Reading along with the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize shortlist

Sift – Alissa Hattman

Let’s start with the only one I didn’t read, because I couldn’t get my hands on it. It’s published by the tiny independent The 3rd Thing Press, manned by 3 volunteers (including the eventual prize winner), and the shipping costs were just too much for me (added on to the book and other international taxes). I’ll keep looking out for it, though; perhaps I can find it some day and fully complete this readalong!

Synopsis of the book: “Two women set out through the haze of social and environmental collapse in search of fertile soil. As they travel through deserts, burned-over forests, and lightless mountain caverns, they learn to navigate the terrain of their evolving connection. An invocation, an elegy, a postcard home, Sift is a story about family wounds, humanity’s failures, how to care for one another at the end, and how to make a new beginning.”

The Siege of Burning Grass – Premee Mohamed (2.5 stars out of 5)

An imprisoned anti-war activist is given the option to accompany a soldier for a secret mission to perhaps end the eternal war raging between their country and the neighbouring one. A fantastic concept – is going along on such a mission not already a betrayal of anti-war principles? – and complicated, interesting main characters, but somehow this book just kept fizzling for me. Like the war, the story dragged on, to me. Still, there are some wonderfully inventive magic systems in place, and of course the central principle could keep a discussion going long into the night.

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over – Anne De Marcken (3 stars)

A slim little story set in dystopian future Earth where the zombie apocalypse has happened, told from the point of view of a zombie. When you can’t die, how do you live? The main character describes her life as a zombie, from the mindless need for human flesh to a way of living without it, and living with, or at least along, human survivors somehow. I found it an odd and experimental book – probably too experimental for me. I do find myself thinking back on parts of it even now, however.

The Skin and Its Girl – Sarah Cypher (3.5 stars)

This is one for the literary fiction fans: recurring themes and symbols, a multi-generational family history, spans the world from Palestine to the West Coast of the USA. A baby is born with bright blue skin into a sprawling family displaced from their home in Nablus. A book full of women: the narrator, her mother, grandmother, and most importantly, her great-aunt. It’s told somewhat chaotically through family lore and folk tales, and has some truly amazing passages (most notably the titular chapter, as well as a surreal but probably true-to-life interrogation at the Israeli-Palestine border). Unfortunately I didn’t find anything terribly interesting about the narrator beyond her blue skin.

The Saint of Bright Doors – Vajra Chandrasekera (3.5 stars)

Not quite like anything I’ve read before; it starts out as fantasy, there’s magic, but the further you get in the story the more modern it gets, with computers and phones. I liked the main character, Fetter, as he struggles to escape his parentage. There are some wonderful ideas here: The Unchosen, a kind of support group for religious figures who didn’t quite make the cut; those bright doors of the title; Luriat, the big city he ends up in. At about 3/4 the story takes a turn that really slowed everything down for me, and at the very end there’s a change in perspective that is not exactly unexpected but also felt unnecessary to me. Still, a wondrous story. It won the 2024 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

The Library of Broken Worlds – Alaya Dawn Johnson (3.5 stars)

I find it hard to describe this book. It’s a sprawling and complex story about material gods, interstellar war, and atoning for mistakes. The library of the title is at the center of it all, and main character Freida is born into, and as part of, it. Her function is to destroy the god of war, and the story is told in flashbacks as they match wits. I found it incredibly complex; I really had to pay attention to figure out what was going on. I’m not sure I succeeded, but I sure was fascinated as I read it. Apparently this is considered Young Adult Fiction by publishers and awards, but to me this was Fantasy/Science Fiction of a high order. It won the 2024 BSFA Award for Best Fiction for Young Readers.

Mammoths at the Gates – Nghi Vo (4.25 stars)

The fourth book in the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo, a series of novellas I can heartily recommend (don’t worry, you can read them in any order you please). Cleric Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey for the first time in years after having collected stories from around the country, and finds it under siege after the head of the abbey has died and his granddaughters lay claim to him. Cleric Chih must try to find a way out of the impasse, and of course the best way to do this, according to them, is to tell and listen to stories. The cleric is just such lovely company, and their neixin companion Almost Brilliant also makes a welcome return (having been absent in the third book). I found it the most touching of all the Singing Hills Cycle books because of its major theme of grief and grieving. A beautiful book.

Orbital – Samantha Harvey (4.25 stars)

A gorgeous, dizzying little book. High above the Earth flies the International Space Station. Over the course of 24 hours it circles Earth 16 times, and its six astronauts conduct experiments, exercise, observe natural phenomena, celebrate, and grieve together. The writing is gorgeous, the characters distinct, the connections to the planet palpable. I found it a beautiful love letter to Earth, written from a distance just far enough to be objective and just close enough to feel like a hug. It won the 2024 Booker Prize.

Those Beyond the Wall – Micaiah Johnson (4.5 stars)

I really enjoyed Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, and this follow-up is just as good; a different, more focused, raging beast of a book.
The good news is that you don’t need to have read the first one to make any sense of this sequel. The story is mostly set in Ashtown, full of outcasts whose rough lives have formed a patchwork community living in prickly peace in a harsh environment. Not too far away is Wiley City, a walled enclave, climate-controlled, money-rich, entitled. (Subtle this book is not.) When both communities are threatened by unexplained deaths, they must find ways to protect themselves, but how to do that with so many walls, physical and emotional, between them? I really liked how Johnson resolved this conflict, and I also really enjoyed her rough-and-tumble characters and setting.

Some Desperate Glory – Emily Tesh (4.5 stars)

This is a dystopian sci-fi centered around Kyr, star pupil of the military of the remaining human civilization living on a space station. She is an unpleasant character, hell-bent on seeking revenge for the destruction of humanity. And then… things shift, as her life’s path turns into something she was not expecting, and she has to deal with it. I absolutely scarfed up this book in one day (and it had been a long time since I’d done that). I loved the world-building, the themes, the characters (awful though some of them were), the very real choices Kyr had to make at every turn (and there were quite a few turns), and a lot more. Something that started out as straight-up military sci-fi turned into something else a whole lot more thought-provoking. It won the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Novel.