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Book review: Harmattan Season, by Tochi Onyebuchi

Cover of Harmattan Season, by Tochi Onyebuchi, featuring the back of a dark-skinned man wearing a dirty djellabah, looking at a barefoot woman floating amid clouds, or clouds of debris..

Even the most surreal fantastic elements of the book end up being employed in ways that eventually make some sense. But despite some familiar elements, their combination and development is unique and engaging. I wouldn’t quite call Harmattan Season an easy read, but it absolutely kept me interested throughout, and I was entirely satisfied with the ending.

Book Review: The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

Cover of The Book of Doors, by Gareth Brown, featuring a staircase against a blue background with a few stars; a door stands slightly ajar in the center, and a woman is falling beneath that door.

This is a book not quite about the power of books and doors and going places by opening one, but instead, it is a twisting and intricately devised narrative of stable time travel loops. Brown has a lot of fun in the novel…

Book review: Soulstar, by C.L. Polk

Cover of Soulstar, by C.L. Polk (The Kingston Cycle, Volume 3), featuring two female ice skaters, one with long hair and a scarf, and one with close-cropped hair), against a cityscape with a rising or setting sun.

Even though I have a heavy reading schedule of new books for Skiffy and Fanty, it was absolutely worth the time to go back and read Soulstar.

On Karen Lord’s REDEMPTION Series

Where Redemption in Indigo reads folksy, and frequently comical, Unraveling turns more into the subgenre of dark urban fantasy, with shades of a mystery police procedural added into a shadowy mix. Lord constructs the story as a labyrinthine exploration across dreams and realities, beyond the normal (human) flows of time and space.