Category Archives: Speculative Fiction

Tender is the Flesh

Posted on January 23, 2021 by Teresa

This novel by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica and translated by Sarah Moses is set in a future where all non-human animals have been infected with a virus that infects anyone exposed to them (or so they’ve been told). So to … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 11 Comments

The Down Days

Posted on January 18, 2021 by Teresa

I didn’t really intend to read a pandemic book during the pandemic, but this novel by Ilze Hugo is on the TOB shortlist, and the more TOB books I read, the more fun the event is to follow. So here … Continue reading →

Posted in Speculative Fiction | 2 Comments

The Ballad of Black Tom

Posted on January 14, 2021 by Teresa

Victor LaValle is a pretty terrific horror writer whose books take the real-life horrors of racism and add monsters. The 2016 novella The Ballad of Black Tom is the third of his books that I’ve read, and they’ve all been enjoyably intense … Continue reading →

Posted in Speculative Fiction | 8 Comments

Piranesi

Posted on October 4, 2020 by Teresa

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my favorite books, and I’ve been longing for another novel from Clarke ever since I first read that masterpiece. (I haven’t read her  story collection, fearing that short stories won’t have the … Continue reading →

Posted in Speculative Fiction, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

September Reading in Review

Posted on October 3, 2020 by Teresa

Do you ever feel guilty for not loving a book? I sometimes do, especially when I have several middling reading experiences in a row with books that don’t have obvious problems because that’s when I have good reason to suspect … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Contemporary, Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 10 Comments

The Changeling

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Jenny

I’ve been interested in stories about changelings for a long time. I can’t quite trace the source of the interest — perhaps part of my more general interest in stories about interactions between fairies and humans, and that goes back … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Seed to Harvest: The Patternist Series

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Teresa

Octavia Butler’s Patternist series is a series of Octavia Butler’s earliest novels (although she wrote Kindred as a standalone during the time these books were published). Four of the novels that make up the series were published in a single edition … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 5 Comments

Call Down the Hawk

Posted on January 19, 2020 by Teresa

The interactions between the Lynch brothers were one of my favorite parts of Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series, so I was delighted to learn that she would be writing a new series focusing on Ronan Lynch (with, presumably, a lot … Continue reading →

Posted in Children's / YA Lit, Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 4 Comments

Among Others

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Teresa

Mori’s diary starts in September 1979, as she heads to a new boarding school in the country, after the school year has already started. Teenage Mori suspects she’s being sent to school so her aunts can be rid of her. … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 5 Comments

The Water Dancer

Posted on January 12, 2020 by Teresa

There is a lot to like about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel. I appreciated, for example, the way he illuminates the complex relationships between the enslaved and those who enslaved them, especially when, as so often happened, those characters were actually … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 6 Comments