crisis and how it led to New York City becoming how it is now. Palmer also details so many unique kinds of robots, as well as the complicated relationship that they have with humans, which was very nuanced. Granted, if you’re inclined to climate doom (as I often am), I’d proceed with caution, but it’s at least proof that Palmer did exhaustive research on all of the possibilities stemming from unchecked climate change, from pandemics to the reshaping of our ecosystems. It all felt real, and it was very much a call to action to stop this vision of the future before it’s too late. If nothing else, Ode to the Half-Broken was a great piece of cli-fi that documented the grim potentialities of climate change while not completely collapsing into doom—there’s a vibrant flame of hope that never gets snuffed out.

For the most part, Ode to the Half-Broken worked as a more slow-paced novel. Having read a lot of cozy sci-fi, I feel like this novel qualifies, although the ending certainly pushes the boundary. It’s cozy sci-fi in the way that The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is: quiet and contemplative, but still readily acknowledging the existence of violence and other societal ills. I loved this novel’s readiness to dwell in the quieter moments, and be content to have long stretches of mostly conversation and ordinary human (and robot) interactions. The pacing was tight, but I think it faltered at the last moments. Palmer pulls off the rare feat of balancing flashbacks with the present in a way that felt natural—they were key to building up to the eventual villain, as well as informing us about the world without vomiting infodumps on the reader—something that’s so hard to do! The climax happens quickly and quite messily, and with a rather abrupt ending; one of the key villains was introduced at the eleventh hour, making the aftermath and ending of Ode to the Half-Broken feel unresolved and sloppy. After all that mess, it just sort of ended at a seemingly random moment—I think this novel would’ve been more successful if, like most of the rest of it, it had been willing to wallow in the feeling for longer. But for the most part, this novel was solidly plotted and paced.

Ode to the Half-Broken was built on character work, from the structure of the novel to the marketing. Unfortunately, that’s the element where it suffered the most. I liked the concepts of all of the characters, but the execution of them left something to be desired. It was mostly their voices that didn’t work for me—Palmer’s writing style was one that I mostly enjoyed, but her character voices were either uninteresting or grating. Be didn’t have a whole lot of personality, and even when they became more of an autonomous being, their personality was quite boring. Most of Atticus’s page time consisted of him delivering corny, MCU-style “witty” one-liners, and he just got on my nerves to no end. (Sidenote: I imagined his voice like Rizzo the Rat from The Muppets. Not sure if that hindered or helped that image. Do with that what you will.) To be fair, Litchfield was an interesting villain, but his character was built up in more organic flashbacks, and not in real time. I didn’t feel one way or another about Murphy, as well as the other side characters—again, the issue was that they were all good concepts, but Palmer didn’t deliver on them beyond the idea of them.

That issue is exacerbated in Be’s arc. A lot hinged on their arc of having to let go of their past, but the issue was that this arc didn’t really change. By the time that we begin Ode to the Half-Broken, they’ve already come to the conclusion that the world has changed, and that they have an active role in making sure that they don’t do any more harm. I think there was an attempted message of the answer being integrating yourself in community instead of self-isolating, which is an arc that I normally would have adored, but I don’t think it was executed as well; with the exception of Be and Atticus, none of the other characters seemed to change much after they were introduced to one another. It comes back around to Palmer’s mediocre character work; with more effort put into the characters, this could’ve been a beautifully-written message about the positive change that community can have on your life and in the world at large (as well as being against hyper-individualism), but the result felt like an afterthought without much tangible character development.

All in all, a dystopia with a richly-imagined world, but that faltered in the very thing it advertised as its draw: its characters. 3.5 stars!

Ode to the Half-Broken is a standalone, but Suzanne Palmer is also the author of the Finder Chronicles (Finder, Driving the Deep, The Scavenger Door, and Ghostdrift).

Today’s song:

I could listen to this song all day!! god, I’m obsessed

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/18/26) – The Republic of Memory

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

It’s always the best feeling when you find an extra cool-looking book at a bookstore that you’ve never even heard of before. (It’s a rare feeling for me, since I spend too much time reading and engaging with content about reading. Oops. I need to get out more.) That’s what happened with The Republic of Memory, and I recently bought myself a copy (shoutout to the Boulder Bookstore!).The Republic of Memory boasted so many inventive concepts, and it was such an original novel!

Enjoy this week’s book review!

The Republic of Memory (Song of Safina, #1) – Mahmud El Sayed

Onboard the Safina, a generation ship on a 400 year journey, revolution is brewing. Factioning based on one’s language and the tyrannical rule of the Captain have begun to chafe on the thousands of crew members. But when the Safina is plagued by a series of targeted blackouts, many of the disparate crew must come to terms with the fact that the foundations of their ship—and their journey—are about to change forever.

TW/CW: violence, police brutality, xenophobia, murder, homophobia, infertility, sexual content, suicide

Without a doubt, The Republic of Memory is one of the more original sci-fi novels that I’ve read recently. It’s in a subcategory that Mahmud El Sayed calls Arabfuturism, and though I’ve read speculative fiction by Arab authors, it was so fascinating to see all of the cultural aspects integrated into this classic sci-fi setting. The worldbuilding is top-notch, and El Sayed did an amazing job of making the vast, interconnected world of the Safina into such a lived-in place brimming with history. I loved how El Sayed explores the idea of linguistics and language; the Safina is stratified based on language, and he gets into every possible outcome of separating people and groups based on language. Not only that, he gets into so much detail on how this has affected the culture aboard the Safina in the past few centuries, from how translators have become bureaucratic annoyances to a con-lang that mixes at least six different languages becomes a form of resistance. To say that El Sayed put so much thought into The Republic of Memory is a major understatement—this is a massive worldbuilding undertaking that was nothing short of phenomenal.

This novel dissects the beginnings of revolutions like very few others I’ve read have done. Until the end, it’s not terribly action-packed, but I loved that about it; it’s very much in the vein of a political thriller, and you get to see the revolution boiling over and eventually erupting through a kind of slow-burn, tense series of incidents all across this centuries-old generation ship. Along with El Sayed’s expert worldbuilding, there was such an incredible attention to detail paid to every aspect of what could trigger a revolution. We get a complicated, messy history of the Safina and all of the circumstances leading up to it, and The Republic of Memory is, in a way, a trail of hundreds of separate dominoes leading to the climax. It felt like a very honest depiction of how a revolution begins: not in a single, concentrated burst of activity, but a slow implosion over the course of years—in this case, centuries.

