Version française ici : https://blog.pasithee.fr/2020/02/02/#balisebooks—janvier-2020/

Permafrost – Alastair Reynolds

The base story of Permafrost is about a group of people who travel in time from the future, trying to fix a past catastrophe so that they have a chance to survive – because in their time, humanity is literally starving to death. They travel through time in a somewhat “Quantum Leap-y” way: “hosts” are identified in the past, and get to be controlled by the time travelers for some amount of time.

It is, generally speaking, a good story. But it did get pretty messy at time, and I think I would have liked a little more hand-holding. The amount of twists and turns in such a short story was, however, absolutely delightful. At less than 200 pages, it apparently counts more as a “novella” than as a novel – I think I may have preferred a slightly longer form; but as it is, it was a pretty neat way of spending a few hours still – very hard to put down, that’s for sure 🙂

Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik

It’s fairly rare that I finish reading a book more than two months after starting it… because usually, it means that I gave up on it rather than taking more time to read it. For Spinning Silver, I knew I wanted to finish it; I also knew I didn’t necessarily have the right mindset to finish it fast (I’m starting to get better at knowing whether a book is “not for me” or “not for me this week” 🙂 )

Spinning Silver revolves around three young women. Miryem comes from a family of moneylenders; she decides to take things in her own hands when understanding her father’s inability to collect debts (which, for a moneylender, would be problematic, I suppose). She gets helped by Wanda, who repays her father debts by working for Miryem’s family. Miryem attracts the attention of the Staryk king – local ice realm boogeyman – who challenges her to change his silver to gold. And said Staryk silver ends up in Irina’s possession – a small duke’s daughter, who’ll end up marrying the tsar, who may have a secret of his own.

The pacing of the novel is pretty slow, but the telling is very vivid (my “brain imagery” is quite detailed), the language is beautiful, and I just don’t see anything I didn’t like in this book. Very highly recommended.

Trade Me – Courtney Milan

My Twitter got a high amount of content about the Romance Writers of America association leadership recently, and a side effect of that was that it made me aware of Courtney Milan. Courtney Milan writes romance, and she’s also the initial author of the Jurassic Emoji proposal (thanks to which we eventually got the 🦕 and 🦖 emoji :D) Long story short, since Twitter is apparently my way of discovering romance authors, I started reading Trade Me.

The premise of the story is not suuuuper-believable – Tina and Blake go to the same university; Blake is the billionaire son (and heir) of the head of a large tech company; Tina is juggling with her studies, her work, and trying to make ends meet for both her and her family. And they end up making a bet, where they’d exchange their lives for a few months, to see how it goes, and maybe revisit their prejudices. We learn more about Tina, Blake, and his father, as the relationship between Tina and Blake blossoms.

And, while I don’t 100% buy the premise, the setting is quite credible and well-documented. I also liked the interactions between the characters, including their baggage and the way they handle it – and all in all I really, really liked that book – there’s a few other in the series and I’ll probably read them soon 🙂

Planetfall – Emma Newman

Renata is one of the founders and 3D printer engineer of a small colony on a distant planet. The life there seems pretty well organized, the colony has a real community sense, tech and biotech make things work in a believable way. Until one day, a stranger arrives, which a/ shouldn’t really happen b/ is all the more confusing that he bears a strong resemblance to one of the other colony founders. And quite quickly, questions begin to arise, and secrets start to be revealed.

This is one of these books where you just have to let go of understanding everything at once – and just wait for the pieces of the puzzle to be added one by one. You may have some idea about said pieces of the puzzle, but it’s incredibly satisfying to see them added little by little. I will definitely read the other books set in the same world 🙂