Breath of Oblivion by Maurice Broaddus is the second novel in his Astra Black series (following 2022’s Sweep of Stars) and moves the story of the Muungano world forward from multiple perspectives, each of which probes the internal struggles of a large cast of characters. While the action shifts more to deepening our understanding of […]
The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafur #SciFiMonth
The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafur adds to the great Africanfuturist epic Okorafur began in Who Fears Death (and which she continues with her new novella, She Who Knows). This is a prequel that describes the destruction that led to the world of the first novel, with its sharp division between light and dark […]
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Who Fears Death (2010) by Nnedi Okorafor puzzled me at first. The central character, Onyesonwu, (whose name means “who fears death”) is an outcast figure, a child of rape, who is avoided by most people and as a result angry most of the time. But the story reveals her life on two levels, the physical […]
Embassytown by China Miéville
When I first read China Miéville’s Embassytown, which I now regard as a nearly perfect novel, I didn’t get it. The story seemed to move quite nicely to an anticlimax, I thought, where a potential massacre turns on a dime because of language. My fault – I was expecting the normal sort of adventure and […]
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 […]
The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed
During the recent Coode Street podcast interview with Premee Mohamed, she came up with an interesting phrase that seemed to capture what happens in her latest novel, The Siege of Burning Grass. She said that while juggling all the demands on her time, she often felt like one of her characters being “seduced into usefulness.” […]
