pageglue's reviews
221 reviews

The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories by Yu Chen, Regina Kanyu Wang
Did not finish book. Stopped at 70%.

These stories are very… simple? Boring? Extremely light on fantasy and sci-fi elements. The essays on translation are really basic. 

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.0

Saint Juniper's Folly by Alex Crespo

dark emotional funny mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

This book takes the idea of being “stuck” to a whole other level. Taylor should have left home for college, but she and her dad are stuck in grief after the death of her mother. Theo has to start applying for colleges, and his parents are pushing him to study what they want him to study at a local college. He doesn’t know what he wants to do or where he wants to go, but he can’t wait to get out of their small town. And then there’s Jaime, who’s been sent from house to house in the foster care system, but then one day he enters a creepy house in the woods, only to find that it won’t let him leave. 

I loved this book! The big stand out how thematically sophisticated and rich it was. The interplay of the themes with the characters and the plot was so good and did a great job of inviting the reader to think more deeply about what was really going on from scene to scene. The main mystery behind why Jaime can’t leave the haunted house helps with that, but then there all of these other smaller mysteries which reveal deeper insights into the characters, which eventually lead back into the main mystery/plot very cleverly. 

I thought the characters were so well-written and dynamic. I really enjoyed the familial / cultural element of Taylor connecting with her maternal lineage of practicing witchcraft native to Puerto Rico and the ways that that brings tension between her and her dad. I loved how loyal and earnest Theo was, and Jaime had a great balance between presenting himself as “cool/aloof” while also being quite sensitive. Aside from the thematic aspects, Crespo really excelled at writing tense scenes where the characters’ emotions were heightened, especially between Taylor and her dad and with Jaime’s (perfectly understandable) outbursts. 

This was just a really good book! Perfect if you’re looking for a queer romance with paranormal elements and Latine characters and magic!

The Conjure-Man Dies: A Harlem Mystery: The First Ever African-American Crime Novel (Detective Club Crime Classics) by Rudolph Fisher

challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Eyes Guts Throat Bones by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

I really enjoyed this short story collection of sapphic horror and speculative fiction. There was a lot of beautiful writing, and many of the stories were very creatively and thoughtfully crafted. Some of the stories seemed like a critique of heteronormativity with queer relationships - the opening story in particular, What Would You Give For A Treat Like Me, wherein a woman’s wife is trying to force the “stability” of the nuclear family in their relationship in a post-apocalyptic world. 

There was some great, visceral gore writing, and in one of the stories I even skipped parts of the ending because it was too gross 😖. Even with the stories I didn’t enjoy that much, basically all of them had a cool, interesting premise. I particularly liked the Irish/Celtic elements in some of the stories. I think my favourite story was Flowers, which was about these two teenaged girls and whenever they kissed (in secret) it started to rain flowers. It really captured the feeling of living in an oppressive, conservative, gossipy small town, and the speculative elements were eerie and really clever.

All in all I thought this was a great collection and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.5

1949, a year following the Nakba, an Israeli soldier patrols the south of Palestine. He’s seeing things. He has an infection in his leg that keeps getting worse. His unit captures a woman after killing the men she was with, and ends up killing her too. Decades later, a Palestinian woman reads a news article about this event and catches a minor detail that she becomes obsessed with, and so she decides to investigate further. 

If you loved David Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black you need to read this. It very poignantly explores themes of colonialism and war, the writing is fairly simple but hypnotically rhythmic, and it looks at a historical moment through the lens of madness. 

The book is divided into two parts, and in the second part we follow a woman who is autistic, and it was really interesting to see her navigate her city under occupation and driving through checkpoints while having difficulty reacting to people and situations “logically,” as she puts it. 

I’ve seen this book on some lists of “Books to read to understand Israel/Palestine” but I wouldn’t say this is beginner friendly. The first part especially relies on the reader interpreting the metaphors she’s making, which you should readily be able to do if you understand the current situation, plus maybe read an article on or watch the Vox video on YouTube about the history of the Nakba. 

