From the brilliant opening of Nnedi Okorafor’s Remote Control, when we meet the confident Sankofa, just fourteen, walking a road in rural Ghana (“Small swift steps made with small swift feet”) the hints of her extraordinary power are everywhere. She is a subject of rumor, people hide from her approach, she wears adult clothes though […]
Slipping by Mohamed Kheir – A Review for #SciFiMonth
Mohamed Kheir has written in Slipping a brilliant series of stories that drop their characters out of time and space for brief periods and interweave their narratives to challenge the limits of story-telling. The effect is like a folding of reality itself as the terms of their lives change directions in a stray encounter here, […]
The Pastel City, a Novel of Viriconium by M. John Harrison – A Review
The Pastel City (1971) is the first story by M. John Harrison in his Viriconium fantasy sequence. This short novel drew me in immediately with its luminous prose and its ability to depict a world in ruins and a world of hope with just a few brilliant visual strokes. Though it begins with a prologue […]
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri #WyrdandWonder
What an exciting and involving novel this is! Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne takes a while to set its crowded stage but soon launches into a powerful story of two extraordinary women, each trying to gain power of very different types. When thrown together, despite their vastly different backgrounds, one (Priya) apparently a lowly servant, […]
Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard’s prose swept me through Fireheart Tiger like a single brushstroke of many beautiful strands toward a strong conclusion that came just a little too easily and a little too soon. She is a master at plunging the reader at once into a richly imagined fantasy world yet without distracting the mind with […]
Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
I like writers who take risks in introducing their heroes. Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa sets this first book of The Nameless Republic series on the continent of Oon and its dominant country called Bassa. But unlike the image of the sleek figure on the cover art, the protagonist appears before us […]
