2024 was bit of an irregular year for me, reading-wise. As per my notebooks, I read around 90 books (alas, less than my last year’s score of 110 on Goodreads) – the main course obviously being speculative fiction, with a small dessert sampling of literary fiction, romances, comics and non-fiction. The meal wasn’t entirely satisfying, as there were plenty of anticipated titles that I didn’t get to read, and plenty ...Read More
Read more
Dream Machine: A Portrait of Artificial Intelligence, Appupen & Laurent Daudet (The MIT Press 978-0-26255-129-8, $29.95, 160pp, tp) August 2024.
The graphic novel Dream Machine is the brainchild of versatile Indian artist Appupen (known for Legends of Halahala, The Snake and the Lotus, and other inventive myth-building comics) and Laurent Daudet, a French physicist and AI researcher. Educational and engaging, the book delves into the wide-reaching ramifications ...Read More
Read more
At the Fount of Creation, Tobi Ogundiran (Tordotcom 978-1-25090-803-2, $21.99, 224pp, hc) January 2025.
At the Fount of Creation is a thrilling conclusion to Tobi Ogundiran’s Guardians of the Gods duology, packed with cinematic action and with more deities from the Yoruba pantheon making an appearance. It continues the story of Ashâke, a failed acolyte who is later revealed to be the vessel for the surviving orisha, and is ...Read More
Read more
A Song to Drown Rivers, Ann Liang (St. Martin’s Press 978-1-25028-946-9, $32.00, 336pp, hc) October 2024.
Inspired by ancient Chinese legends, A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang is an intriguing historical fantasy novel that tempers the logic of trope-driven storytelling with a mature understanding of the futility of war. As a folkloric retelling of the tragic story of Xi Shi, one of the ‘‘Four Great Beauties’’ of ...Read More
Read more
Sun of Blood and Ruin, Mariely Lares (Harper Voyager 978-0-06325-431-2, $30.00, 384pp, hc) February 2024.
Pitched as a reimagining of Zorro against the backdrop of Mexican anticolonial resistance, Sun of Blood and Ruin – the debut novel by Mariely Lares – manages to be a fun comfort read with a distinctively folkloric bent. Like its gender-flipped Zorro protagonist who constantly switches between two identities (Lady Leonora, a member of ...Read More
Read more
Once upon a time, bad things happened and eventually, things got better. While this might be true for certain stories, real life, plagued by ongoing pandemics and genocides, rarely offers such neat conclusions. Perhaps that is why we repeatedly turn to art – not only to find escape and solace, but also, wisdom, empathy, and more urgently so, the will to resist and survive, despite the odds. And as the ...Read More
Read more
Dry Land, B. Pladek (University of Wisconsin Press 978-0-29934-394-1, 264pp, $18.95, tp) September 2023.
Dry Land, B. Pladek’s debut novel, is historical climate fiction that meditates upon man’s fraught relationship with the natural environment and the limits of magical powers, enlivened with evocative sketches of the Wisconsin wilderness. Set against the backdrop of the First World War, the story revolves around Rand Brandt, a young man whose ...Read More
Read more
Thief Liar Lady, D.L. Soria (Del Rey 978-0-59335-805-4, $28.00, 416pp, hc) June 2023.
Fairytale retellings have been perennially popular, offering readers the chance to relive the magic and mayhem of a familiar world while also discovering something new about it. Take for instance the tale of Cinderella, where the main character’s escape from a dreary and deeply unjust reality isn’t just temporary (as secretly attending a royal ball might ...Read More
Read more
Maddalena and the Dark, Julia Fine (Flatiron Books 978-1-25086-787-2, 304pp, $28.99, hc) June 2023.
Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine is an exquisite and lyrical imagining of the lives of two girls, Maddalena and Luisa, who meet at a prestigious music school and whose devotion to each other slowly and carefully builds up to a devastating crescendo that unfolds against the decadence of 18th-century Venice. Fine’s prose, delicate ...Read More
Read more
The First Bright Thing, J.R. Dawson (Tor 978-1-25080-554-6, 352pp, $27.99, hc) June 2023.
The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson is crafted on an enchanting premise – a magical circus that can move through space as well as time, powered by people with special abilities called “Sparks.” The chief players are Rin, the Ringmaster who can bend time and space to her will; her wife, Odette, a healer; ...Read More
Read more
Shanghai Immortal, A.Y. Chao (Hodderscape 978-1-399-71741-0, £18.99, 352pp, hc) June 2023.
Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao’s is a flamboyant debut fantasy novel featuring deities and demons from the Chinese pantheon that follows the escapades of Lady Jing – a half-vampire and half-hulijing fox spirit – as she traverses through the realms of Hell, 1930s Shanghai, and the Celestial lands. Vaguely reminiscent of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow ...Read More
Read more
Languages of Water, Eugen Bacon, ed. (MVMedia 979-8-98573-366-2, $21.99, 222pp, tp) September 2023.
Languages of Water, as its title suggests, delves into the concerns posed by water scarcity and climate change, in not one but many languages, but it isn’t a conventional anthology where a reader might expect a careful selection of short fiction united by a common theme. Instead, Eugen Bacon’s book is a careful and thoughtful ...Read More
Read more
The Moon Represents My Heart, Pim Wangtechawat (Blackstone 979-8-21234-003-8, $25.99, 272pp, hc). June 2023.
Pim Wangtechawat’s debut novel, The Moon Represents My Heart, is an ambitious, timey-wimey, multigenerational saga about love, grief, and healing, although for me it never quite reaches its emotional potential. The story revolves around a family of British-Chinese time travelers whose frequent forays into the past influence their relations in the present. Joshua and ...Read More
Read more
The Jasad Heir, Sara Hashem (Orbit 978-0-31647-786-4, $18.99, tp, 528pp) July 2023.
Familiar tropes get rewritten with a twist in The Jasad Heir, the debut novel by Sara Hashem. Billed as an ‘‘Egyptian-inspired political fantasy,’’ it also straddles a deftly written slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance, although the political intrigue falls a little short. We follow the story of Sylvia/Essiya, the heir to the Jasad throne, presently hiding in a ...Read More
Read more
Pomegranates, Priya Sharma (Absinthe Books 978-1-78636-875-1, £24.00, 108pp, hc) December 2022. Cover by Jeffrey Alan Love.
Priya Sharma’s latest novella, Pomegranates, is a lovely, layered, and luscious retelling of the story of Persephone and Demeter, unfolding against the backdrop of climate change and patriarchal violence. While Greek mythology has been in vogue at least since the success of Rick Riordan’s bestselling Percy Jackson books, Sharma’s novella sits closer ...Read More
Read more
The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, Charles Vess (NewCon 978-1-914953-27-9, £12.99, 262pp, tp) September 2022. Cover by Charles Vess.
Charles Vess’s award-winning illustrations have a spellbinding quality to them, but his debut novel, The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, a Tam Lin retelling richly shaded with evocative descriptions, failed to similarly bewitch this reader.
There are only a few notable adaptations of the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin – Diana ...Read More
Read more
