speculative fiction

Exploring Dystopia: A Review of ‘All the Water in the World’

by Stefani

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall

Published: January 7, 2025 by St. Martin’s Press

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they’ve saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. 

Rating:

Review:

My reading is not off to a good start this year. Most of the books I’ve read haven’t been very good, so I wanted to grab a dystopian novel about a family working to save exhibits in a museum from a flooded world. Unfortunately, this one was just not good.

The main narrator, Nonie, is completely flat and devoid of any emotion. Her tone and temperament don’t really change throughout the story, no matter what action packed or traumatic events are taking place around her. It made it difficult to connect with the story because the narrator was entirely disconnected from it. I’m not sure if this was done on purpose or not, but it was a bad choice. I wanted to feel something for these people. I wanted to feel something about what they were experiencing. But I couldn’t. Because Nonie didn’t.

The narrative felt very fractured. We switch back and forth from the present to the past, but all of it is written exactly the same and in the same past tense tone. So it was really difficult to determine when we were flashing back to the past and when we were in the present. Or perhaps all of the book was in the past and being told as a memory. I have no idea. It was very confusing and I got tired of trying to follow it. Eventually I just tuned out because I couldn’t keep up.

As a side note, I don’t understand what the point was of Nonie’s “superpower”. She has a “deep connection” to water. But the book doesn’t really explore this at all. It’s mentioned once in the beginning of the book, and once at the end. That’s it. We don’t explore it or discuss it at all. So, what was the point?

Unfortunately this book is a case of lots of potential that wasn’t realized. Which is disappointing.

Taking an Elysium trip: A review

by Stefani

Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett

Published: December 1, 2014 by Aqueduct Press

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program’s data, however, has been corrupted. As the novel’s characters struggle to survive apocalypse, they are sustained and challenged by the demands of love in a shattered world both haunted and dangerous.

Rating:

Review:

The best word I can use to describe this book is ambitious. The idea is a really big idea that would be difficult for even the most experienced writer to handle. This came to my attention as an audiobook offering from my library, the blurb intrigued me and so I listened. And honestly, the entire book made me feel like I’d taken a large amount of hallucinogenic drugs.

Essentially, this book is about a computer program that lost its mate. It’s attempting to reconstruct the story of how that happened. And we follow the program through a series of glitches that bring us the same two characters (ostensibly the portrayals of the two computer programs) and put them in varying scenarios before the program glitches again and those characters are recreated as something else. And when I say they become different characters, I really mean that. They switch genders, ages, races, sexualities, motivations, and circumstances. We go from being heterosexual lovers, to gay lovers, to siblings, to parent and child, to a long time couple that has become more of a caretaking situation than a romance, etc. While I found it interesting at first, ultimately it just got very confusing. I could only track the two main characters thanks to the fact that they had similar enough names to track them through these varying tales. Consequently, I found that I didn’t really care about the two characters that much. They were going to be completely different people in just a few pages, and then I’d barely get a chance to know them before they changed again.

I was hoping that we’d slowly get some sort of overarching story that would bind these narratives together. And it started to form by the time I got to the middle, but I tuned out after that. I was lost and my brain was tired of trying to figure out who everyone was all the time. Other reviews tell me that we get a conclusion but I didn’t pay attention to it. The writing is very good but the story was just too messy for me to care about.

Dystopian Climate Crisis Fiction: ‘American War’ by Omar El Akkad

by Stefani

American War by Omar El Akkad

Published: April 4, 2017 by Knopf

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

Rating:

Review:

I believe that there are two ways to write a really great dystopian novel. First, you set the book so far into the future that it doesn’t really matter how outlandish the world building or the situation are. Readers will look at it and think “Well, it’s 400 years in the future, I guess that could happen.” Second, you base it in a more recent reality, but change a few key situations or circumstances that logically explain how the world got to this state in the near future.

Unfortunately, this book doesn’t convincingly do either one. The premise of this book is that in 2074 the United States has a second Civil War. Ostensibly, the war is over oil. Oil has been outlawed due to climate change and some states decide that they want to continue using it and so they engage in a Civil War. After the war ends (about 20 years), there was a devastating plague that swept the nation and things have been in a state of crisis ever since. This book is set somewhere in the midst of the war when the main character and her family flee to a refuge camp to escape the war and the plague. I really wanted a better explanation for how the United States gets to a Civil War just 50 years from now. I simply didn’t understand how the conflicts about climate change and oil reach that boiling point so soon.

WARNING: From here on out there will probably be spoilers. But I find this book to be crap that I would recommend to no one, so feel free to continue at your leisure.

