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She Became The Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

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.

Set in 1300’s China, this epic story—much like its captivating heroine—does not concern itself with boundaries. The narrative is a re-imagining of the rise to power of the peasant rebel, Zhu Yuanzhang, who after claiming victory against the Mongols, reunited China and became the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The historical setting is rendered with loving attention to detail and the considered treatment of gender, catapults the story into the 21st century. In addition, the adroitly managed flavourings of Chinese myth and legend expound the fantastical elements of the story, helping to heighten the vertiginous scale of the narrative, extending it across the plains of China and out into the heavens and the spiritual realm of hungry ghosts.

For a moment she saw the two of them as Heaven might: two briefly embodied human spirits, brushing together for a moment during the long dark journey of their life and death… She Became The Sun

The book is absolutely dripping in honours and deserves them all. It won both the Best Novel and Best Newcomer awards at the British Fantasy Awards, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, the Locus award, the Aurealis Award and the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

This is a massive, masterful book that you should definitely read. I absolutely loved it. Everything from the glimpse into ancient China, to the morally ambiguous but explosively alluring heroine, to the battles and the politics, the love stories and tragedies. It truly deserves the mantle of an epic, and spares the time to line up some emotional gut punches that will take your breath away. 

Already read it? Let me know what you thought in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates. 

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Abe Books £3.64

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A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine 

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 of the Empire, arrives stowed away on a goods transport and demands her help. The mission is to make first contact with a vicious and incomprehensible alien civilisation, which is currently eating ships and wiping out whole planets on their doorstep.

Arkady Martine (pen name of academic and author, Anna Linden Weller), is one of the new queens of the space opera, and if you’re at all attracted by the idea of political intrigue played out over giant intergalactic empires, you will love this book. If you’re not, I’d seriously recommend putting any prejudices aside and giving it a go.

“It is the minds of a people that have to stay free. Bodies die, or suffer, or are imprisoned. Memory lasts.” A Desolation Called Peace

I don’t like space ship sci-fi that puts the ‘sci’ before the ‘fi’, but this is a few hundred light years from that (sorry, no more space travel puns, I promise). Every single character in this vast, ambitious story, is delicious. They are fleshy and real and so seductive that you can’t wait to leave one to get back to another, but then are just as hungry to return. The themes of language and memory and ultimately what it means to be ‘a person’, are handled with sophistication, and the civilisation at the heart of the story is crafted with a loving attention to detail that is frankly intimidating.

This is a master storyteller at work, and the skill with which she draws together layer upon layer of complex narrative for the big finale, is orchestrated with the studied flair of a symphony conductor. The book will demand your time and attention, but it more than repays the effort. If you’ve already read it, let me know what you thought in the comments. If you haven’t, I’m jealous! You’ve a treat in store.

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Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Waterstones £7.49

Follow the author on twitter @ArkadyMartine

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Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

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, it is the day before halloween and the murder hasn’t happened yet.

Yet another time travelling detective novel (there must be something in the water), but this one is a little different. Instead of travelling in loop, Jen can only fall backwards, further and further into her family’s past, until the secrets hidden there—the ones that will drive her son to murder—can be dragged into the light and untethered from the family’s fate.

She suddenly thinks of Kelly. The easy humour they’ve always had. But when has Kelly ever told her how he felt? If she observes him dispassionately, what might she see? Wrong Place, Wrong Time

This is a family drama with a splash of crime fiction, and a speculative element that works well with the story being told. It is a smartly executed mystery, with plenty of enticing twists and shocking reveals, and a refreshing lack of gory horror. If you’re in the market for an easy-to-read crime thriller that isn’t going to put you off your dinner, I’d say this one is a good bet.

If you’ve already read it, let me know what you think in the comments and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy on kindle £7.99 

Paperback from World of Books £4.49

Follow the author on twitter @GillianMAuthor

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The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin

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 her hand at something new. 

Set in our world, in our time, we find ourselves in a reality where cities are extra-dimensional organisms that are born and can die. In order to birth themselves, cities must chose a human avatar from among their residents, who they imbue with special powers, drawn from the essence of the city and the people who live there. It’s an entertaining premise, and one with plenty of scope for exciting world-building.

“Come, then, City That Never Sleeps. Let me show you what lurks in the empty spaces where nightmares dare not tread.” The City We Became

The book is immediately immersive; giant cosmic battles, spunky characters and the plot is always moving. There is some space given over to considering the beauty and the violence of the all-too-human (all-too-inhuman) entities that are cities, and some commentary on the divisions we carve around ourselves, even while living on top of each other. The heart of the book however, is undoubtedly the author’s love affair with New York and its boroughs.