The Republic of Memory juggles dozens of POV characters. It’s a hard task, but I think it partially worked. It reminded me of Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel, which is admittedly a very different book, but it has the same structure of including lots of POV characters in service of telling the story of the vast setting. For El Sayed, it wasn’t the setting that was told through the characters, but the story of a revolution from dozens of different perspectives. Although I wish some of the characters had been developed more, I loved how El Sayed examined the rumblings of a budding revolution through characters of all walks of life. Not all of the characters were likable or necessarily compelling, but I liked how they contributed to different views of how the revolution aboard the Safina was brewing. The execution wasn’t perfect, but I liked the approach that El Sayed took with the characters.

Unfortunately, the big ideas that made The Republic Memory so compelling also became its downfall. El Sayed has so much to say about the nature of language, resistance, and ideologies; for the most part, he’s successful in getting his ideas across. But there was a point when those ideas got so tangled up in the already complex plot that they made said plot even more convoluted than it already was. There were moments where El Sayed was so clearly so deep in his head that he thought it would be perfectly fine to frequently have nigh-incomprehensible chapters in the main con-lang of this novel, which were dizzying, to say the least. (To be fair, said con-lang incorporates elements from at least six different languages, so there’s bits and pieces that you eventually understand, but boy, it takes a long way to get there. And I’m not sure if it was worth it.) In addition, I’m not sure there was enough payoff for all of the established ideas; granted, The Republic of Memory is the first in a duology, but I think El Sayed ran into the classic issue of wanting to have lots of Big Statements on said Big Themes, but there wasn’t nearly enough time to get into everything that he established at the beginning of the novel. It’s a very ambitious novel, but not everything in it was executed neatly enough. I have faith in book two though.

All in all, a densely-packed sci-fi novel with lofty ideas to spare, which was both its strength and its weakness. 3.75 stars!

The Republic of Memory is Mahmud El Sayed’s debut novel, and the first book in the Song of Safina duology; the release date of the sequel has not yet been announced.

Today’s song:

phoebe bridgers + cameron winter doing a duet is seriously a match made in heaven!!

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/14/26) – Machine (White Space, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Thankfully, after last week’s disappointment, we’ve got something to save the track record for Disability Pride Month. I started Elizabeth Bear’s White Space trilogy earlier this year, and I knew I wanted a physical copy of book 2. It’s one of the great joys in life when a sequel is better than the first book—and Ancestral Night was already a 4.5-star read for me, so this was huge! Machine was a fantastic step up for a series that’s already a cut above the rest.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Machine (White Space, #2) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a special kind of doctor. Her patients are usually aliens, and her status as an emergency specialist means that her job description tends to involve having to jump out of spaceships. It’s already a job that keeps her on the edge. But when Dr. Jens and her crew discover two ships that have been abandoned for thousands of years, they uncover a mystery with layers upon layers of disastrous implications. With a strange, antiquated AI, an entire human crew in cryosleep, and a potential conspiracy on their hands, Dr. Jens and her crew must race against the clock to make sure that everybody makes it out alive.

TW/CW: ableism, misogyny, medical content, xenophobia, violence, murder

Genuinely, my sole problem with this novel is the title. Elizabeth Bear thought out this intricate and complex space opera world full of thousands of aliens and unique space travel, and couldn’t think of a more memorable title than Machine? I mean, yeah. There sure are Machines. Lots of ’em. But come on, really.

As much as I enjoyed Haimey’s story in Ancestral Night, I really think that making the White Space series several collected companion novels was the right move. It expands the intricate world that Elizabeth Bear has crafted in so many exciting ways that were only possible through the eyes of a different cast of characters. I loved the ways that the Synarche and all of the different species within it were fleshed out. Bear’s writing is as sharp as ever—her voice is so witty and hilarious, but she also knows just how to stick the landing when it comes to the more climactic or serious moments. The pacing was top-notch, especially considering that Machine is nearly 500 pages long—I blew through hundreds of pages at a time, and Bear never lost me.

I absolutely adored Dr. Jens as a protagonist, and Bear’s willingness to let her protagonists be messy yet lovable people made her shine. Dr. Jens has such a dry sense of humor, and her wry observations about the world around her made Machine such an entertaining read. But beyond that, I loved her continuous self-reflection—about the ideas she’s constructed about herself, but also about her work and the world around her. The supporting cast was so vibrant and lovable—it was a treat to see Cheerilaq again, first off, but all of the characters were so delightful and added a real human (and syster) authenticity to Core General’s staff. Sometimes your coworker gets on your nerves for no discernible reason, and they’re also a massive cetacean-like being getting wheeled around in a massive tank. On that subject, I loved all of the new Systers that Bear introduces. My creature design brain predictably became that meme of the dog with the propeller beanie and the giant lollipop seeing all of the truly alien aliens that populated the Synarche. But Bear went beyond good creature design and into crafting memorable, multilayered characters, which is what makes her space opera stand out in the end.

In particular, the expansion of the AI and robots in the Synarche was one of the most intriguing aspects of the world that Bear discusses in Machine. The whole plotline with Helen Alloy was one of the most well-executed. I love how Bear interrogates the objectification of women and how sci-fi has historically translated this into female-presenting robots. The visceral discomfort that Dr. Jens has that Helen was specifically created to have a hypersexualized, feminine form felt was like seeing the sun peer through the clouds after decades of weird men writing all kinds of messed-up sex-bots. It’s treated with the appropriate level of disgust—both on Helen and Dr. Jens’s part. Helen’s manipulation also ends up being vital to the later twist, and her entire arc of deconstructing the lies that she was programmed with was handled with such tenderness. Beyond the robots, I think that thread of treating people who have been brought up with hateful ideologies and not immediately dismissing those with different opinions was one of the best aspects of Machine; Bear’s insistence that people—human, alien, or AI—are not inherently bad, only victims of harmful ideas, was so necessary.

