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The Grammar of Things in The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar | Book Review
Fey, and Arcadia, and the grammar of things are at the core of Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots. The threads that connect them all are the roots that bind two sisters together. Esther and Ysabel Hawthorne tend to the enchanted willows that feed off The River Liss, whose waters travel freely between mortal lands and Arcadia. The shadow of an uncertain future falls over the older Esther and…
Hope and Quiet Despair in On the Calculation of Volume Book 1 by Solvej Balle | Book Review
“It is the eighteenth of November. Every night when I lie down to sleep in the bed in the guest room it is the eighteenth of November and every morning, when I wake up, it is the eighteenth of November. I no longer expect to wake up to the nineteenth of November and I no longer remember the seventeenth of November as if it were yesterday.” Literature has a rhythm wholly unique to the tackling of…
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel | Book Review
Running Away With It The Secret to Superhuman Strength makes both for an introductory text to the writer and illustrator’s life, as well as for an excellent companion to her earlier autobiographical works. Fun Home and Are You My Mother? explored Bechdel’s growing up and relationship with the complicated, at times solipsistic figures of her parents. The first of those, Fun Home, focused on…
One of cyberpunk's signature short stories, by a master of the genre. Read my thoughts below:
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain by James Tiptree, Jr (The Short Story Reader #001 Vol. 02)
The form of this short story recalls to me a well-sourced government report following the movements of one Doctor Ain, a scientist in the business of developing bioweapons. Crystallised in seven short pages is the essence and horror of every good pandemic novel I have ever read. Precious little is said until late in the story, but hints multiply as the Doctor’s behaviour is reported in a neutral,…
Hearts & Bones by Niamh Mulvey | Book Review
In her first collection of short fiction, Niamh Mulvey tells ten stories variously disquieting, gentle, and sweet. Always they cut through the heart of matters and investigate human feelings and relationships that go far beyond the skin deep. The subtitle, “Love Songs for Late Youth,” The self-loathing of a troubled young man is channelled into the figure of a loathsome ventriloquist dummy; a…
The Gothic Fantasy Cities I'd Kill To Live In (And Proceed to Immediately Die): Some Thoughts on Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances and Hanrahan's Gutter Prayer
Imagine an urban spread of countless buildings, their ages and styles suggesting not just a physical but a temporal sprawl. Cloying at the sky are spiky arches, stone and twisting metal and glass dirty with soot. Down below, brick buildings and sprawling manorhouses stand behind fences of iron latticework while ancient ruins cast an undeniable promise on the desperate inhabitants of squalid…
Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo: A Low-Key Work of Science Fiction | Book Review
I received a copy of this novella from NetGalley some time ago – apologies to Tor for taking this long to review it. Lee Mandelo’s Feed Them Silence is a low-key work of science fiction. The sci-fi conceit at the core of it is simple enough: implants allow a human researcher to experience everything a female grey wolf is experiencing as a backseat driver. The researcher in question, Sean, is a…
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami: An Intimate Yearning for Connection | Book Review | Essay
Mieko Kawakami’s All the Lovers in the Night speaks to the part of the human that yearns for connection. It illustrates, too, the difficulty of reaching out and making those connections, especially in the aftermath of deep and abiding trauma. The novel follows the unhappy life of a young woman, Fuyuko, who works as a proofreader. This woman is the “dictionary definition of a miserable person”.…
Piranesi Makes a Strong Case for A Perfect Novel | Book Reviews
Is there such a thing as a perfect novel? Susanna Clarke’s twenty-odd year career offers two compelling cases: her first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a Dickensian work of fantasy, considered by many a friend of mine better than Dickens’ own works. It is a masterful brick of a novel, the kind that can easily be used for murder if one has the proclivity. Not so with Piranesi. One…
Bibliomania 2025 - August | The Books I Read This Month
A busy month, August! Not quite as much reading as I would’ve liked, but I’m wrapping the month at twelve finished titles across paperbacks, hardcovers, and audiobooks. Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima My occasional aside into Japanese literature continued this month with the excellent Life for Sale by the infamous Yukio Mishima. An interesting novel, this. It borrows from the archetypal…
A New Journey on A New Blog... | Experiencing Wanderhome for the First Time
I decided I’d do one Last Big Thing before I turn thirty (Whaa–that’s tomorrow!!). That’s right, I…made a new blog! On Substack, this time. It’s a blog about tabletop role-playing games (ttRPGs) and I hope to be posting lots on there. I’m going to be sharing a few paragraphs whenever I do here. Probably not for each post, but once a week sounds good, right? Without further ado, you can find the…
The Alters: Brilliant, Flawed, Must-Play Sci-Fi (Game Review)
I covered the Alters when its demo first came out – if you’re looking for a first impressions-style discussion without covering more spoiler-filled moments, you’re welcome to check that out. It’s good, promise! Some games, it’s the journey rather than the destination. There’s good reasons for that: an ending is hard to pull off. A satisfying one, more so. Everything that comes before it: a long,…
A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-ran: A Phenomenal Sci-Fi Novel from South Korea
*A Thousand Blues* is that rare social science fiction novel whose every element is pitch perfect. This three-hundred page work by the South Korean author Cheon Seon-ran has lodged itself deep into my heart. It came at a time when I was questioning the capacity each and every one of us has to connect and communicate with one another. *A Thousand Blues* was a stark reminder that no connection is…
To see the creative team of Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans return for We Called Them Giants is almost bittersweet. Sweet because this short, intimate story about two teenage girls at the end of the world is something special; bitter, because it ends far too soon for my liking. This isn’t a comment on Gillen’s pacing but rather an acknowledgment of just how much I loved main character Lori’s…
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler is A Good Time, but Flawed | Book Review
Word of Django Wexler has been good. He’s one of the fantasy darlings of some booktube and online fantasy communities I follow. It was only a matter of time before I got to reading him: when I saw the quirky, colourful cover of How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, I knew that time had come. The verdict: I had a good time, but I wish this novel didn’t so eagerly stumble onto easy-to-avoid…
Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey - Book Review
Abaddon’s Gate is an interesting example of the way a space opera universe grows from its initial premise into something a whole lot more alien. This book expands the possibilities in which The Expanse‘s future humanity can grow. Do we humans deserve the wonderous opportunities that the Ring might offer? Abaddon’s Gate makes a case both for and against and so do some in its crop of new point of…