Reading
I finished The Dissonance by Shaun Hamill late last week. It was good, but it didn’t dazzle me as much as his first novel, A Cosmology of Monsters. The magic system and worldbuilding in The Dissonance was really interesting. The author set up the possibility for a sequel in the end by leaving a lot of loose threads. If he writes one, I will probably read it.
I also finished the short story collection What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah. I first heard the titular short story on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast and I was intrigued. It’s a literary story that’s vaguely science fiction, which is something I didn’t think I’d like until I read it. I borrowed the collection from the library years ago and listened to it as an audiobook. I liked it so much I bought a cheap used hardcover online. These stories all held up extremely well for me on a reread, which makes me happy I bought it.
One of my reading goals this year is to reread a few of the books on my shelf that I haven’t touched in years to see if they still deserve a place in my personal library. Lesley Nneka Arimah passed this first test.
I was also able to read In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire, the fourth book in her Wayward Children series. This novella only took me a couple of hours to read. It isn’t the strongest novella in the series, but I really liked the world our main character Lundy gets transported to. The Goblin Market is such an interesting concept that I wish it was explored more in depth. This novella could have honestly been an entire novel.
I started two chunky books this week that I likely will not finish by next week. One is The Bear & The Serpent by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is the second book in his Echoes of the Fall series. I read The Tiger and The Wolf last year and liked it, but needed a break between the books. The world is so richly drawn in this series, and the writing takes a bit of patience to get through.
I also started Dangerous Women, a multi-genre anthology about, you guessed it, dangerous women. This collection is almost 800 pages long in a massive hardcover, and a lot of the stories feel novella-length, so I’m in no hurry to finish this book. I’ve read two of the stories so far, a western by Joe Abercrombie and a mystery by Megan Abbott. Both were excellent.
Writing
I’ve been neglecting the novel lately. I want to change that in the upcoming week. It’s been bouncing around in my head, of course, but I haven’t made any concrete progress on the outline, worldbuilding, or characters in almost two weeks.
I’ve been continuing to plow through the Magi story. It’s finally beginning to take shape. I should have the first draft done in the next few days. That will be followed by a few rounds of edits to polish it. It’s due at the end of the month, so I have some time yet.
The second part of my story about a recovering assassin in Jakarta was critiqued by my group today. A lot of criticism centered on what I chose to focus on in the narrative. All of the members of my critique group focused in on the same things, which tells me that this story will likely need to be heavily re-worked in order to make it better. No matter; this is why I get my stories critiqued. I want them to be the best they can possibly be.
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What have you been reading and/or writing this week? Let me know in the comments below.
The Night Bulletin 