Bear’s take on disability in a sci-fi context was also such a respectful and well-researched one! She listed off several sensitivity readers in the acknowledgements, and their work paid off—for someone who seems to be non-disabled, by all accounts, this might be one of the most caring representations of a disabled person and their struggles in sci-fi I’ve seen by a non-disabled author. Dr. Jens has a chronic pain disorder, and she has a special exo-suit that manages some of her pain, but not all of it—sci-fi tech still has limitations in the far, far future. She still aches and gets physically taxed from her daring missions. Granted, I’m not chronically ill, but it felt like Bear paid so much attention to how Dr. Jens’s symptoms would present and how her high-stakes profession would affect it. Additionally, there’s a lot of talk about how disability is handled in the future; there was lots of discussion of “rightminding,” a process that, among other things, mitigates the effects of some mental illnesses. It would’ve been so easy to just slap it on as a cure-all technology, but Bear’s approach was one that I rarely see in sci-fi. It’s not necessarily “disability isn’t cured,” but it’s handled on a case-by-case basis, there’s an understanding that different kinds of disabled people have different needs and opinions about how they want to live with their disabilities with the technology available. This rejection of the one-size-fits-all approach to disability was a breath of fresh air, and wasn’t afraid to get into the nuance of how disabled people live their lives.

Disability wasn’t the only issue that gets dealt with in a refreshing amount of nuance. Bear was not afraid to get into the weeds with this novel, and it made my reading experience so much better. Machine, more so than its predecessor, gets into how a utopia and utopian ideas can be twisted into something sinister. It all feels very Ursula K. LeGuin—the Synarche is without a doubt an ambiguous utopia like The Dispossessed. (First off, I liked that Bear interrogates the ethics of “rightminding” targeting potentially “dangerous ideologies,” and how that ends up being decidedly non-utopian.) I appreciated that Bear discusses how well-intentioned utopias can be co-opted into vehicles for hatred, but also how that revelation wracks the people who genuinely believed in this utopia—people like Dr. Jens. Her arc in having faith in her hospital and the Synarche was so human—her entire reality and faith in the organization she devoted her life to is messily upended. But the realization that she comes to—that you can take the good work you wanted to do and the faith in your fellow people outside of corrupt organizations and do your own work—was one that feels so vital. I also loved the thematic potential of the infectious meme—not unlike the spread of a hateful ideology—that is treated as an infection that has to be weaned out with attention and care. Bear’s depictions of that crushing realization and how Dr. Jens and her coworkers pick up the pieces was so heartfelt, and a very potent message in this day and age.

All in all, a spectacular companion to Ancestral Night that expanded Elizabeth Bear’s masterfully crafted space opera universe with pulse-pounding action and heart. 5 stars!

Machine is the second book in the White Space trilogy, a series of companion novels set in the same universe; it is also includes Ancestral Night (book 1) and Folded Sky (book 3). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others

Today’s song:

still going through my mom’s records from the ’80s. this remains peak.

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/12/26) – Interstellar Megachef

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

It’s funny that I should be reading/reviewing Interstellar Megachef when I am, because just a week ago, I was talking to my older brother about how you sometimes have to wade through the most cornball book covers and titles known to man to find good cozy fiction sometimes. Different strokes, I guess, but oh my God, this book cover is painfully corny. (And mismarketed, but I’ll talk more about that). But ultimately, it was mostly worth the gambit: although it had some structural issues, it was a solid novel about food, love, and immigration…in space, of course.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Interstellar Megachef – Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Saraswati Kaveri is determined to prove herself. After running away from her family on Earth, she upends her life to immigrate to the famed planet Primus—and earn a spot on its most popular cooking show, Interstellar Megachef. It’s not an easy feat, especially when the humans of Primus are deeply prejudiced against Earthlings, who they see as backwards and violent. But when Saras’s plans go awry, she has a chance encounter with Serenity Ko, a disgraced tech developer who might have just the solution for her to redeem herself—and her cooking.

TW/CW: xenophobia/racism, racial slurs (fictional), substance abuse

First off: Interstellar Megachef is mismarketed. Cornball cover art aside, the Interstellar Megachef aspect of the book is fairly understated. This isn’t a spoiler, but Saras gets disqualified in the first episode of the show—and this happens about a quarter into the novel. (However, Interstellar Megachef comes back as a plot point, so it’s not entirely absent from the plot afterwards.) So I’m assuming that it was marketing reasons that gave this novel its title and tagline. So fair warning, if you’re expecting the entire novel to be food-centric, I’d suggest that you dial back your expectations.

Where Interstellar Megachef succeeds is its powerful commentary on the experience of being an immigrant. To me, good cozy sci-fi succeeds when it retains the low stakes, but doesn’t hold back on discussing whatever issues it seeks to tackle; Lakshminarayan does this to great success. Saras’s experiences as an Earthling immigrant to Primus were a biting indictment of how we treat immigrants, from the outright racism and xenophobia to the more subtle micro-aggressions that they’re taught to simply put up with. The labor that Saras has to do just to be marginally accepted by her Primian peers was poignant, and it spoke to the limits of “acceptance” that mainstream society often has for immigrants: she’s only valuable to them if she’s able to serve a purpose to them. But Saras’s commitment to going against the grain and staying true to her culture gave this novel a poignant, beating heart that propelled its narrative skyward.

Interstellar Megachef also boasts a particularly vibrant sci-fi world. Of course, there are elements that didn’t quite make me suspend my disbelief; I couldn’t quite believe that Earthling humans were more discriminated against than the nigh-incomprehensible mecha tentacle aliens, but that was necessary to the plot, so I get why that was a thing. (Also, the Primian naming convention of every adult being named after the Nine Virtues was okay in concept, but confusing logistically, when you have at least four characters with the same first name per virtue.) Lakshminarayan’s descriptions of this futuristic world were so bright and lived-in, and I truly felt immersed into this neon, intergalactic future for humanity. The aliens were fun, but I feel like their role in society was underutilized, especially when the themes of prejudice and marginalization are concerned. That being said, Lakshminarayan often delivered this worldbuilding in portions that went on for three paragraphs in some cases, which unceremoniously took away from the main narrative. All of the detail and hard work was there, but integrating smoothly into the narrative was a different story, unfortunately.

