Into the Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle #3), by Nghi Vo

Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250851420, October 2022

Chih and the talking bird with the indelible memory, Almost Brilliant, travel into the riverlands to gather the stories of near-immortal martial artists that characterize the area. Along the way, they meet up with two young women (a martial artist, and her friend who makes sure the bills get paid), and an older couple, who might be a bit more than that seem. Including a bit older than they seem. The six of them band together to continue traveling to Betony Docks, where they are all bound.

After a lively debate about whether the ferry (safer) or the road (faster) is the better choice, including discussion of just how dangerous the road really is, in these calmer, more settled times, they set off on foot.

Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk

Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250849458, November 2022

This story was definitely not for me.

I had bad feelings just reading the title. It telegraphs that there's something not positive about the ending, right? And the publisher's blurb for it cheerily states that the protagonist, Helen, sold her soul to save her brother's life. This is accurate.

As a direct result, she and her brother are no longer on good terms, or even in contact. She also got kicked out of the magical order they belonged to because, of course, damned soul.

Then years later, her time is almost up, and she gets pulled into the investigation of Chicago's White City Vampire, a serial killer who is apparently a demon. She doesn't want to be involved; she has only three days left and wants to spend them with her girlfriend, Edith. Her client offers irresistible bait, though--the chance to win her soul back, and have a lifetime with Edith.

A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables #2), by Alix E. Harrow

Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250766656, June 2022

Zinnia Gray is five years into her accidental career as a fairy tale fixer. Well, Sleeping Beauty tale fixer.

And she's getting kind of sick of it. The "happy ending" weddings at the end are wearing on her. Why can't some of these princesses solve their own problems?

She's also feeling like a bit of a third wheel, in the apartment she shares with her very first "happy ending," Charm and Primrose. Although, it should be noted, Charm and Prim seem to think this particular third wheel is entirely appropriate.

Planning to cut out early from the latest wedding she's attending, a beautiful, malevolent face looks out at her, a hand reaches for her--and pulls her into a different, and darker, fairy tale. This is the Evil Queen from Snow White.

What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier #1), by T. Kingfisher

Tor Nightfire, July 2022

This is a retelling of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." Kingfisher discovered on a rereading that Poe's story was much shorter than she remembered, and that there was room for...more.

More background and explanation of why this happened, in particular.

It's 1890, and Alex Easton is a retired soldier, plagued by tinnitus, from a tiny European kingdom called Gallacia. Kan is a "sworn soldier," a status which requires an exchange of gendered for nongendered pronouns. Kan is also the childhood friend of Roderick and Madeline Ussher, and travels to their ancestral home in Ruritania, in response to a letter from Madeline.

Madeline says she's dying.

Easton is nearly there when they encounter Miss Eugenia Potter, a knowledgeable and practical English mycologist, who shows them some of the creepier mushrooms of the area. This proves to be important information.

The Difference Between Love and Time, by Catherynne M. Valente

Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Solaris Books, 2022

Our first person narrator first meets the space-time continuum when she is a little girl playing with her Lego set, and he is presenting as a boy of the same age. He changes her Lego set in to a fancier one, one that possibly Lego does not actually make. It's the start of an off and on relationship, in which sometimes, for her, there may be minutes or years between their meetings. They go to high school together. She goes to college, but because of the weird dimensional effects of college with all those young people in transitional stages, he can't even set foot on campus, and has to meet her elsewhere.

Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness, by S.L. Huang

Clarkesworld, December 2022

Mariah Lee-Cassidy, currently imprisoned for fraud, is the putative creator of a chatbot called Sylvie, who targets nasty characters the law is never going to do anything about. People who, if they are ever caught at all, will get slap-on-the-wrist punishments for mostly technical violations that don't come close to the real damage they've done. The poster boy example is Ron Harrison, CEO of a medical supply company facing the potential recall of a defective pacemaker. He has successfully buried the evidence of the defect, and gradually upgraded the pacemaker to eliminate the defect, without announcing those changes. Some people die, but it's not blamed on his company, and he gets bonuses instead of a prison sentence.

