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Wait, what happened in The Relentless Moon?

So I adore Mary Robinette Kowal, like she’s one of those authors who I want to be my friend.  I had high hopes about this book, and I was not disappointed!  Another piece of non-disappointing news: she’s writing a fourth book in the series!  Medium disappointing: it doesn’t come out until 2022?  Hopefully?  In the meantime, here’s an incoherent list of everything that happened in The Relentless Moon, so that when The Derivative Base comes out, I’ll be ready.  Spoilers under the cut!

The main new thing about this book was that it wasn’t about Elma anymore!  It was about Nicole (who frankly I have no memory of), who is the wife of the Governor of Kansas.

Nicole is this badass astronaut/pilot lady, and she’s also a socialite and former spy with a perfect exterior and she uses it to get what she wants.

So at the beginning there’s like training and marriage trouble and astronaut drama and parties to be fancy at.  Nicole is getting ready to go up to the moon, and even though she should be a pilot she’s gonna be some admin yokel’s secretary. But because she’s the wife of an important man, she gets briefed on a suspected saboteur, probably from the Earth First movement, who she’s supposed to be on the lookout for on the moon.

Oh also Nathaniel, Elma’s husband, gets poisoned, and she’s on the Mars mission so he refuses to tell her because he doesn’t want her to worry.

Myrtle and Eugene (love them) are part of the team going up to the moon, and there is trouble afoot!  The rocket malfunctions, Nicole breaks her arm, and there’s all of the power outages and mysterious happenings on board.

There’s your classic sexism, racism, all that good stuff, and the stuffy admin people don’t listen to Nicole’s good sense.

Things highkey fall apart, and Nicole (along with Myrtle, Eugene, and Helen) has to figure out who the saboteur is using her super cool spy skills.

Her husband gets assassinated while she’s on Mars and it’s horrible.

Nicole finds the man who was the saboteur and hid her husbands letters and nearly kills him but successfully interrogates him instead.

Eugene is a super competent leader and he’s gonna be an awesome mayor of Mars.

Nicole has anorexia - her husband and friends are sometimes jerks about it but they’re just trying to take care of her.

Here’s what we learn at the end of the story:

Nicole gets elected president (booyah!)

Her platform is about linking space travel to prosperity and jobs

Elma and the Mars team make it home safely

And here are some things I’m thinking about

When the saboteur wasn’t quoting the bible and raving like a lunatic, he made some good points about the eugenics aspect of the space race - only people who are smart and healthy are going to make it off of Earth in time.  Interested in seeing her talk more about this in the next one.

MRK does such a nice job handling Nicole’s anorexia - I just really appreciated it. She does good work.

There’s nothing so frustrating as watching the women and people of color in these books get passed over for jobs and promotions and having their ideas ignored, and nothing so satisfying as having the people in power have to admit that the people they pushed aside were right all along. Ha! That’s what you get!

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in The Dragon Republic?

I know I’m behind the tumblr train of love for the Poppy War series, but I had a hard time getting into this book because I loved the boarding school part but the second half was just terrible war.  It turns out I was half right - this book was all terrible war, but I’m so glad I read it.  Keep reading for lots of spoiler plot points and my general thoughts on everything (like how Kitay is the best), to remind you what happened before you read The Burning God.

So when the book starts out Rin and the Cike are doing work for Moag the pirate queen because they have a deal to assasinate people for her and then she’ll give them what they need to assassinate the Empress Daji.

But Moag breaks the deal and sells them out to Vaisra, Nezha’s dad (Nezha and Rin were buddies in Sinegard together).

Vaisra wants to capitalize on this moment of instability following a war to assassinate Daji and create a republic, and he needs Rin’s help, so he gets her and the Cike to join his Dragon Army.

They also get Kitay to join, he’s like their super booksmart friend from Sinegard, and he’s super good at strategy and stuff.

They make this whole plan to get Rin in to assassinate her but it fails spectacularly and Daji puts a Seal on Rin’s mind so that she can’t call the phoenix god any more, and the Seal is also slowly poisoning her mind and eating her memories??  Yikes.