However, my biggest issue with Interstellar Megachef was the pacing. I’m used to some slowness when it’s cozy sci-fi that we’re talking about, but there were some parts of the novel that seriously dragged. We take so many detours into characters that aren’t central to the main plot, and they don’t serve much of a purpose—they did almost nothing to enrich the plot or the characters. They just seemed like vehicles for Lakshminarayan to do some even more unwieldy exposition for the world (like the three-paragraph-long dumps weren’t enough…). And it’s not as though the book was too short to cut some parts—my paperback edition is around 450 pages. Did we need a whole chapter about politicians negotiating with an alien species that we don’t even see afterwards? There was definitely some trimming needed. The issues with the pacing don’t end here; with all of these detours, it took away so much from the focal plot, making the development of the main characters feel rushed by comparison.

We took so much time on said detours that the romance between Saras and Serenity was rendered rushed and unbelievable. However, part of that was due to Lakshminarayan not giving them much chemistry at all from the start. I just wasn’t convinced of them being a couple, even towards the end of the book. They just didn’t seem compatible at all—and that’s not even counting some of the terrible things that Serenity does to “prank” Saraswati that realistically should’ve been dealbreakers. (Saras!! Get out of there, girl! You deserve better!) By the time they got together at the end of the novel, I was entirely unconvinced of them as a happy couple. It was just so forced from the start, like a bungled attempt at enemies-to-lovers banter.

All in all, a solid stab at a cozy space-opera, full of potent commentary and a vibrant world, but lacking in plot and some believability. 3.5 stars!

Interstellar Megachef is the first book in the Flavour Hacker series, followed by Intergalactic Feast. Lakshminarayan is also the author of The Ten Percent Thief.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/5/26) – Saltcrop

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

GUESS WHO’S BACK…WITH A BACHELOR’S DEGREE! 🎓 YIPPEE!! Either way, I’ll be back to my normal posting schedule for the foreseeable future, as I’m now done with finals and all of my graduation festivities.

I’ve been a fan of Yume Kitasei since her debut, The Deep Sky. Her second novel, The Stardust Grail, was a 5-star read for me—it’s truly a gem, if you haven’t read it already. (After re-reading it last month, I’m firmly convinced that we need another book set in that universe. Her worldbuilding was so expansive!! It needs a companion novel!! Please!!) So I was ecstatic to hear that she was writing another sci-fi novel. It seems she’s been jumping between all kinds of sci-fi subgenres: a literary thriller with The Deep Sky, space opera with The Stardust Grail, and now dystopia with Saltcrop. And though it didn’t blow me away like The Stardust Grail did, Saltcrop is still a worthy, timely testament to Kitasei’s talents.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Saltcrop – Yume Kitasei

In a world ravaged by climate change, the three Shimizu sisters–Nora, Carmen, and Skipper—eke out a living with their aging grandmother. But Nora has been missing for months without an explanation. Carmen has faith that Nora will turn up soon, but Skipper suspects foul play. The sisters voyage out into uncertain waters to find Nora, but when they stumble into an intricate conspiracy that’s more than they bargained for, they must decide whether the journey was worth it at all—and if Nora is even out there in the first place.

TW/CW: medical content, body horror, death of parents, abuse, violence, murder, illness, animal death, chronic illness themes

One of the coolest things about watching Yume Kitasei’s career expand, from a reader’s perspective, is her willingness to try almost anything within the sci-fi genre. Her first novel was a more literary, sci-fi thriller; her second, a daring space opera with influences from Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Saltcrop is wholly different than both of them, and perhaps the greatest thing about it is that Kitasei never seems to run out of ideas, and that she’s unafraid to chase them.

Saltcrop is full of heart, and to me, that was its main strength. What formed this heart was the central relationship between Skipper, Carmen, and Nora. Even though 1/3 sisters was notably missing for 2/3rds of the novel, her presence was palpable; all that was possible due to the subtle interactions that Kitasei wove through Skipper and Carmen, both past and present. Their clashing but united dynamic as sisters propelled the novel in such a poignant way. Though you know from the start that Skipper and Carmen would cross the ocean for their sister (and they do), Kitasei never falters in giving you the sense of the complex but steadfast love that they have for each other. It feels like a middle finger to all of the dystopian media that posits that the apocalypse will somehow deteriorate our inherently human urge to love and help each other. Siblings will be siblings, even when climate change floods the world—Kitasei means that in every sense possible.

The setting of Saltcrop is familiar: a flooded dystopian world rendered unrecognizable by climate change, where the poor eke out a hardened existence while the rich continue to get richer. It’s a plot we’ve heard many times before, but Kitasei’s touch made it much more human. Aside from the exploration of the sisters’s relationships, I think what made Saltcrop’s plot and worldbuilding so memorable were the vignettes that made it human. Kitasei’s flooded world was peppered with stories of ordinary people, dead and alive, who made a living in spite of nearly inhospitable circumstances. It doesn’t shy away from the dark and ugly parts of this world (namely the spread of illness and corporate greed) Combine that with the clearly exhaustive research she did about agriculture, epidemiology, and genetic modification that got especially relevant in the last half of the novel, and Saltcrop was one of the most lived-in dystopias that I’ve read in quite some time.

I said earlier that Saltcrop is fairly different from her previous two novels, but in terms of writing, I think it trends closer to The Deep Sky, which is to say that it leans more into the literary side of her prose. And if there’s anybody I trust with more literary prose, it’s Kitasei. Her eye for poignant, needle-sharp descriptions that lodge themselves into your heart is stronger than ever—there are casual gut-punches laid about everywhere. Even in the heart of a climate-ravaged dystopia, there were almost Fargo-like interludes where reality and memory warp, which was all the more potent considering the themes of remembrance in Saltcrop. (The bear scene in the middle especially comes to mind.) Like the plot, Kitasei’s prose turned an environment that we’ve seen many times before into something wholly fresh and enlivened.

I’ll admit, I have some mixed feelings about the ending. On the one hand, I loved how the sisters rallied together to try and bring down the antagonist corporation, which routinely swallowed all of their attempts at resisting; the gradual, quiet victory was hopeful, and felt realistic to the long and rocky road to justice that we see with these kinds of issues. However, I feel like there were so many unanswered questions at the end; without spoiling anything, it felt like the setup to another novel, but there was so much left unsolved and unsaid, and yet Kitasei gave it the tone of a bittersweet ending, but a concrete ending all the same. It only felt wrapped up in the sense of the corporation plot, but beyond that, it felt unfinished. I’m all for an ambiguous ending, but with such a key piece of the puzzle missing, it didn’t feel satisfying in the slightest.

