How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin

From the publisher: Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories.

Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

My book club has moved on-line in wake of the COVID pandemic, and we've switched gears in our selection. Realizing that many of us are having trouble finishing full length books, we chose the short story anthology How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin to follow up our discussion of Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi. I do love a good anthology, and it's been close to a year since I've read one. And this was a fantastic book to jump back in with.

Published in 2018, HLTBHM is a collection of 22 stories covering the range from speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, urban fantasy, and dystopia. According to other reviewers, some are set in the same worlds as Jemisin's novels. I haven't read any of her previous works, and followed the stories in question with no issue. The majority of the main characters are black, and at least half of them are women. Overall, I found this to be a great collection. 'The City Born Great' absolutely deserved its 2017 Hugo nomination (the same year that N. K. Jemisin won Best Novel for the second year in a row). Other stand outs include 'Red Dirt Witch', the Jim Crow era fey story mentioned by the publisher, 'The Effluent Engine' set in a steampunk New Orleans that I would love to see more of, and 'Valedictorian', where the top student in each high school class is taken away, never to be seen again. There are a number of stories that didn't really grab me, and 'The Evaluators' suffered from formatting in that it told its story through dated emails and other transmissions that didn't scan very easily. In writing this review, it has also become very noticeable that the story title is not at the top of the page, making it difficult to flip back through. Overall, however, this is a wonderful anthology, and definitely worth your time.

How Long 'Til Black Future Month is available for curbside checkout from Galesburg Public Library in both regular and large print versions, as well as through the Libby app.

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

Consider Lia Habel’s Dearly, Departed to be the anti-Twilight. Like Bella’s Edward, Nora’s Bram is undead. Unlike the sparkly Edward Cullen, however, Abraham Griswold is a rotting corpse infected with the Laz – a disease that reanimates a dead body and turns the person into a zombie. And, unlike Bella Swan, Nora Dearly has spunk and a mind of her own.

Dearly, Departed is set in 2195. Disasters have reduced the Earth’s population to various settlements in Central and South America. One settlement, a wealthy one, has chosen the Victorian era as the perfect time period in the past, and the inhabitants follow Victorian protocols. The Victorians are in a running war with a poorer group of people called Punks. Into this mix comes the Laz, and undead Punks and Victorians who have managed to keep their minds unite to battle it out with the mindless undead.

Beauty Nora Dearly’s father was an important Victorian researcher trying to find a vaccine for the Laz. Handsome Abraham Griswold was a Punk soldier before he died and got the Laz. Cue the star-crossed teen-aged lovers!

At one point, one of the zombies is reading some books from the past. In what is clearly a poke at Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, he says, “In all of these books the girls are throwing themselves at the romantic heroes – romantic heroes who are dead, who drink human blood.…Vampires are just zombies with good PR! That could be us in a few years!”

Dearly, Departed (the first book in a trilogy) is almost 500 pages long. I would have enjoyed it more if it was 100 pages shorter. It definitely dragged for me toward the end, once the novelty of the situations had worn off. Also, I did have a little trouble getting over the ick factor of making out with a zombie. Still, Dearly, Departed is a light amusing read. If you like paranormal romance with a touch of steampunk and lolita, I recommend it.

Frontier Magic series by Patricia C. Wrede

Patricia C. Wrede's Frontier Magic series is set in the past in a sort of alternate United States with magic. The first book in the series is Thirteenth Child. The main character is a twin. Her brother is the seventh son of a seventh son and therefore expected to be an incredibly powerful magician. Although Eff is the seventh daughter of a seventh son, all anyone can focus on with her is that she is a thirteenth child and therefore terrible bad luck. One relative even thinks she should be disposed of, and many feel she should be kept away from her twin brother. Thirteenth Child has a strong female character confronted by people who don't want her to succeed. She and her journey towards adulthood are compelling, and the steampunky alternate world has some original characteristics. I did not find Thirteenth Child just another magical coming of age story.

The second book in the series is Across the Great Barrier. Although I enjoyed it, it was a letdown after Thirteenth Child. It did not feel as original and the tension around Eff being a bad luck "thirteenth" was pretty much gone. (This is similar to how I felt with Wrede's Enchanted Forest series - I loved Dealing with Dragons but felt more let down by each subsequent book.) However, Across the Great Barrier kept me interested and I had no trouble finishing it. I definitely recommend the series if you enjoy magical alternate worlds, strong female heroines, and coming-of-age stories.