So they go back to Dragon Province and everybody is like “yo it’s time to attack, the longer we wait the more time the empress has to build ships and an army.” But Vaisra is waiting for the Hesperians to show up.

The Hesperians are terrible white people who are like missionaries but their country is super advanced.  They’re like the OG colonizers who started the first poppy war.  So they’re like we’re going to help you out but we have to decide if you’re worthy first.  And part of their terms is that they get to study Rin because they think that she access Chaos, which is the antithesis of their god, the Maker.

So then there’s this long part where Jinzha, Vaisra’s son, takes these ships up the country and attacks towns and lets them vote to join the Republic.  But then he gets super cocky (partly because the Hesperians are watching his every move to decide if he’s worthy), and leads them to attack on this lake even though they’re super outnumbered

After this battle, Rin, Kitay, Chagan, and Qara escape down the river.  They meet up with the Sorqan Sira, who is a Ketreyid related to Qara and Chagan.  She gets rid of Rin’s Seal by binding her with Kitay, the way that Qara and Chagan are.  There’s a conflict started by her second in command, and Qara and the Sorqan Sira die.  Chagan goes back to the Hinterlands, and Kitay and Rin head back to the Republic.

Ok around here the order starts to get a little shaky, but here are some facts:

Their buddy Venka from Sinegard is there! She’s injured and but she’s adapting and we love her.

Nezha can channel this dragon god!  He’s a shaman.  And he has been his whole life, after he met a dragon in a grotto.  He’s in constant pain, but Rin is not sympathetic.

There are a bunch of refugees from the southern provinces.  Rin finds her old family and it’s not what she expected.

At one point the southern Warlords ask Rin to defect with them, but she says no.

Oh there was a wind god shaman at the lake, so Kitay builds Rin some wings so that she can fight him.

At one point Rin sees a Hesperian soldier raping a refugee.  She kills him and dumps the body in the river.

There’s a big battle! They entomb the river god shaman in a mountain, and she fights empress Daji and finds out that Daji’s real goal in all of her supposed betrayals against the country was to keep the Hesperians out.  She gets lost because Rin doesn’t kill her, and it’s almost sort of an afterthought.

The Hesperians finally give their aid and the Republic wins the war.

Ok so after the big battle and everything, it’s clear that the Hesperians are taking over, and Rin, Kitay, and the Cike are getting ready to escape.  

But, Rin goes off and gets drunk with Nezha, and he stabs her and betrays her.

Rin is captured by the Hesperians, who are going to take her and force her to do experiments for them.  She sees two other members of the Sike get killed.

Kitay gets Rin out, but has to break one of her hands to get it out of the shackle.  They escape with Venka, and some of Moag’s fleet comes ot get them.

Rin realizes that the true strength of Nikan is it’s southern provinces (where she’s from) so she goes there to raise an army and fight to win her country back.  Woohoo!

And she wants to kill Nezha - of course.

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in Dangerous Remedy?

Ok so I just finished Dangerous Remedy by Kat Dunn, and it was exactly what I needed to start my winter break off right.  Madcap team pulls of heists, girls in love, historical intrigue and spying around, an interesting sci-fi novum - what more could you want?  Unfortunatley I desperately need more, and the next book doesn’t come out until March!  So, read on for an incoherent list of everything that happens in this book.  Spoilers below!

First of all James (Cam’s fiance) betrayed them!!!! Honestly did not see it coming.  I mean I didn’t like him, but that was because I didn’t want him to break up Ada and Camille, and I was trying to see past that and appreciate his good doctor-y skills.  So anyways, the book ends with James taking Olympe away to England, and Cam and Al are off to rescue her.

Ok but what about Ada!  Lowkey pretty disappointed that she and Cam aren’t staying together (geographically), but they’re both very for the greater good type people so this makes sense for their characters.  Anyways, Ada is going back to stay with her dad who is a slime so that she can spy on him because he has connections with the Royalists.

Super interested to hopefully get to see Olympe get more agency and explore her ability in the next book.  I want her to make friends!  I want her to figure out what happened to her mom!

