Everfair, by Nisi Shawl

Review copy provided by Tor Books.

The cover to this novel screams steampunk. The image, the articulated mechanical hand, the human hand, the globe: if you go into Nisi Shawl’s debut not expecting steampunk, you are just not paying attention. And yet it’s quite unexpected steampunk. It’s steampunk that has thought about where rubber comes from, who builds the steam-powered devices, who has access to them and who doesn’t. Who makes things work, who runs things, the dissatisfactions that arise when the two are not the same. This is steampunk with not just a thorough understanding of colonialism but a deep desire to engage with that colonialism.

Its African setting is perfect for that. If you’ve read things about Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries–about World War I in Africa, for example–you’ll be able to see the places where Shawl’s worldbuilding research really shines. The vast variability of Shawl’s characters’ backgrounds and beliefs is completely natural. It would–should–be utterly unremarkable–but instead, it’s ground-breaking. This book is fiercely tender with its history, unflinching and understanding with its characters’ contexts. The parts of the premise that are not literally true are emotionally true–of course utopianists of the late 19th century would behave exactly like that, look at how they did elsewhere and how fascinating to watch it play out in fiction in a different setting.

Does that mean it’s written like a treatise? Nope. It’s written like a thriller novel: short chapters, lots of action, lots of POV switching to cover the most perspective. With a plot that covers thirty years and people from four different continents, it takes a breakneck pace to get through everything that happens. There is no time to stop and lecture. Everything has to be folded into actual story or there will not be enough room for all the story there is here.

Everfair has all sorts of tags you can put on it that will sound like other things, but it is fundamentally not a heck of a lot like the other things with those tags. Steampunk, fantasy, sure, yes, yes it is. But even more its own thing on its own terms.

Please consider using our link to buy Everfair from Amazon.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Mighty Jack, by Ben Hatke

Review copy provided by First Second Books.

This is the first in a new Hatke series. For those who have enjoyed Zita the Spacegirl and stand-alone works like Little Robot and (my personal favorite) Julia’s House for Lost Creatures, a new Hatke book is reason to sit up and take notice–a new series perhaps doubly so.

Jack has a single mom struggling to make it all work and a sister–Maddy–who is substantially non-verbal. He wants to help more than he’s allowed to, and it’s all very frustrating. Until a bad trade at the flea market leaves him and Maddy with packets of fascinating alien seeds. Their new garden draws the attention of their sword-fighting neighbor, Lilly, who has ideas of her own about what to do with the creatures who come out of the ground.

Mighty Jack ends on a cliffhanger, and a lot of how I feel about the series will depend on how it’s resolved. So far everybody is doing their best, and everybody has sensible motivations that don’t always work well together. But it’s Jack’s story. How will Hatke keep that balance going? The cliffhanger has me in genuine suspense–how will he resolve it and how soon? It’s pretty rare that I’m not sure. But this time I really don’t know. I’m eager for the next volume, to find out.

Please consider using our link to buy Mighty Jack from Amazon.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux