Nearly half my 2022 reading and two thirds of my review backlog were SF titles – time for some lightning reviews to capture my impressions before they fade away, starting with 3 SFnal thrillers: Plan For Chaos by John Wyndham, The Nox by Joe White & Catriona Ward and Pollen From A Future Harvest by Derek Künsken.
climate change
Much to my own surprise, I seem to be down to between 1 and 7 books left to read for the Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards shortlists (depending on how many series I finish). I’ve now finished reading the novella nominees, so time for a quick round-up of the last two and a muse over where that leaves me…
Lina fled London to work for a European conservation corps, but her fragile peace shatters when her ex is arrested for assassinating a Minister. While Lina tries to extract her family from London, the Minister’s family also flee to the mountain reserve she works on. Everyone has deadly secrets – but will they kill to preserve them?
When the House’s most prized courtesan is murdered, nobody says a word. When she rises from the dead to seek revenge, her friends must decide whether to stay silent or to secure their own safety by betraying her to the House. How do you decide what’s best when all your choices have been taken away?
If love does not pin you down, if love is not heavy enough to keep you in place, what on earth could be? If love is not enough then guilt cannot be enough, duty cannot be enough. But what do they weigh?
As the consequences of climate change bite, life on Earth has an expiry date: about thirty years. Our hopes are pinned on an experimental new drive and a distant planet. Will Cavendish save us – or we will kill ourselves just to get there?
From the blood-stained fighting pit under the Shalimar to the memory-haunted Black Mesa, it’s time for Maggie to face her past and fight for her future. But first she must decide what sort of future she wants…
Old enmities flare into new conflict this week – and Maggie and Kai are forced to rely on uncertain friends for sanctuary. But it’s not just the Law Dogs who are out for blood. The tsé naayée are on the hunt again…
Lightning doesn’t strike out of a clear sky… unless the gods are abroad. And in the Sixth World, that’s entirely possible – especially if you’re Maggie Hoskins.
Years after the world drowned and Dinétah walled itself away, dangerous loner Maggie Hoskins hunts the monsters that stalk the reservation. Monsters with human faces and inhuman appetites. Monsters with unspeakable powers… just like hers. Can evil be infectious?
A tide-locked world of endless day and night. A young woman banished into the freezing dark to die. A slim chance to forge an unlikely alliance. As the planet of January slides into a climate apocalypse, is it possible to turn away from the past and embrace a new future?
Minh wants to rebuild the Earth. Kiki wants to be useful. The banks want easy, guaranteed profits. But with a bank funding an environmental research trip back in time to Bronze Age Mesopotamia, maybe everybody can get what they want…
Anderson Lake is a Calorie Man, hunting Bangkok’s markets for foodstuffs long thought to be extinct. There he meets the windup girl Emiko – one of the New People, engineered to satisfy a rich man’s whims, then abandoned to the slums. Welcome to a near-future where oil has run out, seas are rising, and food safety is in the hands of a ruthless few.
onemore.org 