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Hugh Likes Fiction: The City in Glass

February 5, 2025

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The City in Glass
Written by Nghi Vo

Published by TOR

The Skinny: Good Omens meets Sim City

Azril is a city known for its universities and its brothels, its festivals and its observatory, its merchants and its anchoresses. It is home to the demon Vitrine, who has built and shaped the city as she pleases for centuries. She is pleased with her project, until a quartet of angels come and destroy it in a single night. Left with nothing but the book of names in her heart, she curses them as the leave, leaving a piece of herself lodged in the last angel’s chest. And then they are left to consider what to do next.
The City in Glass is a book about recovery and revenge. It is a book about trauma and it is a book about love. Vo’s poetic, tightly worded prose brings a dead city to life as Vitrine wanders the ruins of her home, propelling the reader backwards and forwards in time with an immortal’s perspective as she sifts through the rubble and slowly rebuilds. Her sparring, circling affair with the angel who brought it all down is set against her memories of the city that was, with anecdotes of the artists, pirates, and refugees who had called the city home.
A novel written during the Pandemic Lockdown, Vo has poured grief, frustration, and a strange wicked fondness into her characters and her broken garnet of a city. While many of us were making our Animal Crossing: New Horizons islands, Vo created her own bustling port city only to tear it down with holy fire and start again. The story captures and personalizes the god’s eye view of a simulation city builder as Vitrine goes from changing the course of rivers and cleaning up bodies to planting flowers to choosing which citizens to favor and which to spurn. But Vitrine and the Angel are such fascinating characters and the city they are building is so vibrant that I never felt like I was watching someone else’s play-through. Vo pulled me in completely.
The City in Glass is a bloody jewel of a novel. It constantly surprised me with its capricious demon building and planning her wonder of a city as she danced through the streets and whirled closer and farther from the distraught Angel that pursued her. You can find it in print or ebook from the usual online sources, or from your local independent bookshop. Or, as Vitrine might suggest, your can get it at your local library. I highly recommend it.

Hugh Likes Fiction: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

November 6, 2024

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The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles

Written by Malka Older

Published by Tor

The Skinny: You seem like you might need something cozy right now.

The second novella in Malka Older’s ongoing series, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is a delightfully cozy mystery set in the post-Earth colonized world of Giant, née Jupiter. Pleity is Classical Scholar, who studies ancient texts to gather data about the lost biomes of Earth in an attempt to someday recreate them. Mossa is an investigator as well as her once and current romantic partner. They were thrown together again when Mossa’s investigations led her to Pleity’s University in search of a missing and presumed dead scholar in the first book in the series, The Mimicking of Known Successes.
The sequel finds Mossa once again calling on Pleity’s help,some time after their initial investigation, as she attempts to locate a missing student. They find no less than seventeen people have gone missing from the University across a number of different fields. Meanwhile, the previous investigation has shake Pleity’s faith in the organization and its methods. The pair travel not just the many linked artificial platforms orbiting Jupiter, but also to the moon of Io, Mossa’s home and the site of the first controversial Jovian settlement.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is as enchanting a novella as the first in the series with clever, deep world-building, a cast of lovable space communists, and just enough danger to keep things interesting. Fans will find much to love in this one, and while it spoils the ending of the first book, the opening serves to get new readers up to speed quickly.
Like the first book, the story is over too quickly. I would have loved a meatier, less straightforward mystery for them to solve, but everything clicks nicely into place with a satisfying ending.
Books three and four in the series are scheduled for future releases, so I can’t wait for the further adventures of these two pseudo-Victorian space goofs. You can find The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles in print from your local bookshop, or in ebook or audiobook from your preferred online retailer.

Hugh Likes Fiction: The Mimicking of Known Successes

July 31, 2024

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The Mimicking of Known Successes

Written by: Malka Older

Audiobook Read by: Lindsey Dorcus

Published by: Blackstone Audio

The Skinny: An atmospheric Sapphic mystery set in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.

