Kathleen doesn't know it, but she is a descendant of the original Little Mermaid. Every woman in her line since then has suffered from pain in her feet as if she was walking on glass, as well as episodes of intense pain in her tongue as if it had been cut out, as in the original Hans Christian Andersen story. They've all died young, except for the original who made it to her forties, mostly as suicides or at least possibly so. Kathleen and her girlfriend, Harry (both opera students), are on vacation in Florida when Kathleen begins hearing voices in the sea telling her to come home, and they and Kathleen's father (Ronin, a composer) become more concerned that she is heading to the same fate. Harry and Ronin decide that she should take Kathleen back to Ireland, where she was born, to learn more about her family history. There they find out the truth about the curse and what must be done to break it.

The first half of this book is deeply engrossing from the point of view of a fantasy reader. Once Harry and Ronin come up with a plan to break the curse, I'll admit that I found their idea a bit silly. It does pick up again at the end to the novel proper, though, which was surprising and yet, once it was revealed perfect. I'm not sure how much the short story about Andersen and the original little mermaid that follows the ending adds to it, however. It felt like backstory that was cut from the main book for slowing it down.

Overall: B

In a book set in the same world as the Imperial Radch trilogy but in a different society, Ingray - a young adult daughter of a powerful family- sets out on a desperate plan to one up her brother. Both are foster children, but she came from a "public creche" and he from another noble family, and she's always known that he would be the inevitable choice for her mother's heir.

What follows is a sort of crime or political thriller in an alien society. There are a good number of twists and turns before it becomes evident what the plot will really be, which is why I'm not saying more about it. But apart from the twists and turns of many different schemes, what made this book for me was the look at a new society within a familiar universe, with its own family structures and its own understanding of gender, adulthood, and identity. None of these concepts are info-dumped at the reader but come through naturally as we meet more of Ingray's friends and family.

​Overall: A-

The Power comes from a simple premise: in a time that doesn't look too far removed from our own, women develop the ability to generate electrical shocks from their bodies. It starts by appearing in teenage girls, but they stimulate the ability in older women and soon all female babies have it from birth. In effect, people are soon living in a world in which just about any woman must be assumed to be able to overpower just about any man.

This is the first time since I started serving on the Notable Books Council and discovered a book during our off season that I wanted this badly to be able to nominate. I truly do believe it reaches that level of literary fiction and science fiction combined. (Actually, I checked to see if I could suggest it for next year, but sadly although my library got it in November, the publication date was October, and that puts it in the 2016-2017 cycle.) It's a The Handmaid's Tale for our time. In fact, there are ways that it might be better than The Handmaid's Tale, although one must keep in mind that everybody who has written something in this vein since The Handmaid's Tale had the benefit of Margaret Atwood having gone there before. But the most common complaint people seem to have, in my admittedly unscientific perception of these things, about The Handmaid's Tale is that they can't believe that society could change so much in just a few years, with the actual chain of events only portrayed in disconnected flashbacks. Of course it could, because they have, but it's still a perception that makes it difficult for some people to accept the premise. In The Power, we watch the world change as it happens over the course of ten years, and there's no escaping from it. Additionally, The Power is global in its scope. While The Handmaid's Tale depicts things that happen to women around the world happening to women in (what had been) the U.S., The Power deals with events that happen around the world, the details and the degree of the impact often varying based on what the condition of women had been there in the time before.

And while the framing device- a presentation of the body of the book as a historical novel by a man author, attempting to reconstruct the most likely series of events from several thousand years before, sent to her for her opinion- seems like a minor point at the introduction, the exchanged letters attached at the end drive points home that were passed over more quickly in the main text and couldn't have been lingered on in the time frame of the story proper, and also allow for some of the most bitterly humorous lines in the book.

Since I missed my chance to make a case for this being on the literary fiction list, I just hope that the Reading List was on it when they were nominating science fiction.

Overall: A+

Creatures of Will and Temper is billed as a lesbian Picture of Dorian Gray. (Some reviews identify it as queer rather than lesbian, but let's be honest: queer Picture of Dorian Gray is just Picture of Dorian Gray, so one needs to be more specific and although there are queer characters who aren't lesbians in this book, of the significant on-page romantic relationships, the only same-sex one is between women.) That's accurate, but not sufficient. It's a bit of a retelling and a bit of an expansion. Although there are several characters with names taken obviously from the original, there's more than one Dorian figure, nor does it follow anything like the same story arc.

The paranormal elements are also rather more pronounced than I recall from the original. Obviously a book in which one can sell one's soul so that his portrait will age instead of him isn't exactly what you'd call realistic fiction, but Creatures of Will and Temper fleshes the concept out with societies of demon-worshipers and, of course, fighting demons.

Really, if this is the book for you, I shouldn't have to say anything else. You're probably already ordering it from your library or your favorite book seller. But I really ought to say a little more than one can get from the blurb, and so I'll say that although the basic concept of this book is a terrific hook, what really makes it is the relationship between young Dorina (beautiful, spoiled, in love with all things aesthetic) and her older sister, Evadne (homely, athletic, and a talented fencer). Ultimately, what matters isn't the search for beauty, or fighting demons, it's sisterly love. And sisterly antagonism, but not so much at the end of the day.

Overall: A

The Lawrence Browne Affair is the second in the Turner trilogy, but there's little enough detail about the events of the first book that you could easily read them in either order.

Georgie Turner is a con man who has landed on the bad side of a crime boss. His brother Jack, a sort of private fixer, has been asked to help investigate the mental state of one Lawrence Browne, Earl Radnor. Lawrence's late father and older brother were both known to be mad, and rumors have been swirling about him as well. Jack sends Georgie to Cornwall to act as Radnor's new secretary, find out if he's mad, and generally to lay low for a while.

Radnor's not mad. He's an inventor and a bit of a hermit, devoting all of his interest to working on what will eventually be a telegraph and not, for example, figuring out how many of his servants didn't quit after the last time something blew up. He'd almost certainly be diagnosable with something by modern standards but he's thoroughly competent to manage his own affairs. That doesn't mean he isn't worried that he won't someday go mad like his father and his brother.

Georgie quickly realizes that he likes Radnor, and that he'll have to abandon the part of his plan where he tries to steal something from him worth enough to placate that crime boss. But as the two of them fall in love, the question looms of just how long Georgie can hide from his past, and Georgie and Lawrence can ignore the fact that he's there under false pretenses.

For most of this book, there is not much in the way of conflict, and it says something for it that it didn't need more. It's a rather slow paced story, one of two people without much of a place in society forming a family, as Georgie puts Radnor's house in order and encourages him to open up just a bit to the world. Every now and then a hint of an outside threat arises, but until the last few chapters, each one turns out to be surprisingly less of a threat than one thought. It's not a terribly suspenseful book, but in a way it's quite appropriate, just as Radnor adjusts some of his habits and the results turn out not to be so terrible after all.

Overall: B+