How Long 'til Black Future Month

 

by N. K. Jemisin

I read Jemisin’s excellent essay of the same name online in 2013 (http://nkjemisin.com/2013/09/how-long-til-black-future-month/), so when I picked up this book I was expecting a collection of essays, but was surprised (and pleased) when it turned out to be a collection of short stories instead. And what a collection it is!

 There is Stone Hunger, an exploration of the ideas that would become The Broken Earth trilogy, and The City Born Great, which I believe is a similar exploration of an idea that became The City We Became, the first of Jemisin’s trilogy-in-progress. These are interesting stories on their own, but also give insight into how the author builds from short story to long, intricate novels, a peek behind the curtains that we as readers don’t often get to see.

The emotions of these stories run a wide gamut. There is the fairly grim, but ultimately optimistic opening tale, The Ones Who Stay and Fight, to the bittersweet story of power and race and history told in Red Dirt Witch. Then there is the playful magic realism of L’Alchemista.

One of my favourites was the final, longer story of magic and survival in New Orleans post-Katrina: Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters, with its layers of relationships between the survivors in the flooded city, who they once were, who they were in the aftermath, and who they could become.

There are 22 stories, all magical, sometimes veering closer to science fiction, sometimes further into fantasy, occasionally hewing next to realism. But regardless of the genre, all are stories about people and their relationships, whether between a mother and a daughter coming of age (and of responsibility) in Red Dirt Witch, or strangers becoming friends, allies, and more in The Effluent Engine, or striving to be the best even when everyone around tries to hold back in The Valedictorian, or missing someone so badly it becomes addictive in Cuisine des Memoires.

And, ultimately, it is those relationships that make the stories, and the book, so compelling.

 

The Water Knife

by Paulo Bacigalupi


Depleted aquifers, drought, and dust storms in the American Southwest bring out the worst in people and their politics, allowing gangs and militias to run rampant, loosely controlled by the remaining city-states. Each city is struggling not to dry up completely, everyone trying to score enough water to stay alive for another day.

Angel Velasquez is the Water Knife in this frighteningly plausible near-future thriller. In a world where the US states have closed their borders to each other, and water supplies are dwindling, his job is to make sure Las Vegas gets enough water, by any means necessary, and usually that means cutting off the water supplies of other cities and states.

Lucy Monroe is a journalist in Phoenix, tracking the disintegration of society despite her sister begging her to come to Vancouver, the promised land, where water still comes from the sky. She knows the dangers but takes more and more risks to chase down the stories that powerful people do not want told.

Maria Villarosa is a migrant from Texas, another desperate refugee among tens of thousands trying to find a way to a better life. Her life is a day-to-day struggle against gangs, rich predators, and water that may cost more per litre than she can make in a week. But Maria is smart enough to have a plan that just might work.

Rumors of a vast new source of water surface, and the three characters' lives become entwined in a fast-paced mystery as they all race to find the water and stay ahead of killers trying to make sure they never do.

It's a frightening story because it feels like it could have been ripped out of next year's news. Brutal and almost too realistic, it had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. This novel will give you a lot to think about in the real world long after you finish reading.

Strange Practice

Vivian Shaw

Dr. Greta Helsing has the most unusual medical practice in modern London: most of her patients are dead. But if you are a banshee with laryngitis, a vampire with a head cold, or a mummy slowly succumbing to the ravages of time, who else are you going to call. Her family has had this practice for generations, and some of her family friends date back that long too. And she will need to learn to rely on those friends for help when a cult begins killing both her beloved monsters and humans across London.

So with her gang Edmund Ruthven (vampire), Sir Francis Varney (vampyre, with a ‘y’), Fastidocalon (ancient and inhuman, but not even Greta is quite sure what he is), August Cranswell (human, working at the British Museum), Greta finds herself unwilling drawn into both the serial killing the newspapers refer to as the Rosary Ripper, whose victims are found eyeless and naked with cheap rosaries stuffed in their mouths, and an attack on Varney by people dressed like monks, using garlic and a dagger poisoned specifically against the undead. And she can’t help but feel there is a connection between the two cases.

As the bodies pile up and Greta gets more involved in the cases, the danger ramps up for herself and her friends, becoming a race to solve the case or die trying. But whoever is behind this has been covering their tracks very well, and it doesn’t leave her, or the police, much to go on. Fortunately, Greta has some very talented and resourceful friends, because it will take all of their combined wits and courage to see this through. After all, it can be helpful to have friends who can become invisible or bend steel bars sometimes.

Through it all she has to maintain those friendships, run her business, and resist the powerful attraction she’s beginning to feel for one of her patients.

This is a good edge-of-your-seat mystery with likeable characters and unexpected twists and turns. This is the first Dr. Greta Helsing novel, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the author, Vivian Shaw, takes these characters next. The mix of action, locations, fantastic situations, mystery, and a hint of romance is a very pleasant combination.

Dethe Elza is a Digital Services Technician at the Brighouse Branch of the Richmond Public Library, where he helps kids learn to write their own computer games.