#sffbookclub

There's a lot of neat things going on in this book, but there's also a number of things that didn't quite land for me. I'm struggling to have a solid opinion, so here's a mishmash of drive-by thoughts.

I do love this book's thematic mantra of fixing broken things. It's clear that many characters in this book are broken (emotionally), and it's clear that the Boston timeline is broken (structurally, via capitalism largely), but it's less clear to me what sort of fixing is truly going on, especially in a multiverse sense.

Obviously Martin, Stirling, and Melissa are putting in work for their community, but the rest of it just seems like talk (or something a future book in the series will get to). I wish there was more clarity about how Jace had broken his oath to repair the broken parts of the universe, and what that oath actually means to Jace and Corinne. (Has Harnett sworn this same oath? Also, what is this oath as compared to the Network's "greatest good" motto??)

I think the pacing of the end of the book is also a little harmed by this being part of a series. There's clearly a climactic confrontation, but it largely feels unresolved, leaving lots of pieces for the future.

This sounds like a lot of complaints, but I enjoyed my read here. I do love a telepathic dog. I love the idea of talking to a therapist about portals to other worlds. I love Jace and Corinne working together for a shared goal while also being so misaligned. I love Martin still working to care for Reina even when Reina is not his sister. Overall, my favorite part of this book was all of the characters.

(This was the #SFFBookClub book for March 2026.)

This book was not for me. Maybe I was in the wrong space for reading it, but it felt like YA (derogatory). Everything felt a little too thin and pulled along by a plot. Folks who are at odds with each other resolve those feelings too quickly or in ways that feel unearned. (Especially feelings around Alekhai and Sijara both.)

There were a lot (a lot) of fight scenes. To me a good fight scene is like a good sex scene--there needs to be some character development driving it or I'm going to be bored. Many of these fell flat for me, but positively I really liked the one where Fen meets Alekhai for the first time, because there's so much going on emotionally for her there.

The book has so much intriguing drive-by worldbuilding, but none of it feels connected to the whole. Declaration ceremonies for names and genders come up and are never mentioned again. The world is full of nanites? Undetectable alien neural chips?! The Accusers could have been been building infrastructure and teleporting food the whole time? Resurrected people are supposed to come back not quite the same, but this never happens (emotionally or mentally)?

I was really intrigued by the idea of the ecologically failing Newearth, and the capital letters of the Makers, Accusers, and Executors who constructed the situation and are still present. Unfortunately, they are all ultimately set dressing for the rebellion against the king who must die, and none of it truly gets fleshed out to any satisfying degree.

The fantasy politics of this world also felt a bit short. The word anarchism is only used once as a pejorative, and the replacement for the titular king is the glory of democracy. With minimal spoilers, the "mini boss" that must be faced before the "final boss" is group infighting. I'm not sure if I had a specific desire from this novel, but I was hoping there'd be something more weird, more speculative, more interesting. Maybe it's just me, but this kind of arc is not enough for me these days (and democracy doesn't really feel like the shiniest of destinations either).

Minorly, I saw a blurb that Alekhai is supposed to be trans-coded, but I'm not sure I see it. Is it just because everybody says he's so beautiful (as all of my trans friends are)? Is it that he says he would have used a randomizer for his declaration ceremony if he could? I would credit this more if I felt like it came up in any other way.

I don't like to complain about a book so much, but sometimes I have to articulate all the things that didn't work in order to understand my own feelings. A story about found family and the destruction of empire should have resonated with me a lot more deeply. I don't feel like this book was bad more than I was just disappointed--it didn't cohere for me and live up to what I hoped it could be.

(This was the #SFFBookClub pick for February 2026.)

This was a fun novella about 17th century London midwifery where there's a spate of babies being born with monstrous appearances and magical abilities. This is the September 2025 #SFFBookClub pick.

There's a fun angle of respectability politics, of not wanting to be publicly seen as queer so that Sarah can get better midwife clientele (and survive as a widowed woman), but also taking the angle of her having to cover the parts of herself that are uncanny. (Sure, sure, I am a sucker for the metaphor of queer as monstrous.) There's also a strong gendered metaphor of Sir Christopher Wren, creepily representing science and men cataloguing the world (and thinking they truly know it) versus the midwives having their own knowledge of other worlds and of magic.

Overall, this book met my expectations for exactly what I thought it was going to be in a good way. I love a solid novella that can fit in good worldbuilding and plot and some character development without leaving me feeling like there's elements missing or it's rushed. It feels like the kind of story that would make a good movie. (This is all especially in comparison to previous novellas we have read for #SFFBookClub, like Countess.)

I have some thoughts about the ending, which I will put in a separate spoilered post.

Incredible.

We've read a number of books for #SFFBookClub that have a short story structure with interconnecting themes and worldbuilding (How High We Go in the Dark, and Under the Eye of the Big Bird) but In Universes is my clear favorite among all of these.

Structurally, this book is a series of short stories with a single point of view. Each story takes place in different adjacent-ish branching multiverses, some of which veer into more magical realism and externalized metaphors while others are more realistic. Thematically, this book is about dealing with internalized homophobia, trauma, depression and grief. But it's also about (queer) possibility and transformation and acceptance.

It's interesting to me just how many things I underlined (virtually) while reading this book. Delicious turns of phrase. Devastating sentences seemingly directly targeted at my feelings. Interconnecting thematic ideas everywhere. I found myself utterly engaged in its writing and imagery.

What is most striking about In Universes is that even when some chapters veer off in fantastical directions ("my mother is a horde of bees", "I am pregnant with an octopus", horse telepathy), there is such a coherent emotional progression for Raffi across the entire book. A lot of similarly structured books suffer from meandering too far afield with their ideas that they fail to come together, but In Universes feels so intentional with how it deploys its imagery and pacing. If anything, the final part of the book, consisting of a single chapter, resonates the strongest of all of them and I love the way it reprises the previous stories to bring everything together.

This was the #SFFBookClub book for August 2025.

In some ways, this book structurally reminded me of How High We Go in the Dark; they're both a post-apocalyptic, interconnected series of stories about humanity trying to survive. The stories here are further in the future and feel much more surreal and dreamlike. If anything, I feel like I've missed something critical as a reader--I can't quite put my finger on what this book is trying to do.

There are a few things that don't work for me. I think the stories largely don't stand on their own: there's many interesting ideas, but they don't feel connected via plot or resonate with a theme. There's also a penultimate chapter of the book where the book just out and out tells you everything it's been hinting at previously. I had guessed at a good bit of it, but it felt underwhelming to have it laid out so plainly rather than sketched across stories.