Science fiction. Humanity has found a gate near the earth that leads to another solar system with a world inhabited by sentient life. Which they have conquered, or at least they think they have. The story is set in the English west country, which has declared itself independent and adopted a kind of isolationist and …
Science fiction. Future earth, a couple of generations post apocalypse. There are the walled cities where the privileged live in carefully controlled environments of plenty and ease, their security ensured by jealously guarded gates and the invisible violence of citizenship, and there are the settlements beyond the cities where everything has a Mad Max-like vibe. …
Listed by some as young adult…but it doesn’t really read like it, for all that it’s about teens coming of age. Listed by others as historical fiction…but I refuse the idea that a book set when I would’ve been in Grade 10 belongs in such a category. Fantastical, certainly, and of a witchy bent, but …
Novella. Noir detective story mixed with eldritch horror. The book opens with a young boy trying to hire a PI who is more than he seems to kill his (the boy’s) stepdad. A very quick read. The kind of punchy, compelling writing you would want from both of its source genres and that you would …
A classic work of scholarship. About how dominant ways of knowing what came to be called “the Orient” emerged as part of the Western imperial/colonial project and how they continue to pervade and shape discourse and practices of knowing in the West today. Particularly focuses on the British, French, and US examples in relation to …
The…I guess fourth book (if taken in internal chronological order, which is not the same as publication order but is how Bujold recommends reading them) in the classic space opera series, the Vorkosigan Saga. Originally published in the ’80s. It is the first book to centre the character whom I believe is the protagonist from …
Wuxia fantasy. Novella. Found family. A devoted nun of the order named in the book’s title, who is (for reasons revealed later) waiting tables in a village cafe, falls in with a gang of bandits, in the context of a country quietly seething in the grip of rebellion and civil war. Really, really good. Despite …
Literary fiction. From an author based in Argentina, and translated from Spanish. Short stories. Mostly quite dark. Some drift towards, and some into, the fantastical. Abducted children who mysteriously return, sort of. Teen Ouija board sessions gone awry. A family whose neighbourhood mistreats a homeless man and then becomes terribly unlucky. A tired ghost in …
Science fiction. Short stories. I’ve known Delany’s name since I was a sci-fi-devouring teen, and I read and loved a memoir by him almost a decade ago, but this was my first time picking up any of his fiction. It certainly wasn’t the case in his writing about his own life, but I’d always had …
Literary fiction. Australian. The novel takes place over one evening – a woman getting ready for a party, at the party, and then back home afterwards with a man she met at the party. The main character is autistic (as is the author). The book is a detailed portrayal of her incredibly rich inner life …