Nisi ShawlReseñas

Middle grade fantasy historical fiction featuring African-American main characters.

Winna is a firm believer of magic.
When staying with her grandparents while her mother is in the hospital, Winna's little sister, Tupelo, breaks her glasses. Winna is given a part of replacement glasses which just happened to magical glasses.

I was a bit confused as to some of the details. I believe this takes place in the early 1960s, but I fear wasn't clear to me exactly which state it took place. Vandalia? And the spectacles: Winna's grandfather, who had expertise in "Woodoo", gave her the glasses, but they belonged to Winna's grandmother's sister, Estelle, and the family curse was on Winna's grandmother's family?

There are some difficult topic in this: divorce, parental illness, bullying, racism, colorism and a deadly curse!

I like the fantasy bent. The resolution was somewhat satisfying; Don't want to give it away, but even with a fantasy bent, some practical aspects were far-fetched.

Some of the stories were decent, some were confusing and boring. I guess I'd probably read something else by them.

I was really into this book in the beginning, the set-up and characters were so interesting, and nothing like I had ever read before. I got stuck in the middle and gave up because I had a hard time following different characters' over the years, and since the story is told in short vignettes, i stopped caring about any of the characters. I am still giving it three stars since the concept and writing were good.

A good, diverse collection. there is a bit much fantasy and supernatural for my tase, but everything is well-written and interesting.

*glee* The steampunk alternate history of Belgium’s invasion of the Congo if the natives had known a lot more about steam technology. Air canoes! Mechanical bicycles!

Queer women, women being awesome.

Read everything she has written, there's lots.

I decided to read "New Suns" after it was announced to have won the Locus Award for Best Anthology. I've never been big on short stories, but I've been trying to branch out lately. And in part of that, I've been trying to ensure I read from new perspectives and new authors than I have before. So Nisi Shawl's collection was the perfect collection for me to dive into.

This anthology does its job of providing speculative fiction from a variety of backgrounds really well. Different cultural norms, mythologies, and aesthetics are all laid before the reader in an approachable manner, without sacrificing or white-washing their substance. I did a few times find myself having to pause in my reading to look up a phrase or word that I wasn't familiar with, but was glad to have been included as keeping these stories authentic to each author's background made them whole.

I in particular wanted to highlight the story "Burn the Ships" by Alberto Yáñez, which was my personal favorite of the anthology. It seamlessly blends the horror and shame of the holocaust and colonialism, as well as cultural/religious themes from Yáñez's backgrounds, into a very dark tale of the oppressed and oppressor.

The whole collection is mixed in humor, horror, and intriguing speculation. The book never really drags; while each story clearly has different pacing, they're organized in a way that the flow never becomes an issue. It really does have something for every reader, and I'm incredibly glad to have read it.

This was a fantastic, middle grade fantasy novel. I love that Winna cares so much about her family and wants to try and lift the family curse. The glasses that she gets from her grandfather were so interesting, I wish that items passed through families had the ability to show us more about our past. Looking forward to reading more books from Nisi Shawl in the future.

In a search for steampunk outside of white people in London, I found Everfair. I put it down after a chapter thinking it was going to be a brutal tale of European colonists but it nagged at me to try again. I did and was happy to find that it was not at all what I had first thought. There were certainly European colonists but they weren't the awful people I anticipated, nor were they saviors. The struggles faced by both Africans and Europeans and their interactions made for a compelling read.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/filter-house-by-nisi-shawl-the-knife-of-never-le...

I think this may be the only collection of stories to have won the Tiptree / Otherwise Award. Perhaps I was just in a tired mood, after an exceptionally busy period at work, but none of these especially grabbed me. I guess the two that lingered most are “The Pragmatical Princess”, whose title character cuts a deal with the monster that was supposed to eat her, and “The Water Museum”, about a society where water is scarce and its guardian is an assassination target. I slightly bounced off Shawl’s Everfair as well, and perhaps this is just one of those authors who is not for me.

I finished this a while ago, and forgot to write a review. So I'll keep it short. This is the anthology I needed. The title is from the Octavia Butler quote “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” And recently I've been needing new suns. These short stories have a distinctly different feel but still all the boundless imagination and fresh insights that I love about science fiction and speculative fiction.

