I suppose one little month can’t get much worse than this past November. Following soon after the depressing election came a bureaucratic nightmare threatening health insurance, a case of shingles and, by far the worst of all, the death of a close relative after a long illness. But the one book that brought back a […]
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Who Fears Death (2010) by Nnedi Okorafor puzzled me at first. The central character, Onyesonwu, (whose name means “who fears death”) is an outcast figure, a child of rape, who is avoided by most people and as a result angry most of the time. But the story reveals her life on two levels, the physical […]
Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse (Book 3 of Between Earth and Sky)
One of the great themes of Rebecca Roanhorse’s impressive third volume of her Between Earth and Sky trilogy is the struggle of humans to use godlike power without being destroyed by it. In Mirrored Heavens, the major characters either reach for such power or have it imposed on them, and all pay a heavy price. […]
True Names by Vernor Vinge
The passing of Vernor Vinge, author of the great A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep, led me to go back to one of his earliest ground-breaking works, the novella True Names, first published in 1981. It’s regarded as the inspiration and first detailed working out of what William Gibson would […]
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi – #WyrdandWonder
In Wole Talabi’s exciting fantasy adventure, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, the spirit world has fallen on hard times. With dwindling followers to make faith offerings, the companies of the gods have to make do with diminished income, and their powers are not quite what they used to be. Shigidi is an ex-god […]
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
Impressed as I was by Simon Jimenez‘ beautiful and moving first novel, The Vanished Birds, I have to say I’m just staggered by his second, The Spear Cuts Through Water. Using the second person, the narrator lures “you” with intensely lyrical but dramatically apt prose into a world between worlds. One of several story tellers […]
