Category Archives: Speculative Fiction

Green Grass, Running Water

Posted on February 25, 2015 by

Is it possible to enjoy a book you don’t understand? I think it is. I certainly enjoyed Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, but there’s a lot of it that I didn’t understand. The novel blends the stories of … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 6 Comments

Tenth of December

Posted on January 28, 2015 by

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about short stories is the way they give authors room to play with an idea without having to fully flesh it out or offer a full-fledged plot. Sometimes just a glimpse of … Continue reading →

Posted in Contemporary, Fiction, Short Stories/Essays, Speculative Fiction | 8 Comments

Station Eleven

Posted on January 22, 2015 by

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 22 Comments

Revival

Posted on January 21, 2015 by

At the start of Stephen King’s newest novel, Jamie Morton muses on the people in our lives—those who are close to us and those who aren’t. Friends, family, acquaintances, and people we just pass on the street. But then there’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | Leave a comment

The Vet’s Daughter

Posted on January 15, 2015 by

Well, that was quite a journey. This 1959 novel by Barbara Comyns starts off seeming like one kind of book, but as it goes on the story gets more and more odd until the oddness is the center of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Classics, Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 13 Comments

The Just City

Posted on January 10, 2015 by

The question that was uppermost in my mind as I finished Jo Walton’s new book, releasing January 13, is why isn’t it July yet? Because July is when her follow-up, The Philosopher Kings, is being published, and I’m dying to … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 16 Comments

Tooth and Claw

Posted on November 19, 2014 by

Teresa asked me to read Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw — essentially a Victorian novel in which all the characters are dragons — in this year’s book swap, after she read it herself in 2013. Her review of it sums it … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 10 Comments

The King Must Die

Posted on November 13, 2014 by

You’ve probably heard the story. Fourteen young Athenians, seven boys and seven girls, are sent to Crete as tributes to King Minos. There they will be placed in a labyrinth with the fearsome Minotaur, the half-human half-bull son of Queen … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 17 Comments

Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Posted on October 31, 2014 by

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn’t forget it on mornings like this one—fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting out of the mountains, the Pig running … Continue reading →

Posted in Children's / YA Lit, Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 6 Comments

A Stranger in Olondria

Posted on October 29, 2014 by

Jevick is from Tyom, a small village in the Tea Islands. He has lived here all his childhood, learning the delicate art of pepper-growing from his father, hardly understanding his own isolation, until one day his father brings back something … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 6 Comments