laurareads87's reviews
536 reviews

 Rereading Parable of the Sower in July 2024 – the month/year that the book’s timeline begins – is an unsettling experience. If this vision of a dystopian future felt disturbingly possible in the 1990s when it was written, now it feels scarily close. In the world of Parable, in the midst of a slow collapse of societal organization that isn’t fully explained but which most certainly involves the impacts of climate change, corporations, racism, and misogyny persist but most infrastructure and services are wholly out of reach of most people. Butler’s work demands that we engage with so many pressing, urgent realities and Lauren Olamina’s Earthseed asks us to envision other ways of being and living, futures of freedom and mutual aid guided by a God we create and shape. I am ever grateful to Octavia Butler for these works. 

Content warnings: rape, sexual assault, violence, murder, death, death of a parent, death of a child, child abuse, grief, gun violence, animal death, cannibalism, torture, addiction, racism, sexism, misogyny, slavery, human trafficking, fire / fire injury, injury detail. This book is not easy to read. 

 I am thrilled to review Thyme Travellers, an excellent collection edited by Sonia Sulaiman. This collection of short speculative fiction by Palestinian diasporic authors accomplishes so, so much in a relatively short page count. There are a wide array of speculative motifs here – AI, alien species, space travel, and time travel to name a few – and there is a range in terms of story length, mood/tone, and themes. I appreciate the inclusion queer representation in several stories. 

Inevitably with a collection one will find certain stories stand out, but it is very difficult to choose a few favourites given how consistently strong this one is. Several stories have really stuck with me after having finished them; I suspect this is a book I’ll revisit to re-read some stories again. 

I had only read a few of these authors before: Emad El-din Aysha (whose work also appeared in Palestine +100), Nadia Afifi (whose novel The Sentient I enjoyed), and Sonia Sulaiman (whose short fiction I’ve read, and whom I’m happy to call a friend). I am looking forward to reading more from the authors featured here & absolutely recommend this collection wholeheartedly. 

Content warnings: violence, war, murder, death, death of a parent, suicide, police brutality, classism, racism, colonization, bullying 

Thank you to Roseway Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC. 

 

She Who Knows follows Najeeba, a young girl who feels the call to go out on the salt roads to find and sell salt with her brothers and father – an adventure reserved for boys and men. With mixed reactions, she embarks on a journey that will change her, her family, and her community. 

I really enjoyed this. I suspect with the youthful protagonist that it might even have some YA crossover appeal, though it definitely reads adult to me. I’ve read quite a bit of Okorafor’s work, and there is much here that one would expect on this basis – a well-developed world, beautiful prose, and a protagonist to feel invested in. Okorafor’s Africanfuturism shines in this novella. 

I read She Who Knows without having read Who Fears Death or any other book previously written in the same universe, and it worked perfectly well as a standalone. I had, when it released, opted not to read Who Fears Death for ‘content warnings’ related reasons, but having appreciated this novella so much I do think I’ll plan to read that one too. 

Content warnings: sexual harassment, sexism, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, death 

Thank you DAW & NetGalley for providing me with an ARC to review. 

I just couldn't stay focused on <i>Kalpa Imperial</i> despite my best attempts. I picked up this book having noticed that LeGuin translated it. I can see why, based on her own work, why she'd have been drawn to it; however, I just wasn't captivated. The writing style is compelling and the structuring of the stories as being told orally is interesting, but after a while it felt quite repetitive. It is hard to say whether I'd call this a series of short stories or a novel, given that the stories take place in the same universe but over such a huge span of time that they feel quite disconnected. Every so often, a discriminatory comment or an unexpected reference to gender-based violence would turn up rather unexpectedly; I found these jarring, and not in a good way.

<i>Content warnings:</i> sexual assault, rape, misogyny, racism, violence

In The Ex-Human, Michael Bérubé looks closely at several well known novels – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Oryx & Crake, The Three Body Problem, Lilith’s Brood, Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Dispossessed – as well as some films – the Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bladerunner – and considers how these works’ explorations of the fate of humanity function to open up perspectives that might be called ex-human.

I come to reading this book having read every novel Bérubé discusses and have seen all the films.

I also have an academic background in Cultural Studies and, like the author, have taught some of these novellists’ work in undergraduate courses (I’ve taught Butler and LeGuin) – this inevitably impacts my reading.

If you haven’t read these novels, this book will obviously include major spoilers. I think that Bérubé does a good job of explaining and contextualizing the scenes and passages he refers to, so someone who hasn’t read a particular novel would certainly still be able to follow his line of argument.

I will not say I’m 100% on board with every interpretation that Bérubé offers about every work, but all in all, this text is wonderfully thought provoking and I can see chapters from it being wonderful supplementary reading alongside the novels they discuss (on a syllabus or just for personal interest). I appreciate his inclusion of autobiographical context, including situating the writing of this book in the context of how the COVID19 pandemic has thusfar impacted his family’s lives and within the context of the American political landscape. I would definitely recommend this text to readers interested in thoughtful political analysis of science fictional works.