All in all, a startlingly human post-apocalyptic story of sisterhood and survival. 4 stars!

Saltcrop is a standalone, but Yume Kitasei is also the author of The Deep Sky and The Stardust Grail.

Today’s song:

genuinely criminal that this isn’t available on streaming, but this is, hands down, one of the best Wilco covers out there

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (2/17/26) – The King Must Die

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Confession time: I was not a fan of Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s debut, The Splinter in the Sky. I didn’t think I would read any of her other books. But my hunger for sci-fi knows no bounds, and when I saw this, I was intrigued enough by the premise to give her writing a second shot. Thankfully, the gamble paid off—The King Must Die was an unexpected delight, full of rebellion, blood, and the friendships that somehow spring up from those other two things.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Newearth was once humanity’s last hope, a planet terraformed by incomprehensible, alien overlords. Now, it’s on the verge of destruction, with dwindling resources divided unfairly amongst the struggling poor and the Sovereign that rules over them. What’s more, the Sovereign has the power of the omnipotent, alien Executors on their side, willing to do their divine bidding at a moment’s notice, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Fen, the daughter of anti-imperialist rebels, is on the run after the assassination of her fathers. With a target on her back, she flees for a neighboring rebel faction. But when Alekhai, the ruthless heir to the Sovereign, stumbles directly into the plans of the rebellion, Fen is faced with a brutal choice: join forces with him, or let the rebellion fall prey to the Sovereign.

TW/CW: murder, loss of loved ones, gore, blood, violence, descriptions of injuries, torture

I almost passed on this novel when I saw that it was by the same author as The Splinter in the Sky. But sometimes, every once in a while, it’s worth it to give an author another chance; if not for second chances, I wouldn’t have loved Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel, for instance! I’m glad I took the chance with Kemi Ashing-Giwa, because The King Must Die was an action-packed, adrenaline-filled story of rebellion and intrigue.

My issue with The Splinter in the Sky was that the story did not feel original. A recurring thought I had while reading it was that it had poorly copied A Memory Called Empire‘s homework—there wasn’t enough about the story that was original. I can excuse some of it, since this was her debut novel, but debut novels can have a story that doesn’t border on being a rip-off. That being said, I do remember liking some of Ashing-Giwa’s prose. Thankfully, she’s worked on both of those fronts, creating an original story to go with said prose, and the prose itself has been leveled up significantly! Ashing-Giwa had such a vibrant way of describing the imagined world of Newearth and the many people within it, so much so that I could easily see myself walking through its war-torn jungles. Her dialogue is snappy without being corny, and her metaphors added a poetic flair to an often bloody and dreary landscape. The King Must Die is a marked improvement from Ashing-Giwa’s debut, fleshing out what I felt lacked in her writing on the first time around.

Whenever I say that an adult novel is a good transitory novel between YA and Adult age groups, it always seems backhanded. I guess that’s because literary circles still turn their noses up at YA for the most part. Listen—even though I’ve aged out of the target audience, I read a fair amount of YA (although adult novels have eclipsed them), I write YA, and I have a deep respect for it as an age group (it’s not a genre!). There’s a difference between YA (novels that genuinely portray the complex emotions of teenagers and their circumstances) and YA (tropey slop banking on the latest fanfiction/TV trends). And I think there’s something about The King Must Die that felt like it could be an excellent book to introduce older teens to more adult genre fiction. Sure, the kill count and amount of blood in general is very much adult, but Ashing-Giwa hits that balance between the political intrigue that’s more present in Adult novels with the character drama that I associate more with YA. It has the fast pace that I associate with some of my favorite YA sci-fi romps that I ate up in high school, but with a level of maturity that would have been lost on me at that time. It’s difficult to balance this kind of complicated worldbuilding and politics while also having this character drama, but The King Must Die had both in spades.

The main part that felt YA (affectionate) to me was the character dynamics. The dynamic between Fen and Alekhai is a classic YA setup; she’s a runaway rebel, and he’s the heir to the empire she wants to destroy. Will sparks fly? …no, evidently, but they did make for some seriously compelling character dynamics. I appreciated that, although there were multiple opportunities for Fen to be paired off with any number of characters, all of them were platonic, and they still gave me that juicy, delectable drama that’s usually only reserved for romances. Fen had such excellent chemistry with Mettan, Sinjara, and the other rebels, but what stood out the most was her relationship with Alekhai. I love a good redemption story for a villain, but it’s even more impressive given how much that Ashing-Giwa establishes about him that honestly…shouldn’t be that redeemable. But his development over the course of the story culminated in something so emotional, and the slow cracking of his shell from a ruthless, indestructible royal to someone who only wanted love in return was incredibly poignant.

The King Must Die is still sci-fi for sure, but I’d place it somewhere in the nebulous category of space fantasy. There are some elements that solidly ground it in science fiction: the alien Makers and their terraformed planet, for one, but also some of the technology. However, much of the action that we see on the ground was very fantasy, what with battles waged with intricate swords and quarterstaffs. I loved the strange, often horrifying beasts that we encounter throughout, though I would’ve liked explanations about how they fit into the ecosystems; we get a lot of tidbits of creatures that supposedly went extinct centuries ago, but are showing up for…reasons, and are never brought up again. As a whole, there were a handful of holes in the parts of the worldbuilding that didn’t relate to a) the politics or b) the terraformed Newearth, but for the most part, the world of The King Must Die was a compelling one without a doubt.

In general, I liked the ending and the epilogue; on a more technical level, Ashing-Giwa is excellent at writing battle scenes that really pump up your adrenaline. Some of the imagery, as well as Askrynath’s dialogue, reminded me of the final battle in the throne room in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which, if you know me well, is a compliment of the highest order. Conceptually, I like how the ending and epilogue resolved—through selflessness and collective community work, the empire was dismantled and a more fair system was set up on Newearth. However, it felt wrapped up far too neatly. An empire that size—especially one with the backing of incomprehensibly all-powerful aliens—doesn’t crumble in a day. I wanted to see more of the messiness of rebuilding a new world in the ashes of the old one—the transition just felt too clean to be realistic. To be fair, The King Must Die is already pushing 500 pages, so I get it if that didn’t make the final cut. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying ending—just too satisfying for my liking, and for the tone of the story itself.

