psocoptera

City of Lies, Sam Hawke, who is up for the Astounding. I liked this a lot - a brother and a sister, friends/allies of the heir to the city, deal with a murder mystery and a siege. Kept me guessing, some good warfare action, pretty gripping second half. Stands alone satisfyingly but there's going to be another one, which I would like to read. Spoilery comments: I really liked the whole setup where the city is being attacked but the protags have no idea by who or why. I feel like a lot of fantasy books lay out who all the factions are and they're there with their banners and Hawke was like "nope! this is just happening now, imagine trying to figure it out while also dealing with it!". One tiny thing that threw me was the use of the word "microaggressions", even in a book written from a strongly pro-social-justice perspective, I had a hard time buying that word in particular in this fantasy society. But in general I thought the central conflict felt quite relevant, maybe unexpectedly timely, with the current protests, and the feeling of being under siege by the pandemic, and the concerns about illness/safety and scarcity. Btw I was interested to learn that Hawke is a woman Sam rather than a man Sam, which I am embarrassed to realize I had assumed, so if you were worried/wondering whether this book might be in Dude-o-vision, it is not. (And in fact it's a nicely queer default-bisexuality sort of culture with interesting family structures that center sibling and uncle-niephling relationships rather than romantic pairings and "nuclear families" are a marginalized lifestyle; always nice to see more fantasy without default patriarchy.)

(I feel like I should clarify that even if Hawke was male like I had assumed, I don't think every book by a man suffers from Dude-o-vision. And also Sam could of course have been an enby Sam, I didn't mean those were the only options.)