My boy Al had to watch his parents be executed and it was just as horrible as you think it might be - hoping to see him and Cam start to take care of each other more, and learn to rely on each other.

Honestly one of the biggest vibes of this whole book is that the core team can only rely on each other - everyone else they interact with (huh except Léon and my girl Olympe), turns out to be a betraying sneak.

Overall, delightful book, and I’m excited for more shenanigans in the next one.

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in The Grace of Kings?

This book was a behemoth to go through, but aside from a short slog in the middle, I genuinely enjoyed it.  My advice to anyone who wants to read this is to use that cast of characters page at the beginning as much as you can.  But it’s a gorgeous silkpunk book from Ken Liu, and it’s really fun to read. Below is a spoiler-full note to myself about the major things that happened in this book - read it if you’re getting ready to start The Wall of Storms!

First of all the main thing that redeemed this book for me was that we got some actual female characters with more than sexual/romantic plot lines - but it took until like page 400!  Ridiculous.

This book honestly reads more like a story or a tall tale than a historical event, which is super fun, but it also means that most of the characters are more like archetypes than actual people.

Ok let’s get down to brass tacks: the main thing that happens at the end is that Mata’s new empire falls when he commits suicide after being surrounded, and Kuni Garu ascends to the throne.

The last parts of the book set the stage for some infighting within his court - his different advisors are scheming in different ways and trying to find their place in a new empire, and Kuni gives his first wife, Jia, the shaft by naming his other wife Risana’s son as something more promisingly princely.  So there’s trouble there.

My two favorite characters! The two brothers who join the army and are there for the prophecy about the fish!  One of them (Ratho) becomes Mata’s personal guard, and Dafiro is the captain of Kuni’s guard.  In the end, Rat is with Mata when he dies, and commits suicide with him, and Dafiro takes his body back to be buried at home and mourn.

Gin Matozi is like this book’s entire redeeming quality - a girl who disguised herself as a man to rise through the rank’s of Kuni’s army, and eventually reveals herself and becomes the General, and does some pretty ruthless stuff.  I’m keeping an eye on her in the next one.

There was like a bunch of stuff about how the gods picked favorites and manipulated everyone but I didn’t super duper keep track of that - there were enough characters to begin with.

Here’s my final thought, to my future self or anyone brave enough to start the next one: if there aren’t meaningful women in the first fifty pages, I’m out.

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in All Systems Red?

So I just finished reading the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series, and I’m writing this reminder to myself (and any others who need it) because I know it’s going to be a while before my library hold on the next book comes in.  Read on for a summary of the book with lots of spoilers, to refresh your memory before Artificial Condition!

Murderbot’s governor module is unlocked and it just wants to watch a soap opera.  It’s contracted out to these like friendly socialists who are exploring a planet.  Some crazy stuff goes down, Murderbot reveals the governor’s lock secret, one dude on the team, Gurathin, isn’t too hype about it but the rest are chill.  Murderbot and Dr. Mensah, the team’s leader, face down some baddies who want to exploit the planet they’re on.  At the end, the crew’s corporation, PreservationAux, buys out Murderbot’s contract, and the plan is that it will go live with Dr. Mensah.  But Murderbot doesn’t want humans to make decisions for it, so it escapes and this whole book has been a letter to Dr. Mensah, Murderbot’s favorite human.

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in Girls of Storm and Shadow?

Like a fool, I read this book thinking that it was the last one in the series. (Maybe because of the numerous ways it's similar to We Set the Dark on Fire???).  Well anyways as I got closer and closer to the end I realized that I was going to have to brace myself for a cliffhanger and a long wait after.  So, for when I finally get my hands on Girls of Fate and Fury, here's an incoherent list of everything that happened in this book. Spoilers!

Ok so our main girl is Lei and she's dating Wren who was like basically raised with this revolutionary for a dad in order to kill the king but Lei got their first (that was the earlier book and frankly I don't really remember how it happened)

So now Lei and Wren are dating and super cute and they're trying to get this rebellion started by getting a bunch of different clan leaders to sign on.