A Dream of Electric Mothers, by Wole Talabi

Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Sheree Renèe Thomas (editor), Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (editor), Zelda Knight (editor), Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250833006, November 2022

Brigadier-General Dolapo Abimbola Titilope Balogun is the youngest member of the cabinet of what I think is the country of Yoruba, with what is currently Kenya again separated into Yoruba and Dahomey. (I was intent on the story, and I'm not 100% sure I picked up the political detail correctly, except that Dahomey is definitely "the other country." If someone can correct me, please do.) They are facing rising tensions with Dahomey, over a border dispute, and are seeking a solution that neither surrenders the territory in dispute, nor results in war. So far, they're not having success.

If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You, by John Chu

Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2022

Steve is an actor--he sings, he dances, and between gigs he works out regularly at his local gym to stay in shape. He's Chinese-American, and we soon learn, fluent in Mandarin. Lately, gym time has been enlivened by viral videos that might be part of a marketing campaign for a movie. featuring a flying man who is extremely well-built. Steve refers to him as Tom of Finland Guy. He of course wears a costume that emphasizes his really excellent build.

Tom of Finland Guy, who is also Chinese-American, intervenes to stop attacks on other Asian-Americans. He also, when convenient, does casual favors, like moving a piano.

For some reason, the coverage Tom of Finland Guy gets gradually more hostile, as if he's the troublemaker in those assaults on Asian-Americans.

We Built This City, by Marie Vibbert

Clarkesworld, June 2022

Julia is one of the workers who cleans the outside surface of the city, protecting it from deterioration and damage by removing the acids and other atmospheric detritus that can dent, crack, or eat away at it. Her mother, Hortensia, is one of those who helped build the city. She wanted Julia to pursue something more in the way of brain work, something that would get her both more pay and more respect, but Julia chose to work at maintaining the city in the most basic way possible. It's hard, physical labor, but she's proud of it.

It's also more dangerous even than you may be thinking, because this city is floating in the atmosphere of Venus.

But there are budgetary problems, and new cuts are announced. Only four dome cleaners will be retained. Julia and three of her team members are the four--because they really are the four best, and this job really does matter.

The White Cliff, by Lu Ban

Science Fiction World, May 2022

A man named Yanli awakes from a rather dull dream in which nothing happens. Who has a dream in which nothing happens? It makes no sense to him.

He's living in a small cottage on a seashore, with a view of a white cliff. He lives alone, but he does have visitors, or at least a visitor, who appears along the path from elsewhere. We soon understand that she's a former student, a doctor, and they're discussing a research project, and a patient they both know well.

Resurrection, by Ren Qing

Galaxy Awards I: Chinese Science Fiction Anthology, December 2022

The cover shown is of the anthology that Ren Qing's story, a 2023 Hugo Short Story Finalist, is published. It's available on Amazon.

A woman has just received the corpse of her soldier son's body, and the notification of his death. Except, the corpse isn't really a corpse. It's an animated synthetic body, containing the partial, damaged, memory of her son. There was apparently brain damage when he was killed, so the memory transferred to the chip that now resides inside the "corpse" is incomplete and slow to activate.

But the woman recognizes her son, and tends and cares for him over the next days, as the memory strengthens and he becomes, if not the quite the son she remembers, more functional, and supportive of his mother as she is of him.

Zhurong on Mars, by Regina Kanyu Wang

2022

Zhurong is the AI doing the administrative work on a Chinese colony on Mars. They're manufacturing nanomachines, and as Zhurong's capacity increases, it takes over more and more of the manufacturing, while the humans begin to devote themselves fulltime to design--including designing the ability to upload themselves into really advanced nanomachines.

Eventually, the former humans leave, literally waving goodbye, and Zhurong is alone.

On the Razor's Edge, by Jiang Bo

2022

I've replaced the cover I originally included with  a generic cover, because I've been informed that it was indeed the wrong cover. That anthology apparently contains another story by Jiang Bo, but not this one. My apologies for the error.

