Book Review: Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Mapping the Interior is a powerhouse of a novella by Stephen Graham Jones. It’s astonishing to me how some writers can make such a gut-punch impact in 100 slim pages that others struggle to achieve after 400. This story is haunted by searing recursive imagery and faulty memory, lenses blurred by love and dissociation. Mostly limited to the walls of the family home, the setting heightens the urgency, accelerating with every page. The forces who watch from the edge of this story never fully reveal themselves, but we all know them, and they are terrifying–especially seen through the eyes of the narrator–just a boy who barely knows what has happened to him, and later, a man trying to make sense of it.



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Book Review: No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnbull

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


No Gods, No Monsters is surprising, wild, and multifaceted. Cadwell Turnbull shows off his significant writing chops while wielding an interconnected multiplicity of plotlines in this thoughtful urban fantasy. The narration is complex–not only do we have several different time periods and character groups, but the veiled identity of our first person narrator slips in an out of the reader’s consciousness like a spell. Considering the world Turnbull has built, the disorientation feels incredibly fitting. It’s a book to tilt you out of what you thought you knew.



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