Alaya Dawn Johnson

In The Library of Broken Worlds, Alaya Dawn Johnson creates a complex science fiction-fantasy world that often overwhelms its first-person YA plot. The story is set in a far-future world in which humans, aliens, AIs, and humans—both cloned and natural—prowl the tunnels of a vast library that governs three systems. Freida is a human girl who aspires to become a librarian, one of the highest positions in her society. Dozens of tales from various subcultures break up the straight path of show more the adventure romance story. At times, Freida seems to be a future version of Scheherazade. I am sure this novel has a large, appreciative audience, but it does not include me. show less

Very, very nice. A post-apocalyptic Earth has been invaded and occupied by enigmatic aliens who have taken over for unknown reasons of their own. However, one of their agenda items is 'social rehabilitation,' which in practice seems to manifest as casual brutality and incomprehensible laws. One of the 'rules' is that all fetuses must be carried to-term (after which, it is suspected that the aliens may experiment on them.) In this scenario, a woman must help her sister try to obtain a show more forbidden abortion. The perspectives here are definitely underrepresented in fiction, and although this is a rough read, emotionally, it's also refreshing to see. show less

Chocolate as currency, swashbuckling women with swords, lively Mesoamerican traders, unremarkable queerness, a fantasy of manners -- as marvelous as light quasi-fantasy fare can be.

Tremontaine is set in the world of Swordspoint, though fifteen years earlier, and it is written as a weekly serial by authors including Malindo Lo and Ellen Kushner herself. Though the plot is more mundane than I'd expected from the opening chapters, I found myself pulled back again and again due to the show more atmospherics and the characterization. A duke pulled into an affair, a duchess struggling to keep her position, a farm girl who earns money gambling to pay for her friends and study of mathematics, a disgraced spy-merchant having a love affair with a forger in the bad part of town -- what's not to enjoy? show less

It is with regret that I say I couldn’t finish this book. I got within several dozen pages of the end, and even then I couldn’t make myself finish. This book has so much going for it: the world-building of a future South American enclosed society that’s extremely hierarchical and matriarchal and sci-fi is one of the best I have encountered in books marketed as YA, and as a result of this spectacular world-building, Johnson had a LOT she could work with in terms of exploring dystopian show more ideas and socially relevant themes of art and technology and race-based issues.

Unfortunately, what THE SUMMER PRINCE lacked for me was an emotional connection with the characters. In between Johnson’s sinfully sensuous prose and her attempts to portray Enki as this beautiful and irrepressible, yet enigmatic, near-mythical being, it seems like there was lost the ways in which readers could concretely grasp the characters’ traits and motivations and desires. Enki read too much like a MPDG (except a guy) to me, and I don’t really have a problem with MPDG characters, except Enki’s character was much too slippery and bright for me to even grasp at the edges.

Johnson is a talented writer, having already published several acclaimed works. But perhaps THE SUMMER PRINCE would have been better marketed as not-YA, for in this genre in which so much depends upon readers’ connections with the characters, THE SUMMER PRINCE will have to face an uphill battle despite all that it has going for it. show less