I really struggled reading this book. It was extremely slow paced for the first 60-70% and I had a difficult time differentiating the characters from each other. Unlike other reviewers I read about online, I didn’t have a hard time with the fact that the book jumped around in time. But I wanted to expose myself to something outside my comfort zone. I am a little bit familiar with the big picture of “Eastern Literary…
Well, I have finally finished the Dune books. I will not be the first to note that the last two books which finish of the original series started by Frank Herbert lack the depth, clarity, and precision of the original Dune. Chapterhouse ended on a cliffhanger with a very strange vision of an old couple, and for years, that was just how the series ended. But apparently Frank left an outline in a safe deposit…
Of the three books in the Binti series, I definitely liked this one the best, but like the other two books, I struggled to really follow the plot and find meaning in the story. Admittedly, this is not my typical read, and I am pushing myself to read outside my normal space opera (aliens and spaceships) books. And this series did have aliens and spaceships (sentient spaceships even!) but most of the story takes place…
This is the sequel to Binti, which i read long enough ago that I only remembered vaguely what it was about so I did a little research on the in-tar-webz to remind myself of that story. In this story, Binti has completed a year at the big galactic university, the first of her people to be admitted. She is making a journey home in order to do a pilgrimage in her ancestral lands, and travels…
This book was recommended to me on Twitter (by Elizabeth Bear who did a month of LGBTQIA+ book recommendations for Pride Month). I have attempted to read Le Guin before but have always struggled with the relatively dense prose, but I decided to give this book a try. I won’t lie, I had to force my way through it. I know a lot of recommendations out there say to not read books you aren’t enjoying…
A Black woman moves into her new home with her husband on her birthday. While unpacking, she gets nauseous, and finds herself transported back to Maryland in the early 1800s where a child is drowning. Her great-great-great grandfather points a gun at her. Her terror sends her back to her shocked husband. This novel is fantasy, and it explores dark themes. And sadly, it is just as relevant today as it was when it was…
I became aware of Dotson’s writing on social media (twitter, specifically), mostly because Gareth Powell regularly lifts her up. I love space opera and so I decided to look into this author. In many ways, her life story sounds a lot like mine. We both created worlds as children and young adults, wrote stories and fleshed out our characters, but are not full time fiction writers. The difference, of course, is that she has followed…
I bought this book earlier in the summer because I specifically wanted to broaden my horizons and read books by Black authors. Later, this book was nominated for several awards and it kept appearing on lists. It is a novella, so at the end of a busy and stressful couple of days I decided to sit down and read it yesterday. I read it in two bursts, and I’ll be honest, this is not my…