This anthology was like a breathe of fresh air. I've added works by nearly every author in this collection to my "to read" list. If, like me, you feel like sci fi / fantasy (speculative fiction) can get stuck in a rut and start to feel a little formulaic sometimes, then I highly recommend this collection.

everfair starts with an interesting counterfactual for a premise, but its profoundly liberal worldview and lack of understanding of the structural issues underpinning the subjugation of the congo make for a frustrating and deeply underwhelming read that doesn’t bother to interrogate any of the usual shortcomings of the genre it finds itself in. it treats the violence of the congo free state as a quirk of a fucked up and evil individual tyrant, not the unleashed form of the system of domination in place throughout africa. in a particularly shortsighted move that feels reminiscent of colonialist industrial fantasy at its worst, everfair renders labor completely invisible - the rubber, palm oil, and rare earth metals that form the backbone of the country’s economy appear as if by magic, their production explained away with a hand wave and a promise that the horrors of leopold’s rule are firmly in the past. i so rarely leave a novel wishing the author read more theory, but i think this book has hamilton disease and would really have benefitted from shawl reading marx, spivak, fanon, said - or even giving their own book (writing the other) another glance.

on the upside this is getting me to finally read king leopolds ghost so thanks for that.½

Most of the stories were hits and [spoiler] there is smut in few stories haha. All in all, they made me think and speculate which is the biggest part about sci-fi that I love (and kinda the whole schtick with sci-fi) and will definitely keep an eye out for bigger pieces from the authors compiled here

I didn't finish this book because it seemed to go nowhere. It became uninteresting.

Utopian fiction!

I don't generally read short stories for a petty reason: I'm a fast reader, so I end up going through multiple short stories in one sitting, and then they get muddled in my head and it's no fun. However, I've had less time to read recently anyway. And reading multiple stories in one sitting is not a problem with "Filter House" - each one is unique, and I find myself still thinking about them about a week after I finished the book. I hear she's writing a steampunk novel in colonial Congo. I cannot wait to read it.

A really interesting read. A little hard to follow in places, so maybe it would benefit from being expanded out. Certainly a brilliant set up for a longer book, as well as a decent read in its own right.

Confusing Jimi's Vision
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook (August 2021)

so my love Catherina and me
decide to take our last walk
through the noise to the sea
not to die but to be re-born
away from a life so battered and torn....
forever... - Jimi Hendrix (excerpt from the song 1983... A Merman I Should Turn to Be (1968))

2043... , the story, was an expansion on Jimi Hendrix's sci-fi song which imagined a future apocalyptic situation where the characters Catherina and the songwriter escape to a life underwater after being transformed by a "machine." The story version packed in rather too much confusing techno bafflegab and a complicated storyline that was hard to follow.

It still had some lovely nods to its inspiration, including having a Catherina character and a nanotechnology version of Hendrix's "machine."

2043... A Merman I Should Turn to Be is the 3rd of the 6 short stories making up the speculative / fantasy / science fiction series Black Stars, released simultaneously on August 31, 2021 as an eBook by Amazon Originals and as an audiobook by Audible Originals.

Short story. Black Americans using nanotech to become mer-people and live in an underwater city off the coast of the USA, where they are still occasionally subject to attacks from above by white racists. It's an interesting idea but then just peters out, doesn't go anywhere.

Received via Netgalley for review

Unfortunately, while I was looking forward to reading this, I didn't end up liking it that much. It seemed very long (17 stories, which doesn't seem like much when I see the number, but really dragged on when I was reading them) and the stories themselves seemed to drag on.

Normally, in a short story collection, I expect there to be a fair amount of variation in the quality of the stories and some that I like better than others, but none of the stories in this collection really grabbed me. They all seemed to focus on similar themes (treatment of women, sexuality, romantic/familial/etc. connections, violence) and it got a little boring to read after a while. I JUST finished reading it, and while there are a few stories I remember, I know they won't stick with me in the future.

• Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias S. Buckell 2/5
Good enough for what it's trying to do and a good opener.

• Deer Dancer by Kathleen Alcalá 2/5
The premise left me intrigued, but there were just too many unanswered questions and I ended up lost.

• The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations by Minsoo Kang 3/5
Very much in an academic style, which works for some people and doesn't for others. I liked the gentle admonishment at the end, scolding the author for not really doing their due diligence. It did feel a little long, however.

• Come Home to Atropos by Steven Barnes 4/5
One of the few I liked! A darkly humorous ad about a beautiful Caribbean island full that has become the premier destination for the euthanasia of wealthy white people, in which the natives are only too happy to oblige.

• The Fine Print by Chinelo Onwualu 1/5
I barely even remember this one. The love of the father for his son was nice.

• unkind of mercy by Alex Jennings 2/5
A kind of confusing kind of ghost story.

• Burn the Ships by Alberto Yáñez 4/5
Another good one: the colonized and oppressed natives of a land finally rises up against their colonizers (who have literally burned their own ships so they cannot leave!) with hints of a dark god who demands their lives.

• The Freedom of the Shifting Sea by Jaymee Goh 2/5
I'm not sure how I feel about this one... I like the idea of an atypical mermaid, but the interplay beneath her relationship with all the members of the family was very strange to me.

• Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire by E. Lily Yu 3/5
Some retellings of The Emperor's New Clothes, with a nice twist at the end.

• Blood and Bells by Karin Lowachee 2/5
A kind of star-crossed romance gangster story in some kind of violent future city, narrated in slang. Another example of a father's love for their child.

• Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 3/5
Just long enough to tease you with the dark possibilities.

