Amara's Giraffe (Lady Astronaut Universe #4.3), by Mary Robinette Kowal

Mary Robinette Kowal, May 2018

This is a very short story in the Lady Astronaut series.

Alyshondra is taking her eleven-month-old daughter on a visit to Grandma, at Grandma's new homestead, on the Moon. They're in the zero-G part of their trip when baby Amara's stuffed giraffe starts falling toward the floor. This should not be happening. Where's the force coming from, with no thrust?

Alyshondra has to figure this out, get them back on their correct course, and calm the now crying Amara.

It's a story that's both charming and interesting.

Recommended.

I received this story as part of the 2021 Hugo Voters packet, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

Death on the Lake (DCI Satterthwaite #5), by Jo Allen

Jo Allen, April 2021

When a young woman, Summer Raine, is found drowned in a lake, having earlier been drinking and doing drugs with two young men on their boat, it doesn't look like something that should need the direct attention of DCI Jude Satterthwaite. Yet something is definitely off, when his boss, Detective Superintendent Faye Scanlon, tells him to keep an eye on the case--but not investigate too energetically, so as not to disrupt a fraud investigation going on in the area.

That fraud investigation apparently involves the father of the two young men the woman had been partying with.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Jude's former lover has family ties in the are a and her aged Great-Uncle George lives in the only house that has a good view of the area where the dead woman seemingly went into the water and drowned. His current lover, and colleague, Ashleigh O'Halloran, was briefly the lover of his boss, DSI Faye Scanlon. Oh, and Ashleigh's ex-husband is now back in the area again, applying for Summer Raine's job as a water sports trainer.

Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi (author, narrator)

Blackstone Publishing, ISBN 9781094006352, January 2020

This is a novella that really packs a punch. It's very good, very powerful, and I'm not sure that I like it. I'm not sure I should like it; I'm certainly not the intended audience.

On the other hand, I think it's a very good thing for nice white people to listen to what this story, and others like it, are telling us. It's a very real piece of black American experience, and an eloquent expression of the rage that experience can generate.

Ella is just a young child when her brother Kevin is born--in the midst of the Los Angeles riots sparked by the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King. She's already starting to develop psychic powers that she describes as her "Thing." At first she just has dreams, or daydreams, about the futures of people she knows. Given that she obviously knows a lot of black boys and young men, many of those futures are dark and tragic.

The story unfolds in two voices, Ella's, in third person, and Kev's, mostly in first person.

Echo in Time (Echo Trilogy #1), by Lindsey Fairleigh (author), Dana Dae (narrator)

Rubus Press, ISBN 9781094262048, December 2013

Archaeology grad student Alexandra Larson has just experienced her first notable success--a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal.

She's also starting to experience more disturbing events, in which she has dreams that recall forgotten memories just when she needs them, or, more disturbingly, things that haven't happened yet, but which are all too real. Or things which have happened, but aren't her experiences. They're the experiences of other members of her family.

Then her mother reveals a startling and disturbing fact: her father isn't her biological father. She's the product of artificial insemination, with sperm from a sperm bank donor who remained anonymous. Her world has come completely unhinged.

Changes to Email Subscription to Lis Carey's Library

 If you've been getting my new posts in your email, it's been through Feedburner, and Feedburner is not going to be doing that anymore. "Maintenance." "Changes." I frankly don't fully understand the explanation, but I have to do something else. The "something else" I've decided on is Follow.It.

Unfortunately, although I followed the steps for downloading my email subscription list from Feedburner, I apparently did it wrong, and have garbled nonsense instead of a list. Hey, I'm a librarian, not a techie.

This means that those of you who want to continue to receive my new posts via email will have to sign up again. My apologies for this, but it at least appears to be easy to do. You can see the sign up box in the upper righthand corner. Please do sign up!

Also, to make everyone's lives easier, if you can give me really simple, easy help in getting my email subscription list downloaded correctly, please do. I will be grateful.

Thanks for your patience and tolerance, all.

Preacher Boy, by Gwyn GB

Chalky Dog Publishing, June 2021

Harrison Lane is a psychologist working for the London Metropolitan Police as a civilian expert in ritualistic behavioral crimes. His own background is unusual, to say the least. His mother led a bohemian life, was involved in a rather alarming cult, and also, in one of the most positive formative experiences of Harrison's life, lived with one of the Shadow Wolves, a group of Native American trackers who work to prevent smuggling along the Mexico-USA border in Arizona.

