New year, new book tag! I have been Patiently Awaiting this one since the book deal was announced, because I love interdimensional nonsense and pocket worlds, and yeah okay maybe it did remind me a little bit of TIME WAR (beloved), and sure let's sprinkle in evil corporations and make it gay, why not. Very excited for this!!
an archaeologist who studies pocket worlds with her wife, with the hope that maybe some had become a refuge from colonisation for her Taino ancestors
when she exits one and the time dilation means she’s suddenly 40 years in an unrecognisable future, where corporations have turned pocket worlds into a commodity for everything from tourism to commuting to factories and unstable landfills and refugee camps
with her wife still within a pocket world she carries, and dealing with the sudden grief of having lost everything and navigating a completely changed world, she seizes one last chance to discover something to redeem herself
HOLY SHIT. i'm wrung out after reading this, what an absolute stunner! Peynado has offered both hopeful and devastating possible futures, wrapped up in one tight package of grief. it's wild how much happens in this novella, and how much of it had me by the throat.
the premise is fascinating: the discovery of pocket worlds, different sizes and biomes and time dilations, accessed by doorways that humans have stumbled on accidentally for the entirety of our history on Earth. but these worlds, like any other discovery, are eventually at the mercy of human greed. it's a book about the violence of colonialism and capitalism, and the longing to undo those harms or find a way out from under them.
but these huge-scale themes are distilled through Raquel, an archaeologist in the Dominican Republic, part of an institution that studies pocket worlds, alongside her botanist wife Marlena. the action of this book—and there's a lot of it—is full of dazzling technology and hops in and out of pristine or utterly ecologically ruined dimensions, but the heart of it is with Raquel and the grief of her mistakes and the desperate hopes she tries to make real.
i barely even know what to say about this, even though i've now rambled for three paragraphs. it's breathtaking. it knocked my socks off. i have a sudden craving for mango.
the deets
how i read it: an e-galley from NetGalley. i think this one was actually marketed to me by email, for which i'm insanely grateful, as i might have missed it otherwise!
try this if you: are into weird time and space physics, dig LatAm and Caribbean stories, love to cry while reading, want more archaeology and botany in your sff, or have a hate on for exploitative fruit corporations.
some lines i really liked: a collection of large and small griefs
I am ready to wish. I take a breath. The raging air in my lungs screaming to be let out, I chant, I will not think about before, I will not think about before.
But time never lets it be that easy, does it? Grief can make a single breath feel like a thousand years, but when you want to stay in the moment forever, time is a hound that hunts you down. Time, my enemy. Time, the thief.
___
The buzz of insects worshiping flowers. The floral exhalation of the rustling wild. A small, burbling stream that cut through the meadow like a smile. The magnified curvature of the sky like we were walking through the meadow and the sky at once. We felt brilliant, new, released from the crush of Earth Standard.
___
She told me that centuries ago, imported bananas tasted different, but that cultivated species had been decimated by a fungus. The echoes of that flavor could still be found in the formulated candies that pretended to be essence of banana. Essence of all that we'd lost.
___
But aren't all anniversaries relative? We can celebrate and mourn every day if we want.
pub date: August 13, 2024! go get this book immediately
I read a lot this month! Finally got around to the novella kick I had been hoping to do after NaNo (thanks, Tor!), PLUS the weather was fabulous for reading through some Snowy Winter Books, and I managed to daisy-chain between them really well!
Photos and/or reviews liked below:
TIME'S AGENT - ★★★ I had outrageously high hopes for this one (Pocket Worlds?! dimensional fuckery?! scientist MCs?!? queer?!), and unfortunately it turned out to be Just Okay for me. Very much a grief-centered book, very much a corporate hellscape future (I suppose it does have some Murderbot overlap, in that regard). How time worked in the Pocket Worlds was wild and cool, but I found the grief-strained relationship between the MC and her wife exasperating--maybe it'll hit right for allos, but it was not my cup of tea.
WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE - ★★★½ I don't usually peruse non-fiction, but I'm doing a subscription box of nature writing this year, and they sent me this! Interesting cultural window to far-north Norway, very winter-approved, and pleasantly surprisingly queer. Glad I read it! (CW for much sexual assault/abuse, though, broadcasted clearly in the first couple pages.)
CAMP ZERO - ★★★½ This near future cli-fi was comped to Station Eleven (which I loved) and The Power (which I have not read), and takes place in far north Canada where something sus is going on at a building project. I was really enjoying it up until the last hundred pages or so, when things suddenly felt very rushed and thrown together--I might've given it 4 stars if she stuck the landing. Another good winter read!
BLACKFISH CITY - ★★★½ I can't decide if this is 3.5 or 4 stars, but since I didn't slam the 4-star button on Goodreads, I'm going to leave it as 3.5. I really liked this one, though! Love a good futuristic floating city in the Arctic. The worldbuilding was very cool, and the polar bear was appropriately terrifying. Had a lot of POVs and jumped kind of rapidly between them, which I didn't have a ton of bandwidth for this month. Overall had a good time! Might reread when the time is right.
LOST ARK DREAMING - ★★★★ I thought this one was also about a floating city based on (not looking closely enough at) the cover art, but it turns out those are Super High Rise Skyscrapers where the first few floors are underwater. More climate fiction, but this one takes place off the coast of Nigeria, and the comp to Rivers Solomon's THE DEEP is absolutely loadbearing (affectionate). Enjoyed this one a lot, too, to the tune of Some Of The Interspersed Poetry Made Me Feel Shrimp Emotions, And I Busted Out A Sticky-Tab To Flag A Few Lines.
