Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2021

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The Secret Skin: So many scares!

The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner There are so many scary things in Wendy N. Wagner’s short 2021 novella, The Secret Skin. There is the nasty housekeeper who gives the nasty housekeeper in Rebecca a run for her money. There is the leering, unpleasant overseer of the Vogel family sawmill. There is Abigail, a […]

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The Best of Walter Jon Williams: 12 smart stories

The Best of Walter Jon Williams by Walter Jon Williams The Best of Walter Jon Williams (2021) is a 663-page tome containing, as its name implies, twelve of Walter Jon Williams’ best stories spanning four decades of his writing career. Fans will appreciate Subterranean Press’s beautiful hardcover edition of this collection (there’s also an audio […]

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Noor: Okorafor weaves another stunning imaginary world

Noor by Nnedi Okorafor Nnedi Okorafor’s 2021 Noor is a short, fast-paced science fiction novel. The futuristic energy delivery system called Noor, and the “Red Spot” dust storm are innovative, made plausible by Okorafor’s grounded writing and her fine eye for detail. Anwuli calls herself AO for Artificial Organism. Considered “wrong” even before birth, AO […]

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The Ghost Sequences: Moody, thoughtful and disturbing

The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise A.C. Wise’s 2021 story collection The Ghost Sequences delivers a sampler of her short fiction. As the name implies, nearly all are ghostly or eerie. Wise pays homage to North American (Lovecraftian) Gothic with two stories in particular, and examines the serial-killer/slasher genre in others. Despite the disturbing subject […]

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The Sentence: A haunted bookshop is a window into America

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich “sentence (n)1. A grammatical unit comprising a word or a group of words that is separate from any other grammatical construction, and usually consists of at least one subject with its predicate and contains a finite verb or verb phrase; for example, ‘The door is open’ and ‘Go!’ are sentences.” […]

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Foundation: Season One: A mixed bag, but generally good

Foundation: Season One on Apple TV+ In my first review of Apple TV’s Foundation series, written after the first two shows, I said it wasn’t “great” TV (at least not yet) but ranged consistently between good and very good. Having just finished all ten episodes of season one, I’d broaden that range from “occasionally annoying […]

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Comfort Me With Apples: All happy families are (not) alike

Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente Sophia’s life is perfect. She adores her husband, her company is much sought-after in the luxurious gated community she and her various neighbors share, she has endless tasks and joys to fill the long days while she waits for her husband to return from his various freelancing […]

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12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson In 12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next (2021), Jeanette Winterson offers up a dozen essays on Artificial Intelligence divided into four sections: “How we got here” (a dip into the history of computing), “What’s Your Superpower” […]

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Lights of Prague: I wasn’t the audience for this one

The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis The Lights of Prague (2021) is Nicole Jarvis’s first novel. It’s set in 1868 Prague, filled with pijavica* — vampires — and other magical creatures. Fighting the pijavica are the lamplighters, whose cover job is to go around lighting the new gas streetlamps in the city. Domek Myska […]

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Dune: Lovely to see, but lacks character depth

Dune directed by Denis Villeneuve It’s been many a year since I’ve read Frank Herbert’s Dune, so I can’t say with any authority where in the book Denis Villeneuve ends his film version, but I do feel comfortable saying it was too far. Because even at roughly 2 ½ hours, Dune the movie is too […]

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Medusa: A powerful retelling

Medusa by Jessie Burton  If I told you that I’d killed a man with a glance, would you wait to hear the rest? This question opens Jessie Burton‘s latest novel, Medusa (2021), a feminist retelling of the famous Greek myth. Told through the eyes of the snake-headed Medusa herself, the story reframes her tale as […]

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Harlem Shuffle: Another twist from a master storyteller

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead One thing we can be sure to expect from Colson Whitehead is the unexpected. The double Pulitzer Prize winner shot to fame with the alternate history (and FanLit favourite) The Underground Railroad. He debuted with speculative fiction, later wrote a zombie novel, and his work now takes another twist: a […]

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Cloud Cuckoo Land: Transcends the sum of its parts

Reposting to include Ray’s new review. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr What do a pair of young kids on the opposite sides of the fall of Constantinople, the protagonist of an ancient Greek tale, an eco-terrorist, a Korean war vet and former prisoner-of-war, and a young girl on a generation ship have in common? […]

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