Holiday Gift Guide: Books

Welcome to our annual Holiday Gift Guide, where the flock takes a break from our usual schedule to consider all the different things that the nerds in your life might appreciate for the holiday season this year. Today we'll talk about books and comics, with posts throughout the week on games, collectibles, movies and more.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Gift Edition) [Algonquin] (recommended by Joe)

Originally published in 2016, The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill is a Newbery Medal winning novel and it is an absolute delight (my review). I almost can't wait for my children to grow just old enough for me to read them this beautiful novel. Algonquin has recently published a new Gift Edition with a prequel story, new illustrations and a map. It's just lovely.

Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight [Subterranean Press] (recommended by Adri)
Aliette de Bodard is, thus far, the only author to reach the ballot for the Best Series Hugo with a series entirely developed in short fiction, for her Xuya universe of mindships, filial piety and Vietnamese culture in a far future spacefaring world (at least in the more recent stories - there is an entire earth-based mythology for Xuya as well). This collection brings together a range of Xuya tales, along with a couple of pieces - including an original new novella - from the Dominion of the Fallen world, featuring fallen angels and dragon gods in a post-apocalyptic Paris and explored in the trilogy starting with House of Shattered Wings.

Because this is a Subterranean Press book, it's a beautiful object, coming in a signed and numbered edition with a cover illustration by Maurizio Manzieri which really brings the aesthetics of Xuya to life. There still aren't many opportunities to pick up printed editions of the Xuya stories, and this selection would look gorgeous on any shelf, to dive into when it next makes an appearance on the Best Series ballot.

Dune: Deluxe edition [Ace] (recommended by Paul)
In November 2020, there will be a new screen version of Dune for the first time in nearly 20 years. If you have been waiting for a chance to finally read Dune in preparation for this movie release, have I got an edition for you. While the Folio Society version may be rather out of reach for a lot of buyers price wise, there is a new version of at a much more reasonable price point for readers both old and new to it: I present to you the deluxe version of Dune from Ace.

It’s a beautiful hardcover edition of one of my heart books, which I previously discussed here back in October. It has beautiful end papers, dust jacket, excellent binding, and a new and much clearer map of Arrakis than previous versions of Dune use. Readers and lovers of the novel can get a lasting and beautiful edition of the book. Readers who are new to the book can get a copy of the book in preparation for seeing the movie in an excellent edition that works for readers. Dune is a novel that really works best as a book (audio versions having real issues with its omniscient point of view) and this edition leans into that, using typography and layout to help make it clear who is speaking, thinking, and acting: no mean concession in this complex, complicated and wonderful book.

Zach-Like (recommended by Brian)
Reading Zach-Like by Zach Barth, you’re going to learn two things: Zachtronics isn’t a one-man affair, and the Zachtronics creative process creates a lot of cast-offs. If you’re not familiar with Zachtronics games, they make mostly puzzle programming games, the most popular being SpaceChem and Opus Magnum. They also, arguably, inspired Minecraft with a very early game called Infiniminer. Zach-Like shares some of the stories, diagrams, trials of these games, the rest of their published catalog, and lots of unpublished games as well. It’s a fascinating look at indie game development from a fairly niche studio that doesn’t necessarily want to fit in a niche.

Zach-Like is available through Steam in PDF form, and occasionally gets reprinted via crowdfunding.

Battle Angel Alita Vol. 1 by Yukito Kishiro (Recommended by Mike)

My family and I were very pleasantly surprised by Alita: Battle Angel this year and it left me with additional questions about the world that Alita inhabited. Fortunately this entire series is available on ComiXology Unlimited and my son and I were able to read all nine volumes. The story centers around Alita, a cyborg who is found in the dump in the scrapyards beneath Zalem (one of the last great floating cities). It is a quest for her to find her identity and for her friends to make peace with their own personal demons associated with living in as a second class citizen with no hope of upward mobility. The action sequences in this book are phenomenal, but the world building and character development are where this series shines. It can be hyper-violent at times, but it never felt unnecessary or graphic. If you enjoyed the film or are looking for an interesting post-apocalyptic tale I suggest you check this title out.

The NASA Archives: 60 Years in Space (Recommended by Joe)
Covering 60 Years of the United States space program and including more than 400 photographs, this may be the coffee table book of all coffee table books for the space enthusiast who wants to see how it all came together. A collector's item.

