Since its release in 2016, Naomi Alderman’s The Power has been impossible to miss, receiving accolades from the New York Times and President Barack Obama, among many many others. The premise is that women — through a new organ called a skein, located at their collarbones — suddenly become more physically powerful than men, able to transmit strong jolts of electricity. Things go downhill pretty quickly. I resisted The Power because I am tired of power and the things people do to keep it. 2016 was the year Alton Sterling was killed in my home state. 2016 was the year…
Leave a CommentCategory: 3 Stars
Welp, this is going to be hard to review without spoilers. But I’ll do my best to segregate the spoilers from the non-spoilers in a secure bunker where contamination won’t be possible. (That’s a humorous This Mortal Coil joke for you.) Catarina Agatta has spent the last two years fending for herself after the dangerous corporation Cartaxus showed up and took away her only companions: Lachlan Agatta the world’s leading gene-coder and may be the planet’s only hope for wiping out the deadly Hydra virus. Then a supersoldier named Cole arrives at Cat’s house with the news that her father…
Leave a CommentHere’s what happened in January: I had to wear this neck brace that made it impossible to ever sit comfortably. In part because of this, I was very, very cranky in the month of January.1 Every time I thought about going out and doing something, I’d be like “ugh I’m too cranky for that so instead I will stay home and read and that will cheer me up.” But because it was impossible to sit comfortably, staying home and reading did not cheer me up. But because I am very stupid, I did not figure this out until I had…
5 CommentsNote: I received a copy of The Bedlam Stacks from the publisher for review consideration. This has not influenced the content of my review. So a funny thing about Natasha Pulley is that I resisted reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street for ages, as the cover and premise sounded much more whimsical than I thought I’d be into. But actually, the word I’d use for both that book and her sophomore novel, The Bedlam Stacks, is melancholy. They are really not whimsical at all, so if — like me — you have been avoiding them for that reason, do not…
4 CommentsMy God, Laini Taylor has a lot of ideas. Have we talked about how many ideas Laini Taylor has got? The inside of her brain must be an absolutely wild place to be. Strange the Dreamer is the first in a new series (her earlier one having finished up with Dreams of Gods and Monsters in 2014), and it’s a hell of a ride. Lazlo Strange has always been a dreamer, and what he’s dreamt of is the lost city across the desert. For many centuries, travelers came to Lazlo’s country on camels, bringing stories of a city of domes…
10 Comments