https://youtu.be/OLS_7RnWwAs How might a love letter to the gothic genre look? It might, first, be in the novel form: nothing less would capture its grandiose themes, its dark and brooding atmosphere. Then, there must be a house. Not just any house will do. You know the type: a tangle of rust-covered metal gates and fence,... Continue Reading →
Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree is Cozy Fun with a Necromantic Edge! | Book Review
My Legends & Lattes review! The Dark Lord's Legends and Lattes review. https://youtu.be/qbuMDknoeao Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes was the cosy fantasy the book-reading world needed in 2022; but does its prequel show that Baldree, former games developer and full-time narrator, can catch lightning in a bottle twice? The short answer: Yes. Yes, it does.... Continue Reading →
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector | A Short Vignette of My Experience
“I know what I am doing here: I am telling of the instants that drip and are thick with blood.” I read Clarice Lispector's work Água Viva at what might have been the most serendipitous time, during personal heartbreak that saw me submerged into a well of grief. It proved slippery to get out of,... Continue Reading →
What I Talk About When I Talk About Books In November – Part 2
Previously on What I Talk About When I Talk About Books In November... Hullo again! Time to cover a few more of the by-gone reads of yestermonth! Last time, I went on a Greek play binge! This time around, I reckon it's time to cover a few weirder reads from the Ancient and Medieval world,... Continue Reading →
The Traitor by Anthony Ryan – Book Review | A Fitting Conclusion to the Covenant of Steel
Filip reviews the final book in Anthony Ryan's Covenant of Steel - The Traitor!
The Short Story Reader # 119 – The Parts That Make Me by Louise Hughes
Previous | Next Here's an interesting piece of flash fiction, one that looks to the ties that bind the individual to who they are. Louise Hughes tells a familiar story in a new way from the perspective of an old freedom-fighter: We shouldn’t have existed as we did. Universal law decreed it, but in the... Continue Reading →
The Short Story Reader #104 – Mount by China Miéville
Previous | Next Envy. That's what I feel when I read through this piece of flash fiction, so erudite is it, so self-assured in the way Mieville breathes life in its prose, as in this description of a carousel: "a Bauhaus tiger chased by a Deco lamb, as many different schools as there are animals,... Continue Reading →
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh – Book Review
Author: Emily TeshGenre: Queer Space OperaLength: 436 pages https://youtu.be/O4bhzzwbBpQ Some Desperate Glory is the kind of novel that aims to bag some desperately glorious nominations come SFF award season. The topics it examines are timely, they are attractive to the more liberally-minded of science fiction readers (and there's a good chunk of us around), and... Continue Reading →
The Short Story Reader #103 – Covehithe by China Miéville
Previous | Next The sea is no black hole. Just because we discard something in the vastness of our planet's oceans, we shouldn't assume that it won't come back ashore. So Mieville tells us in this melancholy story of oil rigs turned sentient, multiplying through some unknowable method and leaving their spawn on dry land.... Continue Reading →
What I Talk About When I Talk About Reading in October 2023
March has Ides, April has cruelties in spades, but October…October has a respectable list of books I managed to get through! And hopeful revolutions that turned to terrible totalitarian regimes, but that's neither here or there. The Martyr by Anthony Ryan I started off the month by wrapping up The Martyr by Anthony Ryan. It... Continue Reading →