I found this a really captivating, thoughtful, and creative read. Highly recommend it. 

Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

dark funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I fucking loved this book! It’s a female-led horror-comedy that crosses a ‘Bachelor’ style reality show with a big foot story. It’s wild, and it was done SO well. I laughed a lot, but there were still a couple of scenes that were pretty disturbing. 

Like Alison Cochrun’s The Charm Offensive, this book criticises Bachelor-style reality shows and exposes how manipulative they are of the participants and viewers, but this book stood out to me because of the dignity it gave to the female contestants. They played the role of bitchy, jealous Bachelor contestants when the cameras were rolling, but their internal worlds and the conversations they were having off-screen showed they had a lot of depth and had much grander aspirations than just finding a man. I also really enjoyed the setting of a fictional town in Alaska that was home to a long-standing (largely female) queer community. It was very emblematic of the tension that exists for queer people between secrecy and privacy, and the various motivations behind each.

I highly recommend this smart, fun, strange book!

Walking Practice by Dolki Min

challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

I’ll start by quoting from the Sophie Caudle’s Translator’s notes: “While the novel may be positioned under the umbrella of speculative fiction, many of ■ ⧆ ◈ ◈ ▤ ‘s fears and the dangers they face are mirrored in the fears and dangers faced by queer people, not only in Korea, but around the world: the fear of being out-ed, the threat of persecution, the potential to be met with violence in the pursuit of love. Walking Practice is a novel that yearns for community as much as it is a novel that plays with notions of gender and sexual expression.”

This book was fucking wild and awesome! It’s a queer, sci-fi horror book, translated from Korean about a shapeshifting alien that crashed to Earth and discovers that the only food they like is human flesh. The way they choose their victims is through online dating and hookup apps, changing their appearance to suit their prey.

I especially love horror where the queer person (or being in this case) is the monster in the closet. The protagonist’s alien perspective on human gender, although not particularly new or insightful to me personally, was still very well put and worked so well for the story (see quotes in the slides). The physical book/ebook includes drawings from the author, and the text emulates the alien’s voice (again, see slides). I also listened to the audiobook while reading it and honestly the narrator, Nicky Endres, made the experience SO much better! 

This book is emblematic of why I love queer horror: queer themes explored through the lens of gore and fear. Highly recommend!

Nubia: the Awakening by Omar Epps

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I was so looking forward to this book. The premise is awesome, and I was really enjoying it early on when everything was being established. The story takes place in the late 21st century. Due to rising sea levels from climate change, wealthy Manhattanites have ascended to a New York City built above the island. Refugees from a fictional African island called Nubia have settled in the slums of NYC that are only barely protected by a sea wall. We follow three Nubian second generation immigrants, Zeberi, Uzochi, and Lencho, who come to find their Nubian magical powers awaken, learning about themselves and their family histories. 

This book started off as a sci-fi / cli-fi book and I was having a great time with it, but it really lost me when it started becoming a fantasy book. The magical abilities are very nondescript; like I had trouble imagining what the characters were doing when they were performing magic and how it was manifesting in the physical space. The further along I got into the plot, the less interested I became in the story. 

The world building really bothered me too. The clothes and hairstyles and accessories you see them wearing in the cover? Nothing like that is described in the book. These Nubians apparently don’t have a native Nubian language, or at least no one spoke it in their homes or communities. There were no defining features of their culture like music, dress, food. And we’re reading a book set 70 years in the future, and yet there were no changes in costume or slang or anything in that time? There are some sci-fi elements, like we get a brief mention that the ascended New Yorks can afford biotechnological implants, but we don’t know what kind or why they get them. 

I will say that I didn’t start feeling negatively about the book until I started speculating about the plot or asking questions about the world and the nature of the fantasy, so maybe this is best enjoyed by not thinking too hard about it lol.

In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony by Darren Byler

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0