I like this book, but not because it's fantasy or science fiction. Because it isn't. It's a coming of age novel of a girl who likes science fiction, set in 1979 -- half if not two thirds of the novel is her talking about books she has read and loved, and they are all the same books that I read and loved as a child. I would have loved this books so much if I'd read it in the 1980s. It is pure SF nostalgia, with true respect for the past and the period, in the same way that Ready Player One is a paean to eighties computer games.

And it makes total sense that it got the Hugo and the Nebula. After all, who would love a book more about the love of Science Fiction?

At the same time... I wouldn't hand this to anyone who doesn't read SF. I wouldn't hand this to anyone who was looking for plot, or derring-do, or anything beyond the activities of an unsentimental and clearheaded 15 year old girl getting on with her life. I mean, I get that it's a "coda" after the main event prior to the book, where Mor and her sister face down their Evil Mother, but pointing out the "everydayness" and the "healing" without the explody thunderstorm is a lot like the normal everydayness that everyone goes through every day.

So from that perspective, it's not a great book. But fuck it, it's good to have something written for the child SF nerd I was, at last.