The Helm of Midnight by Marina J. Lostetter was one of the most complicated and confusing books that I read in 2021. It was a strange murder mystery in a dystopian bubble world where people could summon the skills of the dead to empower them through masks. The book was so complicated that reading the…
Continue reading ➞ The Cage Of Dark Hours – Taking Off The Shackles
Though we don’t really do our Dark Horse initiative in the way we used to, we are always striving to find worthwhile debuts. When I came across Marisa Crane’s debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself, I was instantly grabbed by the title. After reading the synopsis, I just knew I needed to read…
Continue reading ➞ I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself – A Metamorphic Debut
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean is by far the strangest book I’ve read in 2022, and I mean that in the best way possible. I was not expecting a story about book-eating creatures to pull a Handmaid’s Tale and push a desperate mother to the edge. It’s a dynamic book, and dare I say…
The Chosen Twelve, by James Breakwell, is a humorous standalone dystopian thriller about a group of young senior citizens competing in a series of chaotic simulations to determine the fate of the Earth and all organic life. It strikes an uncommon balance between silly and serious and certainly checks the box when it comes to…
Back in 2020, Jesus, yeah, two years ago, I read a little novella by the name of Riot Baby. Tochi Onyebuchi’s novella hit very close to home considering the events of 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd. It was one of my instant favorites, and I still feel the righteous anger that poured…
If you have read a lot of my reviews in particular, you might have noticed that I enjoy reading books from the perspective of an individual’s relationship to society. So when offered the chance to read a book with the tagline “there is no consent under capitalism,” you can imagine the inhuman sounds of excitement…
As with a lot of people, music has played a defining role in my life. I never really played an instrument (fifth-grade trumpet does not count), but it was always there in the background guiding how I viewed the world. However, my tastes and attitudes in the past few years have changed greatly from my…
Continue reading ➞ A Song for a New Day – Playing Fast And Luce
It's a great time for readers and writers of dystopian fiction. Whatever world you want to imagine where something terrible is happening, it is out there for you. One can recede into the classics, finding new relevancies and warnings. Then there are the newer stories that draw inspiration from the past, with the emotional resonance…
Continue reading ➞ An Excess Male – More Than Necessary Reading
Last year, when I finished reading Blackwing, by Ed McDonald, I was unsure if I would be back for more. My review of the McDonald’s debut can be found here, but the short version is: good writing and interesting world, but a super boring protagonist. However, after sitting on the book for a few months…
To a reader like me, who voraciously consumes spoon-fed, tried-and-true Sci-Fi tropes without scoffing, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road teeters on the edge of greatness for a majority of the fittingly winding narrative. It withholds details that, to any other book, would be crucial. It chooses moments of solemn tranquility over epic conflict. It dives deep…