Perhaps that is why—as a Londoner—I felt it sometimes fell short; lapsed into all too easy moralising, while taking aim at obvious crowd-pleasing targets (‘Karens’, whiny hipster boys). It seemed to want to say something about gentrification, but it couldn’t quite decide what. 

I was undone by The Broken Earth Trilogy, but The City We Became simply doesn’t have its depths. However, when complaining that a book is not someone’s best work we must remember who we’re talking about. This book won the BSFA Award for Best Novel this year, and was nominated for the Nebula, and Hugo Best Novel Awards. It will also be part of a trilogy, so I will certainly be tuning in to see what the next one has to say.

Have you read it? Let me know what you thought in the comments and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Hachette £8.99

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The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal

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 out life as we know it (for now), just the whole east coast. Leaving a humanitarian crisis in its wake, the comet also triggers a slow motion extinction event and a world which must now come together with a plan to colonise space. 

So far, so good and the story carries along OK, but all in all, it feels overly long and too schmalzy for my taste. The feminism is heavy handed, there’s not much character development, and the romantic elements quite honestly stray into gag-inducing (if I ever some across another bit of rocket/blast off innuendo I will punch someone).

I guess if you like airport literature and are intrigued by the idea of historical sci-fi, this might be your bag. It wasn’t mine and I won’t be continuing with the series.

Disagree? Let me know why in the comments and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

Buy on kindle £5.99 

Paperback from Blackwells £7.77

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The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

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 more (believing himself mad, possessed or cursed), before he is found by others of his kind and initiated into The Cronus Club. This shadowy organisation exists to support and shelter its members (the Ouroboran), and defend the secret of its own existence. Other than rescuing Ouroboran children from their linear parents to save them from the boredom of endlessly repeating their childhoods, the club is mostly social in nature, though it does have one strict rule: No interfering with linear time. 

It is on his eleventh death bed, that Harry receives a message. A small girl bearing a warning passed back in time through future generations of Ouroboran that something is wrong. The end of the world is getting faster.

Already a little tired of immortality, Harry begins an investigation into the cause of this acceleration, a search which gets him entangled with a formidable nemesis, and leads to a ferocious battle of wits played out across multiple lives, while the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

“Men must be decent first and brilliant later, otherwise you’re not helping people, just servicing the machine.”

The premise is intriguing, and underneath the skilful world-building and juicy vignettes about life as a Ouroboran, the text is full of big questions about what it means to live well. On its release, it received widespread praise in the media and had since reached Bestseller status, extremely impressive for a book of this length and complexity. If you have the patience for it, it’s well-written, expertly crafted and rich which space for contemplation.

Already read it? Let me know what you thought in the comments and don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.

 

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from World of Books £4.19

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Agua Viva, by Clarice Lispector

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.

The book is about being alive. It channels a raging hunger to connect honestly and completely with lived experience; an insatiable desire to hold and know the elusive moment of existing even as it passes us by. It is heartbreaking and vivid and empowering and as unique as the incredible mind it sprung from.

“My only salvation is joy. An atonal joy inside the essential ‘it’. Doesn’t that make sense? Well it has to. Because it’s too cruel to know that life is unique and that we don’t have, as a guarantee, more than faith in darkness; because it’s too cruel, I respond with the purity of indomitable joy.” Agua Viva

Clarice Lispector, born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector (Хая Пінкасівна Ліспектор), was a Ukrainian born novelist and short story writer. She moved to Rio de Janeiro in her teens, spent a decade living across Europe and The United States, and then returned to Brazil in 1959. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her short life in frequent pain and it is during this period that she produced the lion’s share of her published work. She wrote Agua Viva in 1973 and died four years later, at the age of fifty-seven. 

Her legacy is now wrapped in mythology; her writing frequently described as spell casting in which the effusive elegance of her prose possesses her readers, earning her a cult status among her fans. Whatever your take on this, Clarice Lispector’s potency is undeniable, and the experience of reading Agua Viva a profound one. So take a deep breath, and plunge in.

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

Buy on kindle £4.99 

Paperback from Blackwells £7.56

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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

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 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

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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. 

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Buy on kindle £9.99 

Hardback from Waterstones £9.49

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