But here's the thing the rebellion turns out to be mega bad!! Wren kills people in order to keep her magic going (like this bird princess), and her dad is basically like we should raid and burn down villages and make it seem like the king is doing it so that people hate him more!  They even targeted their friend Aiko's village and killed her family.

But Lei like barely gets time to process this information when she finds it out because they're with the cat clan (and General Lova who keeps being a jerk and flirting with Wren), and then they get attacked!  And there's this great part where this general is like Lei come with me to save them, and Lei's like I'll save them by kicking your ass.  Or something like that.

And then it gets crazier because our boy Merrin (the bird who rescued them in the first book, and is now on their revolutionary team for this book), takes Lei and Nitta away and is like yo I betrayed you to be re-admitted into the bird clan.  You thought they were on your side?  Well the surviving daughter started a coup because she suspected how awful the rebellion could be after she died.

So that nonsense is going on and Lei's like I'm out of here and she wanders through the desert until she gets captured by the king's General Naja.

Dun dun dun! Cliffhanger!

Ok so one theme in this book is like recovery from trauma.  Like Lei kind of develops this reliance on alcohol to stop having hallucinations where the king is following her.  And then Wren's magic runs off of pain, and I feel like she is dealing with her trauma by sacrificing herself (and others) for the cause, so she can feel like it's worth it.

Also I don’t know about you all but the Steel caste seems ok enough, but I can’t wrap my head around some of the people/animal combos.  And then also thinking about Monstress - castes are created either way, but different ways that power is distributed.  Innnteresting, innnnteresting.

Characters!

Lei and Wren - cute couple whose relationship falls apart during the book

Hiro - shaman who sacrifices himself so that Lei can protect the group while they're facing the lizard clan (Czo?)

Bo and Nitta - cat siblings and thieves.  Bo dies while they're at sea and it's super sad and also some of them blame Hiro and Wren for not using their magic to save him.

Shifu Caen - wise mentor who teaches Lei how to fight.  Also later we find out that he and Wren's dad (Ketai Hanno) are lovers.

Merrin - poor misguided bird guy who was stuck up at the beginning, falls in love with Bo (despite the clan divide - cats v. birds), and then betrays the group!

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in season five of Tanis?

To my future self: this show stopped being good a while ago, but that doesn’t mean you’re ever going to stop listening.  Although this post probably won’t help you remember the name of every white man they bring up on this show and expect you to remember the backstory of, at least this will help you remember where we left off.  Spoilers for season 5 of Tanis are below! And hopefully there’s a season 6 so that this post was worthwhile to write!

We’ll try not to get to far ahead

by the time you get back.

That whole foolin manuscript they read aloud was from Nathaniel Carter.  I think he’s like the creepy corporate guy on the inside of that Tanis organization?  Let me just say on any other show?  Like a detective show?  Finding that manuscript and explaining it would’ve taken approximately two minutes.  Which gives me the sense that they were grasping at straws for this whole foolin season.

Ok so plotwise this season sorted drifted along until Nic got serious about looking for Rose Hempel - she’s into Tanis like him, and went missing in Canada and her dad came and asked for Nic’s help and then died mysteriously shortly after.

Part of what made this season less interesting is that usually the man has some sort of goal in mind, or mystery he’s unraveling, but for the first half it seemed like he barely cared about Rose Hempel and was just strolling along ho-humming about the occult.

So he and MK go to Canada and like the whole supernatural thing this season is called the Gates of Karsas.  So they’re doing a whole bunch of research on them, that’s where Rose Hempel went missing, so they’re gonna retrace her steps and find her.

BUt! They find out that Rose Hempel missed one of the gates and maybe that’s why she went missing.  So they decide they’ll do it right.

John Coroman Jr. (can’t remember why we care about him, his dad is one of the legion of mysterious white men with Tanis secrets), is also gonna do that (he and Rose Hempel used to be married?) and he sort of tries to thwart Nic.

But in the end Nic and MK go through the gates, yadda yadda, Nic ends up at this cabin where JC Jr’s body is like stretched across in this grotesque way but he’s still alive.

