Sean Dowie

Books Reviews 

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim: Review by Sean Dowie

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Blood of the Old Kings, Sung-il Kim (Tor 978-1-25089-533-2, $27.95, 368pp, hc) October 2024.

Sung-il Kim’s 2016 fantasy novel Blood of the Old Kings features heroic characters and an innovative, engaging magic system. It makes for a breezy fantasy story where exposition is skillfully allotted in brief bursts that don’t mar its pacing. And the action scenes are breathlessly propulsive. Those ingredients launch a tale of a band of ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Archangels of Funk by Andrea Hairston: Review by Sean Dowie

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Archangels of Funk, Andrea Hairston (Tor­dotcom 978-1-25080-728-1, $29.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024.

Andrea Hairston’s Archangels of Funk forced me to rewire my brain chemistry. The book contains a stew of dense but rewarding elements as people, dogs, spirits, and bots dot a literary canvas unlike anything I’ve read. It’s a cozy dystopia that demands attention, demands that you think on its wavelength. The book largely contains good but flawed ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Sean Dowie Reviews No Edges: Swahili Stories by Sarah Coolidge, ed.

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No Edges: Swahili Stories, Sarah Coolidge, ed. (Two Lines Press 978-1-94964-145-5, $16.95, tp) April 2023.

Untethered imagination is what I’m always hoping for when I read. That’s why I like speculative fiction: it breaks through the constraints of reality. However, those aren’t the only constraints I’ve encoun­tered in literature. Cultural constraints – par­ticularly those in Western culture – can make stories with seemingly radical speculative ideas have a tinge ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Sean Dowie Reviews Short Fiction: Asimov’s, Analog, and Clarkesworld

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Asimov’s 3-4/23 Analog 3-4/23 Clarkesworld 3/23

Asimov’s in March opens with the stel­lar “The Nameless Dead” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in which a direction­less mother abandons her earthbound family for space. The catch is that due to the temporal shifts for all spacefarers, she cannot return home to a time when they’re still alive. With her family in the rearview, she is hired by someone whose curiosity ...Read More

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Reviews Short Fiction 

Sean Dowie Reviews Short Fiction: Lightspeed and Translunar Travelers Lounge

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Lightspeed 3/23 Translunar Travelers Lounge 2/23

“The Omniscient Codex to the Perfect Rela­tionship” by Uchechukwu Nwaka in Trans­lunar Travelers Lounge is a choose-your-own-adventure story where the reader goes through a relationship in which every path leads to a breakup, and how even an on-paper perfect re­lationship isn’t unequivocally perfect because of the vicissitudes of humanity. The choose-your-own-adventure subgenre is typically freeing, and this technically abides by that because ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Sean Dowie Reviews The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud

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The Strange, Nathan Ballingrud (Gallery 978-1-53444-995-4, 304pp, $27.99, hc) March 2023.

Nathan Ballingrud’s debut novel The Strange takes place in a version of the 1930s where humans have inhabited Mars. It opens with teenager Anabelle and her father Sam working in their diner, living in a Martian town that is surrounded by arid nothingness, an isolation that is mirrored in the characters’ loneliness. When their diner is robbed by ...Read More

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