The Bone War, by Elizabeth Bear

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2015

Bijou the Artificer is called in to see, and ultimately work on, the nearly complete fossilized skeleton of an ancient fantastical beast, a dinosaur, called a Titdal Titan. Dinosaurs are truly ancient creatures, predating not only the ancient peoples, but even dragons. Bijou's techniques involve magic, and her own and her assistant's familiars, both of which are also magically reconstructed bone creatures. Bijou's familiar is Ambrosias, a giant centipede-like creature constructed from the bones of unrelated mammals. Her journeyman Brazen's familiar is Hawti, a reconstructed elephant.

What Bijou doesn't initially realize is that she is stepping into the middle of an academic feud over the proper interpretation of the remains in taking on the reconstruction of this ancient creature.

The story is set in Bear's Eternal Sky world, and Bijou is a recurring character. What she does with her reconstructions is intriguing and charming. Her take on academic rivalry and feuding is fun, and overall this is probably a good entry point for the larger series.

Recommended.

In Libres, by Elizabeth Bear

Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2015
http://uncannymagazine.com/article/in-libres/

Euclavia and Bucephalus are graduate students studying for their PhDs in sorcery. Their dissertations are nearly done, but they  need some additional sources, and that means a visit to the library.

Specifically, to Special Collections.

Did I mention that the Library is a labyrinth?

This is a very literal, and dangerous, Quest for Knowledge.

Did I mention Bucephalus is a centaur?

This is a lot of fun, and I want to see more in this world.

Recommended.

Sea Change, by Kimberly Unger

Galaxy's Edge, September 2015
http://www.galaxysedge.com/n8.htm

We see this story from Maryanne's viewpoint, and there's room for a couple of different ideas about who/what Maryanne is before she's spilled enough detail that we get the right idea. I don't think this is an  accident, by any means.

The world is probably not Earth, but it is habitable, and humans are living more or less successfully on it. Unfortunately, they do not have all the infrastructure they expected to have; a major control and support facility on the moon (one of the moons?) has been destroyed. Maryanne and her cohort are supposed to defend the land against invaders from the sea, but she's doing that on her own now. The rest of her cohort has been killed over time, since the disaster that took out the facility that should have supported them.

In their absence, Maryanne has become attached to a family living in a beach house nearby. She continues to do her job, but she also watches over and guards the children and their parents.

Then a new crisis arises, and Maryanne has to decide which job is more important, the one she was meant to do, or the one she's given herself in her not-fully-acknowledged loneliness.

This is a nicely done story. The development of Maryanne is compelling, and the revelations of the larger world and of the family she's attached herself to are well-done.

Recommended.

Hic Sunt Monstra, by Brian Trent

Galaxy's Edge, September 2015
http://www.galaxysedge.com/n7.htm

A small human colony on an only somewhat-hospitable world is confronted every spring by the return of the colossi, large creatures that might be somewhat elephant-like in appearance. These colossi form out of the melting and refreezing ice.

They are ice-borne memories of a species the humans wiped out not long after their arrival, because they were competing for resources, eating the only human-edible plant life on the planet. (Or, perhaps, the only plant life; there are some problems of scale here.) Every year, when the ice colossi return, the humans re-enact the hunt in which they wiped out the real colossi. It's worth noting that this isn't just ritual; the ice colossi move around, behave like real colossi, and are very dangerous.

Meanwhile, the humans are hungry most of the time, due to the fact that the plants the colossi were competing for aren't recovering in numbers and distribution.

Maybe the humans have made an awful mistake.

We see the story from the viewpoint of a young boy and his friends, one of whom lost her father to a colossus attack, which helped fuel the extermination of the species. On a human level, this story works very, very well. I'm completely drawn in to Bill, Jillian, and their friends and neighbors.

But.

I mentioned a scale problem. This is a world large enough that any difference from Earth gravity doesn't get mentioned. It holds an atmosphere thick and almost-friendly enough that they only use rebreathers, not space suits. It defies reason that there are only two significant life forms on this world, and just one, very localized, population of each, so that when the humans have wiped out the colossi near their settlement, they've wiped out all the colossi.

A fun read, but I don't expect this to be anywhere near my 2016 Hugo ballot.

A Natural History of Dragons (A Memoir by Lady Trent #1), by Marie Brennan

Tor Books, ISBN 9780765331960, February 2013

Isabella, Lady Trent, is now the world's most famous dragon naturalist, by she was once a young girl in a land called Scirland, like and unlike our own Regency England, with an interest in dragons considered distinctly unladylike. But when it comes time for her to marry, her loving and indulgent father helps her find a husband who shares her interest in dragons and will be equally indulgent in letting her share the use of his library.

