Book Review: Chasing Whispers by Eugen Bacon
African-Australian writer Eugen Bacon … writes poetry that can propel with prose-like narrative, while she constructs prose with a playful, poetic touch: fluid lines that invite readers to dance among possible meanings and interpretations, evocative words that sing out to strike emotional chords.
Movie Review: THEY CLONED TYRONE (2023) Directed by Juel Taylor
The They Cloned Tyrone movie has earned critical and general audience acclaim in a little over a month since, and Skiffy & Fanty followers with access to Netflix should check it out if they haven’t already.
BOOK REVIEW: SORDIDEZ BY E.G. CONDÉ
Within these two apocalyptic settings where all four of the Horsemen of Revelation ride, the stories of three protagonists intertwine via multiple points of views and narrative voices (first- and third-person). In both Puerto Rico and in the Yucatán, these characters face their dystopic present to envision positive Indigenous-led futures enacted by purposeful decolonization and embrace of their ancestral ways.
Book Review: Dehiscent by Ashley Deng
Dehiscent has a form of New Weird that combines eco-horror with what might be considered cozy horror, despite unsettling themes of the prison that can form from the recognition of privilege while feeling powerless to change it. With rich, quiet atmosphere and an exceptionally compelling and realistic, empathetic protagonist, Deng lifts a mirror to our current lives to reflect a fantastic image of how divisions of humanity would continue.
Book Review: Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé
From its opening pages, the surreal atmosphere of Morowa Yejidé’s exceptional, otherworldly novel Creatures of Passage envelops readers in a hazy pairing of familiarity and disorientation.
Book Review: ESCAPE POD Edited by Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya
The eponymous Escape Pod represents a ‘best-of’ anthology of sorts, celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the audio short fiction podcast. Edited by Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya, the book features some of the biggest names in speculative fiction published through the podcast’s history. While I don’t have interest in listening to stories, I adore them in print form, and this collection from Titan Books offers a diverse selection of high-quality writing. With the current exclusive focus of Skiffy & Fanty on writers/works by the BIPOC community, I’ll highlight here that this collection features superb stories by Maurice Broaddus and N.K. Jemisin. In what follows, I’ll briefly review the stories in this collection.
