A young, peasant girl, starving to death in small village, is confronted with the stark ignominy of her fate: She is nothing and she will die nothing. The girl refuses. In a devastating act of will, she pitches herself into a new destiny, one that will upturn the boundaries of Read more…
There have been many pandemic books written since COVID, and this is one of them. Drawing on the themes of terror, political incompetence and social collapse, End of Men does something a little different with this device, using it to poke around in some ’what-ifs’ of current gender politics. The Read more…
If you haven’t read, A Memory Called Empire, I strongly suggest you put it at the top of your reading list and line A Desolation Called Peace up next. An ambassador from a small mining station is trying to avoid becoming political lunchmeat, when her handler—and one-time lover—from the heart Read more…
It’s halloween, and watching from an upper window, Jen sees her son kill a man. Her loving teenage boy barely looks at her, as tight-lipped and apparently indifferent, he is cuffed and taken away. At some point later that evening, shell-shocked and devastated, Jen falls asleep, and when she wakes, Read more…
In a world were you can get limbs and organs replaced as easily as car parts, Kobo is addicted to his own transformation. Or he was, until his funds dried up. Now this one-time baseball star spends his days scouting talent, and avoiding a pair of inanely vindictive, but motivated, Read more…
A homeless kid becomes the human embodiment of New York City, when a terrifying alien force arrives to destroy it (and possibly the universe). N.K.Jemisin is undeniably a grand dame of speculative fiction and having gotten two highly-acclaimed, sci-fi trilogies under her belt (Broken Earth and Inheritance), here she tries Read more…
Winner of the 2019 Nebula, Locus and Hugo Awards, I had high hopes for this, the first in the Lady Astronaut Series. Honestly, I was disappointed. Overall I would say the set up is good and the world building is pretty solid: A comet hits 1950’s America and doesn’t wipe Read more…
This is a sophisticated book, long and meandering, which makes sense as it follows a character destined to live, die and be born again with his memory in tact, ad infinitum; a strange sort of immortality. After his entirely ordinary first life (and death), it takes Harry August a couple Read more…
I knew nothing about this book and had no idea what to expect, which made it all the more fun! I therefore won’t stray into any spoilers here. The story opens with the first person narrator crashing into consciousness, to find themselves in the middle of a foreboding wood. We Read more…
One of the most unexpected reads of my life – not an exaggeration. I thought I was picking up a novel, felt very hard done by after the first couple of pages which felt like slippery, stream of consciousness poetry, and then got wrapped up in one of the most Read more…