So, ostensibly this war is about oil. Except that doesn’t make any sense. Apparently climate change has gotten so bad that most of the American Southwest is just perpetually on fire and unlivable, and half of Louisiana is permanently underwater, and the ice caps no longer exist. I find it hard to believe that in the face of such catastrophic changes to the world that there would be so much climate change skepticism left to start a war over. Currently there’s a lot of nuance to climate change opinions. People who believe that it is entirely man made and we have to do something about it. People who believe it is a natural cycle of the earth that we have little to no influence over. People who believe it’s all made up and not actually happening. People who believe that it is happening, humans are responsible, but we’ll find ways to innovate solutions as times goes on. But despite this diversity of opinions, in 50 years time everyone either boils down into “let’s ban oil to help climate change” or “we want oil, because….we want it.” I find that difficult to imagine. I also find it hard to believe that there would be enough people who feel strongly enough about oil to start a war over it. Apparently there’s three states that started the war, and a few others joined along the way. Texas was part of it at one point, but it’s now part of Mexico for some reason. So they are kind of affiliated, but not really. It’s confusing. Let’s also ignore that even the most catastrophic climate change predictions state that the temperature difference will be about 1 degree in 100 years….

Really, what this author does it just replace slavery with oil and utilize all the same tropes and circumstances of the first civil war and overlaid it into the book. But instead of the Union we have “the blues”, instead of the Confederacy we have “the reds”. It was not well done. The author tells us the war is about oil but it isn’t. It’s about typical Old South tropes of racism, misogyny, and classism. It also doesn’t seem like this is even a world that can survive without oil in the first place. For example, “the blues” have warships that are supposed to enforce the oil ban, they have solar panels. But the solar panels are so inefficient that the ships regularly use their diesel engines to get things done….the author tells us this as an aside, like it’s a normal course of business. That was so weird. You ban oil but still haven’t advanced alternative energy sources enough to actually be useable? What?

Speaking of oil, apparently in this book the “Middle East” and “North Africa” decided to put aside thousands of years of conflict and culture differences to form a new world superpower. Where apparently everything is sunshine and rainbows. And things are so good that everyone in Europe is fleeing to this new land on boats as refugees. No explanation is given for how this happens, nor why. Just that it happened. Some of these countries have been having continued conflicts over religion, race, class, culture, etc for literally thousands of years. But, everything is cool now? In 50 years? That doesn’t seem likely either.

It also isn’t difficult to figure out that the author has overlaid current political differences (and his own political opinions) onto this book. “The reds” are bad people. They like guns, and oil, and hate women and gay people. “The blues” believe in trying to help the world, and love everyone, and want to save the planet. Huh, that sounds very 2016 to me. It’s egotistical and ridiculous. To think that the political stage wouldn’t have advanced past the tropes and stereotypes that the two sides throw at each other in current times is laughable.

There were a lot of other things that were laughable and ridiculous about this book but I just can’t devote more time to it. I only got halfway through and that was already a waste of my time. The next “great American novel” this is not.

New Releases Wednesday – August 14, 2024

by Stefani

Dear Hanna by Zoje Stage

Published: August 13, 2024 by Thomas & Mercer

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Hanna is no stranger to dark thoughts: as a young child, she tried to murder her own mother. But that was more than sixteen years ago. And extensive therapy—and writing letters to her younger brother—has since curbed those nasty tendencies.

Now twenty-four, Hanna is living an outwardly normal life of domestic content. Married to real estate agent Jacob, she’s also stepmother to his teenage daughter Joelle. They live in a beautiful home, and Hanna loves her career as a phlebotomist—a job perfectly suited to her occasional need to hurt people.

But when Joelle begins to change in ways that don’t suit Hanna’s purposes, her carefully planned existence threatens to come apart. With life slipping out of her control, Hanna reverts to old habits, determined to manipulate the events and people around her. And the only thing worse than a baby sociopath is a fully grown one.

With its dark humor and chillingly seductive protagonist, Dear Hanna is a stand-alone sequel sure to thrill returning and new readers alike.

Why this caught my eye:

The author’s name on this one caught my attention, I knew I recognized her. I read her other book a few years ago, Baby Teeth. If interested, my review on it is HERE. I remember enjoying the way the author writes and being really entertained by the book, even if it had flaws that affected how I rated it. Since Hanna was the only character I found sympathetic in Baby Teeth, I would love to see what Hanna is up to now. Like I said in my review of Baby Teeth, we all know how these books go. You know it, I know it. We’re reading to see how things fall apart.

Hum by Helen Phillips

Published: August 6, 2024 by Mary Sue Rucci Books

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. 

Why this caught by eye:

I’m a fan of speculative fiction and science fiction. AI is the threat du jour at the moment and the media is all a flutter about the future of the technology. Admittedly it makes me a little bit nervous too, science fiction has an uncanny habit of predicting the future that I find disturbing. Anyway! This synopsis sounds really intriguing and I can’t wait to get it on my shelf.

Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler

Published: August 13, 2024 by Simon & Schuster

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

A powerful memoir that reckons with mental health as well as the insidious ways men impact the lives of women.

In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and self-harm. Over two weeks, she underwent myriad psychological tests, participated in numerous therapy sessions, connected with fellow patients and experienced profound breakthroughs, such as when a doctor noted, “There is a you inside that feels invisible to those looking at you from the outside.”

In Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler recounts her hospital experience as well as pivotal moments in her life that preceded and followed. As the title suggests, many of these moments are impacted by men: unrequited love in high school; the twenty-eight-year-old she lost her virginity to when she was sixteen; the frustrations and absurdities of dating in her mid-thirties; and her decision to freeze her eggs as all her friends were starting families.

This stunning literary self-portrait examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century. Yet overwhelming and despairing as that can feel, Tendler ultimately offers a message hope. Early in her stay in the hospital, she says, “My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.” By the end of the book, she fulfills that wish.

Why this caught my eye:

Historically mental heath has been turned into a weapon, used to take advantage of people and render them insignificant. Don’t listen to that person, they’re crazy! Oh, don’t bother so-and-so with that, they’re fragile and not well in the head! While this is true at scale it is particularly true of women. Mental health has often been used as a weapon against troublesome women. So the fact that this is the subject of this memoir was interesting to me. I am a bit familiar with the author’s art and had heard through the media grapevine about her mental health struggles. This seems like it will be an interesting and enlightening memoir.

New Releases Wednesday – July 31, 2024

by Stefani

Look in the Mirror by Catherine Steadman

Published: July 30, 2024 by Ballantine Books

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

When Nina’s father dies, she is left something in his will: a gleaming dream vacation home in a balmy tropical paradise.

Still grieving her father’s death, Nina learns she has inherited property in the British Virgin Islands—a vacation home she had no idea existed, until now. The house is extraordinary: state-of-the-art, all glass and marble. How did her sensible father come into enough money for this? Why did he keep it from her? And what else was he hiding?

Once an ambitious medical student, Maria is a nanny for the super-rich. The money’s better and so are the destinations where her work takes her. Just one more gig, and she’ll be set. Finally she’ll be secure. But when her wards never show, Maria begins to make herself at home, spending her days luxuriating by the pool and in the sauna. There’s just one rule: Don’t go in the basement. But her curiosity just might get the better of her—and soon she’ll wish her only worry was not getting paid.

All This & More by Peng Shepherd

Published: July 9, 2024 by William Morrow

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Cartographers and The Book of M comes an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made… and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.”

But there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does next to change her fate.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over.

She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off.…

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Published: July 30, 2024 by Henry, Holt & Co

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamt of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Advancer Reader Copies (ARC) Approved – June 13, 2024

by Stefani

Run by Blake Crouch

Expected publication: October 22, 2024 Ballantine Books

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

No time to think. No time to ask why. Only time to run.

Five days ago, the epidemic of rage began.

Four days ago, the rash of senseless murders swept the nation.

Three days ago, the president addressed the country and begged for peace—even as the murders increased tenfold.

Two days ago, the killers began to mobilize.

One day ago, the power went out.

And tonight, the killers are reading the names of those to be killed over the Emergency Broadcast System.

Jack Colclough is listening over the battery-powered radio on his kitchen table in Albuquerque, and he just heard his name. People are coming to his house to kill him, his wife, his daughter, and his son.

He has no idea what’s happening, or why, but the time for questions is long past. 

His only chance is to run.

Following an ordinary family on a desperate race through an America that’s destroying itself, Run is a terrifying, brutally stripped-down thriller from master storyteller Blake Crouch.

Why I requested it:

A few years ago I read another book by Blake Crouch. Recursion. You can find my review here. I enjoyed that book, even though I felt the ending was a bit disappointing. I really enjoyed the way Crouch writes. So when I saw this available for review I knew I needed to try it. The plot sounds exciting and horrifying, and Blake Crouch writes in a very compelling way. This should be a fun ride.

The Bitter Truth by Shanora Williams

Expected publication: June 25, 2024 by Dafina

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

An upstanding political candidate. A determined stalker. A shattering lost weekend. Now, when his worst secret comes calling, how far will one man’s elegant, all-too-devoted wife go to uncover the truth . . . or bury it?

For Jolene “Jo” Baker, the least she can do for her adoring husband, Dominic, is give unwavering support for his North Carolina gubernatorial run. He is not only the love of her life, he’s also helping her prove that she’s far more than just a pampered trophy wife. With huge crowds showing up at Dominic’s speeches and the polls consistently in his favor, she’s never been happier to stand proudly by his side . . .

