Books

There are places in this world where it is hard to imagine beauty of any kind emerging. Top of the list, with dubious honours, would have to be the theatre of war, that peculiarly destructive place where humanity supposedly fights one against the other but if we’re truly honest, against Continue Reading

SNAPSHOTRaybearer themes loyalty and fate, and is steeped in West African traditions and mythologies. The novel centers on Tarisai, who was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as The Lady. As Raybearer begins, The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Continue Reading

SNAPSHOTOver the summer of 2019, the Penguin Books distribution center in Maryland played host to a little African penguin who interned with them for a day. The flightless bird confidently walked into the building, through the lobby and right into the warehouse to do a spot inspection. She then made Continue Reading

One thing that quickly becomes apparent when you plunge into the vividly imaginative postmodern queer sci-fi storytelling of Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, is that this is not your grandmother’s retelling of the Arthurian legend. To be fair, most grandmothers probably do not habitually sit Continue Reading

Life is, in many ways, a bittersweet mix of opportunities seized and chances lost. This all too flawed and earthbound state of affairs is not necessarily the result of poor decision-making or impetuous planning; it’s often simply the consequence of sliding doors rising up to meet us, necessitating that a Continue Reading

SNAPSHOTThe story follows a horse as it guides a group through a museum looking at the real-life examples of how artists have imagined the humble horse. It includes reproductions of more than 30 artworks about horses, from artists like Pablo Picasso to Susan Rothenberg and Jackson Pollock. And there are Continue Reading

Belonging, truly belonging, to a group of people, family or otherwise, is one of the great defining attributes of being human. While it’s healthy to define ourselves in our terms as anyone who has ever been part of a dysfunctionally intrusive group will tell you, there is so much to Continue Reading

If there is a creed for science fiction, and no doubt someone somewhere has attempted one since people, most people anyway, tend to love immutable rules, it must surely be to (a) to be expansively imaginative and (b) weave in penetratingly substantial examination of the contrarily complex nature of humanity. Continue Reading

Ask anyone who has ever fallen in love with the written word, and by fallen I mean with that desperate sense of urgency that says words and stories are life itself and their absence is a slow and lingering death, and they will testify with unbridled passion about the power Continue Reading

At first gloriously silly glance, If You’re Reading This I’m Already Dead by Andrew Nicoll seems like a very silly novel. A riotously funny, over the top tale of a bunch of circus performers, then based in Germany, who decide to pull the grandest con of all by having one Continue Reading