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The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

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The Seed Collectors

January 9, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: The Gardener Family has secrets. After the death of the eldest family member, some of those secrets begin to come to light – secrets of paternity, of love, of how the middle generation all died on a mysterious expedition, and of real world magic. The Review: It is a goddamn shame that just as Scarlett Thomas delivers her best novel so far, one that highlights all of her eccentricities and skills in perfect measure, that American audiences are […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 6, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Botany, Family, Favorites, Fiction, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, review, Reviews, Scarlett Thomas, Science, Speculative, The Seed Collectors

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Square Wave

February 1, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Sometime in the future, in a city called Halsley in an America not quite dystopic but certainly worse off than we are now, several lives intertwine: a writer interested in 17th-century Sri Lanka, a musician exploring microtones, the son of an Indian scientist researching weather modification, and more all come together not quite in harmony but in a sort of harmonic dissidence as the presidential elections loom… The Review: I’ll admit that for quite a long time with this […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Advance Review, America, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Dystopia, Fiction, History, Ideas, Literature, Mark de Silva, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Reviews, Science, Science Fiction, Square Wave, Two Dollar Radio

1

All the Birds in the Sky

January 6, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Two young outsiders – Patricia (a witch) and Laurence (a computer geek) – strike up an unlikely friendship in grade school. Although fate sends them careening in opposite directions, their lives are inextricably entwined as the planet grows ever more chaotic and their reunion as adults will either save the world – or destroy it. The Review: Considering they get shelved together, sci-fi and fantasy don’t actually tend to co-exist. Sure, you’ve got magic in a modern setting with […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Sci-Fi • Tags: Advance Review, All the Birds in the Sky, Book Reviews, Books, Charlie Jane Anders, Fantasy, io9, Magic, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Science, Science Fiction, Speculative, The Tournament of Books 2017

2

The Bestiary

December 21, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Compiled by Ann VanderMeer, The Bestiary presents just that: a collection of short writing about strange creatures, one for each letter of the alphabet (as well as ‘&’ and an invisible letter). The Review: I think sometimes that there isn’t quite enough wonder in the world, particularly of the magical variety. I don’t necessarily mean the magic of wand-waving wizards and the like (although they’re not excluded) but the sort of magic that comes from a moment’s turn […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories • Tags: Amal El-Mohtar, Animals, Ann VanderMeer, Bestiary, Brian Conn, Brian Evenson, Cat Rambo, Catherynne M. Valente, China Miéville, Corey Redekop, Creatures, Cryptids, cryptozoology, Dean Francis Alfar, Dexter Palmer, Eric Schaller, Fantasy, Felix Gilman, Fiction, Gio Clairval, Grimoire, Jeff Vandermeer, Joseph Nigg, Karen Heuler, Karen Lord, Karin Lowachee, Karin Tidbeck, Lisa L. Hannett, Micaela Morrissette, Michael Cisco, Michal Ajvaz, Research, Reza Negarestani, Rhys Hughes, Richard Howard, Rikki Ducornet, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Science, Short Stories, Stephen Graham Jones, The Bestiary, Vandara Singh, Weird Fiction

1

The New and Improved Romie Futch

October 14, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Taxidermist Romie Futch is middle-aged, divorced, and nearly bankrupt. So when he sees an ad for a well-funded neuroscience research study, he signs up. The study downloads a broad swath of knowledge and he becomes a better man… but what to do with all that knowledge on the outside? Get his wife back? Hunt down the near-mythic Hogzilla? Keep on keeping on? The Review: What a wild novel. There’s something wonderfully unkempt about it, like the way unkempt wilderness is […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Advance Review, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Brains, Fiction, Genetic Engineering, Gothic, Indiespensable, Julia Elliott, Literature, Reviews, Science, Southern Gothic, The New and Improved Romie Futch, Tin House

1

Perdido Street Station

April 7, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A stranger arrives in the city-state of New Crobuzon with a seemingly impossible request. And what begins as an ordinary scientist’s experiment unexpectedly (when he receives some contraband) swings into a terror that threatens to consume the entire city – a terror that invades your dreams on giant wings… The Review: I’m on record as being a big Miéville fan – but his Bas-Lag sequence has been touted as his sprawling masterwork, a titanic trilogy that (in its […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Bas-Lag, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, China Miéville, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Metaphysics, New Crobuzon, Perdido Street Station, Physics, Politics, Reviews, Science, Weird, Weird Fiction

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Find Me

February 13, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A virulent new disease appears in America that causes the infected to develop silver lesions and lose their memories, then rapidly lose motor control and cognitive function before death within ten days. Joy, apparently immune, is taken to a hospital in Kansas where she and several other patients wait out the epidemic. But when things take a turn at the hospital, Joy runs away and decides to head to Florida to find her birth mother, embarking on […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Advance Review, Apocalypse, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Contagion, Disease, Dystopia, Farrar Straus and Giroux, Fiction, Find Me, FSG, Laura van den Berg, Literature, Memory, Post-Apocalyptic, Psychology, Reviews, Science, Speculative, Speculative Fiction

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MaddAddam (MaddAddam Trilogy, Book #3)

January 28, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Ren, Toby, Snowman (Jimmy), the Crakers, and the remainder of the God’s Gardeners/MaddAddamites have gathered together in the post-Flood world – but the violent Painballers are still on the loose and while the Crakers learn the past story of Zeb & Adam, those in the present must lay the foundation for what will come next. The Review: There comes a line early in this concluding chapter of Margaret Atwood’s post-apocalyptic warning-disguised-as-popular-literature that tips off the reader to […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Sci-Fi • Tags: Apocalypse, Biology, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Crake, Crakers, Dystopia, Fiction, Literature, MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood, Oryx, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Science, Snowman, Speculative, Survival, Trilogies, Trilogy

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Revival

November 29, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: As a young boy, Jamie Morton befriends the new town priest, Charlie Jacobs.  After a terrible accident, Jacobs leaves the town – but not before exposing Jamie to his secret obsession: electricity.  Several times over the ensuing half-century, Morton and Jacobs cross paths on the road to a harrowing showdown that may well rip open the very fabric of our world. The Review: I think my affection for and adoration of Stephen King is probably pretty well-known at this […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror, Literature • Tags: Arthur Machen, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Electricity, Fiction, Frankenstein, Horror, Literature, Lovecraft, Religion, Reviews, Revival, Science, Stephen King

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