Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

 

Who here doesn’t know about Chuck Tingle? Author of dinosaur erotica, unwitting target of the Rabid Puppies who turned their own hate against them, he is a neurodivergent pink-masked beacon of hope who preaches that love is love. I excitedly read Camp Damascus, his first traditionally published novel last year, and really enjoyed it! It was a tad rough in spots but the story and the message outweighed any minor issues. I loved his second traditionally published novel, Bury Your Gays, even more! Lucky Day was not my favorite, but there was still alot to like there. 

So I was very excited when NetGalley and the publisher gave me an ARC of his new book, Fabulous Bodies, in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was a lot of fun! The book starts out creepily enough- the protagonist is a social media influencer who supplements her income by stealing dead bodies from morgues and delivering them to whoever wants them. Honestly, I think I found the content creation stuff more disturbing than the corpse thievery, personally. 

Early on in the book, she gets an offer for millions of dollars to steal the body of her recently deceased rockstar icon, but it turns out that he’s not really dead. He uses his mind control to force her to accompany him on a killing spree which is as gorily creative as it is brutal. 

Maybe others will have seen the third act twist coming a mile away, but I was totally surprised by it in a very pleasant way. I enjoyed the resolution and thought this was a really fun horror book. Can’t wait to see what Mr. Tingle comes up with next!

The Captain’s Daughter by Peter F. Hamilton

Years ago, back when I finished reviewing the Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton, I said that I looking forward to trying his next series. And I was so right! About 5 years ago I got an audio advanced reader copy of A Hole in the Sky and it was fantastic! I have always loved Hamilton’s space opera, and I love a good generation ship story, and this was so much fun! 

I recently got an eARC of the second book in the series and it was just as good! This book really ramped up the action and solved some of the mysteries in this generation ship story, but it left plenty of things to be resolved in the final installment. 

I realized that I enjoy Mr. Hamilton’s YA mode a lot in this book. Some of his earlier works have some squicky sex stuff but there’s none of that here. 

I can heartily recommend this but would suggest you read the first book first. I am very much looking forward to the final book and everything else Mr. Hamilton chooses to write. 

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

This book was magnificent. I had never heard of Isabel J. Kim before the Hugo nominations came out last year, but I really enjoyed her nominated short story "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole". It was clever and well written and I enjoy works in conversation with other works like that. I also thought she was a witty and engaging panelist when I saw her at Worldcon and I resolved to look out for her work in the future. 

Sublimation is her debut novel, and I was excited to get an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It is set in a world in which people can split into two versions when they cross a border, like when they emigrate. The protagonists are Korean - one split when her mother moved them to America when she was a child, leaving copies of themselves in South Korea, and the other is her childhood friend who split in college. 

The world building is fascinating. The author includes tidbits about how, in this world, the Odyssey and the Book of Genesis are different because Odysseus left behind a duplicate when he went to Troy and Adam and Eve left behind copies of themselves in the Garden of Eden. 

This book did not always go where I expected. Corporate espionage and tech bro jerks were far more important to the plot than I had anticipated, but everything proceeded logically from the world building. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. 

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Audiobook)

I have been so excited for this book and it did not disappoint!

I first encountered Naomi Kritzer’s writing when her short story “Cat Pictures, Please” was nominated (and later won) the Hugo Award. It was just delightful in every way and I cannot recommend it enough. It’s about a benevolent artificial intelligence that just wants to help people and to look at pictures of cats. This story was included in a short story collection after it won, Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories, and I enjoyed that collection very much. 

Later, Ms. Kritzer took this premise and turned it into the award winning Catfishing on Catnet, in which the AI hangs out with a bunch of teens in a chat room and helps out when the protagonist is pursued by her stalker of a father.  It was a delight and deserved every award it won. (And more!) I also very much enjoyed the sequel, Chaos on Catnet, and her more recent book, Liberty’s Daughter. 

So of course, when I went to Worldcon for the first time this past summer and I saw that Ms. Kritzer was reading from a new upcoming work, I had to be there! She read from this book, Obstetrix, which is set in a not too distant future in which an obstetrician is kidnapped by a cult. I couldn’t want to read the rest of it, so I was so thrilled when Tor and NetGalley approved me for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

It did not disappoint. Once again, the author creates an immersive world with believable characters that make you unable to stop turning the pages. You really feel you are there, captive, with the protagonist, and you share her creeping dread.

I predict this book will be on the Hugo ballot next year - it’ll certainly be on mine!

I listened to this audiobook at 2x speed. 

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey

This book was just horrible (in the best way possible!) 

I think I first became aware of Sarah Gailey’s work when I read about their hippo riders in a review on tor dot com and thought “that sounds super fun!”  It was super fun, and after devouring River of Teeth and Taste of Marrow, I have always looked for new works by this author. I loved Magic For Liars and the Echo Wife, and Just Like Home was terrifying in a wonderful way. Last year’s Spread Me was also quite enjoyable horror in a sexy John Carpenter’sThe Thing kind of way. 

I was intrigued when I got their new book Make Me Better from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I enjoyed it but I wished there had been content warnings for pregnancy loss and dead babies. 

This book was so so so so creepy in a looming eldritch horror way where you’re not sure if the way humans treat each other is actually the scariest thing in the world. 

It follows Celia, a woman lost in her life, as she goes to an island cult to try to find herself and a friend who had used to live on the island. 

The book is intricately constructed with multiple timelines and some truly monstrous characters. Every time I turned a page I hoped that characters would realize what was going on and get out of their terrible situations. 

This wasn’t an easy read but I’m very glad I read it. 

Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis

I often request books from NetGalley based on the positive buzz I see on blue sky. So when a number of authors that I like started talking about this book, I thought to myself: hey, I should check this out. I enjoy a good fairytale retelling and I enjoy mermaids so why not? Sadly, after finishing this book, I failed to see what all of the hype was about. I found this book profoundly boring. The book is told from the perspective of a princess who is the granddaughter of Ariel (you know, the little mermaid) and her bodyguard/love interest. The fact that both are women is practically meaningless because neither of them has any character to speak of. It’s hard to imagine how the book would’ve been different if either or Both of them had been men (or cardboard boxes). The visit to the underwater realm was not interesting. The Struggle for power made me question why I cared whether the protagonist succeeded or failed. The answer ended up being that I did not care in the slightest. I wish I knew what everyone else kept seeing in this book. It was well written on a sentence and paragraph level, don’t get me wrong. But I just did not like the story.

The Many by Sylvain Neuvel

 

I remember picking up Sylvain Neuvel’s first book Sleeping Giants, from the library when it came out. The format was interesting (it was practically an epistolary novel) and I love giant robots, so I enjoyed it quite a bit, but as the series went on, it felt staler and I enjoyed the conclusion less than I enjoyed the initial mysteries. I never ended picking up his second trilogy, but I was intrigued enough by the concept of his new standalone novel The Many to request it on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

(By the way, I despise the title. No one will pick this book up based on the title alone). 

This book is an interesting twist on the zombie pandemic - a tick bite makes a woman bite people and who she bites she mind merges with. Whoever they bite merge minds with them ending in a Borg- like collective consciousness. 

I really liked some things about this book - the idea that people with merged minds would be obsessed with sex because they were sharing orgasms makes perfect sense, and the autistic police officer character was very well handled. But it is clear that this author doesn’t know any Jewish people in real life - his Jewish doctor character is full of unpleasant stereotypes and she also refers to the house of worship as a “church” which is laughably wrong as well as offensive. 

But problems aside, this book was a real page turner - I couldn’t put it down even when I should’ve been reading something else. It’ll be an excellent beach read or airport book (in the best possible ways).