Book Review: BLEAK HOUSES by Kate Maruyama
Bleak Houses, by Kate Maruyama, represents the debut of this line, consisting of two novella-length stories: Safer and Family Solstice. The small independent press Omnium Gatherum previously published Family Solstice in 2021, when Rue Morgue Magazine named it Best Fiction Book of the year. The release of Bleak Houses by RDSP thus represents an opportunity for new readers to discover that story while also being treated to another previously unpublished story born from the horrors of pandemic isolation.
Horror Review: Penny Reeve on Victor LaValle’s The Changeling
“When you believe in things you don’t understand you suffer” Stevie Wonder’s words serve as the epitaph to Victor LaValle’s The Changeling; accurately summing up the ensuing 431 pages wherein we’re introduced to a genre-defying novel that mixes horror with the fantastic and monsters both real and imagined come a-knocking.
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.
Book Review: The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang
Releasing books in a series in quick succession is nothing new. An author sells multiple volumes, already written, which come out in relatively short order with each other. It is far far less common, however, for a publisher to release multiple works by an author at the same time. It’s even rarer to have a pair of twinned works, who inform and influence each other. In The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, two entangled novellas have been released by a new talent on the SF scene, JY Yang.
Month of Joy: Sharing My Joys with My Son by Maria Turtschaninoff
This year, my husband and I have introduced roleplaying to our son. He was 6 at the beginning of the year, so we thought it was time. I never got to role play as a kid. I had the games, and I would have loved to play, but I had no-one to play with. I was the only nerd in my class (not that I even knew the term). I spent hours making characters, drawing maps, and planning adventures. It was difficult to plan the adventures, though, as I did not really grasp how the game was supposed to work, never having tried it for real. It wasn’t until I met my (nerdy) husband, who DM-ed for me, that I got to play. I love that we did that together! I even got to DM for him.
Month of Joy: The Smell of Masa in the Morning by Sabrina Vourvoulias
There is a particular smell to corn that has been soaked in wood ash lye, then washed and hulled and ground into a fine meal. It is the aroma of freshly made tortillas, of tamales as they steam, of my mother’s huipiles. Really. No matter how freshly laundered, no matter how many cedar balls or lavender sachets have been thrown in the drawer to keep the moths away, the distinctive hand-woven Guatemalan blouses my mother wore retain the smell of a grain turned more aromatic, more flavorful, more nutritious by the nixtamalation process.
