Well, you can’t attend a convention and not buy books, can you? Especially not if they’re (presumably) remaindered stock going at considerably less than the usual face cost of books in Scandinavia, which is Not Cheap.

The Jemisin because I was hugely impressed by the Broken Earth series, and figure I should try more of her stuff. The Palmer because I finished the first of that series a few days ago, and parsed the appearance of a cheap second volume as a suggestion from the universe to continue with it… or, perhaps I should say it was Providence, to echo the books themselves? I’m not sure I like them, and the subtext—if I’m parsing it right—is eyebrow-raising, to say the least; but I like the ambition of them, the refusal to make it easy or obvious or deploy the tropes du jour. But can you reconcile a spirited defense of Enlightenment humanism with worldbuilding that’s fundamentally posthuman? I guess answering that question is what’s keeping me reading.