And Rose Hempel is there and she’s like did you bring the thing?  Because it turns out that she wants to bring the destroyer, she’s the one who killed her dad as some sort of sacrifice, and then Nic wakes up in like this dream world and there’s some woman who’s supposed to be his wife from another life and there’s some long story about fish that I think is supposed to be a metaphor for humans on earth? And why they should be destroyed?

And then it ends

Yup

Mysteriously he must get out of there somehow because this is all narrated after the fact. So logistically how would that work.  Stay tuned for it to be explained in the next season with a throwaway line two years from now.

Overall, will I listen to the next season? Yes.  Is it mainly to make fun of it with my dad? Also yes.  Specifically to make fun of the advertisements? You know it!

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor?

Dear future self,

If Jeff ever reads this book like you told him to, you will feel like a fool for not having written down some thoughts to share when you were having them.  Stay tuned for lots of incoherent spoilers for Hank Green’s novel (yes, that kind of Green), A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor!

Lots of love,

Your past self who always occassionally has your back

Ok first things first I feel majorly bamboozled into reading a book about people who want to be in some alternate reality computer thing so badly that it messes up their lives.  And here’s the thing it’s like even though I know that I hate this I still read the books anyway because I want to know what happens.  But it was alarming when Miranda walked into that room of people being the server farm and I was suddenly like oh this is the kind of book I got into.  You know?  Like similar to, but not as bad as, the betrayal of the Reality Bug Pendragon book, which has haunted me since childhood.

I love love love secret messages that are part of a larger plot, and you can’t have a better name for that then the Book of Good Times.  Delightful!

Just like so many things about what makes humans good and special.  Like I just want to wrap this book up in a big hug.

Did I mention how much the secret messages and the tell no one and everything made this book for me? Because they really did

The twist! That the shadowing youtube essay group the Thread was secretly the enemy in disguise! Crazy.

Also I feel like so many parts of this book are Hank working through his own internet anxieties and like it’s very familiar to me from *listening to his podcast*.  But somehow these anxieties have become my anxieties and it’s very reassuring that they get laid out and talked about by different clever people in this book.

Also I find it very reassuring that they just shut Altus down.  See my first bullet point, but I did not care for it not one bit.

Something that I liked was how well I could see parts of myself in the different characters.  Like the part where Bex kicks Andy after he’s been in the premium space - I was both kicker and being kicked.

I got really stressed out that Andy was going to betray them somehow and I was very relieved that they wouldn’t.  But looking back on it it’s super clear that Andy was Hank’s proxy for himself and he wouldn’t turn himself into the bad guy.

The gay girls got back together! And they’re happy! Huzzah!

I knew that Carl wasn’t going to make it because in the end humanity needs to be able to save ourselves - Carl gave us the tools, and now we go for it.

I didn’t have the self control to read this book slowly (I swallowed it whole in one day like a snake) but in hindsight I wish I’d given myself more time to enjoy it slowly.  Because there are lots of things to think about and now they’re all rattling around in my brain and falling out the cracks instead of blossoming slowly like they’re supposed to.  Stupid Hank, writing such a good book that I had to swallow it whole.

*imagine that I’m talking in like a pretentious nasally voice here

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in The Ten Thousand Doors of January?

Hellooooo future self! So, you recommended The Ten Thousand Doors of January to one of your friends, and now you want to squeal and talk about it - there’s only one problem: you have the memory of a fruit fly.  Luckily, past self has your back - read on for Major Plot Spoilers and my uncollected thoughts on Hugo-nominee The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow!

All right first things first this book is all about Doors and you know what it lowkey reminds me of?  The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.  Like let’s get into the logistics and the lore of a portal fantasy.  Except frankly this one is way more fun to read because the first half of Starless Sea was very confusing (even though the payoff was well worth it).  This one was good throughout.

Ok so the main thing is that the book ends happy!!!! Her mom is alive and is in the other world, and she finds her mom and then her dad is there too and in the end she gets to go off and build back the doors!  Very good ending made me happy and also a little sad that it was over.  But definitely I hope there’s not a sequel I want this book to be it’s own thing.

