- A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Science fiction novel. A new ambassador from a peripheral world must learn to survive at the heart of an expansionist interstellar empire. Loved it.
- The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente. Novella that centres “fridged” female comic book characters (i.e., killed solely to cause pain and motivation for the male protagonist); in this case said characters are recognizably stand-ins for well-known female characters.
- Making Conversation by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. A collection of Teresa’s blog posts and other web comments, many of which are extraordinarily pertinent to online discourse.
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Time-travel epistolary novella in which agents from mutually exclusive futures develop a relationship through the messages they leave for each other.
- The Art of Illustrated Maps by John Roman. Reviewed at The Map Room.
- The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross. The ninth Laundry Files novel. Nyarlathotep dispatches Mhari and her team to America, where no one seems to remember the president. (This will make sense to regular readers of the series.)
- The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde. Fantasy novella, set in the same world as The Jewel and Her Lapidary. Time travel and library destruction.
- Desdemona and the Deep by C. S. E. Cooney. Fantasy novella. Industrial Faerie; daughter of privilege rescues men sacrificed to the world below.
- Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone. Science fiction novel. Expansive space opera on a wide canvas.
- Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer. Reread. Trafalgar Medrano tells you tall tales over coffee about his adventures in space.
- Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction by Benjamin Percy. Useful collection of essays on the craft of writing.
- After Atlas by Emma Newman. Science fiction mystery novel.
- Cartography: The Ideal and Its History by Matthew H. Edney. Reviewed at The Map Room.
- The Famished Road by Ben Okri. A spirit child grows up in an impoverished quarter of an unnamed African city.
- He, She and It by Marge Piercy. A cyborg’s creation in a post-apocalyptic world is juxtaposed with the story of Rabbi Loew’s golem. (First published as Body of Glass in the U.K.)
Books Read: 3Q 2019
Jonathan Crowe
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room and writes and reviews science fiction and fantasy; his work has been published by AE, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.
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