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 […]
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
So, another creeping infirmity makes it harder for me to focus for long on the printed (or ebook) page, and I have finally started listening to audio books. I started with two novels that, at first glance, could not be more dissimilar: Octavia E. Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and China Miéville’s The Last […]
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 […]
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 […]
Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope
After yet more downtime caused by, first, the misery of a post-covid illness, something like a cold from hell, and then happy times during a special family birthday gathering, I managed to start reading again with Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope. I was so impressed with her earlier The Monsters We Defy […]
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – A Review for #SciFiMonth
I needed to re-read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky because I was tone-deaf years ago to what the author was doing when I first opened this novel. Yeah, I was a bit turned off by characters who were spiders but more so by the narrative voice of those sections describing their evolution. There was […]
