magneticcrow's reviews
705 reviews

Afterlife: Ghost Stories from Goa by Jessica Faleiro

Well, I learned some things about the history of Goa. I can say that about it. 

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

5.0

The Coming of Joachim Stiller (Valancourt International) by Hubert Lampo

I’m a big fan of surrealism and weird fiction, so I was pretty disappointed here. The most interesting parts for me were the descriptions of historic Antwerp in 1957, and the protagonist’s recollections of being part of the resistance during WWII in his youth less than  12 years prior. 

Also it turns out to be about Jesus, which is the biggest disappointment to me. Ugh.

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I will read anything Jennings writes from here on out, this book was inspired from front to tail. Wonderful. 

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
Did not finish book. Stopped at 64%.

I almost never DNF but I just really wasn’t enjoying this. For something that was billed as a science fiction murder mystery series similar to Midsomer Murders (or if that wasn’t the intent, calling the series Midsolar Murders was a huge misstep) there was a distinct lack of on-page murder mystery solving or intrigue. Instead it’s just backstory, 1/3 of a book spent  freaking out about humans moving to the space station, and then after the halfway point new backstory for new point of view characters. It felt like the entire book was basically being used as setup for the intended series without including enough plot or forward movement to make me at all interested in continuing. Or even finishing it, obviously. 

The aliens really bothered me too, they kept making throwaway comments about how humans are fragile bags of water walking around and then themselves turning out to be full of blood also?? Blood is liquid, yes? It implies a liquid vascular system? Or just sentient versions of earth animals like wasps or chameleons, or straight up “just the rock biters from The Neverending Story.” Plus how do we all have the same type of ear canal and eardrums that the translator devices work the same, yet again we keep hearing how wildly different and fragile humans are?

And for me the biggest, and this honestly probably biased me against the rest of the book: you can’t have a throwaway joke about authors arguing about using “singular they” and then have a strictly binary gender system and zero characters that use singular they or other non-binary pronouns without sounding like you come down on the bigoted side!! There aren’t even any acknowledged binary trans characters! Yikes yikes yikes. I mean I’d say it’s just crap anyway not having trans characters at all in your near-future science fiction, but that just rubs in the salt. Will not be reading more by this author. 

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious fast-paced

5.0

I’m a huge Kelly Link fan, and honestly this might be my favorite collection of hers yet. Eminently haunting

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Assassin of Reality by Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko

I thought it was an excellent continuation of Sasha’s journey of self, and I cried during the acknowledgment at the end. I think it was implied that Marina and Sergey were working on plotting a third book about Sasha, and I hope I’m right. I want to see her finish this

The Other City by Michal Ajvaz

adventurous challenging funny hopeful lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated

5.0

The soldiers who spend months on end there among the coats themselves end up looking more like coats than people, and their thinking is more like the thinking of coats (for instance, they spend hours on end thinking about a city, where there are houses, monuments and streetlights on springs, and through whose streets there walks a solitary pony).

This book is absolutely as strange as I could possibly hope a book to be, and yet entirely comprehensible and with a strong plot and message. A+, will be reading it again and again in the future. 

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

I loved it, and I will take a long time to recover from it. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Blood, War