The Bone Shard Daughter
by Andrea Stewart (Orbit, 2020); audiobook read by Natalie Naudus, Feodor Chin & Emily Woo Zeller (Hachette, 2020)
Stewart’s world-building has a certain intrigue (the shifting archipelago setting is a pleasing point of difference), yet the concept of bone-shard magic, which one might expect to drive the plot, proves mostly a curiosity shunted aside in favour of standard character arcs.
Hexarchate Stories
by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris, 2019); audiobook read by Emily Woo Zeller & Brian Nishii (Recorded Books, 2019)
A handful of longer pieces showcase the rich SF complexity of Lee’s Hexarchate universe (though even these suggest he should stick to novels). The collection’s remainder is unconscionable filler: random bits of prose—not even especially good prose—masquerading as short stories.
This is How You Lose the Time War
by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Simon & Schuster, 2019); audiobook read by Cynthia Farrell & Emily Woo Zeller (Simon Schuster Audio, 2019)
What seems at first a gimmicky homage to Spy vs. Spy turns out to be a serious piece of conceptual science fiction, greatly enhanced by the authors’ embracing of texturising vignettes within the time travel plot. Makes Philip K. Dick look ordinary.