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 […]
Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi
Wole Talabi, in his brilliant story collection Convergence Problems, offers an intriguing idea about how stories can be told. It contrasts sharply with the method made famous by James Joyce in Dubliners where characters reach a climactic moment of epiphany in which they grasp some great truth about themselves. That approach has been done to […]
Moon Witch Spider King by Marlon James, A Review for Wyrd & Wonder
Marlon James’ Moon Witch Spider King (second book of the Dark Star trilogy) impressed me at first as everything I had missed in the first novel, Black Leopard Red Wolf. There was a story of emotional depth I could link into and a brilliant character I could care about, as opposed to the strangely alienating […]
Slipping by Mohamed Kheir – A Review for #SciFiMonth
Mohamed Kheir has written in Slipping a brilliant series of stories that drop their characters out of time and space for brief periods and interweave their narratives to challenge the limits of story-telling. The effect is like a folding of reality itself as the terms of their lives change directions in a stray encounter here, […]
The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo #WyrdandWonder
Look, I can’t pretend to keep up with the outpouring of fine SFF writing we are now witnessing, so I’m dipping into the recent past to discuss a pair of stories that are so perfect in their way that it’s hard to write about them. Nghi Vo is a storyteller of dazzling gifts, and her […]
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
In Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, it takes a neighborhood of strange characters, rather than an over-reaching scientist as with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to create a monster. And it takes a good story, whether or not it is true, just so long as it is believed. There are many stories and levels of truth in […]
