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Author: trishmatson

Educated as a physicist yet living as a journalist, Trish Matson is an award-winning writer and editor whose ever-expanding list of interests includes a lifelong love of SF/F, plus wordplay, libraries, games, music, dancing, audio drama, and podcasting. She’s listed as TrishEM on various fora, but you can find her most easily on Twitter.

Book review: The Black Orb, by Ewhan Kim

Cover of The Black Orb, by Ewhan Kim, translated by Sean Lin Halbert, featuring the back of a man with short black hair, with three red circles/spheres circling him down what looks like a an abstract checkerboard-design funnel.

This book isn’t for everyone, with its weird horror, violence of various kinds, a problematic main character, and mysteries that never really get resolved; however, it absolutely kept me interested and engaged, and presented a lot of ideas to consider.

Book review: Motheater, by Linda H. Codega

This book did not go where I was expecting with the main plot, but I loved the twists and turns that it took. People with the best of intentions can be blind to the harm they’re storing up for the future, and anyone can make promises that end up being derailed by events beyond their control…

Book Review: A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett

Cover of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, featuring a white plant springing from a severed hand, with green succulent plants around it, and a different person's silhouette at each corner.

Anyone who enjoyed the first book should find A Drop of Corruption: An Ana and Din Mystery (Shadow of the Leviathan: Book 2) equally satisfying. I definitely advise against jumping into the series with the sequel, though; start with the first one.

Death of the Author: A Novel, by Nnedi Okorafor

Cover of Death of the Author: A Novel, by Nnedi Okorafor, featuring a mostly silhouetted dark-skinned woman whose hair is in locs, against an abstract red, green, and blue pattern (rivers? blood? computer chips?).

I love the vivid characters in it, the way they face their challenges, the fiercely exuberant explorations of personhood and choice and negotiating relationships, and the sheer joy of life apparent in how Okorafor plays with ideas.

Book Review: We Lived on the Horizon, by Erika Swyler

Cover of We Lived on the Horizon, by Erika Swyler, featuring sand dunes and a purple sky, with a blue inset saying "A Novel".

An artisanal bio-prosthetist and her personal house AI become aware of growing data gaps in a post-cataclysmic city run by an artificial intelligence system, precipitated by the murder of an acquaintance and the subsequent erasure of facts about the victim and his death.

Book Review: The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

Cover of The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett, featuring a goblet on its side, with a plant sprouting from it, and more plant life creeping in from the borders. Human silhouettes stand at the corners. Cover design by Will Staehle/Unusual Co.

After a man is found dead due to a huge plant having suddenly sprouted from within his body, the investigator and her assistant quickly determine that this is no ordinary, accidental contagion. Their investigation and other events take them from a small frontier town to a metropolis full of factions and intrigues, from jurisdictional disputes to economic entanglements, as more deaths are discovered and a conspiracy unfolds that threatens the Empire itself.

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