February is a short month, and I was traveling for a good chunk of it, so my blog and my reading were a bit quieter than usual. Does this mean I have nothing to recommend? Absolutely not! Let’s take a look at what I read and reviewed this month!

Short Fiction

February Favorites

As always, I reviewed Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus, and I also posted another entry in my Magazine Minis. Both had a favorites-worthy entry, so don’t miss “Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents” or “Jackie and Xīng Forever.” I also won’t be including stories from my read of The Map of Lost Places, which will get a standalone review at some point in the next few weeks, but keep an eye out for “Codewalker” by G.M. Paniccia, which I liked a lot. But those weren’t the only ones worth sharing:

• You Will Be You Again (2024 short story) by Angela Liu. At first glance, this is a wildly disorienting dementia story that’s a bit chaotic on the whole but has some powerful individual scenes. But a closer look reveals connections that paint a much more cohesive and sinister picture and send this shooting up my favorites list. I’ve got to reread this (again) before Hugo nominations are due.
• Rembrandt, graffiti, and the strange disappearance of ducks (2024 short story) by C.H. Irons. A graffiti enthusiast in a high-tech society travels the city trying to find the pattern behind a series of unexplained artwork and its underlying encryption. Meanwhile, small asides feature compact pleas for an unnamed reader to come home. A couple elements of the encryption gave me pause, but there’s a touching interpersonal story here with well-paced revelations to give the plot some structure–on the whole, I liked this a lot.
• What Becomes of Curious Minds (2024 short story) by Wen-yi Lee. Not tonally an Alice in Wonderland story so much as borrowing the worldbuilding to tell a darker story of the lone human in Wonderland, passing along tales of a world he only knows through his mother’s stories, secure in his status as Storyteller. . . until another human arrives. Well-paced, with a great job digging into the lead’s complicated emotions.

Others I Enjoyed in February

It’s a short list because I had a few hard misses that I’m not reviewing here, and I did a lot of reading in The Map of Lost Places which will be reviewed elsewhere. But there are still a few!

• Rachel is at a Protest (2024 short story) by Esther Alter. A deeply thematic story of a Jewish trans woman reckoning with the horrors in Gaza, all the while fighting off dreams of the Holocaust that leave her with literal bruises (and worse). Wanted a bit more from the ending, but this one is messy and emotionally intense.
• The Trauma Tourist (2024 short story) by Christos Callow Jr. Another thematic story, of an actor living traumas in virtual reality in order to authentically represent characters from oppressed groups. There’s a lot of meditation on cultural appropriate and a fair bit of plot-related punch as well.
• Kopki and the Fish (2024 short story) by Alex Irvine. Firmly in the folktale style, in which the lead repeatedly tries to fill a seemingly impossible demand from a tyrant who could easily take out his petty angers on the lead’s family.

Novels and Novellas

Reviews Posted

• Mechanize My Hands to War (2024 novel) by Erin K. Wagner. A near-future sci-fi about the effects of android labor on law enforcement and blue-collar labor, with ten different chapters featuring different POV characters that almost feel like short stories in their own right, but all orbiting around a central event. This one was very up my alley and definitely deserves more attention.

Other February Reads

• The Martian Contingency (2025 novel) by Mary Robinette Kowal. Another entry in the award-winning Lady Astronaut series plays the hits but doesn’t maintain the tension quite as well as the previous book. Full review to come.
• A Drop of Corruption (2025 novel) by Robert Jackson Bennett. If you liked The Tainted Cup, it’s hard to imagine not liking this one. In some ways more of the same, but with a new plot that reveals more about the world and keeps the story fresh. Full review to come.
• Ancillary Justice (2013 novel) by Ann Leckie. An entertaining, readable space opera that doesn’t feel quite as groundbreaking as it’s reputed to be. May have suffered from me not reading it in 2013. Full review to come.
• Black Sun Rising (1991 novel) by C.S. Friedman. A chunky 90s fantasy quest to defeat a Big Bad. Reasonably well-told, but I’ve lost my taste for the quest structure since the 90s. Full review to come.

DNFs

• In Universes (2024 novel) by Emet North. 50% read. A fascinating concept, where each new chapter sends the lead into a parallel universe in which they did something slightly differently, but one that never emotionally engaged me. I have friends who felt extremely emotionally engaged, and some of this may be that I don’t have personal experience with gender dysphoria or pining after people of my own gender in a homophobic society. It could also be that prose is a black box, and a style that hits for some will often miss for others–after all, there were chapters where the setup felt very, very relatable that still didn’t grab me. At any rate, this is a non-judgmental DNF. I can see the quality, but it wasn’t clicking me for whatever reason, so I put it down. It may well be a huge hit for others. If the blurb interests you, I’d strongly recommend reading the first two chapters, which should be a good barometer for enjoyment of the book as a whole.

SPSFC

There was a bit of off-page drama leading to my team’s quarterfinalist group dropping to just two entries. I have personally reviewed both A Swift and Sudden Exit and Time of the Cat. Expect full team reviews of both–and possibly an escape pod choice borrowed from another team–sometime this month.