‘As You Wake, Break the Shell’ Becky Chambers has built a career proving that science fiction’s true final frontier isn’t deep space but deep feeling. How can something as vast as space be the setting for something so cozy and comfortable? How does she balance her deeply character-driven stories while
Read More →‘Crocodilopolis: A Novel’ This is a dreamy jungle of story, set in the dreamy jungle of Costa Rica, and filled with a lush prose that takes the dreaminess to yet another level. This is a book that very much fills itself to the brim with its themes with stunning results.
Read More →‘The Salt King’ Look, I’m all for breezy, simple reads that whisk me away and rest my weary brain. There are times, however, in which my brain needs to be pulled out of its malaise and shaken up, like a good margarita. Thankfully, Natasha Pulley has the magical ability to
Read More →‘A Resistance History of the United States’ American history is, like all history, a giant tangled knot of perspectives and fables and winner’s lies. The story that’s been told is always angled in such a way to achieve a certain effect a reader has to work to uncover. So the
Read More →‘The Girl With A Thousand Faces’ Sunyi Dean already had me locked into her twisted narratives with “The Book Eaters” and her endlessly inventive sentences, but this one hit differently. It is set in Kowloon in 1970s Hong Kong, one of the most fascinating places in human history, and she
Read More →‘The Poet Empress’ You should know that this is not a fantasy romance book, despite the piles of marketing that say otherwise. This is a book about power in 100 different forms, and, more specifically, this is a book about words. The magic in the setting literally comes from poetry.
Read More →‘The Ending Writes Itself’ As a lifelong reader and word collector, I love a bit of metafiction. A story about stories will always perk my ears. The skilled pair of authors writing under the name of Evelyn Clarke has given me that in spades. This one has a ton of
Read More →‘Queen of Faces’ Books with layers are always going to draw me in. This delightfully dark and gritty fantasy explores identity, power, resilience and the madness of survival all packaged in a riveting, magical story. Set in a politically charged world where appearance and perception can be as dangerous as
Read More →‘Honeyeater’ This is not an easy book to read. Just throwing that out there if you’re not the kind of person who likes a challenging read. This is a slow-burn, convoluted, stream of consciousness style story that performs literary acrobatics while it breaks your heart. If you are up for
Read More →‘Hemlock’ Melissa Faliveno’s “Hemlock” is a story about addiction, isolation and a creepy deer. This is a haunting novel that balances psychological tension with an intimate exploration of identity and that indefinable sense of place that roots so many people. Set in a small Wisconsin town, the story follows a
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