All in all, a sci-fi adventure that balanced genuine political critique with fast-paced action and dramatic, snappy dialogue—it’s rare to find a book that succeeds with both. 4 stars!

The King Must Die is a standalone, but Kemi Ashing-Giwa is also the author of The Splinter in the Sky and the novella This World Is Not Yours.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (2/10/26) – This Great Hemisphere

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

This book came up in several searches I found looking for speculative fiction authors that I hadn’t heard of. It seemed more on the literary side of dystopia/sci-fi, but the premise seemed interesting enough, so I took the leap. Unfortunately, This Great Hemisphere falls into the same trap as many other literary sci-fi novels: all literary, hardly any sci-fi—or basic worldbuilding to speak of.

Enjoy this week’s review!

This Great Hemisphere – Mateo Askaripour

In the 26th century, Earth has become unrecognizable, and so have its people. Parts of the population have become Invisible; those who cannot be seen are relegated to manual labor and pushed to the margins of society. Sweetmint, and Invisible woman, has worked her entire life to ensure that she becomes more than another statistic, securing a top apprenticeship with a legendary non-Invisible businessman. But when her missing brother becomes the prime suspect in a politically-motivated murder, Sweetmint sets off to find him—and convince the rest of the world of his innocence.

TW/CW: racism, misogyny, violence, sexual assault, murder

I really just need to steer clear of literary sci-fi, at this point. Once in a blue moon, you’ll get something incredible, but I feel like authors who go from literary fiction straight into sci-fi forgo world/character building and just slap the same faux-deep prose into a vaguely speculative setting. To Mateo Askaripour’s credit, This Great Hemisphere goes slightly further than that, but beyond the basic premise, there’s not much about this novel that holds water.

Overall, This Great Hemisphere left a lot to be desired in terms of the worldbuilding, which I’ll get to later. That being said, the one part I really enjoyed about the novel was how fleshed-out the concepts of the Invisibles were. It’s the only bit of worldbuilding we really get, but at least what we have was somewhat substantial. I loved how Askaripour outlined not just how Invisibles are marginalized in this far-future society, but their own cultural quirks; I love the “scent-prints” that Invisibles recognize each other by without sight, and the fact that some paint themselves in order to be visible in DP society was fascinating to me. Askaripour fleshed out their social world well, and it made that part of the novel feel real. From the get-go, it’s easy to see how this becomes allegorical for racism. I found the allegory a little shallow, personally—it doesn’t go far beyond “racism is bad and it’s systemic,” and I would have liked it to have more nuance—say, the psychological effects of it or how a character like Sweetmint might view herself because she’s been socialized around this racism. But as it was, it was a decent way of showing how racism could manifest in a speculative setting.

However, the Invisibles concept is where my praise for This Great Hemisphere ends. One of my biggest issues with this novel is that all of the characters were flat, and as a result, I had significant trouble connecting to any of the characters. Sweetmint was the protagonist who we were supposed to root for, but she had no personality outside of being an object of marginalization; I know that she gets beaten up and wants to save her brother, but those aren’t character traits. Strip the plot away, and Sweetmint would be nothing. The same applied to most of the other characters in the novel, who were either hollow caricatures of various kinds (ex. Croger was an eccentric billionaire, the Rainbow Girls were gossipy, catty women), or just not given any personality traits at all. This was most detrimental when it came to Sweetmint’s brother; since we spend the whole novel searching for him, surely we’ll get a taste of what his personality is like, as well as his relationship with Sweetmint, right? Apparently not…once again, he’s just there to move the plot along. This Great Hemisphere could have been a solid novel with the bones that it stood on, but without any substantial characters, it was practically skeletal.

Beyond the Invisibles, there’s almost no worldbuilding, and what’s there makes almost no sense. It’s the 26th century, and we’re in…a forest of some sort. Climate change has affected…something, but Askaripour refuses to tell you what. There aren’t any major technological innovations in 500 years, seemingly—and even if this were some kind of society where everybody had become luddites for whatever reason, that’s not explained either! Chief Architect Croger is the one responsible for molding modern society into what it is, but do we know how? Also no. There’s a government, and it’s bad, and they have…elections? That’s about all I know. There’s just absolutely no scaffolding for any of the worldbuilding, nor is there context for it. If Askaripour hadn’t said anything about the time period, I fully would’ve assumed that this was set, at the furthest, at the end of the 21st century. If This Great Hemisphere had been set in a climate-ravaged 2080’s, or something, half of these problems wouldn’t even exist—but it would still take at least some modicum of effort to convince us that this was set past 2024. It was just blatantly clear that Askaripour did very little work to make his speculative fiction truly speculative—it felt so modern, and that continued negligence for the worldbuilding made suspending my disbelief exceedingly difficult.

I’m always wary of male authors writing from the perspective of female characters, and This Great Hemisphere reminded me of why I have those fears in the first place. Don’t worry—we don’t get into “her boobs breasted boobily” territory here, but it’s not great, either. The bar is in the Mariana Trench, but Askaripour is still somewhere in the twilight zone at best. Already, the characters were developed poorly and presented little opportunity to get attached, so Sweetmint, regardless of gender, was not a compelling character. But her gender factored greatly into the discrimination in this novel, which is where it gets messy. There are so many scenes with her being beaten up, groped, and otherwise abused, which bordered on gratuitous. And yes, This Great Hemisphere is about a (somewhat) fictional kind of discrimination, but Askaripour didn’t seem to reflect at all about how gender would intersect with this fictional marginalization. Instead, we got page after page of Sweetmint facing gender-based violence with no nuanced reflection on it. It just rubbed me the wrong way that these things were being done so thoughtlessly to a female character. It wasn’t gratuitous enough to be torture porn, but it came close to it. In addition, when the female characters weren’t underdeveloped entirely, they felt rather shallow; I did appreciate that Askaripour kind of humanized a few of the Rainbow Girls, but they were very much a caricature of gossiping, oversexualized women in the end. Again! He could’ve made some very potent commentary on that, but no, apparently this novel needed the same caricature in every color of the rainbow…for some reason.