In the far future, humanity has conquered Jupiter, living in cities on platforms orbiting the upper atmosphere connected by rings that serve as train lines. After a man disappears from a small and remote platform, Talented by idiosyncratic Investigator Mossa is brought in to solve the crime. But the case leads her to the University platform of Valdegelde, home of her ex-lover, the scholar Pleiti. The pair will have to work together, and work through their differences, to solve the case which threatens Pleiti’s work researching the lost ecosystems of Earth, and the eventual resettlement project.
Older’s delightful science fiction novella is more of a vibe than a mystery, with taking the reader from fog-shrouded platform cities to experimental habitats for cloned wildlife in the comfort of well-appointed rail cars circling Jupiter. But the two leads are so delightful that you’ll be swept up in their Holmes and Watson dynamic as the chase for clues while braving just enough peril to be in danger of missing teatime. The mystery itself is a bit on the slight side, but this story is as cozy as curling up beside a warm hearth and watching the swirling gas giant out your window. Older devotes most of the book to world building, along with kindling the embers of the remaining sparks between the two leads. But I find that I didn’t mind the thinness of the story. This story is all about atmosphere, and the short length means that it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
I listened to the audiobook, and narrator Lindsey Dorcus’s performance is spot on: Neat as a pin and evocative of the Neo-Victorian charm of the setting. Her fussy, idealistic Pleiti and gruff, analytical Mossa are both excellent, It can be hard to sell a romance with one actor, but she does a great job with both characters, and her performance is enthralling.
The novella’s short length does make the central mystery feel a bit simpler and safer than I would have normally gone for, but this was a wonderfully cozy listen. You can find The Mimicking of Known Successes in print and ebook from wherever you buy books, and the audiobook from Audible and other retailers. I highly recommend it.

Hugh Likes Fiction: The Butcher of the Forest

July 5, 2024

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The Butcher of the Forest
Written by Premee Mohamed
Published by Tordotcom

The Skinny: A dark fairytale about the rules of power: how to bend them, and how they break you.

The villagers stay away from the North Woods. They raise their children on the stories of the things that live in the forest and the strange, magical realm in its heart. They memorize the rules they will need to survive should they wander too far into the trees. But while the knowledge was passed on, it never reached the Tyrant, who conquered the village and established his castle on the outskirts. Nor did it reach his two children.
So when Veris is roused before dawn and brought before the Tyrant, she knows what he will demand before he tells her: His two children are missing, and as the only living person to venture into the North Woods and the Elmever that lies within its boundaries, she will bring them back.
In this dark fairy tale reversal over Hansel and Gretel, everything resolves around power, and the rules it follows. Contrasting the typical rules of entering a fairyland (don’t eat anything, don’t give your real name, don’t try and negotiate) with life under a dictatorial regime is a brutal and brilliant choice. Fascists are as capricious and dangerous as the fey. Their rules are no less byzantine, and the penalties for breaking them are no less deadly.
Mohamed’s writing is spare and sharp as a knife, compressing the story into a single day. This is a quick but by no means easy read. The story is gripping, and the characters have depths that peek in just at the edges of their dialog and the narration. This book will get its hooks in you until the final, brutal reveal. I highly recommend it. The Butcher of the Forest is available in print from your local independent book store, or in digital formats from the usual online storefronts.

Hugh Likes Fiction: Three Parts Dead

April 18, 2024

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Three Parts Dead

Written by Max Gladstone

Narrated by Claudia Alick

Audiobook Published by Blackstone Audio, Inc
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The Skinny: A high-magic fantasy novel that eschews the royal court for the courtroom.

