Jim Crow Horror, Social Space Opera, and What Genre is That Anyway?
Review: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
CW: Child abuse, child death
First warning: This book is a tome. It weighs in at 570 pages.
Second warning: This is horror that focuses on real events…and real events that happened to children. Very, very bad things happen to children in this book.
Due weaves a story that reveals the true horrors that took place in the American South under Jim Crow. Set in 1950 and focused on a “reform school,” this is a dark, racially charged (in the best way) work that is not for the faint of hearted. Beautifully written, it dives deep into a world where the supernatural is present, but the real monsters are human.
Our protagonist, Robert, is sentenced to six months at a reform school for kicking a white boy…even though the white boy doesn’t want to press charges (he’s overruled by his parents). Through this, we see a school that is worse than any prison and echoes not just reform schools at the time, but Indian boarding schools.
The worst horror here is that it is based on things which actually happened…and at some levels still happen. This is a book in which the real villain is racism.
Recommended…but only for people who can handle it.
I received a copy of this book for review purposes.
Review: The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
This book reminds me of two touchstones. One is Everina Maxwell’s M/M romance space operas, the other is Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire.
Ashing-Giwa doesn’t quite have Martine’s deft touch with cultural anthropology and her Imperium is squarely Roman in its trappings and feel. There’s nothing wrong with this, and the core of the book is, of course, anti-colonialism.
From Rome, Ashing-Giwa takes the idea of the divine emperor and the concept of tolerating all religions as long as you acknowledge the emperor. She then takes the military a stage further, although she has the legions themselves made up of brainwashed victims, rather than merely the auxiliaries.
This is, yes, a space opera book, but one which takes aim squarely at both Rome and the British Empire (and, on more than one occasion, the British Museum). It’s also a decidedly queer book, with an F/F romance at its heart…no spoilers, it’s obvious to the reader from the moment the characters meet, if not to them. It’s a queernorm world, but it’s more casual than most…the queerness is not the point, it simply is…and I like that.
This novel won the Compton Crook and I’m glad to finally get to it. Recommended.
I received a copy of this book for review purposes.
Review: The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter
Every so often somebody trots out the trope of the culture that mates in public and eats in private. Porter takes this and applies it to climate fiction, in a way which is both interesting and relevant. It’s a secondary world, but not a fantasy. It’s science fiction in that there are a few things that don’t exist, like the appetite control implants.
I almost have to put it in the category of alternate history, but really it has to be described simply as “speculative.” Porter creates a world that combines the eat/mate trope with the trope of the wealthy living literally above the poor. It’s climate fiction in that the seas are rising and a thinly veiled Monsanto that’s also a religious cult…
In other words, this is a delightfully strange book. My one issue is that I didn’t find the characters relatable.
Make that two issues; I didn’t quite understand the ending or why the book within a book would destroy their religion. I probably missed something…this is the kind of layered book that probably benefits from multiple readings.
Recommended for those who like the strange and unclassifiable.
I received a copy of this book for review purposes.
Review: The Dent in the Universe by E.W. Doc Parris
CW: Pandemic, torture
Imagine you have a time machine.
Except that all it can do is access the internet in the past…interactively. Meaning you can order pizza thirty minutes ago.
Or start a company five years ago and make a billion dollars.
Or…
The Dent in the Universe takes this concept and runs with it into some very dark places. This is a bitter book…I wonder if the author had a bad experience in a startup, because he doesn’t seem to care for them.
It’s not exactly horror, but crosses over into it and has some…well. Check the content warnings.
But it’s really a duel fought between two entities who can change things…as long as history doesn’t record them and they don’t know what happened.
And one of them is one evil motherf*.
Parris writes well, but with a low opinion of humanity. Evil tends to win in this world, but this is also the first book in a series and is meant to set up a dark future.
I’d kind of like instant pizza ordering. But nobody should have the kind of power Oneiri turns out to bring.
Ultimately, this is a book about unintended consequences of technology.
It’s also very much a pandemic horror book. If you’re ready for that, you might enjoy it. If not..wait until you are.
I received a copy of this book for review purposes.
Review: The Hanging City by Charlie N. Holmberg
This is a very classic fantasy. Our protagonist is desperate for a place to belong in a drought-stricken world. She’s gifted..or cursed…with the ability to instill fear in others.
And she’s running out of places to go, so she throws herself on the mercy of the trollis, to whom she can never be more than a slave, in their city under a bridge.
It’s a star crossed romance, because of course it is. The worldbuilding is a little…sketchy…with only really the trollis (troll) city of Cagmar drawn in any detail. The characters fall between interesting..and equally sketchy, with one existing only to be a cheap bully. That’s a weakness, but the plot did carry me past that.
If you’re fond of star crossed romance, you might want to pick this one up. The stakes are small by high fantasy standards, but important to those they matter to.
My favorite character is Perg.
Recommended for romance fans…of a certain bent ;).
Review: The Witch’s Lens by Luanne G. Smith
World War I wracks Europe. Petra endures while her husband is at the front, hiding from everyone that she is…the fairy tale girl who spins straw into gold.
Her ability to transform non-living matter is hidden, but her ability to take photos of the dead has caught the attention of a military recruiter who thinks she might be…useful.
The tsar’s mystic has been raising the dead as upir (vampires) left, right, and center. It’s not looking great for the war…
…but Petra’s talent is a thing of great value to all sides.
This is an interesting historical. I don’t find much set in World War I, and this is set in Eastern Europe. Petra is a citizen of the collapsing Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Magic here works in a very traditional way with spells and incantations, although Petra doesn’t need to speak to use her abilities. And given the setting…there are, of course, werewolves.
This is actually a relatively light novel, although the body count is high. Smith doesn’t waste any words in telling her story.
Petra isn’t always a convincing lead. She reacts with a bit of flat effect, perhaps because she has learned to keep so many secrets. The other characters, especially Josef, are honestly more interesting.
Still, it’s a nice historical fantasy, well researched from what I can tell, and with enough action to keep the pages turning.
Not a bad choice if you like the setting.