Once again, it’s time for a batch of mini reviews. I might not be in a reading slump anymore, not quite, but I am in a bit of a reviewing slump and I finally have enough of these hoarded up for a post.
So, let’s get started!
– goodreads –
This was, I confess, a complete impulse read. I was idly browsing cheap ebooks and – hey, I’ve heard of this before. And it looks to be barely longer than a novella, too! Checking the preview, the strangeness of it all was incredibly compelling. I had to go back to it at the earliest possible opportunity.
– goodreads –
I’m not sure where to even start with this book – I’m not sure a review can do it justice. I picked it up because I heard about the 18th century references and it turned out to be one of the craziest, best, wildest, most cursed rides involving a lot of quite uncharacteristic incoherent screaming. It has to be experienced to be believed. As hard as it was to tell from my commentary while I was reading it, I think I might have a new favourite series. Definitely not for everyone, but very up multiple of my niche alleys.
I struggle to open history’s inner doors to you, to teach you how those who made this new era think and feel. In my age we have come anew to see history as driven not by DNA and economics, but by man. And woman. And so must you.
Continue reading “Review: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Terra Ignota #1)”
And once again I read enough novellas (and one anthology) that I have enough for a mini review post! This time, it has been a rather mixed batch.
– goodreads –
ARC received from the publisher (Solaris) in exchange for an honest review.
We burn history down, over and over, as an act of remembrance. When there are no answers, there is recollection, and repetition.
I’m always on the lookout for more SFF slice of life. Especially weird literary SFF slice of life. So when Fabienne brought this book to my attention, I knew I’d have to read it. And it turned out to be one of the most unique things I’ve found in a while – at the same time somehow a seamless blend of super chill sci-fi slice of life (slight Becky Chambers vibes anyone?) and something altogether more unsettling.
– goodreads –
It is dangerous to build. Once you have built something – something that takes all your passion and will – it becomes more precious to you than your own happiness. You don’t realize that, while you are building it. That you are creating a martyrdom – something, which, later, will make you suffer.
And with this, I am done with the 2020 r/Fantasy Bingo!
The Winged Histories is one of my all-time favourites, so I was incredibly curious how would the first book in the series (really, the two can be read in any order) compare. I’m all for literary fantasy with lovely prose, so that I would like it to at least some extent was pretty much a given, but I still far prefer its sequel.
Continue reading “Review: A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar (Olondria #1)”
– goodreads –
ARC received from the publisher (Tor.com) in exchange for an honest review.
Sometimes, you know a book will be perfect for you going into it. Sometimes, like here, you stumble into it completely unawares. It was the cover that first caught my eye, and then the blurb – a woman with a perfect memory looking for answers. But it was the prose and the narrative style that won me over. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I still think it’s best to go in blind and knowing no more than that, but if you need more convincing…
Continue reading “Review: The Seventh Perfection by Daniel Polansky”
– goodreads –
It is thrilling, to be so far up. The very quality of the air is different; it conducts less of the sound of your voice, and its shallowness, its thinness, infects you. It is a small spike in your cold throat. In that narrow air, looking down over the misty land in the last few minutes of sunlight, you hear your own heart like a slow bass drum, and feel the anticipation of a good song beginning, somewhere in your bones, the percussion of the joints and the slur of the blood.
The Breath of the Sun is another confirmation that an instinct that a book will be great is never to be ignored. I have waited over a year to be able to get my hands on the paperback and in the end, it was absolutely worth it.
With its gorgeous prose, unique concept, experimental structure, queerness, and complex relationships, it shot straight to my favourites and I’d even put it on the same level as The Gray House or The Winged Histories. I can’t praise it enough. If you’re looking for literary fantasy that’s unlike any other you’ve read before: that’s the book for you.
Continue reading “Review: Breath of the Sun by Isaac R. Fellman”
– goodreads –
ARC received from the published (Tachyon) in exchange for an honest review.
They were birds of bright fire that fell from the sky and cocooned me, until I could see and hear nothing except the warmth and the feathers enveloping me and the threads of the wind singing each to each until my whole skin was ignited by the sun, my body changing and changed by the malleable flame.
I have been familiar with R.B. Lemberg’s works for a while – Geometries of Belonging and Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds (which should preferably be read before reading this book) are two of those short stories that stuck with me long after I read them. So when Erio brought The Four Profound Weaves to my attention, highly recommending it, I knew that sooner or later, I will end up reading it. Queer books with lovely prose are precisely my kind of thing.
As suspected, I adored it.
Continue reading “Review: The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg (Birdverse)”
– goodreads –
I probably never would have read Central Station at all if not for the fact that this year’s r/Fantasy Bingo had a cyberpunk square. I hate the very thought of cyberpunk. Oppressive high tech societies? No thanks. So in the oldest tradition of Bingo, I went out in search of edge cases. Oddities. This was one of the candidates I couldn’t quite choose between – then I saw it in a bookstore and it was decided. And I couldn’t be more glad I did.
A group of disgruntled house appliances watched the sermon in the virtuality – coffee makers, cooling units, a couple of toilets – appliances, more than anyone else, needed the robots’ guidance, yet they were often wilful, bitter, prone to petty arguments, both with their owners and themselves.
The easiest way to describe it would be “gorgeous sci-fi fever dream.” I have a long-standing love for weird, trippy books and for slice of life, so I could hardly have stumbled upon a more perfect match for my tastes. And before I scare anyone off: it’s strange, yes, but never confusing.
To Other Worlds 