Terra Abernathy is a craftswoman, a graduate of the Hidden Schools, and a young woman of incredible power, even if they did literally kick her out after graduating her. But she survived the long fall to the ground as well as the perilous desert crossing that followed.
After a brief visit home, she’s rescued/headhunted by the mysterious Ms. Kavarian, a partner at a prestigious craft firm. Craftspeople aren’t merely wielders of mystical powers fueled by starlight and the stolen secrets of the gods. They’re also professionals, offering their services in negotiation, arbitration, and other meta-legal matters. Ms. Kavarian is looking to recruit Ms. Abernathy, but first they have a difficult case ahead of them: settle the affairs of a dead god, and if possible, secure his resurrection.
The first novel in Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, Three Parts Dead is set in a world where magical contracts function like legal contracts, with wizards and liches acting much as lawyers and judges do in the real world. It’s a fascinating system, and Gladstone’s world-building is rich and detailed without becoming dry and overbearing on the story. The setting of Alt Calum and its surroundings is vibrant and bustling, with divine-powered technology, mystical architecture, and a colorful cast of mystics, priests, monsters and others.
No matter how strong the world-building, a story lives or dies based on its plot and characters, and Gladstone presents us with a city full of legalist magicians, shady priests,  outcast gargoyles, vampire-chasing club kids, and love-sick gods. These are unique, and more importantly, well-realized characters that will worm their way into your heart and break it. Contracts have two sides, after all, and not everyone negotiates in good faith. Often characters are left considering if their goals are worth the costs.
I listened to Three Parts Dead as an audiobook read by Claudia Alick and produced by Blackstone Audio. Alick does an excellent job bringing the characters to life from nervous, chain-smoking acolyte Abelard to the terrifyingly professional Ms. Kavarian.
Three Parts Dead is a rollicking start to Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence. It is available in print from your local independent book store, digitally from the usual suspects, or in audio from Audible.com.

Hugh Likes Fiction: A Market of Dreams and Destiny

February 15, 2024

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A Market of Dreams and Destiny

Written by Trip Galey

Audiobook read by Will Watt

Published by W. F. Howes, LTD.

The Skinny:  Let’s Make a Deal: Victorian Fey Edition

Deri is an apprentice in the Untermarcht, the goblin market hidden beneath London where anything is for sale for the right price, and no one takes anything so prosaic as coin. Well, not so much an apprentice as an indentured servant to one of the most powerful and cruel fairy merchants. But he’s picked up a few tricks, and he has a plan to buy his freedom. But his plans are all derailed when meets Owain, a young man also laboring under an indenture in a dangerous workhouse in London above. In order to get the guy and escape their bondholders with both their skins intact, Deri is going to have to make the deal of a lifetime. Fortunately, a runaway princess has appeared in the Untermarcht with a destiny to sell…
A Market of Dreams and Destiny is a charming fantasy novel set in a very different Victorian London. In a world where King Henry VIII struck a deal with the old gods of the British Isles, the city is filled with mercantile magic with a deadly edge. Galey’s characters spring to life against a strange world where the uncanny is hidden in the fine print, and the loopholes can very literally bind you. The magic system of contracts and deals was delightful and surprising, and it meshed well with the delightful and engaging cast of quick-thinking merchants, greedy factory owners, and put-upon royal bodyguards. The magic elevates the characters from what could’ve been twee Dickensian cliches to fleshed out and engaging players in a gripping drama.
But the real charm in this fantasy is the sweet and charming gay romance between Deri and Owain. Not without its complications, this was the best romance I’ve read in some time. I was glad that Trip didn’t shy away from just the right hint of spice and salacious implication. It felt much more well-rounded and believable for it.
I listened to this book in audio. The audiobook, read by Will Watt, is a delight. Watt breathes life into the cast and setting, from the tiniest bell to the terrifying merchant lords of the market.
A Market of Dreams and Destiny is one of last year’s best fantasies, but has fallen slightly under the radar. This hidden gem is well worth your time. It is available in Audio, print, and ebook from the usual sources.

Hugh Likes Fiction: Even Though I Knew the End

March 6, 2023

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Even Through I Knew The End
Written by C. L. Polk
Audiobook Read by January LaVoy

The Skinny: A quick mix of Fantasy and Noir that hits hard and fast.

