One of the great themes of Rebecca Roanhorse’s impressive third volume of her Between Earth and Sky trilogy is the struggle of humans to use godlike power without being destroyed by it. In Mirrored Heavens, the major characters either reach for such power or have it imposed on them, and all pay a heavy price. […]
Archives for 2024
Ashes of the Ancestors by Andrew Knighton
I was all set to take a summer vacation from blogging when I came across this gem by Andrew Knighton. Ashes of the Ancestors is a slim novella that manages to immerse the reader in a vaguely European medieval fantasy world in an original way and pose telling questions about power, friendship and love. We […]
We Speak Through the Mountain by Premee Mohamed
We Speak Through the Mountain by Premee Mohamed is the second part of the story she began a couple of years ago in The Annual Migration of Clouds. It’s another strong novella that continues the story of nineteen year-old Reid, surviving in a post-apocalyptic western Canada. The story picks up directly from where the last […]
In the Shadow of the Fall by Tobi Ogundiran
Tobi Ogundiran, the award winning short fiction author, has produced his debut epic fantasy, the first part of which is the novella, In the Shadow of the Fall. It is a beautifully rendered story about a young acolyte of the orisha whose attempt to commune with the gods triggers a sequence of events that almost […]
Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Brace yourself for a wild ride through cascading realities, where the dead and living intermingle in daily life, and exploding time scales from Sri Lanka’s present and recent past to the far, far future of an earth boiling under an expanded red sun. This is the world and universe of Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall. It offers […]
Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I once read that most novel plots could be reduced to two great starting points: a stranger comes to town, and someone goes on a journey. In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s comic and thought-provoking Service Model, the one-time valet robot named Charles embarks on a journey to discover the source of a fatal error in his routines. […]