Posted by: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy. 

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Bacigalupi, Paolo, & Tobias S. Buckell. The Tangled Land [Saga Press]
Publisher's Description:

From award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell comes a fantasy novel told in four parts about a land crippled by the use of magic, and a tyrant who is trying to rebuild an empire—unless the people find a way to resist.

Khaim, The Blue City, is the last remaining city in a crumbled empire that overly relied upon magic until it became toxic. It is run by a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor and his devious right hand, the last archmage in the world. Together they try to collect all the magic for themselves so they can control the citizens of the city. But when their decadence reaches new heights and begins to destroy the environment, the people stage an uprising to stop them.

In four interrelated parts, The Tangled Lands is an evocative and epic story of resistance and heroic sacrifice in the twisted remains surrounding the last great city of Khaim. Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell have created a fantasy for our times about a decadent and rotting empire facing environmental collapse from within—and yet hope emerges from unlikely places with women warriors and alchemical solutions. 

Why We Want It: I've had copies of the linked novellas The Alchemist (Bacigalupi) and The Executioness (Buckell) on my shelf for a number of years without ever having cracked either cover for no good reason that I can understand. I've been a big fan of Buckell's work since discovering Crystal Rain ten years ago, so I'm always excited to see something with his name on the cover. The Tangled Land pulls together the two previously mentioned novellas with two additional ones to weave together a larger epic story. Now is the time to finally dive into this world.

Barnhill, Kelly. Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories [Algonquin]  
Publisher's Description:

A stunning new collection of short fictions for adult readers from the World Fantasy Award– and Newbery Medal–winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Kelly Barnhill comes a stunning first collection of acclaimed short fictions, teeming with uncanny characters whose stories unfold in worlds at once strikingly human and eerily original.

When Mrs. Sorensen’s husband dies, she rekindles a long-dormant love with an unsuitable mate in “Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch.” In “Open the Door and the Light Pours Through,” a young man wrestles with grief and his sexuality in an exchange of letters with his faraway beloved. “Dreadful Young Ladies” demonstrates the strength and power—known and unknown—of the imagination. “The Insect and the Astronomer” upends expectations about good and bad, knowledge and ignorance, love and longing. The World Fantasy Award–winning novella The Unlicensed Magician introduces the secret, magical life of an invisible girl once left for dead.

By an author hailed as “a fantasist on the order of Neil Gaiman” (Minneapolis Star Tribune), the stories in Dreadful Young Ladies feature bold, reality-bending fantasy underscored by rich universal themes of love, death, jealousy, and hope.  

Why We Want It: We loved Kelly Barnhill's Newbery Medal winning novel The Girl Who Drank the Moon (my review) and pretty much everything else Barnhill has written. I nominated Barnhill's story "Mrs Sorensen and the Sasquatch" for the Hugo back in 2015, but alas, it did not make the final ballot. I've been enjoying her short fiction for years, so this collection will be a delight.  It also includes The Unlicensed Magician (my review), so if you haven't had the chance to discover Sparrow, The Junk Man, or Marla the Egg Woman yet, you're in for a treat.

Bujold, Lois McMaster. Penric's Fox [Subterranean Press]
Publisher's Description

With Penric's Fox, multiple-award-winner and bestselling author Lois McMaster Bujold returns to her World of the Five Gods, the setting of her acclaimed novels The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt. Continuing the tale begun in the novellas “Penric’s Demon, “Penric and the Shaman,” and "Penric's Mission," Bujold’s newest installment of Penric and Desdemona’s tale is another must-read novella for her legion of fans.

Some eight months after the events of Penric and the Shaman, Learned Penric, sorcerer and scholar, travels to Easthome, the capital of the Weald. There he again meets his friends Shaman Inglis and Locator Oswyl. When the body of a sorceress is found in the woods, Oswyl draws him into another investigation; they must all work together to uncover a mystery mixing magic, murder and the strange realities of Temple demons. 

Why We Want It: At this point we don't have to say much more than "Lois McMaster Bujold" to get you to pick up a book, do we? Bujold's Penric novellas are bite sized delights and I'm quite looking forward to more.
 

Burke, Sue. Semiosis [Tor]  
Publisher's Description

Human survival hinges on an bizarre alliance in Semiosis, a character driven science fiction novel of first contact by debut author Sue Burke. 