Helen Brandt is a Private Investigator living in 1940’s Chicago. She’s also a lesbian, and a warlock. She takes on magical work for her mysterious clients, gets paid well for her work, and doesn’t ask questions. But when she’s recruited to investigate a notorious serial killer whose murder scenes have a magical connection, she turns the job down. There’s too much risk involved, and people she cares about could get hurt, including her estranged brother and her girlfriend. But she changes her mind when her client offers her something she can’t refuse: Her soul.Even Though I Knew The End is a delightful little jewel of a fantasy noir novella. Polk’s recreation of 1941 Chicago, layered with a tantalizing hint of a rich magical world, is stunning and vibrant. The city breathes, and you can practically smell the stale cigarette smoke and stale coffee on the narrator’s breath. The combination of enticing fantasy world and impending doom with palpable and exciting. Polk’s well-researched noir prose is spot on, giving just enough to bring the story to life without turning purple.The audiobook, read by January LaVoy, is outstanding. Her narration brings the characters to life, and her performance of Brandt brings out the perfect amount of hard-luck noir sympathy for a protagonist who has undoubtedly done awful things for awful people (Marlowe in particular) but we want to root for her anyway, even though, well, we know how things are fated to turn out. Her performance of the rest of the cast is also excellent, giving otherworldly touches to the characters where appropriate and garnering sympathy when necessary.Even Though I Knew the End is a brilliant Fantasy Noir novella. You can find it in Print and eBook from the usual marketplaces, and as an audiobook from Audible.

Hugh Likes Fiction: Fevered Star

October 26, 2022

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Fevered Star: Between Earth and Sky Book 2
Written by Rebecca Roanhoarse
Audiobook Read by Christian Barillas, Darrell Dennis, Cara Gee, Nicole Lewis, Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Published by Simon and Schuster, Inc
Listened to via Audible

Spoilers for Rebecca Roanhoarse’s previous novel, Black Sun. Also, I listened to the audiobook, so please forgive any misspelled names.
The sequel to 202’s Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhoarse returns to her Pre-Columbian America inspired epic fantasy world of the Meridian, expanding the focus of the story from the canyon city of Tova to encompass its neighbors, as the fallout from the first book’s climax reveals the charactersWith both the Crow God’s champion of Serapio and the Sun Priest Naranpa having unexpectedly survived, but the city itself in a shambles, the new year dawns in Tova with the sky frozen in an eclipse, as Shadow and Light struggle for dominance. While the office of the Watchers has been destroyed, the Sky-Made clans and their matrons still plot, and Serapio and Naranpa both return home to their clans and families, unsure of what to do next. But as the sorcerers who engineered Serapio’s rise plan their next move, so to do the disaffected masses of Clan Carrion Crow, and the clanless criminal underclass of Coyote’s Maw. While it is difficult to say much about the book without getting into spoilers, I really enjoyed this epic fantasy. Roanhoarse is a master of the dramatic irony and pacing that are the life’s blood of the sub-genre. The unique setting of the Meridian, with its pre-Columbian America vibes is a delight to return to. I’m glad this book gives the characters more figurative and literal room to breathe. The first book was a race towards the climax, which coincided with a solar eclipse and a big festival for the city. This book feels less like an impending crash and is a bit more quiet, as the characters recover and consider their next moves. The Sun Priest and the Crow God’s avatar spend the book circling one another, looking for advantage, or a way out.That isn’t to say this book is dull. There’s plenty of drama and action, and cool magical powers and fights. Everything that was great about the first book returns here, and is enhanced. With more cliffhangers at the end, I am fully invested in this series, and can’t wait for the next entry.The audiobook features five different narrators, each of whom brings one point-of-view character to life. I enjoy this style of narration for epic fantasy, and it works well here. The different voices highlight the different points of view of the characters to great effect. I just wish that the producer had made sure all of the readers were on the same page for pronunciations, as some of the proper names and places would shift depending on the narrator.Fevered Star is available in print, ebook, and audiobook from your local bookseller or internet-based megastore.

