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Book Review: The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

Brooke Bolander jumps from stories to novellas with The Only Harmless Great Thing, her #Tordotcompublishing novella. The novella is a strongly affecting and moving story that proves that her emotional strengths in reaching an audience do translate from her short stories to novella length. Brooke Bolander first came to my literary attention with “Our Talons can crush Galaxies”, her Nebula and Hugo nominated story in Uncanny magazine that mixed Gods, revenge and a very sharp, short  package. When I heard that Bolander was writing a novella that was an alternate history that involved the radium girls, a part of history I only had the vaguest notions about, I was thus intrigued. What could and would the author do at novella length in an alternate history? I was not sure, but I wanted to find out.

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Bedtime Stories: Sleep Well, Siba & Saba

Bedtime Stories is a new column that will highlight Children’s Books with a diverse, global perspective. Forgetful sisters Siba and Saba are always losing something. Sandals, slippers, sweaters — you name it, they lost it. When the two sisters fall asleep each night, they dream about the things they have lost that day. Until, one night, their dreams begin to reveal something entirely unexpected… Sleep Well, Siba & Saba, written by Nansubuga Nagadya Isdahl and illustrated by Sandra van Doorn, is a gently rhyming and alliterative story with dreamlike illustrations that highlight the author’s Ugandan heritage.

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Book review: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman

Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman is a deeply affecting young adult novel that is part coming-of-age and part episodic road trip. It focuses on the eponymous Tess, a young woman who runs away from home to escape the restrictive life that is slowly smothering her. Rachel Hartman is best known for her Seraphina duology. Tess of the Road is not only set in the same world, but Tess is Seraphina’s half sister. New readers don’t need to have read the previous series in order to read this book; it makes clear how the world works. However, Tess of the Road takes place after the events of Seraphina and Shadow Scale. Several of the characters from these books make cameos and I highly recommend reading them first if you are adverse to spoilers.

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Guest Post: That Thing You Love Doesn’t Always Love You Back by Spencer Ellsworth

‘Til All Are One, Buy All Our Playsets & Toys! I’m just old enough to have been raised on VHS tapes. Every weekend in the 80s, my sisters and I would go to the little video store in our tiny California town, right next to the feed store, to pick something out of the 1$ rental shelf for the weekend. I always picked Transformers: The Animated Movie. This piece of ’80s insanity is a hyper-violent, bonkers-weird, hour-and-a-half toy commercial. Hasbro wanted to clear the 1984-1985 model toys, especially those that weren’t selling well, from toy store shelves and introduce new characters. So the first half-hour of the movie, ahem, transforms the franchise. Unlike the syndicated cartoon, a consequence-free zone of stun guns, the animated movie follows Megatron as he mows down Autobots with gruesome detail, climaxing in the brutal death of Optimus Prime from a gaping stomach wound. Oh sure, these are robots with scratched chassis and cut fuel lines, but they fall and scream and mutilate like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan.

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Retro Childhood Review: Justice and Her Brothers

Justice flicked her eyes this way and that. All else around the parlor appeared ordinary. The light of sun set the room aglow in corners and on walls. It was an eerie effect, but not something she hadn’t seen before. The house was stifling, as it had been for weeks. But there was nothing odd about sunlight, about heat, at this early hour. Yet, since the summer started, she’d got the notion at times that something deadly strange was going on. When I was considering what book to read for Black History Month, I was once again struck with how inadequate my small library of childhood favorites is in representing any perspective that is not white. Thank goodness for Google. I’m upset with the system that existed in my small, very white town. A system that seems to have excluded voices of color and, indeed, made attempts on numerous occasions to explicitly do so. All of this means that I was never introduced to the exceedingly talented Newbery Medalist author, Virginia Hamilton. I suspect this is not JUST because she is a black woman, but because, at least when it comes to Justice and Her Brothers, one could easily mistake her work for “Not Sci-fi.” This is a mistake that needs immediate rectification because nothing could be further from the truth.

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Book Review: The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

Binti is a prodigy among her people, the Himba, in a mid-future world constructed by author Nnedi Okorafor.  Binti’s desire to go  the finest University in the galaxy breaks all sorts of norms. Binti’s like that, though, breaking norms and boundaries as she finds her way to the University, back home, and what happens thereafter. Binti’s story  is told in Okorafor’s Binti, Binti: Home and the finale of the trilogy, Binti: Masquerade.

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