Category Archives: Speculative Fiction

Seed to Harvest: The Patternist Series

Posted on April 21, 2020 by

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

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

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

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

Oval

Posted on December 25, 2019 by

Anja and her boyfriend Louis live in a supposedly sustainable housing enclave in Berlin, all thanks to Anja’s employer, a corporation devoted to science and sustainability (or the appearance of it). Anja, Louis, and their friends spend their evenings partying … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 2 Comments

Golden State

Posted on December 23, 2019 by

Imagine if each person was allowed the luxury of claiming their own truth, building a reality of their own in which they can live. Imagine the danger that would pose, how quickly those lies would metastasize, and the extraordinary threat … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 2 Comments

The Southern Reach Trilogy

Posted on December 22, 2019 by

Annihilation was one of my favorite movies of last year, which made me curious about Jeff Vandermeer’s book series that inspired it. It has taken a while, but I’ve finally gotten around to reading the 2014 book series: Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 4 Comments

Stories of Your Life and Others

Posted on December 14, 2019 by

The stories in this collection by Ted Chiang all deal with our perceptions of the world and how those perceptions may be off or incomplete or … just not the only way to see the world. Sometimes that’s a source … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Short Stories/Essays, Speculative Fiction | 6 Comments

The Book of Strange New Things

Posted on November 17, 2019 by

While I was on my extended, unplanned blogging break, I read a bunch of books, most of which I have no intention to write about. I either don’t have much to say or have forgotten too much about them to … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 2 Comments

The Testaments (and a little catching up)

Posted on November 9, 2019 by

I  said for years that I blogged about every book that I read because if I didn’t make it a habit and blog every time, I’d stop blogging altogether. I’m all in or not in at all. And that proved … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Speculative Fiction | 14 Comments