Hugh Likes Fiction: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

July 15, 2022

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Written by Becky Chambers
Published by Tor.com
Read as a part of a promotional ebook from Tor.com

The Skinny: A post-industrial story so cozy, it should come with a cup of tea.

Cover image: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Sibling Dex is a tea monk. They peddle the roads of Panga delivering brews and a comforting shoulder as a part of a society that long since gave up on automation and the creature comforts of industrialized society. But they are restless. Dex is good at what they do, and proud of their work, but they are no longer satisfied by it. On a whim, they pedal their bike-mounted home into the forbidden wilderness, where they meet Brilliant Speckled Mosscap, the first robot to make contact with humans in centuries.
A Psalm for the Wild Built is a sociological sci-fi novella built in the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin. It is an optimistic story in that it predicts a world (or in Panga’s case, a moon) where humanity looked at its actions and changed course before it was too late to avoid catastrophic climate change. Much of the novella is devoted to worldbuilding and the technology that makes such a world possible, as well as the values that the people hold that make it sustainable.
The novella is also is also pessimistic, in its way. Much like in her other writing people are still at the end of the day people, and all the green technology and cups of tea in the world can’t solve the problems we carry inside us. A lot of the story is devoted to Dex and Mosscap’s respective existential crises and goals. Mosscap isn’t sure it will be able to complete its mission to determine what humanity needs after their long separation, and Dex doesn’t even know what they need themself anymore. Chambers’s writing is witty, their worlds are richly imagined and technologically fascinating. She doesn’t stumble over the hard science of how an ox-bike works or a get bogged down in the precise history of Panga, but gives just enough detail to bring her world to life.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a quick, engrossing read about utopia, friendship and the limits of each. It is available in print and ebook wherever books are sold, and I highly recommend it.

Hugh Likes Fiction: Legends and Lattes

May 20, 2022

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Legends and Lattes
Written by Travis Baldree
Audiobook read by Travis Baldree

The Skinny: What if the Coffee shop A. U. was the story?

Viv is a barbarian warrior ready to get out of the mercenary’s life. But before she hangs up her greatsword for good, she needs a plan. Fortunately, she has two things going for her: A lucky, if gross charm in the Skalvert Stone, a sort of a magical bezoar she takes from the skull of a monstrous giant insect. Trophy in hand, she travels to the town of Thune, following the ley lines to the place where she’ll start her new life: Opening a coffee shop.
Unfortunately, there are a few hurdles for her to overcome, including the local organized crime boss, the fact that nobody in town has even heard of coffee before, and her prime location is in fact an abandoned livery. But with the help of some new friends, and the occasional assistance of her former adventuring party, she’ll give her new life a go.
Legends and Lattes is the coziest of cozy fantasy stories. Not so much a tale of adventure and blood, but of steam and baking. There is some tension as Viv attempts to break from her old life and settle into the new one, but most of this audiobook’s six-hour run time is more concerned with the day-to-day running of the shop than fighting monsters or fantasy politics. It’s clear that these things are all going on somewhere, but this story is all about the beans.
As a professional narrator, Baldree does an outstanding job reading, and the text feels right as an audiobook. His voices for the characters feel distinctive without becoming forced, which is no mean feat as a male actor reading a book with two female leads.
While the story was engaging and satisfying, It did feel a bit on the short side to me. We get an eclectic cast of characters, both from Viv’s old life and her new one, but they are mostly supporting Viv. It would have been nice to have spent more time with Cal, Thimble, Tandry and the rest of the supporting cast. Also, this is a romance, but a very fluffy one. It doesn’t go much farther than awkward stammering and acknowledged feelings. I would have liked it to have been more, well, steamier.
Legends and Lattes  is a +5 cozy little story that is sure to warm your heart like a warm cup of coffee on a cold winter’s morning. It is available as an audiobook, print or ebook from the usual locations.

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