Donald Maass Literary Agency

Wall Street Journal: A peculiarity of American fiction is that it is filled with visions of the apocalypse yet lacking in explorations into the experience of death. Writers can imagine the end as a collective catastrophe but rarely as something intimate and individual. A clever, genre-blending book by Eden Robins, “Remember You Will Die” illustrates the paradox. The novel is written as a collection of obituaries of deceased characters from the distant past to the speculative future. Its title derives from the ancient Roman custom of employing slaves to remind triumphant generals of their mortality. Yet the ultimate impression is one of continuity and perpetuation. It’s real interest is in the ingenious ways that humans try to erase death. The novel’s many obituaries—some written in the standard newspaper template, some more informally—hopscotch across time periods, projecting as far ahead as the 22nd century. Gradually the passages create a mosaic of future pandemics and climate crises, as well as of controversial new developments in artificial life and interplanetary colonization. One story outlines the adventures of an outlaw artificial intelligence called Peregrine who, through a process of “in-vitro gametogenesis,” bears a human child. The obituaries dwell on the innovators of these death-defying advances or on avant-garde artists—or both at once, such as Aristotle Williams, a sculptor who invented Peregrine’s “neo-skin.” “Art is emergent, art is a living thing,” declares the maker of huge art installations involving nature. The persistent idea in this book is that life and art are conjoined creative ventures driven by an opposition to death—and often, as in the case of the poppy flower, which flourished on World War I battlefields, growing out of death’s physical residue.  Poppies are one of many recurring motifs in this wild, exfoliating book, which jumps around so frantically and contains so many intertextual references that readers will need to take notes to have any chance of keeping up. Ms. Robins has clearly enjoyed herself designing this vast network of connections, which often resembles the art installations it commemorates, full of patterns and puzzles and messages. Its excess and energy make it less a memento mori than a reminder, spelled out in boldface, of the remarkable tenacity of life.

Library Journal: Saraswati Kaveri has left her life on Earth behind. Arriving on Primus with a bag of clothes and her little robot Kili, she is determined to take her chance on Interstellar MegaChef, the most watched cooking show of the galaxy. Primus cuisine is exacting and amalgamated, and never has an Earthen chef, with their primitive, messy techniques, participated. Serenity Ko has created the wildly popular sim SoundSpace, but a drunken celebration–turned–angry mob chase has forced the young prodigy to take a mandatory leave to rest. Serenity, of course, instead decides she needs to create the next hit sim, this time one for food. If only she knew how to cook. A chance encounter between her and Saraswati launches a partnership to change the future of food, if their own individual goals don’t destroy their chances first. While the food descriptions themselves are few, the emotional impacts of food on the various characters still center culinary pursuits in the novel.

VERDICT Lakshminarayan (The Ten Percent Thief) offers an engaging story that dives into themes about the appreciation of food, colonization, and xenophobia and features two morally gray queer women attempting to find their footing with each other.

Library Journal: Luka is a bodyguard in the matriarchal, magical Gailand, named after goddess-founder Gaiea. His charge is nine-year-old Viella, princess and heir to Gaiea’s abilities and memories. When the queen is killed and the capital is raided by shadow mages, Luka flees with Viella across the allied queendoms to keep her safe. But why can’t Viella use her Gaiea powers yet, and who within the capital let the magicians in? This novel from Garcia (Lex Talionis), the first in a duology, is styled like a retro high fantasy. Character names include both Mordoch and Gretchen, there’s a nebulous source of all evil, and the background is vaguely Middle Ages—this time with more Caribbean and West African stylings, featuring a woman warrior caste named after the Dahomey Amazons. Fresh and inventive takes come through glimpses of the origins of Gailand: the evil might be an eldritch space god, magic is fueled by nanobots, and magic portals have brand names. The balance leans heavily high fantasy, but the possibility of breaking out of genre standards might keep readers hooked for the sequel. VERDICT An intriguing magi-tech high-fantasy series opener that paves the way for chaos in the follow-up.