The World Gives Way, a debut novel by Marissa Levien, is a super depressing book that you probably shouldn’t read if you are in a bad place. This standalone story focuses on the idea of coping with your impending death, and not in a peaceful, fulfilled, going silently into the night sort of way. It's…
Continue reading ➞ The World Gives Way – What The World Need Now, Is A New Hull
I am slowly stepping out of my somber reflection and trying to gather my thoughts on Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur. Upon finishing the book, I slowly closed the cover and then spent the next three days trying to unpack what I read. I still don’t fully grasp what happened or what it all…
At a high level, it is really easy to tell if you should read The Witness for the Dead, by Katherine Addison. Have you read Addison’s famous book, The Goblin Emperor? If you have and like it, you will like this book a lot. If you haven’t, well, you should go read Emperor first. I…
Continue reading ➞ The Witness For The Dead – Come Take A Look
Winter’s Orbit, by Everina Maxwell, surprised me in a lot of ways. For starters, it is one of our Dark Horses for 2021, so I knew almost nothing about it other than its plot synopsis. Then there is the fact that I wasn’t particularly sure I would like Winter’s Orbit given its stated plot. It…
Continue reading ➞ Winter’s Orbit – A Hot Romance With Subtlety And Gravity
Look, just read this book. You are going to like it. Swordheart, by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon), is an impossible book to dislike. It’s a fantasy romantic comedy that positively radiates humor, joy, and character. It is currently published by Argyll Productions, a small targeted publisher, so Swordheart is relatively unknown - which is a…
Continue reading ➞ Swordheart – Pointedly Funny and Heartwarming
I seem to be reading a lot of great novels by journalists recently, and if they keep turning out as well as this one did I have no plans to stop. I don’t know if I would strictly call The 7 ½ Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton a fantasy book, but I will…
Continue reading ➞ The 7 1/2 Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle – Eight Takes On A Good Time
I recently moved from NYC to the suburbs. In preparing to depart the city, I made an effort to request a number of more hard to find books on my TBR pile that the NYPL had, but a smaller library would not have access to. Two of these books were The Troupe and American Elsewhere…
Continue reading ➞ The Troupe And American Elsewhere – The Bennett Backlog
Piranesi is the most recent novel by Susanna Clarke, best known for her truly massive book, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Normally I wouldn’t put this much emphasis on an author’s past work, but Norrell might be the largest book I have ever read both in page count and in density. While Norrell is a…
Yoon Ha Lee is a science fiction writer with a penchant for the strange and the imaginative. His Machineries of Empire series came out of nowhere a few years ago and wowed the pants off of myself and many other reviews. His work has a tendency to be surreal and confusing but with clever guardrails…
I am very appreciative of Adrian Tchaikovsky continually putting out solid standalone science fiction novels. His latest book, The Doors of Eden, is the next in a long chain of satisfying and meaty stories that are nicely contained in a single novel. Tchaikovsky’s latest novel has cemented him in my mind as a reliable author…
Continue reading ➞ The Doors of Eden – A Window Into What Could Have Been
