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Tag: speculative fiction

Review: Pet, Akwaeke Emezi

Hands up everyone who read Freshwater and thought “When will Emezi grace us with a YA novel? That is clearly their metier.” Because I freely admit that I was not among your number. Freshwater was one of my best reads of 2018 — the writing was brutal and gorgeous, and I felt elated to be reading the debut of an author of Emezi’s talent, and to know that they had a whole writing career ahead of them and I would get to read all those books. But still, when I saw the announcement that Emezi would be releasing a YA…

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The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss

The blogger is prepared to stipulate that she bought a certain number of books at WorldCon. The actual number is not important. What we should focus on is that despite temptation, I did not purchase both The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and its sequel, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, in hardback editions. In fact I purchased neither! I confined myself mainly to small, portable books. You may leave your accolades for my restraint in the comments. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the story of Mary Jekyll, who discovers hints among her father’s papers that…

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Review: The Devil’s Alphabet, Daryl Gregory

As mentioned in this space a few weeks ago, I was more excited by the first couple of chapters of Pandemonium than I have been by the first few chapters of any book I’ve read in a while. Naturally, I was excited to check out more of Gregory’s work. Like Pandemonium, The Devil’s Alphabet drew me in with its premise, but didn’t quite succeed in bringing the plot home. Okay. Here’s the premise. Bear with me for a bit. When Paxton was a kid, his town was hit with what’s now known as Transcription Divergence Syndrome, which killed some of…

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Lexicon, Max Barry

Oh what a fun book this was. What a completely fun and enjoyable book. Kerry from Entomology of a Bookworm described it as “part X-Men Academy, part ode to the power of language, part action novel,” which is a pretty perfect description of the book. The beginning: A man called Wil is abducted from an airport by two men he has never seen before, men who are convinced that he knows a secret they desperately need. Meanwhile, a sixteen-year-old street kid called Emily is recruited by a mysterious organization whose members learn to control others with something that looks like…

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