THE DEAD CAT TAIL ASSASSINS - ★★★½ This was a lot more fun than I anticipated! I've really enjoyed all of Clark's novella-length work, and this one was funny and surprisingly weird and perfectly fucked up and unfortunately I cannot state specifics without being spoilery. Definitely worth picking up, if you like assassins and mind-bendy plot twists.
ADRIFT IN CURRENTS CLEAN AND CLEAR - ★★★½ One of my favorite January Traditions is reading the latest installment of Wayward Children. I really enjoyed the waterworld in this one, and All Things Russian are my jam! I should go back and reread Sugar Sky, though.
OVERGROWTH - ★★★★½ I received an ARC, and it was SO GOOD HOLY SHIT!!! I actually wrote a Thoughtful Review about it. Out May 6, 2025! Great things to look forward to!!
THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT - 94*/259 pages read; will report back. Really enjoying this so far! It's very thoroughly introduced, and I appreciate the thematic organization over chronological. (*asterisk: By the page numbers, I'm up to 94, but there are definitely xl pages of General Introduction before the book itself starts--I am not exaggerating about Thoroughly Introduced haha.)
Under the Cut: A Note About ~*★Stars★*~
Historically, I have been Very Bad™ about assigning things Star Ratings, because it's so Vibes Heavy for me and therefore Contingent Upon my Whims. (Example: I don't like that stars are Odd, because that makes three the midpoint and things are rarely so truly mid for me)(I have hacked my way around this with a ½, which is really only applicable for me at ★★★ and up). Here is, generally, how I conceptualize stars:
★ - This was Bad. I would actively recommend that you do NOT read this one, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not worth the slog. Save Yourself, It's Too Late For Me. Book goes in the garbage (donate bin).
★★ - This was Not Good. I would not recommend it, but it wasn't a total waste or wash--something in here held my interest/kept my attention/sparked some joy. I will not be rereading this ever. Save Yourself (Or Join Me In Suffering, That Seems Like A Cool Bonding Activity).
★★★ - This was Good/Fine/Okay/Meh. I don't care about this enough to recommend it one way or another. Perfectly serviceable book, held my interest, I probably enjoyed myself (or at least didn't actively loathe the reading). I don't have especially strong feelings. You probably don't need to save yourself from this one--if it sounds like your jam, give it a shot! Just didn't resonate with me particularly powerfully. I probably won't reread this unless I'm after something in particular.
★★★½ - I liked this! I'll probably recommend it if I know it matches someone's vibes or specific requests, but I didn't commit to a star rating on Goodreads. More likely to reread, but not guaranteed.
★★★★ - I really enjoyed this!! I would recommend it (sometimes with caveats about content warnings or such--I tend to like weird fucked up funny shit, and I don't have many hard readerly NO's). Not a perfect book for me by any means, but Very Good. This is something I would reread! Join me!!
★★★★★ - I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS, IT REWIRED MY BRAIN, WILL RECOMMEND TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION (content warning caveats still apply--see 4-star disclaimer). Excellent book, I'll reread it regularly, I'll buy copies for all my friends, I'll try to convince all of Booklr to read it, PLEASE join me!!
This is a sci fi novella following Raquel Petra, an archeologist working for an institute that investigates pocket universes. She and her wife believe in the shining future offered by the endless possibilities of pocket worlds, but when she falls into one with extreme time dilation for what was for her a few seconds but 40 years in standard time, she emerges into a hellscape of capitalistic greed destroying not only our own world, but every pocket world corporations can get their hands on.
I didn't like this one, but to be fair, that's probably more my fault than Peynado's since I don't understand it. I already had difficulty wrapping my mind around the sci fi elements- I'm unsure if this is due to Peynado not explaining well enough and the fact that I'm pretty sure she was inconsistent about which pocket worlds were labled short time or long time, or if I'm just stupid. But I already struggled to grasp the mechanics of the science, and when the spiritual was introduced, I became completely lost. I only even finished the book because by that time, there was only 20 pages left. I know what happened, but I have no idea how any of it happened.
However, frustrating though I may find it to have the minutia of a book make me feel stupid, ultimately I don't care about the mechanics if it delivers on a good story and interesting themes. And while the anticapitalist message is well executed and delivers some truly horrifying imagery, the themes surrounding Indigeniety feel muddled. The reading simply that uncontacted peoples should remain uncontacted because with our current world systems, it would only result in exploitation and desecration is an idea I agree with, but I think it is a shallow reading of the text. I think the intention may be that Indigenous people are just pure and have an inherent connection and understanding of the world around them, in a pretty stereotypical way. That's the vibe I got anyway.
I also don't think the exploration of grief is compelling. The one conversation Raquel and Marlena have about which one of them is refusing to truly see Atalanta in their grief was interesting, but very brief. Mostly Raquel is very stagnant and just letting things happen to her until the end when she just does what Marlena tells her to do. She doesn't feel like she has any growth, except maybe a little negative growth in how she winds up isolating herself.
This is such an interesting concept, but unfortunately, aside from a few short scenes with the new version of Raquel's job and some minor world building that all could have been boiled down to a great short story instead of a meandering novella, I don't think it's well executed. There are good scenes here, but not enough for me to recommend the book to anyone. 2⭐️
on the bright side: a book i've been anticipating since the publisher deal was announced ~2 years ago (TIME'S AGENT by Brenda Peynado) was in the mailbox waiting for me this afternoon, so :)
