This is another of the 2013 Hugo Award nominations, and probably the only other one besides 2312 I’ll read – partly because two of the other nominations are part of on-going series, and I don’t have an especial urge to commit to reading several works by one author as a semi-prerequisite to reading the nominated one, and partly because Charlie has Linda Nagata guest-blogging, and I’m always up for reading new female sci-fi authors.

So, back to Saladin Ahmed and his Throne of the Crescent Moon. Arabian fantasy possibly science-fiction, I’m not sure yet, reminds me a little of the feeling of reading Hannu Rajaniemi, and also it pushes east, out of the near-hegemonic white American hetero male authorship in the genre (ok, he also happens to be this in part, but I suspect it is the part not reducible to this which is important, as well as which interests me). And so while I trundle through some heavy academic stuff which is also most delightful, I have someone new to discover. Perhaps a new favourite? (I should really have bought the trade paperback, as the mass market print always feels too small and slightly embarrassed at itself.)