Most of the people in the Society (which is all about closing Doors) are from the other worlds themselves! So it’s like they got to cross over to our world and then once they got here they wanted to seal them up and keep it for themselves - verrrry interesting.

Frankly this is one of the few books I’ve read where I (a demisexual who 98% of the time is like love at first sight is the worst thing that could happen in a book) actually enjoyed a like meet when they’re kids and then search for each other for the rest of their lives and finally meet and are in love forever.  But I’m not sure what made it good?  Like maybe the after the fact narration?  I mean it still wasn’t splendiforous but it did do something for me.

Ok the betrayal! Of her foster dad being the founder of the Society!  That slime!  He deserves every bit of what he got.

I am such a sucker for good dogs and Bad is such the best. I love him so much he deserves all the sausage he wants.

[waitwhathappenedin]

Wait, what happened in Harrow the Ninth?

This is a note from my current self, giddy with finally finishing Harrow the Ninth, to my future self, when she sits down to read Alecto the Ninth and doesn’t remember the basic plot details or who any of these characters are.  So!  Major spoilers for the ending of Harrow the Ninth are below - read this if you want some incoherent, disorganized reminders of what happened at the end of the book!

- The Emperor is Gideon’s dad??? What!! And she was conceived to be born at the Ninth House specifically to unlock the tomb!!

- OK I’m a little more confused by exactly who her mother was - like Mercymorn and Augustine seduced the Emperor because it had to be like his cells or his flesh or whatever, but the woman who gave birth to Gideon was Commander Wake?  Who has a longer and even fancier name.

- Frankly the whole first quarter of this book was a confusing retelling of Gideon the Ninth but everything was changed and bad, alongside a lot of Harrow puking and not doing much else.  But it all made sense in the end because Harrow tried to remove all traces of Gideon from her brain because she loved her too much to let her die. Incrediyble.  But frankly neither of those two are known for their stellar choices.

- The epilogue!! So mysterious.  Someone is in a city (that seems like Earth? or at least not like the Ninth House or Canaan House or any of the other places we’ve been so far), and Camilla Hect is with them and they must be a Lyctor or at least a necromancer or somebody because they eat hot food and it doesn’t burn them.

- Some other characters - everyone who died in Gideon the Ninth came together like a super ghost squad to save Harrow from the Sleeper that was haunting her, and they called back the ghost of this long-dead super swordsman from the Ninth House.

- It ends with Harrow getting into a tomb? Is she dead? Obviously I hope not but she never brought her soul back into the world of the living so I’m curious to see what that’s about.

- There’s all of this drama with the Emperor’s cavalier at the end of the book - A.L. - she’s the only cavalier who survives and all of the other Lyctors are salty about it when they try to kill him.

- Something else to remember - Gideon is back but in Harrow’s body.  She and Pyrrha (saint of duty’s lyctor) watch Augustine and God fight in the River.  Ianthe (other lyctor, don’t trust her) helps God and it seems like Augustine dies?

- Harrow wrote all of these letters to herself before she lost her memory and I love that plot device holy cow.

- Ok this is a minor thing but God makes enough like pop culture references that it seems like he came from earth - so what’s up with that?

Characters:

Augustine, Mercymorn, Gideon/Ortus are the OG Lyctors.

Ianthe is the new baby Lyctor with Harrow

Camila Hect is mysteriously alive and met Harrow mysteriously on this planet and now she’s in this mysterious new city with a new mystery person.

Abigail Pent is Harrow’s best buddy in her spirit world constructions and helps her out with the Sleeper.

Commander Wake inhabits Cytherea’s body and is also a ghost stalking Harrow for most of the book.  Comes back and drops some information until Gideon/Ortus the Lyctor kills her.

Anastasia had some role in creating the Ninth House.

The Emperor’s mysterious A.L. who went crazy.

Ok there’s definitely more but this is just what I’m vomiting out right after finishing the book.  Enjoy Alecto the Ninth, future self!