Books and comics read in December 2020

[usuallyhats]

London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City - Sukhdev Sandhu
The Glass Hotel - Emily St John Mandel
The Bone Shard Daughter - Andrea Stewart
The Wimsey Papers - Dorothy L Sayers
The October Man - Ben Aaronovitch
The Lights Go Out in Lychford - Paul Cornell
Seven of Infinities - Aliette de Bodard
Not Your Backup - CB Lee
Hollow Empire - Sam Hawke
The Fire Never Goes Out: A Memoir in Pictures - Noelle Stevenson
Soul of Stars - Ashley Poston
Curse of Bronze - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Dreadnought - April Daniels
Champions: Change the World
Summer Bird Blue - Akemi Dawn Johnson


London Calling
Fascinating exploration of how black and Asian writers have written about London. My main criticism is that most of the authors examined, and I think all of those studied in detail, were men: this may have been a deliberate choice, but it's never examined within the text. Other than that, and the occasional slide into hagiography re London, it's very good.

Seven of Infinities
I enjoyed this f/f sf novella a lot. One's a teacher with a secret! The other's a spaceship with a shady past! Together they fight and/or commit crime!

Soul of Stars
This is the sequel to Heart of Iron, which I enjoyed very much. I liked this one slightly less as it felt a bit rushed in places - possibly it should have been a trilogy rather than a duology - but it was still a fun, satisfying found family in space adventure.

Dreadnought
Superhero stories don't always work for me in prose format, but this one, about a trans girl who inherits the mantle of a legacy superhero, was pretty great. It had a few moments I liked less but overall it was a good, thoughtful read.

(Content notes: transphobia, domestic abuse)