• The Shadow We Cast Through Time by Indrapramit Das 3/5
Another one that seemed a little too long, about a settled planet that is populated by demons who take human bodies sometimes. Surprisingly little happens.

• The Robots of Eden by Anil Menon 3/5
A "slice of life" story of a man finalizing a divorce while maintaining a friendship with his ex-wife's new husband, in a world where the privileged are "Enchanced" against certain negative emotions (...I think). The hints of strong emotions (rage, sorrow) trying to bubble up in the main character were well done, as was the difficulty of their daughter's adjustment.

• Dumb House by Andrea Hairston 1/5
This seemed like an excerpt from a larger story - there were pre-established settings and characters and attitudes that were never fully accessible to me. And nothing much happens.

• One Easy Trick by Hiromi Goto 2/5
Not terrible, but not for me. A woman loses her belly fat in the woods, and is lectured by a bear about how she doesn't deserve it back.

• Harvest by Rebecca Roanhorse 2/5
I wanted to like this one...! It's incredibly dark and melancholy, but maybe it was just too short to properly draw me in.

• Kelsey and the Burdened Breath by Darcie Little Badger
I have to admit, I was so ready to be done with this collection I didn't even read this one...

It's really a 2 star average, but just barely, so I don't feel bad rounding down to 1.

Abandoned at the halfway point. I love the idea of the central premise but too many incoherently portrayed characters make it so I cannot force myself to turn another page. Reading through other online reviews I see I am not the only one with this reaction.

It's a collection and like all, some of the stories are better than others. These were all good, but I particularly enjoyed "Blood and Bells," by Karin Lowachee. Hopefully you'll find something you like as well.

Short, helpful rundown of the basics.

A fun collection of short stories.
Very eclectic.

Dang, this is a great collection! Tons of really great work here, highly recommended.

I was very disappointed with this book. The only reason I finished it is because I had it as an audiobook and automatically listened whenever I was walking my dogs. I'm pleased to say Alyson Johnson does a masterful job of reading the book but it's hard to elicit excitement in tense scenes that are bogged down with useless details and characters I was never invested in.

Basically the premise is brilliant and exciting, but the delivery is dull.

Steampunk? Mmm, sure there are steampunk elements, and at times they even come to the forefront, but overall the steampunk aspect was not interesting or exciting, and this despite one POV character having a literal kink over machines. And steampunk authors, can we agree to use real words? If you are going to say bicycle, car, dirigible, etc, then let's call a watch a watch. A "repeater" is a gun and I was often confused by characters checking their guns, only to realize they were checking the time.

POV: so many POVs. Too many. One of three things happened in each POV scene - I was bored/it was unnecessary, it cut away just as it was getting interesting, or the interesting part climaxed and then I listened through a boring petering out of the scene into trivial moments.

Characters: too many POV characters, poorly fleshed out such that I was invested in maybe 2 out of what felt like dozens.

Structure: years pass between scenes, huge, actually interesting events happen in the background, and then the reader struggles to sort through what's going on. With so many POV one would think a lot of exciting things would happen, but this book seems to focus more on the ground level banalities of building a country. I personally think the lives of country builders can be interesting despite the slow toil (Hamilton has recently proven that) but the tone of this book is dull and overfull with pointless details that drag it to a crawl. Chopping half the view points and half the scenes might have made the book sleeker and more interesting. I looked up the author and she appears to be well known for short stories. The piecemeal structure of the book does make me wonder if the author's strength lies in shorter fiction and I am interested in reading her short stories.

Characters: as I said, too many. Too many POV. Get a tiny bit invested only to be yanked to another scene and come back months or years later to try to reestablish some rapport.

Relationships: whoo. Um, for a book with multiple queer and mixed race relationships, I was really unhappy with nearly all of them. Usually avoiding the white, cishet couple relationships sets you up for my overwhelming joy. Nope. A complete lack of communication kept one couple apart nearly the whole book. Nearly all relationships had huge age gaps of decades. (Hi there author's kink - what's up?) A character died to elicit man pain, only for the angsting character to later creepily propose to a sister off screen. Didn't outright hate any of them, just found them eye brow raising and couldn't invest. Lots of polygamy, which, whatever, but hey, funny how polygamy is always one man and lots of wives. Weird... After much review I liked maybe one relationship, but the constant reference to "favorite wife" annoyed me even within that relationship. She was awesome and should have had 10 husbands and taken over the country.

History: well, it is an alt-hist. If you're unaware of what was going on at the time in our history you are going to be confused. I do love, love, love the premise, but as I said, the execution left me cold.

Right to the bitter end I would be happy about some resolution, then the writing would go on too long, slow, and dull and I would end up bored again. If you want an alt-hist that doesn't take place in Europe (for the majority) , and has some steampunk, some religion, and some fantasy elements, ta da! But, it's still very Euro-centric (they're fighting with Europe in one way or another the whole time.) Of course, Europe sticks their nose in everything, so you really can't avoid them in a lot of alt-histories based on recent times.