In the Shadow of the Ship Aliette de Bodard Aliette de Bodard 's  In the Shadow of the Ship  is a novella set in her  Xuya Universe . Like many  Xuya  stories, this one takes place aboard a mindship. This particular mindship is called Nightjar and was damaged escaping from the collapsing Empire. (Exactly which Empire this was I am not sure -- there is more than one in the  Xuya Universe .) At any rate, Nightjar is not a healthy place. She escaped carrying some of her family. They still live aboard and afford her the loyalty she expects, mostly. Nightjar demands tribute in the form of children whom she lures into her dead zones, from which they never emerge. When Khuyên was a child she was invited to the dead zones by her cousin Anh, but she refused. Later she did the unthinkable: she left Nightjar for the broken Empire, where she rose to the post of Magistrate. Now Khuyên has returned to Nightjar for her grandmother's funeral, where she is met with a complex mixture of disdain

The Emperor's Soul Brandon Sanderson The Emperor's Soul  won  Brandon Sanderson  his first Hugo Award, Best Novella 2013. It is, in my opinion, a well-deserved honor. Although  The Emperor's Soul  is set in the same world as  Elantris , it is not a sequel, but a standalone. You needn't read  Elantris  to follow it, and you can read the whole in 90-120 min. Shai is a forger. That means more than you probably think it does. Although Shai is expert in the kind of forgery you know of -- producing deceptive documents and works of art -- she also is expert in the magical art of forgery, which in the empire means convincing an object that it is something other than what it is, so thoroughly and convincingly that it becomes for all intents and purposes the forged object. To Shai, this is High Art, to the leaders of the empire, it is a criminal abomination. But the empire needs Shai. The Emperor, hurt by an assassin, is unconscious. The arbiters of the Heritage Faction, who curr

Devil in a Blue Dress Walter Mosley Devil in a Blue Dress  is the first book in  Walter Mosley 's  Easy Rawlins  series of mysteries. I became interested in  Easy Rawlins  through the Marvel Netfix series  Luke Cage . The directors and writers were keen to show us that Luke is no dumb knucklehead, so we are treated to Luke discussing poetry with his mentor Pops, carrying  Ralph Ellison 's  Invisible Man  with him, and also reading  Mosley 's  Little Green . So I looked that up, and decided to start the series at the beginning. As a murder mystery  Devil in a Blue Dress  is not really very good. Nor, I think, does it try to be.  Devil  introduces us to Easy Rawlins. It was first published in 1990. I read the 30th anniversary edition, published in 2020 (Duh!), and it begins with an Introduction written by  Mosley  in 2020. He writes When I wrote  Devil  I had a simple thought in mind. I wanted to tell a story about Los Angeles that highlighted black life and the black contrib