A strange, quiet book, where the speculative elements are painted so lightly, you won’t realise you’re reading sci fi until you’ve been sucked into a story about love, family and community in a forgotten West Country village.
Jem runs a small rural Inn, serving brew to a smattering of locals alongside her immigrant partner, Isely; a love affair that seems both intensely intimate and frustratingly unconsummated. The community where they live, forms part of The Protectorate, a partitioned area of the UK that separated itself from the outside world in protest over the invasion of Qita, Isley’s home planet. The battle for Qita ended before it begun, won by humanity without a shot fired, a fact explained away by the pacifist nature of Qita’s people.
Jem lives a carefully compact existence; innkeeper, resentful sister to the local councillor, and estranged mother to a wayward son, until outsiders arrive to penetrate the studied calm.
The guide laughed at him. ‘Somebody told me that [Where to babies come from?] was the most difficult question you can human. Is that true? I heard you squeeze them out of yourselves, and cut them free. They do not decide to come free themselves!’
The book holds its cards close to its chest and although I was sucked in from the beginning, it wasn’t until the final quarter that I really sat up and realised I was reading something important. Expertly woven into a story about intimacy and independence, selfhood and community, are deeper questions about how and why we reach for each other, and what we might be prepared to sacrifice not to feel alone.
The novel was a finalist for the 2021 BSFA Award for Best Novel and Arthur C. Clarke Award, as well as being named one of the five best science fiction novels of the year by the Financial Times. It has been monikered a ‘modern classic’, something which gets bandied around a lot, but that I think in this case is valid. This book is grappling with something timeless and vital, and doing it in a perfectly paced and plotted story that I believe will hold out against the test of time.
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Paperback from Awesome Books £6.05
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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 possibility and bring her into battle with heaven itself.
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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.
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 exciting literary journeys of my life. You should read Agua Viva, even though its going to ask a lot from you – it more than repays the effort.
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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.
Winner of the British Fantasy, Locus and Nebula Award’s in 2021, this fast-paced, 180 page novella is an action-packed historical fantasy. It is set in the American deep South after the civil war, where a hardened bunch of sassy, gun-toting vigilantes, hunt demonic beings known as Ku Kluxes.
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.