I’m way ahead of the publication date for this one, but I couldn’t resist jumping right into The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by the remarkable Malka Older. This is Book 2 of the Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, my favorite detective couple since Holmes and Watson, and it’s another beautiful and charming story. As in […]
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord, the latest in her Cygnus Beta novels, is unlike any science fictional work I’ve recently read. It depicts familiar elements: a vast scale of galactic politics, a humanoid diaspora in space, a climate-changed Earth where cities are being enclosed in protective globes and many current nation states have […]
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, author of the remarkable The Centenal Cycle, is a many-layered book that becomes more and more interesting upon closer examination. On the surface, it is a very good mystery about the search for a missing man. It is also a fine relationship story about the investigator, Mossa, […]
Bliss Montage by Ling Ma
One of the things that makes Ling Ma’s stories in Bliss Montage so extraordinary is her ability to blend keen perceptions of human relationships with fantasy elements that somehow make the fantastic an intimate part of ordinary life. There is the house in “LA” the narrator shares with a hundred ex-boyfriends, the pickup date in […]
Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi – A Review
Just as I was wending my way through various fantasy worlds, Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi slammed me back into a near future that is just a little bit removed from the ugly realities of today. Onyebuchi’s novella Riot Baby may have been a great outcry of pain, told in powerful prose, but Goliath is a […]
Finna and Defekt: Books 1 and 2 of Nino Cipri’s LitenVerse
I wasn’t prepared for Finna and Defekt, the two novellas so far comprising Nino Cipri’s LitenVerse. It’s hard to find stories that effectively satirize consumer capitalism and combine that with penetrating portraits of relationships, but here they are! These are absorbing and insightful stories skillfully blending emotional realities of dealing with gender, love, and loneliness […]
