425. Acacia by David Anthony Durham w/ Brent Lambert — Reading Rangers
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-425-acacia/SandF_425_Acacia.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSTwisted quotas, questionable empires, and ancient mysteries, oh my! Shaun Duke is joined by special guest Brent Lambert for a neck deep discussion of Acacia by David Anthony Durham! Together, they discuss the influence of the book on Brent’s life, the role of ancestry and legacy in empire, Durham’s treatment of trauma and the fantasy genre, and so much more! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
420. Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (Reading Rangers)
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-420-brown-girl-in-the-ring/SandF_420_Brown_Girl_in_the_Ring.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSInvisible men, sexy moss, and gymnastics, oh my! Shaun Duke and Alex Acks join forces for the first ever A Book and Its Adaptation pairing. April 2021’s selection includes Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring and the prequel adaptation, Brown Girl Begins (2017; dir. Sharon Lewis)! In this episode, Shaun and Alex discuss Hopkinson’s novel, diving into the book’s themes, its treatment of white flight and Caribbean culture, its exploration of medical and cultural power, and its significance, among other amazing subjects. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
419. Captives of the Flame by Samuel R. Delany (Reading Rangers)
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-419-captives-of-the-flame/SandF_419_Captives_of_the_Flame.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSInvisible men, sexy moss, and gymnastics, oh my! Shaun Duke and Trish Matson take a page out of the 60s to discuss Samuel R. Delany’s Captives of the Flame! Together, they discuss Delany’s approach to plotting, the novel’s themes of the other and war, the strange ending, and so much more! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
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.
Book Review: THE RAGE OF DRAGONS by Evan Winter
Evan Winter self-published The Rage of Dragons in 2017. It soon received notice from an editor at Orbit, and in 2019 the publisher gave a freshly edited version of the novel a release, along with a deal for three further novels in its series entitled The Burning. The second novel of the series, The Fires of Vengeance, has recently been released, and a copy I picked up of that from my local bookshop (for this purchase, the aptly named Burning Books) now sits on my massive TBR stack. If you’re a regular follower of Skiffy & Fanty, you probably have already at least heard of The Rage of Dragons and its author. We featured Winter in episode #53 of the Signal Boost series (found here), and my fellow reviewer Paul Weimer praised the novel on Goodreads and Twitter. Paul even included it among books recommended to his followers at the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, right as we all began self-isolating and looking for worlds to escape into within pages. (Also: see Paul’s review on Barnes & Noble here).
387. The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste — Reading Rangers
https://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/sand-f-387-the-jumbies/SandF_387_The_Jumbies.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS Oranges, wild boys, and douen, oh my! In today’s delightful literary discussion, Shaun Duke and Jen Zink take a look at Tracey Baptiste’s incredible middle grade novel, The Jumbies. Together, they discuss the novel’s treatment of Caribbean folklore, its exploration of family and loss, its treatment of colonization and nature themes, the terrifying-ness of Jumbies, and so much more! Plus, we read some of your reviews of the show! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode!
