Book Review: I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


One for the Great Lakes Gothic shelf! I CHEERFULLY REFUSE by Leif Enger spins a tale that imagines how our world might disintegrate or regenerate in the years just beyond our own horizon. The characters in this book are recognizable, for their flaws, their oversights, their confusions and convictions. Culture and circumstances change quickly, but perhaps people don’t, and in that reality lies a balancing act for morality when the chips are down. Enger’s book celebrates the stubborn and trusts Lake Superior as a rarely forgiving (but always honest) setting on which to prove oneself. An entrancing sail through the dark.



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Book Review: Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead

Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What will we leave the world?
Also: will we leave the world?

–Two central questions at the heart of this boundary-pushing novella that imagines human history’s farthest-reaching future through its oldest written literary form. Unforgettable, weird, and wonderful stuff from Oliver K. Langmead.

We haven’t seen the end of epic heroes. History has more waiting for us. I think, in the end, that’s the idea that made this book so touching to me.



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Book Review: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


ORBITAL is one of so many, many books that I’ve read which are set in space. But it is the very first book I’ve read which, in the reading of it, feels like actually being in space. Dreamlike, cyclical, removed, focused, questing, massive and tiny, lost and tethered. More like a poem than a novel, it’s a view from above. A unique read that takes its own strange time to say what it has to say.



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Book Review: Venomous Lumpsucker by Neal Beauman

Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ned Beauman’s VENOMOUS LUMPSUCKER is a bold, scathing, and brilliant commentary on the impact of human industry on the natural world. It’s funny, incredibly dark, and grusomely incisive. 0% lyricism, 100% wit. But always with an honest love that you can tell is probably still alive, way down there, somewhere in the brackish depths.



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Book Review: Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier

Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


SINGER DISTANCE by Ethan Chatagnier is a story that recognizes how incredible minds approach problems from angles that are anything but straight-on. Much the same, Chatagnier gives us a story of mathematical brilliance focused not on the genius herself, but on the complementary mind most oriented to her despite all her human failings, resulting in a propulsive scientific mystery that is also a generous love story, one that contends with personal histories in a way that feels radically like home even within an alternative historical timeline a few hops over from our own. What a book.



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Book Review: The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman

The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Rebekah Bergman’s THE MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY is a spellbinding study of how people reckon with the most powerful force in our lives: time. Through touching and inventive vignettes spotlighting a handful of households inhabiting the same town, Bergman asks what any of us might risk or leverage to stop time, and the roles of our bodies, our memories, and life’s artifacts in the attempt.



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Book Review: The Seep by Chana Porter

The Seep by Chana Porter

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


THE SEEP by Chana Porter is quiet and strange, a new utopia for a new era with new discomforts and new questions. Porter’s questing, soft narrative explores the burdens and the wisdom of resistance to easy solutions. Humor, otherworldliness, fantastic worldbuilding, and open-ended possibilities abound.



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Book Review: All Systems Red by Martha Wells

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Science fiction at its absolute finest, the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series ALL SYSTEMS RED is downright delightful. A solid adventure-rescue story in its own right is enhanced into something really special with the narration of its genderless, socially anxious, reluctant hero–a robot designed to kill stuff who really just wants to binge watch a show called Sanctuary Moon.



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Book Review: Light Bringer by Pierce Brown

Light Bringer by Pierce Brown

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Pierce Brown is at it again, rewarding his loyal legion of Howlers for their ability to keep track of a million different characters/loyalties/feuds/family ties with another powerful ride. Perhaps the most introspective book of the Red Rising series while approaching the grandest scale, Light Bringer feels like coming home. Hearts will break. Mayhem will ensue. Last page will leave you frantically looking up the expected release date of the final book.

Disclaimer: If you don’t want spoilers, do NOT read the acknowledgements in advance. I’m probably the only weirdo with that habit, but just in case.



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Book Review: Fish Gather to Listen, edited by Jes McCutchen, Victoria Moore, and H.V. Patterson

Fish Gather to Listen by Jes McCutchen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A memorable collection from a dynamic new press thematically unified around that most primal of fears: deep, murky water occupied by things unknown. The grotesque swims parallel to the lyrical in Fish Gather to Listen. There is much here to disturb and delight, often simultaneously.



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