Posted on

The Water Cure, by Sophie Mackintosh

Three sisters live an antiquated, disconnected existence on a remote island. Their lives are ruled over by their autocratic parents, who mete out medieval punishments and force them to compete in bizarre rituals of sufferance.

The girls are introduced to us one by one, their narratives unfolding, sad and lonely as their large, dilapidated home; all empty rooms and creaking floorboards. It is unclear why the family has secluded itself on this remote spot and what exactly they have to fear from the ‘toxic’ mainland and its men, but unease lurks like sea mist in the mind of the reader as the sisters piece their parents’ hints and their own memories together in an attempt to understand what is true.

Then three male castaways wash up on their lonely shore and the spell their parents have worked so hard to craft, begins to unravel.

“It will always be a woman who saves us, we know that now. The protections of men are only ever flimsy and self-serving.” The Water Cure

The story is heavy with female longing, with the desperation for salvation through love and the giving over of oneself to something bigger. It is a quiet, potent story, one of those incisive pieces of speculative fiction that speaks of something too painfully real, too true, for realism.

Let me know what you thought of The Water Cure in the comments, and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy on kindle £3.99

Buy from Waterstones £8.99

Follow the author at @fairfairisles

Like reading speculative fiction? Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on my latest posts.

Like poetry? Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometimes

Posted on

 This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

One of my favourite books from the last few years. It won the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction, the Nebula Award for Best Novella of 2019, and the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella. If you’re only going to read one book this year, read this one.

The story follows two time travelling beings, Red and Blue, acting as agents of cosmic forces which are locked in a fierce battle for the timeline. These opposing empires, The Garden and The Agency, fight to influence events throughout history in a mission to lay the seeds for their preferred outcomes in the future. Pursuing each other up and down the timeline, Red and Blue’s initial antagonism melts into curious, adversarial jesting, before blossoming into friendship, and then love.

“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.” This Is How You Lose the Time War

The story takes the form of messages the two central characters leave for each other at the scenes of their triumphs and defeats. Letters written in the wind, in the heat signature of water, in the entrails of sea creatures, in the heart rings of a tree. Hiding these letters from the ever watchful superpowers they serve, the lonely warriors tease, flirt and slowly come to reveal themselves to each other, unaware that something is on their trail. 

A mesmerising story of love and resistance in which the oppressive powers that be, fight the long game, and still cannot win. It blew me away. The prose is delicious, the love story seductive, and the sci-fi vivacious with fresh ideas and immaculate plotting. I doubt you’ve read anything like it before and you should absolutely read it now. 

Don’t forget to tell me what you think in the comments, and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.


Buy on kindle £4.99

Buy paperback from Bookcase London £4.99


Follow the authors @tithenai and @maxgladstone

Like reading speculative fiction? Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on my latest posts.

Like poetry? Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometime

Posted on

Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, Bewilderment  is an important and beautiful book about empathy and the sadness and beauty which define living in our troubled world.

The book follows a father, Theo, and his son, Robin, as they struggle to fill the spaces the world has cut out for them. Set in the near future, or perhaps an adjacent timeline, the book moves seamlessly between realism and the speculative. Theo’s job searching for signs of life in the galaxy brings us to visit a variety of different worlds, and Robin, a sensitive boy who is quick to anger, begins an avant-garde treatment for his unspecific neuro-atypicality. The therapy teaches him to mimic brainwaves patterns in an effort to teach him how to regulate his emotions, and has some unexpected repercussions.

“They share a lot, astronomy and childhood. Both are voyages across huge distances. Both search for facts beyond their grasp…”

Always teasing a delicate line between despair and hope, shrinking and expanding between the relationship of father and son, and the nature of being in the universe, the book is rich with love and life and the implausible abundance of the natural world. It is the best kind of speculative fiction: Wild and exciting and new, while full of old wisdom.

If you like personal stories with heart that invite you to think about how you live in the world, you should definitely add it to your reading list. 

If you enjoyed it, let me know why in the comments and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy on kindle £9.99 

Hardback from Waterstones £9.49

Like reading speculative fiction? Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on my latest posts.

Like poetry? Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometime

Posted on

The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells

The six book series has won various awards, including Nebula Award Winner for Best Novella and Hugo Award Winner for Best Novella. I fully expect to see a Netflix series or movie franchise one of these days.

The main character is a dry-toned cyborg with a penchant for trashy TV dramas who is afraid of nothing, except the possibility of close interpersonal relationships with humans. Built by a nefarious company to act as security detail for planetary exploration, a malfunction causes our protagonist to murder the team they are protecting. The self-titled ‘Murderbot’ then hacks their governor module to ensure they are no longer under external control, but with apparently nothing better to do, continues to perform their duties, all the while giving us the benefit of their eye-rolling narration. This is until the group of humans they are protecting get themselves into some serious trouble, and our ‘Murderbot’ is forced to confront their freedom, and make some choices about who they are and what it is they want out of life.

“…in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.” All Systems Red

As the series continues, we are taken around the galaxy solving crimes and gathering evidence against the corporate giants that treat human, and other forms of life, so cheaply. I’m only three books in and I’m utterly sold. The world is great, the plots compelling, and the protagonist unfailingly charming. I flew through the first three books and have had to restrain myself from jumping straight into the next. If you like your sci-fi low on the sci, and heavy on the action (with a good dose of dry witticism), this series is for you. 

Have you read any of the Murderbot series? If so, let me know what you thought in the comments and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy Book One: All Systems Red on kindle £2.09

Paperback six book series from Blackwells £36.44

 

Follow the author at @marthawells1

Like reading speculative fiction? Want more book recommendations? Follow me on twitter @SLangridgeUK for updates on my latest posts.

Like poetry? Check me out on TikTok @theyrhymesometimes