Colonists from Earth wanted the perfect home, but they’ll have to survive on the one they found. They don’t realize another life form watches...and waits... Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that humans are more than tools. 

Why We Want It: I've long loved novels of colonies and discovery across generations.  Semiosis continues to pop up on our radar and as this is a generational novel of a human colony struggling to survive on another world, it's exactly the novel I'm looking for. Semiosis should be an impressive debut.

Stross, Charles. Dark State [Tor] 
Publisher's Description

Hugo Award-winning author Charlie Stross dives deep into the underbelly of paratime espionage, nuclear warfare, and state surveillance in this provocative techno-thriller set in The Merchant Princes multi-verse 

Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in the sleek techno-thriller Empire Games, the start to Stross' new story-line, and perfect entry point for new readers, in The Merchant Princes series.

In the near-future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, is imminent. In Commissioner Miriam Burgeson’s timeline, her top level agents run a high risk extraction of a major political player. Meanwhile, a sleeper cell activated in Rita's, the Commissioner's adopted daughter and newly-minted spy, timeline threatens to unravel everything.

With a penchant for intricate world-building and an uncanny ability to realize alternate history and technological speculation, Stross' writing will captivate any reader who's a fan hi-tech thrillers, inter-dimensional political intrigue, and espionage.  

Why We Want It: Empire Games (my review) was perhaps the strongest of Stross's parallel universe hopping Merchant Princes novels filled with political intrigue. I didn't love it without reservations, but I frequently find myself coming back and thinking about the details and how things fit together. I'm hoping for more of Dark State to be set in Miriam's timeline since Empire Games skimped on that a bit, but I've got this sitting on the nightstand next to my bed and I anticipating cracking this one open very soon.
 

Wexler, Django. The Infernal Battalion [Ace] 
Publisher's Description

Military might and arcane power clash in Django Wexler’s thrilling new Shadow Campaigns novel. 

The Beast, the ancient demon imprisoned beneath the fortress-city of Elysium for a thousand years, has been loosed on the world. It absorbs mind after mind, spreading like a plague through the north. The fell army it has raised threatens the heart of Vordan, and it is under the command of the Beast’s greatest prize: legendary general Janus bet Vhalnich.

As Queen Raesinia Orboan and soldiers Marcus D’Ivoire and Winter Ihernglass grapple with the aftermath of a hard-fought military campaign, they soon discover a betrayal they never could have foreseen. The news arrives like a thunderbolt: Janus has declared himself the rightful Emperor of Vordan. Chaos grips the city as officers and regiments are forced to declare for queen or emperor.

Raesinia must struggle to keep her country under control and risks becoming everything she fought against. Marcus must take the field against his old commander, a man who has seemed an unbeatable strategist. And as Winter recovers from her injuries and mourns her losses, she knows the demon she carries inside her might be the only thing standing between the Beast and the destruction of everything in its path…. 

Why We Want It: We here at Nerds of a Feather have long been fan of Django Wexler's Shadow Campaigns, especially The G, so you know we're looking forward to this fifth volume. 


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Writer / Editor of the mostly defunct Adventures in Reading since 2004. Minnesotan.

Microreview [book]: The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill

This Newbery Medal winning novel is a triumph.

Imagine a town nestled just on the edge of a forest. The town is frequently enveloped in a persistent fog. The forest is dangerous and said to be haunted by a witch. Every year the Elders of that town come to collect the youngest child born that year to bring into the forest as tribute and sacrifice to the evil witch who lives in the dark and dangerous forest. Those Elders know there is no witch, but the sacrifices serve to keep the townspeople in line.

What the Elders don't know is there is a witch who lives in the forest. Her name is Xan and even though she doesn't understand why the townspeople abandon a child in the forest on the same day every year, she rescues that child and finds a safe and loving home somewhere the infant won't be found.

This is background, these are the broadest strokes Kelly Barnhill uses to shape the world of The Girl Who Drank the Moon. This is how she sets up the story of Luna, one of the sacrifices rescued by Xan, but because Luna is imbued with an abundance of magic, Xan chooses to raise Luna herself. Xan doesn't raise Luna alone, though. There is a kind Swamp Monster named Glerk who may be far more than appearances suggest. There is also a Perfectly Tiny Dragon named Fyrian.

