River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey

 

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey  I had read Upright Women Wanted and found it to be less than I had hoped, but I love the premise of this book and really hope it is more enjoyable.  This is the first book in the River of Teeth series.

Started: 3/3/2023
Completed: 3/3/2023
Recommended: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody, but I did read a review which described the plot

Review:

I think that there was a lot more space to work with this story, but it sort of became an LGBTQ+ western.  I'm not all that interested in westerns, so it kind of lost me there.  It did talk about some of the nature of revenge and there were interesting character reveals.  In short, it is a short read and worth the space, but not the great read for which I was hoping.

Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey

 

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey is a novel that was nominated for the Hugo Awards.

Started: 9/29/2021
Completed: 9/30/2021
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Recommended By: Hugo Awards

Review:

At base, this is a puppy love story.  The story opens, however, with a hanging of the protagonist's girlfriend.  The hanging leads to the protagonist running off to be a librarian (that part was funny and clever) in a dystopian future that looks kind of like the 1830s.  Beyond that, the hanging largely loses its significance and the protagonist falls in love with the next lesbian (non-gender binary, so, I don't pretend to know the correct term, but I went with lesbian to indicate that "they" are a "she" when in town) she meets.  I just didn't buy it and found it hard to be caught by any of the characters.  I think it would have been a stronger book as an 1830s Western with an odd group of all female cowboys/vigilantes.  Aside from the initial laugh, I'm not sure that the whole librarian concept brought much to the game (of course, the librarians are hugely subversive under a façade of "uprightness").