I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself – A Metamorphic Debut

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…

Spin – A Monumental but Slightly Dizzying Spectacle

Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, is a book that constantly showed up on lists of books I should have read by now. Its reputation is so present that whenever I wanted something big and exciting, the cover art would worm its way into my brain. It was also name dropped at various moments in different…

The Vanished Birds – Finding Your Family

Have you ever wanted to turn to a colleague and exclaim “wow, you’re a coward,” and have legitimate grounds to stand on? What if that colleague was a good friend who told you to read a book, and you stonewalled them forever because “you had better books to read than ones they already read?” Well,…

The Mountain In The Sea – Peak Performance

When I first read the synopsis for Ray Nayler’s debut novel, The Mountain In the Sea, I felt threatened. The description of the book felt pointedly aimed at me and my parasocial relationship with Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children books. I didn’t exactly pass right over it, but I didn’t really engage with the possibility of reading…

Chasm City – Not Splitting Hairs On This One

Revelation Space is a big series. Sure, it’s a trilogy, but it also has two related novels and a treasure trove of short stories. I’ve only scratched the surface on the shorter fiction by Alastair Reynolds, but the little I have read has been just as exciting as the sprawling epics. Now I’m writing this…

How High We Go In The Dark – Treading Water in a Cave

Catching up on the year’s previous releases is a double edged sword. It feels good to read something that so many people have already weighed in on, but said novel carries the baggage of having to live up to expectations. While I didn’t read any reviews of this next book until after I had finished…