Fyrian is a charming dragon who is small enough to fit in one's pocket, but somehow thinks he is a Simply Enormous Dragon living in a land of giants because nobody would ever lie to him. Fyrian is destined to enter the canon of the great dragons of literature. There is so much to love in The Girl Who Drank the Moon, but Fyrian is a remarkable creation filled with charm, humor, grace, wonder, and delight.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon swept me away with charm and heartbreak and love and loss and oppression and the courage to stand up against it. Kelly Barnhill has a lot to say about institutional evil and the power in being a single voice standing up against it (and that how a series of single voices can become a chorus, though the analogy doesn't stretch much farther than that). She's just telling it through a framework of magic and wonder and the framework of a story we're pretty sure we've read before realizing we haven't read anything quite like this.

Have I mentioned the Fyrian, the Perfectly Tiny Dragon?

On January 23, The Girl Who Drank the Moon was awarded the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award given for children's literature. Receiving the Newbery has nothing to do with my commentary on the novel, but it was something I wanted to note here. It's a significant award. It's a big deal.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for Fyrian. Fyrian is everything.

Penalties: Nope.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 "Very High Quality / Standout in its Category". 
See more about our scoring system here.


Reference: Barnhill, Kelly. The Girl Who Drank the Moon. [Algonquin, 2016]

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004. Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015, editor since 2016. Minnesotan.    

Microreview [book]: The Unlicensed Magician by Kelly Barnhill

Sparrow! The Junk Man! Marla the Egg Woman!

Cover Art by Ben Baldwin

One thing I wondered about The Unlicensed Magician only after I finished reading the book and my heart finished soaring, is if the title of the book is "The Unlicensed Magician" - are there actually licensed magicians? This is not a question Kelly Barnhill elects to answer in her novella, unless the answer is "well, the Minister, obviously," but this is also a question that one probably doesn't need to dwell on for very long.

What we should dwell on is the story of Sparrow, a teenaged girl who almost nobody in the world can actually see or remember unless she chooses to let that person see. Even then, they are unlikely to remember, but that's a good thing because Sparrow is magic and in this world, magic is forbidden.

There were twenty magical children born that year. Nineteen, if you count the one that died. The Minister ordered that the nineteen children be shipped to the Tower to be worked and drained to nothing, and that the dead child be thrown on the rubbish heap, and never spoken of again. But the dead baby had other plans. When the half-drunk junk man witnesses the half-decayed corpse becoming a living, breathing, healthy baby, he knows at once that he must protect the child from the clutches of the Minister. Enlisting the help of the formidable egg woman and the sagacious constable, he manages to keep the existence of the child a secret.

But children grow. And so does magic. And secrets long to be told. 

If you've read any of Kelly Barnhill's previous fiction like her YA novel Iron Hearted Violet or her short story "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch", you have come to expect a certain amount of charm all wrapped up in a fantastically well told story and The Unlicensed Magician has both in spades. The most important characters all have names like Sparrow, The Junk Man, Marla the Egg Woman, The Constable, and The Minister. Their names are easy descriptions, but they're not facile. There is remarkable and painful depth to each of these characters.

That bit with The Minister acquiring and draining the magical children, it's been going on for a long, long time and there are some far reaching consequences that range from the structural in the city down to the oh so deeply personal. Barnhill doles out the personal histories in small bites, but each one resonates and each one hurts. Some things you just don't get over.

The Unlicensed Magician is a smoothly affecting novella told in alternating chapters of the present day with Sparrow and her looming confrontation with the Minister (not a spoiler, this is so obviously the storyline from the start) and the past with The Junk Man finding a living dead baby on a pile of trash. Barnhill compels the reader to smile through the heartbreak, cheer for bold heroism and defiance, and celebrate victories which come with a heavy cost. The Unlicensed Magician is a delight and a treasure.

Before we close, let's take one more look at Ben Baldwin's full wraparound art because, well, just look at it.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: + for how perfectly drawn each of the characters are.

Penalties: -1 because sometimes the prose is a touch on the spare side.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 "a mostly enjoyable experience" See more about our scoring system here.


Reference: Barnhill, Kelly. The Unlicensed Magician [PS Publishing, 2015]


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004. Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015, editor since 2016. Minnesotan.