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You are here: Home / Archives for South Asian fiction

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

By John Folk-Williams

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

Brace yourself for a wild ride through cascading realities, where the dead and living intermingle in daily life, and exploding time scales from Sri Lanka’s present and recent past to the far, far future of an earth boiling under an expanded red sun. This is the world and universe of Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall. It offers […]

Filed Under: International Speculative Fiction, Post-Apocalytic Tagged With: gods, identity, memory, reality, ruined earth, South Asian fiction, transhuman, Vajra Chandrasekera

The Surviving Sky by Kritika H. Rao

By John Folk-Williams

The Surviving Sky by Kritika H. Rao

Having been blogged out, read out, burned out and whatever else I can think of as down and out recently, I was determined to give myself a long summer break, determined that is until I picked up The Surviving Sky by Kritika H. Rao. I could not put this debut novel down. The powerful clash […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: altered minds, city, consciousness, family, fantasy, Kritika H. Rao, South Asian fiction

The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

By John Folk-Williams

The Oleander Sword

In The Oleander Sword, the second novel of The Burning Kingdoms trilogy, Tasha Suri has produced an even more intensely involving and brilliant book than she did in The Jasmine Throne. That first novel richly explored the many selves and identities its characters had to adopt to survive as they strove to increase their power, […]

Filed Under: Epic Fantasy, Great Series Read Project Tagged With: gods, identity, power, religion, sacrifice, sapphic love, South Asian fiction, Tasha Suri

One Arm Shorter Than The Other by Gigi Ganguly

By John Folk-Williams

One Arm Shorter Than The Other by Gigi Ganguly

Gigi Ganguly’s One Arm Shorter Than The Other begins quietly enough in 1986 as a grandfather, Maurice, a resident of Delhi, like all the characters of this beautiful debut novella, wanders in the past of his memory. That habit worries his son James, who thinks dwelling in memories is unhealthy. James feels that his father […]

Filed Under: Indie SciFi, International Speculative Fiction Tagged With: androids, family, Gigi Ganguly, hopeful future, memory, South Asian fiction, time, time travel

The Horizon by Gautam Bhatia

By John Folk-Williams

The Horizon by Gautam Bhatia

In The Horizon, Gautam Bhatia has written a masterful sequel to his first novel, The Wall, that brings together a close examination of the politics of radical change with the songs and stories that can sustain but sometimes also limit the imagination of what is possible in life. Directly following the climactic ending of The […]

Filed Under: Secondary World Fantasy Tagged With: city, Gautam Bhatia, language, memory, poetry, politics, power, religion, revolution, South Asian fiction, The Wall

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri #WyrdandWonder

By John Folk-Williams

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

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, […]

Filed Under: Epic Fantasy, Wyrd and Wonder Tagged With: empire, fire, power, rebellion, religion, sapphic love, South Asian fiction, Tasha Suri

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Something is struggling to be born in this damaged and inspiring world, and I believe science fiction and its speculative cousins are helping us figure out what it is. It’s pushing the imaginations of fiction writers to bend and twist familiar forms to try to capture the forces that are hurling us into a barely conceivable future. This blog is my small way of exploring the half-perceived … Read More about About

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