Zhong Lixin is a Chinese astronaut, on China's Tiangong Space Station in 2028. He's working on his assigned projects, along with another astronaut, Duan Guozhu, when they hear what they've never heard before on the station--the emergency alarm. Soon they're working on repairs, fixable ones, fortunately, damage caused by micrometeors colliding with the station. They've been fortunate, and can continue their mission.

Then they get new, disturbing information. Some of that same micrometeor cluster hit the International Space Station, and have caused a fire on it.

D.I.Y., by John Wiswell

Tor Books, ISBN 009781250870209, August 2022

The opening of this story does not bring us to a happy world. Climate change has had a major impact, most strongly felt in the heat and the shortage of potable water.

The tech that's involved here, though, includes magic. The companies expected to address the problem are the great magic academies, among them Ozymandias Academy, where once upon a time, a young man named Noah hoped to become a student. When he's finally accepted, though, it's without any financial aid, and his mother, struggling just to support the two of them, has no money. Noah, being a bright young man, puts the blame where it belongs, and in some ways, that sets up later events.

Rabbit Test, by Samantha Mills

Uncanny Magazine, Issue #49, 2022

In this rather dark short story, we follow the troubles of Grace, whom we meet as an 18-year-old girl who has gotten pregnant, in a late 21st century society where technology has been weaponized to make it almost impossible for pregnancy to evade detection. She's not paranoid and careful enough to be able to terminate it before it's detected, and this basically eliminates most of her life choices.

In between parts of the story of Grace and her daughter, Olivia, we get bits about the history of pregnancy tests, including the iconic "rabbit test," as well as earlier tests, dating back to ancient times, many (but not all) of which were surprisingly effective. As society changed to put women more completely in the power of men, many of them became illegal, and termination, when available, also became illegal.

The Spare Man, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Tor Books, ISBN 9781250829160, October 2022

This story is, basically, The Thin Man in space--a retired detective and his very rich wife, who become involved in investigating a murder. In this book, the very rich wife is Tesla Crane, a child of great wealth, but also a highly regarded and highly successful roboticist, whose career ended when a disastrous accident killed six people and left her with PTSD and chronic pain from her multiple serious injuries. The little dog is Tesla's service dog, Gimlet, a Westie, a.k.a. West Highland White Terrier. Tesla's retired detective husband is Shalmaneser Steward, called Shal. He was a working detective, and host of a reality TV series called Cold Cases. He retired when being famous made it impossible for him to blend into the background

They are recently married, and are on their honeymoon, a cruise from Earth to Mars on the ISS Lindgren.. It's a luxury cruise liner with passenger rings that offer, inward to outward, Lunar, Martian, and Earth gravity. Tesla and Shal have a luxury suite in the "Yacht Club" section of the Earth ring. On their first night aboard, they have dinner in the R-Bar, where they watch the karaoke and witness an argument involving three passengers.

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher (author), Amara Jasper (narrator)

Macmillan Audio, ISBN 9781250824776, April 2022

When we first meet Marra, she's building a bone dog in a barren, haunted wilderness. That's not where her story starts.

Marra is the third of three royal daughters, the youngest, the least apt, both socially and politically, but she loves her sisters and her mother. We don't hear much of her father, the king, mainly because it's the queen who has the good head for politics, and he lets her handle things.

Marra is heartbroken when her oldest sister, Damia, is married off to Prince Vorling, heir of the large and powerful Northern Kingdom, which has designs on their little harbor-focused kingdom--because of that very valuable harbor, through which so much valuable trade flows. But Damia dies far too soon after the wedding, and in mysterious circumstances, and after a year of official mourning, the next sister, Kania, is married off to him. Marra is sent off to a convent, she assumes because she's useless and will be happier there. Her mother loves her, but she hasn't lost track of the fact that Marra, too, is a royal princess. She's being kept in reserve.