Crooked
by Austin Grossman (2015)

Richard Milhous Nixon tells his story in first person.

The thirty-seventh president’s political career spanned the fifties, the Mad Men sixties, and the turbulent seventies. He faced down the Russians, the Chinese, and ultimately his own government. The man went from political mastermind to a national joke, sobbing in the Oval Office, leaving us with one burning question: how could he have lost it all?

According to his story, there were supernatural forces at play. And he just made a few schoolboy errors.

At times insightful, quirky and funny. But mainly confusing as the story reaches the Watergate scandal and his departure from politics.

FANTASY STEAMPUNK

The 2024 Fantasy Steampunk Bundle –
Curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

Frozen Talons by Michael Warren Lucas
Necessary Monsters by Richard A. Kirk
Protected by Means of Magic by Kari Kilgore
Clockwork Universe – Steampunk vs. Aliens by Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier
Defy or Defend by Gail Carriger
Frock Coat Dreams by J. Daniel Sawyer
The Clockwork Scarab by Colleen Gleason
Golden Heart by Christine Pope

Making It So
Patrick Stewart (2023)

This is his biography, from a child to his work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises,

Entertaining and informative. Not much is held back. He seems to be someone blessed with talent and managed to exploit it  throughout his life.

Worth reading if you are a Star Trek fan.

Starter Villain
John Scalzi
(2023)

Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.

Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

Essentially a satire on Corporate America. Fun and inventive. It does spend half of the story just setting up the world and the cats and characters.

Then there is a bit of a rush to resolve the story and have everyone live happily ever-after.

The Last Best Hope
Star Trek: Picard #1
Una McCormack (2020)

This book explains the events leading up to the  first series of the TV show. Covering the attempted evacuation of the Romulan home world and the destruction of the shipyards on Mars.

While it concentrates on Picard’s story. I was more interested in how the robots on Mars cam to destroy the place. This is given a brief mention in the final chapter. So not as interesting as it could have been.

Locus Awards 2024

Science Fiction Novel

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport, Samit Basu (Tordotcom)
A Fire Born of Exile, Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz; JAB Books)
Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow (Tor; Ad Astra)
Furious Heaven, Kate Elliott (Ad Astra; Tor)
Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
Starter Villain, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)
Lords of Uncreation, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US; Tor UK)
System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
The Road to Roswell, Connie Willis (Del Rey)

Fantasy Novel

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
The Keeper’s Six, Kate Elliott (Tordotcom)
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett (Del Rey; Orbit UK)
Dead Country, Max Gladstone (Tordotcom)
The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
Paladin’s Faith, T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor; Mantle)
My Brother’s Keeper, Tim Powers (Baen; Ad Astra)
City of Last Chances, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Ad Astra)
Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

First Novel

Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
The Strange, Nathan Ballingrud (Saga; Titan UK)
The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
Threads That Bind, Kika Hatzopoulou (Razorbill; Penguin UK)
These Burning Stars, Bethany Jacobs (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Godkiller, Hannah Kaner (Harper Voyager UK; Harper Voyager US)
The Marigold, Andrew F. Sullivan (ECW)
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (Gollancz)
Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh (Tordotcom; Orbit UK)
Ink Blood Sister Scribe, Emma Törzs (Morrow; Century)

Lioness
by Emily Perkins

is the winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Lioness was up against:

Eleanor Catton – Birnam Wood

Pip Adam – Audition

Stephen Daisley – A Better Place.

Crazy Foolish Robots
(The Robot Galaxy Series #1)
Adeena Mignogna (2021)

Ruby Palmer finds herself on an entire planet surrounded by the things she hates the most: robots. Besides taking everything she says way too literally, the robots have problems of their own.

Well written novella length story. It’s not clear what the author was going for, but it comes across as light and fun with the tone of a Simon Haynes Hal Spacejock story.

Shark Heart
by Emily Habeck (2023)

Lewis and Wren, newly married. Then Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will transform into a great white shark.

Unique.

The story is told through prose narrative, poetry, scripts and even the narrator injecting into the story. There are flashbacks and complete diversions from the main story. But the author keeps it all together and delivers a memorable story.

Quite a book for a first time author,

The Black Queen:
(Book One of the Black Throne)
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1999)

In the fifteen years of Arianna’s rule on the Black Throne, Blue Isle enjoyed peace. Until a powerful reminder of the past resurfaces to threaten the family, the Fey, and the entire world.

This was a real slog to get through. It felt like a short story extended out to 133k words. And it doesn’t help that a lot of the story takes place in peoples heads.