All in all, a speculative dystopia that talked the talk in terms of its themes and metaphors, but largely failed to walk the walk and follow through on its own ideas. 2.5 stars.

This Great Hemisphere is a standalone, but Mateo Askaripour is also the author of Black Buck.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (1/27/26) – A Swift and Sudden Exit

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

First off, I figured I would share this resource with you all. My heart continues to break from seeing ICE violence wracking Minneapolis. If you’re financially available, here’s a post with a comprehensive list of places to donate to support the good people of Minneapolis. If you’re not financially able: continue to spread the word! When the government continues to propagate blatant lies, your words are the best weapon to use against them. Rest in power to Renee Nicole Good, Keith Porter, and Alex Pretti. ABOLISH ICE.

…

Here’s another book that I got with some gift card money for Christmas. I’m always on the hunt for more books with good bisexual rep, especially when it’s in genre fiction. This indie-published time travel romance between a time traveler from the post-apocalyptic 2050’s and an immortal caught my eye immediately, in no small part thanks to the wonderfully comic book-y cover. Though it wasn’t without its flaws, A Swift and Sudden Exit was an emotional and action-packed romp through time and space.

Enjoy this week’s review!

A Swift and Sudden Exit – Nico Vicenty

Zera lives in a post-apocalyptic 2058, where a geomagnetic storm nearly two decades ago plunged Earth into almost uninhabitable conditions. The remains of the military are scrambling to make things right, and the only way out of the wasteland is time travel. But when Zera travels back to 2040—the date of the geomagnetic storm that started it all—she sees a woman who claims to have known her, and may just be immortal. Zera follows this woman over centuries as she struggles to find the missing piece of the puzzle, but will this mysterious, immortal woman be more than just a means to reverse the apocalypse?

TW/CW: homophobia, violence, police brutality, vomit, abuse, suicidal ideation, stalking, blood, murder, loss of loved ones

Maybe the real geomagnetic storm was the bisexual romance we made along the way?

A lot of the reviews for A Swift and Sudden Exit that I’ve read have talked about how this novel couldn’t seem to make up its mind on whether it wanted to be sci-fi or romance. This problem never popped up for me, and I think that might be the novel’s hidden strength. It wasn’t afraid to put the sci-fi and romance elements at equal importance. Vincenty did an excellent job of developing these aspects in tandem, and it made for a very unique mix of genres. The worldbuilding was sound for the most part, but the same attention was paid to making Zera and Katherine’s romance into something that had a very real, slow-burn progression. I felt just as much tension with Zera trying to prevent the geomagnetic storm as I did with her will-they-won’t-they dynamic with Katherine. It’s such a fun premise to begin with—a romance between a time-traveler and an immortal—but Vincenty delivered on both aspects. A Swift and Sudden Exit succeeded for me in part because equal effort was put into the two most disparate parts of the novel, and the merging of the two felt seamless.

The most compelling parts for me were how Vincenty explored both the past and the future. The radiation-wracked future was appropriately bleak, and I loved the atmosphere she created with Zera and the others in their bunker. Just the same, I loved Zera and Katherine’s journey through time. My only critique was that I wanted to see more of the 1884 period—I feel like the whole failed Arctic expedition subplot was way too interesting to only get a single chapter. Come on. Yet beyond that, I loved seeing the different time periods across the United States. Vincenty had a great balance of having some fun, romantic notions of the time periods that Zera and Katherine visited, but also of the very real dangers they presented for queer women like them. Zera and Katherine both being bisexual made my heart so happy, but I appreciated Vincenty’s approach to writing them navigating more unsafe time periods; it didn’t shy away from queer-related issues (including police brutality and the AIDS crisis), but it never veered into full-on trauma porn territory. Vincenty’s strength in this novel is balance.

However, throughout A Swift and Sudden Exit, I found myself unable to fully suspend my disbelief. Although the worldbuilding was fairly solid—I’m honestly fine with the immortals bit not being explained fully—it was the stakes that made me suspicious of the story. Even though this is presumably an incredibly dire situation with world-ending stakes, the remains of the military seemed completely content to let Zera go on all manner of borderline frivolous missions that conveniently lined up with her meeting her sexy immortal girlfriend. Sure, you’ve got to let some plot conveniences go just to keep the story going, but given that Zera’s pretty low in the chain of command (and on Colonel Vylek’s nerves almost constantly), it didn’t make sense that she hadn’t been demoted or kicked off the mission at least halfway through the novel. Additionally, a lot of the problems got resolved far quicker than they should’ve—the funding getting cut for the time travel initiative comes to mind. Seems like a huge problem, and yet it got resolved in the span of maybe 1, 2 chapters tops? It didn’t make sense. I can chalk part of it up to the pacing—A Swift and Sudden Exit has very swift and sudden pacing, giving us little time to rest; it worked when it came to some of the more climactic scenes, but not when glossing over important plot points.

Additionally, I found Vincenty’s writing style to be a bit bare-bones. It was entertaining, but I never found myself thinking that it was great. She did an excellent job with describing the historical time periods and post-apocalyptic 2058, but I think there could’ve been a lot more done with the character writing. Zera and Katherine were developed well, but a lot of the other characters, even the more important ones, felt like window dressing at best. Until the last quarter, Kissi didn’t function as much else than a witty sidekick for Zera. Without spoiling anything, the twist about Byrd came out of nowhere, but I feel like that’s more of a consequence of his character rarely appearing and not getting much development other than quirky banter. Colonel Vylek was much more secondary, but even though I gather her presence was meant to feel like a threat, she never did; maybe that’s because all of the obstacles that she put in front of Zera got resolved so quickly. Had they been developed more, especially Byrd and Colonel Vylek, I think the stakes issue might have been partially resolved. They never felt like real antagonists (or even just roadblocks, in Vylek’s case). I’m not saying that they needed to be on the importance level of Zera and Katherine, but given the roles they had, they could’ve been more distinct and developed.

All in all, an ambitious debut that didn’t fulfill all of its promises, but provided an adventurous, sapphic journey through time nonetheless. 3.5 stars!