Content warnings: this is a scholarly analysis of post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction; it refers to and discusses all the kinds of content you'd expect in these kinds of works.

These patakís are beautifully written and clear. Lele provides a glossary at the back, which is very helpful for those who are not familiar with the terminology, as well as a few notes on pronunciation. For each story, the author notes which odu it comes from; "their unifying thread here is that of the natural world and natural phenomenon" [xiii]. 

I cannot bring myself to give a star rating to the personal, never-meant-for-publication journals of the sixteenth emperor of Rome. These notebooks are the result of Marcus Aurelius' practicing of the Stoic exhortation to maintain one's 'command centre;' he reminds himself, in many cases repeatedly, of such central Stoic ideas as living in the moment (rather than dwelling on the past/future), valuing only what matters (justice, honestly, being a good man), understanding that those who do wrong cannot help it (but can perhaps be corrected so as not to be misled by their own false beliefs about what goodness is), and maintaining control over one's reaction to one's fate. 
What I will mention (from the standpoint of someone with an academic background in philosophy) is that Robin Waterfield's presentation of this material is excellent - well annotated, clear, readable, and with a substantial bibliography. If Stoic ideas interest you, I would absolutely recommend this particular translation.

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I is an account of the lives of two men: Aziz Shehadeh, a lawyer who fought for a Palestinian state and the right of Palestinians forced from their homes to return, and his son Raja Shehadeh, the author, also a lawyer, who in this text grapples with his relationship with his father and his influence on the author's own trajectory as a lawyer and activist. Raja considers the distinctions both men have, at different times, made between legal work, political work, and human rights work, and the similarities between some of their experiences that they never got the chance to discuss. Aziz was murdered in 1985, and at the time of publication the author still had not successfully obtained the release of the documents pertaining to the police investigation that was shut down before it was finished.

Content warnings: war, colonization, forced displacement, deportation, murder, forced institutionalization, violence, grief 

 I have really enjoyed Wole Talabi’s short fiction so I was happy to pick up what I believe is his first full length novel. 

 A lot about this worked for me – I enjoyed the way the orisha and spirits of the Yoruba pantheon were characterized as members of a board of a Spirit Company, and the world-building focused on a kind of corporate capitalist restructuring wherein spirits and gods respond to petitions for the pray-pay that keeps them alive – the critiques are strong but the novel doesn’t feel didactic. I liked the urban fantasy vibe, set predominantly in Lagos and London, and I enjoyed Shigidi’s transformations and POV. I also found the non-linear structure effective. I did not expect Aleister Crowley to turn up as a character, but I appreciate that his overt racism was named explicitly. 

 What didn’t quite work for me was the pacing – there were sections that were very fast action, and others that were rather plodding. While I appreciate that Nneoma, a succubus, is given a complex internal life and her own set of motivations beyond her sexual powers, I feel like having her

very explicitly committing rape

was not really... addressed in any kind of adequate way. I understand there is mythology here, but I cannot say this text does the best job handling gender & sexuality & patriarchal dynamics. 

Content warnings: violence, blood, gore (relatively minor), sexual assault, rape (on page), racism, misogyny / sexism, car accident 

Thank you DAW & NetGalley for providing me with an ARC. 

Blackheart Man is set on the island of Chynchin, where main character Veycosi is working to become a singer-storyteller and looking forward to wedding his betrotheds, Thandiwe and Gombey. From the outset, it is clear Veycosi is someone keen to accomplish great things and solve problems his community is facing, but he is far from consistently effective. When the Ymisen arrive – whom Chynchin had previously successfully repelled from their island – Veycosi tries to help, but of course it doesn’t go as planned. 

Hopkinson’s worldbuilding is, as always, incredible. On Chynchin, the economy is decidedly non-capitalist – people give away items they don’t need in ‘generousities’ and the idea of paying someone for work is seen as an insult (‘I assume you are a layabout who must be bribed to do an honest day’s work’); ship’s captain is a role for women and third-sexed folks and marriages are between threes. This is a world where diverse genders and sexualities are for the most part unremarkable, not marginalized. Chynchin’s Caribbean influences are clear – references to obeah, for example, are plentiful – and Hopkinson’s writing in Chynchin dialects, incorporation of myth, and exploration of the role of storytelling in Chynchin all contribute to making this novel a truly immersive read. 

The plot is quite quick. There is a lot going on here. I think there is room for a sequel – if Hopkinson were to write another book in this world, I’d happily pick it up. 

Content warnings: violence, colonization, war, death, murder, child death, medical content (not graphic), sexual assault (not graphically described), blood, injury detail, animal death

Thank you to NetGalley & Simon and Schuster for providing me with an ARC to review.