After returning to the UK, Harrison's mother was murdered, and that became a major motivation for him to not only study psychology, but to study ritualistic behavior associated with criminal activity. He's determined to solve his mother's murder, but along the way, he also works with the police to solve crimes rooted in the same ritualistic criminal behavior.

One fine morning, he is called to the site where the body of a young boy has been found. The boy disappeared a couple of weeks ago, but he's newly dead, in a park, with a wooden cross set next to him, and paper with Bible verses in his mouth.

Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law: A Tor.com Original (Judge Dee), by Lavie Tidhar

Tor Books, November 2020

This is a fun little short story about a very old vampire who is, essentially, a circuit judge for vampires, enforcing the only law that really matters to vampires: don't endanger us all by behaving so outrageously that you get us discovered by the humans we prey on.

Judge Dee is accompanied in his travels by a boy named Jonathan, whom he rescued from a local disaster in England. Because vampires don't really eat, and really don't eat what humans eat, Jonathan devours ferociously whatever human-edible food comes his way. Other than that, he just tries to be observant, learn what Judge Dee has to teach him, and be useful.

Jonathan is enjoying one of those meals when Judge Dee is called Castello d'oro, or perhaps Castello dell'orrore. Castle of Gold, or Castle of Horrors. When they arrive, they find the Baron Guido, and his surprisingly large vampire family--the large number of former humans he has transformed into vampires. Together with the large number of prey humans they have confined, one can easily see some likely violations of the one law vampires care about.

The Long Iapetan Night, by Julie Nováková

European Astrobiology Institute, May 2021 (original publication 2020)

This is the story of the start of a new space age, beginning about a century after two major disasters in close succession largely crashed technological civilization on Earth. First, the Phlegraean Fields volcano experienced a VEI-8 eruption, destroying Naples and plunging the world into a volcanic winter. This was bad enough, but almost a year later, an extreme solar eruption knocks the human race out of the satellite age, and even destroys much of the electronic infrastructure on Earth.

People survived, and preserved enough that, slowly, they were able to recover, to the point of launching a new space program, to return to the places--the Moon, Mars, and Saturn's moons Titan and Iapetus--where there had been colonies at the time of the collapse. They don't know whether the colonists at the more distant colonies tried to return to Earth, or decided to stay, but they didn't make it back, and weren't equipped to survive in isolation from Earth.

A Master of Djinn (Dead Djinn Universe #1), by P. Djèlí Clark (author), Suehyla El-Attar (narrator)

Macmillan Audio, ISBN 9781250807731, May 2021

In 1912 Cairo, Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the youngest woman agent  at the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, and last summer, she saved the universe from destruction. Now, she's been called in on a most unusual murder. The entire membership of a small secret brotherhood dedicated to al-Jahiz, one of the most famous men in history, who among other things opened the wall between our world and the world where djinn had retreated to, has been killed.

What makes this case clearly a Ministry matter is the fact that with one exception, all the dead were burnt to death--but only their flesh, no damage to their clothes. The last victim was not burnt; his head has been turned completely backwards on his body, a feat requiring superhuman strength.

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (The Singing Hills Cycle #2), by Nghi Vo

Tordotcom, ISBN 9781250786166, December 2020

Cleric Chih has set out on another mission to gather stories for the Singing Hills abbey, this time without Almost Brilliant, the talking bird who normally accompanies them. They are headed up and over the mountains, it's too cold, and Almost Brilliant is sitting a clutch of eggs. Chih misses the bird, but they have a job to do.

However, along the way, they find a young mammoth scout and her mammoth to take them over the heights to enable them to reach their destination. Riding a mammoth is a learning experience for Chih, which, after all, is what they are out here for.

It's unfortunate that even as the are getting close to the way station where they will spend the night, a group of three tigers finds their trail and hunts them the rest of the way to the station. The keeper of the way station, Bao-so, is nearly killed, but the skilled riding of the mammoth scout, Si-yu, and the steadiness and determination of the mammoth, Piluk make possible Bao-so's rescue and their entry into the barn. Piluk turns around to face the tigers, and they won't charge her, but they also won't leave. A temporary truce is negotiated, in which the tigers won't try to attack them as long as Chih keeps them properly entertained with telling a story about a tiger and her human lover. They might even let the three humans live, if the story is good enough.