He did not expect that, after two years of marriage, Isabella and Jacob would join an expedition to study dragons in Vystrana.

What neither she, nor Jacob, nor Lord Hilford, expects is that she will do more than draw sketches of the the dragons and file the men's notes.

A Curious Beginning, by Deanna Raybourn

NAL/Penguin, ISBN 9780451476012, September 2015

It's 1887, and in the English countryside, Veronica Speedwell has just buried her Aunt Nell, the second of two guardians to die. She's now alone in the world, but by the same token, free to set off on a long-planned expedition to the Far East in pursuit of her lepidoptory career. She has financed it through the sale of her butterfly specimens from previous expeditions, and is building a small reputation in the field.

It's rather a shock for her to return to her aunt's cottage and discover that no only has it been ransacked, but the housebreaker is still inside, working on the kitchen now. She successfully chases him out, but he then attempts to abduct her, and is prevented by the timely arrival of an older, armed gentleman, and he flees in a conveniently waiting carriage.

The older gentleman is Baron Max von Stauffenbach, and he tells her she's in great danger. He offers to take her to London in his carriage.

Philomena: The Story of a Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search, by Martin Sixsmith (author), John Curless (narrator)

Recorded Books, October 2013 (original publication 2009)

In 1952, Philomena Lee became pregnant our of wedlock in an Ireland where that just wasn't allowed to happen. She was sent to a convent to give birth to her baby, and would live there for three years, caring for her son and working in the convent's commercial laundry. At the end of that time, Philomena was forced to sign him over to the convent for adoption, and he was effectively sold to an American couple.

She loved her beautiful, happy son, and despite being forced to sign him away and promise never to seek to find him, she made her first attempt less than a year later. Meanwhile, her son, now named Michael Hess, grew up in America, and wondered and worried why his birth mother had given him up.

Beyond Sapphire Glass, by Margaret Killjoy

(c) 2015 Geneva Benton

Strange Horizons, August 2015

The narrator is an attendant at what might be a temple. and it's her(?) job to care for certain vital aspects of the place. She meets those who come there, wanting to go to the Sapphire Gate, and one in particular makes a strong impact on her. Those who come in good health must stay for a year before they can go to the Sapphire Gate, because what happens there is irrevocable, and the attendants want to be sure the petitioners are sure.

As our narrator reminisces about this one particular petitioner, we learn what's really happening there, and that even among the attendants there are strongly differing views about it.

This is a quiet, gentle, disturbing story.

Recommended.
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2015/20150810/Sapphire-f.shtml

The Truth About Owls, by Amal El-Mohtar

Published in Kaleidoscope, from Twelfth Planet Press, August 2014

Anisa is a young girl now living in Glasgow with her mother, but she spent her earlier childhood living in Lebanon with her father, grandmother, and other relatives. When war struck a little too close to home, her father decided that Anisa, having been born in the UK, needed to go join her mother there and be safe.

Starting with her first sighting of an owl in Lebanon, an eagle owl that kills one of the family's chickens, Anisa becomes fascinated with owls, and in stages, learns more about them, and about herself.

At some point, strange things start happening when she's feeling strong emotions.

She's feeling destructive surges of power that she struggles to control, struggles not to hurt anyone.

It's not really possible to say more without giving too much away. This is a gentle, surprising, moving coming of age story, and well worth your time.

Recommended.

Jade Dragon Mountain, by Elsa Hart

St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, ISBN 9781250072320, September 2015

Li Du is a Chinese scholar, formerly a librarian in the imperial library. Now,in 1780, after a political scandal in which he was collateral damage, he's an exile wandering China. His wanderings have brought him to Dayan, a Chinese town on the Tibetan border, and he expects a quiet, provincial town.

Instead, he finds a town teaming with visitors, as the Emperor is about to arrive for a spectacular event: a total eclipse of the sun. He wants to be gone as quickly as possible, before the Emperor arrives, but an elderly Jesuit priest, an astronomer, dies suddenly, and Li finds evidence of murder. He's drawn in to investigating the death. He has three days.

Li quickly acquires friends and allies, starting with the wandering storyteller from Egypt. His suspects include the local magistrate himself, the magistrate's first consort, another Jesuit brother, and the ambassador of the powerful British East India Company.