Books

There is something gloriously refreshing about the way the French approach their storytelling. By some act of the gods or simply a gift for prodigiously good and insightful storytelling, authors like Julien Sandrel are able to write unflinchingly about the most heartbreaking of situations, giving it due gravity and respect, Continue Reading

SNAPSHOTBeyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don’t get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will. Koli has lived Continue Reading

Coming to grips with our past is always a tricky proposition. Emboldened by the idea that with examination and hopeful closure comes healing, and often unable to bear the pain of the scars of childhood any longer, we plunge into the fray of memories and past hurts, convinced by feel-good Continue Reading

As concepts go, the idea of “normal” is one that is very close to most people’s hearts. It may be near meaningless, rubbery in definition and oblique as things get, but it is beloved, largely because intangibility has never been an issue when it comes to Homo Sapiens deciding if Continue Reading

For most people, the death of a loved one is a mostly private affair; granted there is a funeral and often a wake, all very public by their very nature, but for the most part, it’s an intensely-traumatic personal thing. Not so for Dawn Murray, wife of Tom who, in Continue Reading

Falling in love with a book’s protagonist is pretty much for the course when you read a good book. That’s largely because well-written books, almost by definition, come with winningly-articulated characters who propel the page-turning narrative, rather than the other way around, and spending all that time with them, you Continue Reading

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