A Swift and Sudden Exit is a standalone, but Nico Vicenty is also the author of Bone Dresser and Death Between the Stars.

Today’s song:

love love love crab day!!

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (1/20/26) – Ancestral Night

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’d like to think that I’m a competent, capable adult, but a few months back, I picked up book three of this series without realizing that it was book three. Oops. All the same, I was motivated to read it, so I ended up getting a copy with some gift card money for Bookshop.org. Long haul as it was, I’m so glad I took the leap—Ancestral Night knocked me off my feet from the first few pages, and that momentum almost never stopped.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Ancestral Night (White Space, #1) – Elizabeth Bear

Haimey Dz and her small crew fly under the radar, making a living salvaging spaceships at the edge of the galaxy. But after a run-in with a gang of pirates and the discovery of a galaxy-changing revelation hidden inside a derelict spaceship, Haimey knows that she can’t let just anyone get ahold of this secret. Inside of the spaceship is illegal, ancient technology that could turn the tides for the worse if in the wrong hands—and judging from the spaceship, it was already in the wrong hands. Infected with a strange, ancient parasite and with pirates and the government hot on her heels, Haimey and her crew must get to the bottom of this mystery before this tech falls into the wrong hands.

TW/CW: descriptions of injury, violence, blood, emotional abuse, grief, suicide, mental health themes

I really need to put together some kind of list of sci-fi with cats on spaceships. There’s enough out there that it’s a Thing, and though it’s not enough to be a full-on trope, it never fails to make me smile, both as a sci-fi fan and a cat lover. Jonesy from Alien set the precedent, but I think it’s just that through line of historically having cats on boats for good luck that makes it so wonderful. Bushyasta and Mephistopheles deserve a spot in the sci-fi cats pantheon.

The world of Ancestral Night is truly something to behold. From the get-go, I got lost in it so easily—Bear’s prose kept me hooked for all 500+ pages. Part of that was just how intriguing the world was. Everything you could want in a space opera is here—mysterious, derelict spaceships with dark secrets, all manner of very alien aliens, two naughty cats on a spaceship, and perhaps best of all, eldritch, centuries-old seahorse creatures that live in the vacuum of space. Who could ask for more, really? There’s a dormant part of my high school brain that was obsessed with Aurora Rising that got beyond amped about salvaging spaceships, so that was an automatic win. I loved the Atavikha an unreasonable amount, as well as the aliens, but that’s not news at all. But I love the care that Bear took to make this world feel familiar in the right places, but appropriately alien where it was necessary. It’s a world where you can read George Eliot in your free time, but also come face to face with a creature so alien you barely have any appropriate human analogues for it. Balance is key, and Bear balanced it well.

With sci-fi like this, there’s a tendency to forget that no matter how much time you spend on worldbuilding, your universe still may feel like it isn’t lived in; everything’s too sterile and sleek, and you never get the sense that these strange planets and moons and whatnot are places where people spend their lives. Bear circumvented that issue from the get-go—everything about Ancestral Night felt lived-in, from the humble spaceships to the crowded space stations that Haimey and her friends navigated. Her spaceship wasn’t just a way to get around: it was a place where Haimey lounged around and read old books and petted her cats. Every corner that the crew explored was full of not just lore, but memories—everything in Ancestral Night had a story, and that did almost as much work as the worldbuilding in making sure that Bear’s world felt real.

Another aspect that made Ancestral Night feel real was Haimey herself. I’m all for representing marginalized people beyond stereotypes, but there’s something to be said for queer characters who are unapologetically messy and make decidedly terrible decisions—and Haimey makes terrible decisions aplenty. (I finished Pluribus not long ago, and I thought the same about Carol. I guess they’re both lesbians who fall for highly questionable pirate ladies, in the end.) If Ancestral Night was a TV show, I fully would’ve thrown something at the TV when she kissed Zanya. HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING? That being said, she felt so staggeringly real in the amalgamation of all her hopes and flaws. Even in this far-flung sci-fi world, this woman who reads ancient classics onboard her spaceship and dotes after her cats and falls for the messiest, scariest pirate women was so refreshingly real, and in spite of those flaws, ultimately lovable.

Ancestral Night is a space opera without question, but the worldbuilding will certainly appeal to the more hard science fiction-leaning readers for sure. Care for the worldbuilding obviously isn’t exclusive to hard sci-fi, especially as a cozy sci-fi/space opera/soft sci-fi defender and enjoyer, but not every space opera you come across goes into this much detail about accretion disks. Bear doesn’t shy away from getting esoteric with the worldbuilding, whether it’s in terms of astrophysics or politics. The politics form the core of the novel for me. My one major problem with the novel was that it had a tendency to go into Haimey’s philosophical musings about the nature of governments and freedom to a point where it was difficult to suspend my disbelief that nothing bad had happened to her while this was all going on, given everything else that happens throughout. (How did she not get conked on the head by pirates mid-digression during half of those scenes?) However, the nature of these digressions fed into the thematic elements of Ancestral Night really well, and I loved how they formed the backbone of Haimey’s character.

Even though not all of the philosophical musing landed, the setup of it, as well as the worldbuilding of Ancestral Night, set such a wonderful stage for Haimey’s character development. She’s caught between two very opposite poles: the Clade where she grew up, where her existence was placid but assimilated, and the pirates, whose messy anarchy is hyperindividualistic to a fault. Set against the backdrop of a flawed yet somewhat well-intentioned government, Haimey’s realization that her true self comes not from sacrificing her individuality or her obligation to do good for others in her community was so poignant. All her life, the notion of who she really is has been forced upon her from both sides, and yet what’s in her heart is where the two ideologies meet: retaining her uniqueness, but not kicking everybody else aside in the process. Haimey’s true spirit comes from how she decides her life should be, but also from the positive relationships around her. It was such a heartfelt message, and Haimey’s arc gave Ancestral Night a powerful emotional core.

All in all, a captivating space opera with real, lovable protagonists, a lived-in universe, and mystery that had me on the edge of my seat. 4.5 stars!

Ancestral Night is the first novel in the White Space series, followed by Machine and The Folded Sky. Bear is also the author of several other award-winning novels, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!