Calculated Risks

CALCULATED RISKS was a dream book for me, with a new dimension, giant arthropods, and cuckoos as zombies. The way it balances introspection, ethical ponderings, and tense action is fantastic. I knew I'd like it because I've liked everything I've read so far by Seanan, but now I want my own giant spider to ride. I love most of the stuff which was probably supposed to feel a bit like horror because I'm very excited by the prospect of spiders the size of horses, tame mantids big enough to to use as steeds, and excellent use of "our zombies are different". The very large arthropod-like creatures have a consistent presence in the book and I had the best time reading all of it. The bipedal characters are great too! Sarah is an excellent narrator, I'm warming to Mark, and it was interesting to see a different side of Annie and Artie after experiencing each of them as narrators (plus, uh, the memory thing). The changes felt like they fit the level of mental adjustment made to the characters. I really like stories where a character becomes different because of changes to what they remember (or how they think about what they remember), and this was really great all around. 

This wraps up an extremely major thing left hanging from the previous book. The entire point of this one is to figure out how to undo or at least mitigate what happened in the cliffhanger from IMAGINARY NUMBERS. There's a very major thing which is introduced and resolved in this book, and a really cool storyline which was introduced here and wasn't present previously (Greg is the best!). It leaves a bunch for future sequels to pick up, and I'm very excited for what might happen next from the interpersonal changes made here. The main character (Sarah) was one of the narrators from IMAGINARY NUMBERS and her voice here is consistent with her previous appearance. This would not make sense if someone started with CALCULATED RISKS and didn't already know about the series. It feels a bit like IMAGINARY NUMBERS so fundamentally changed what the characters thought they knew about Johrlacs that if someone tried to jump in any later than MAGIC FOR NOTHING (the first book where Antimony narrates) they wouldn't get what's happening (or if they do get what's happening in a literal sense, it wouldn't have the emotional weight and context from the previous books). 

Some stuff in how the magic works reminded me of MIDDLEGAME (same author, different series), but they're very different stories and it was nice to know that there's more room for "math as magic" since it's a really great idea done well here (and done differently than MIDDLEGAME, for all that they both involve writing large equations while trying not to die).

I love this and need to know what happens to REDACTED in the next one. By "REDACTED" I mean a specific character and also secretly all of the characters, as I am already excited by the prospect of the sequel.