April reading
I haven’t been posting cookbook challenges lately because for the past several weeks I’ve been dealing with a back spasm flareup. I’m starting to get back on my feet (literally!) so hopefully I’ll be back in my cookbook explorations soon.
In the meantime, being laid up and missing over a week of work meant I got a ton of reading done, much of it from the Nebula finalist list:
Into the Wild Magic by Michelle Knudsen. Nebula finalist, Andre Norton Award. This middle grade novel is about a pair of 6th-grade girls, both loners for different reasons, who forge a tentative friendship in the midst of an adventure back and forth between our world and a fantasy kingdom
Disgraced Return of the Kap's Needle by Renan Bernardo. Nebula finalist, Novella. Now that was the bleakest story I've read in recent memory. Very well-written, of course, but oh so bleak.
"The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends" by Eugenia Triantafyllou. Nebula finalist, Novelette. A meta story--while we learn what happens to Alavira the Great, the real story is between the two friends who are reading it, blogging it, and arguing about it.
But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo. Nebula finalist, Novella. This is a gothic fantasy mystery sapphic romance, which is a lot of things for one novella to be! Fair warning: as an arachnophobe, I had to consciously turn off the visual part of my imagination for a good chunk of this one.
The Nebula Short Story Finalists
I'm counting these as a single "book" for the purpose of tracking how much I've read this year, since doing it any other way would feel like artificially inflating my numbers. I figure it's like reading an anthology or an issue of a short story magazine. Anyway, the stories in question are:
“Through the Machine”, by P.A. Cornell (Lightspeed 5/25) - a cautionary tale about AI
“Six People to Revise You”, by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny 1-2/25) - a cautionary tale about letting other people definie you
“In My Country”, by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 4/25) - a cautionary tale about authoritarianism
“The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead”, by E.M. Linden (PodCastle 2/18/25) - the ghosts left behind when the last of an island's population evacuates to the mainland
“Because I Held His Name Like a Key”, by Aimee Ogden (Strange Horizons 6/16/25) - Alan Turing among the fae
“Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything”, by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots 5/25) - the intersection of superpowers and disability
The Name Ziya by Wen-Yi Lee. Nebula finalist, Novelette. I was impressed by the richness of world-building and character development packed in such a short word count.
"Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh" by Marie Croke. Nebula finalist, Novelette. Another example of particular, immersive worldbuilding.
"We Begin Where Infinity Ends" by Somto Ihezue. Nebula finalist, Novelette. Another lovely story, one I'd classify as hopepunk, with a beautiful spare elegance to the writing style.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. Nebula finalist, Novella. In a near-future San Francisco (2060s? 2070s?) a group of sentient robots take over an abandoned restaurant, and found family and delicious noodles happen. I loved it, though as a (State of) Washingtonian, I was a bit miffed that the civil war in the backstory led only to Californian independence. If this country falls apart, the West Coast had better stick together! Unless we go with Oregon (and British Columbia if they want to come with) and form the Republic of Cascadia.
The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella. Nebula finalist, Novella. The challenge of judging a contest like this is that you get stories that are so very different from one another, yet all so good at being what the author set out for them to be. This story, which is basically Death having a debate with a mountain it was sent to kill, reads like a fable you might tell around a campfire on a mountain. And it's lovely in an entirely different way than Automatic Noodle.
Descent by Wole Talabi. Nebula finalist, Novella. A really interesting piece of Afrofuturism with a far-future human community living on a gas-giant-type planet encounter dangers using newly developed equipment to explore their planet's dangerous depths...and if I'd known what I was getting into, I wouldn't have read this one the day before the Artemis II crew returned to Earth. Because it's not like my Gen X Challenger-Columbia anxiety needed extra fuel.
Goblin Girl by K.A. Mielke. Nebula Finalist, Andre Norton Award. This one was a little slow to start, but ended up being fun. The lessons about prejudice and reconciliation weren't at all subtle, but that's not atypical for middle grade fiction.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Nebula finalist, novel. Gorgeously written and memorably disturbing historical horror.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Nebula finalist, Novel. This is tagged as dark academia, though it didn't seem especially dark to me--maybe because I read it just after The Buffalo Hunter Hunter! In any case, it's a magic boarding school story from the POV of a teacher, and I enjoyed the intersection of the magical world with mundane bureaucracy and academic infighting.
Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey. I don't think I'm really the target audience for this one--it feels more like a series of lectures for a women's retreat than a work of theology/scholarship, which is what I was expecting.
Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch. A history of the battle/massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, plus a couple of final chapters on how the battle has been interpreted in German culture in more recent centuries. A bit dry and academic, but short and readable.
Heart of Iron by C.M. Alongi. I got this because it's based on the author's CaFae Latte video series on TikTok and YouTube--one of those fun serials of short videos where the creator plays all the parts using different costumes and props. The book is more violent and dark--the author recommended that readers take it as a sort of AU to the cozier, more lighthearted video version--but still fun and not at all grimdark.
Darksight Dare by Lois McMaster Bujold. A new Penric & Desdemona novella always means I'm dropping everything to read it right away, and this one did not disappoint.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. Nebula finalist, novel (which, yes, I finished after the voting deadline passed--it wasn't included in the judging packet from SFWA, and the hold took awhile to come from the library). More dark academia, and certainly an insightful look at the flaws and challenges of university life, at least as they appear to me in my academic research administration day job at UW.