Until she and Dominic start seeing the same, strangely ominous woman turning up all along the campaign trail. Until their tour starts becoming a nightmare of botched events, crucial missed information, and increasingly dangerous “accidents.” Suddenly Jo can’t get any answers from Dominic—or understand why he is acting so paranoid and terrified . . .

What Jo can do is start digging into his past—one she’s never really questioned beyond his perfect image and dazzling accomplishments. What results is an alarming series of events that leave her Good friends turn into enemies, truths are revealed to be lies, and all clues lead back to one secret, shattering weekend that changes Jo’s entire life. With her world splintering into pieces, can Jo risk trying to set things right? Or will hiding the bitter truth by any means necessary destroy her as well?

Why I requested it:

This sounds like a typical thriller plot. The politician and his adoring wife who have secrets. And those secrets are about to be exposed. But that’s a good thing. It’s an exciting premise. And there is nothing that a reader loves more than seeing the bad guy get what’s coming to them. I hope that happens in this one.

Thyme Travellers edited by Sonia Sulaiman

Expected publication: September 5, 2024 by Roseway Publishing

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Thyme Travellers collects fourteen of the Palestinian diaspora’s best voices in speculative fiction. Speculative fiction as a genre invites a reconfiguring of reality, and here each story is a portal into realms of history, folklore and futures.

A man stands on the shore waiting to commune with those who live in the ocean. Pilgrims stretch into the distance, passing a stone cairn with a mysterious light streaming from it. Two Australian women fervently dig a tunnel to Jerusalem. Men from Gaza swim in the sea until they drown, still unconcerned. A father and son struggle to connect over the AI scripts prompting their conversation.

Building on the work of trailblazing anthologies such as Reworlding Ramallah and Palestine +100, this volume is the first of its kind in Canada. Editor Sonia Sulaiman brings together stories by speculative fiction veterans and emerging writers from Australia to Egypt, Lebanon to Canada.

Why I requested it:

I really love speculative fiction. I really love short story anthologies. And I also love new and interesting voices in fiction. This one is a win, win, win. Plus the one liners about some of the included stories sound fantastic.

New Releases Wednesday – June 5, 2024

by Stefani

Tiger Chair by Max Brooks

Published: June 1, 2024 by Amazon Original Stories

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

When China invades America, guerrilla warfare explodes on the streets of Los Angeles in this provocative short story about the future of war from Max Brooks, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of World War Z.

China thought it would be a quick war, an easy war. But now, years later, as the insurgency on the streets of Los Angeles escalates but the propaganda never changes, a Chinese officer can’t keep silent any longer. Torn between loyalty to his country and loyalty to his troops, he writes a brutally honest—and possibly suicidal—letter home to unmask the truth.

Brooks combines his signature meticulous research with unforgettable characters in this landmark work of speculative fiction.

Follow Her Down by Victoria Helen Stone

Published: June 4, 2024 by Lake Union Publishing

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Decades of doubt, fear, and suspicion won’t let a woman overcome her trauma in a riveting novel of suspense by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Jane Doe and The Hook.

The murder of Elise Rockwood’s sister shattered her family. Their mother’s anxiety kept her housebound. Elise’s paranoid brother, Kyle, saw conspiracies everywhere. Elise numbed her grief in an aimless lifestyle that left her emotionally broken. All of them victims. A local boy eventually confessed, but the damage was already done.

Years later, Elise is reinventing herself. She’s bought a mountain lodge to be close to home again and to find stability. Not even an email from her ex tempts her into revisiting the past. But Kyle won’t let it go. He still believes there’s more to their sister’s murder—and the confession—than meets the eye. When Elise’s ex is found dead in the same forest where her sister went missing decades before, Elise is finally willing to listen.

The traumas of the past are reemerging. So is the truth. Elise’s greatest fear now is who will survive it.

Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire

Published: June 4, 2024 by Tor

Series Info: #3 of the Alchemical Journeys series

Check this book out at: Goodreads

Synopsis:

Every night, a Moon shines down on the Impossible City…

New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire takes us back to the world of the award-winning Alchemical Journeys series in this action-packed follow-up to Middlegame and Seasonal Fears .

All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City―the heart of all creation―to keep it connected to reality.

And someone is killing them.

There are so many of them that it’s easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren’t limitless.

In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks―control of the Impossible City itself.

New Releases Wednesday

by Stefani

Blue Ticket by Sophie MacKintosh

Published: June 30, 2020

Goodreads

Synopsis: Calla knows how the lottery works. Everyone does. On the day of your first bleed, you report to the station to learn what kind of woman you will be. A white ticket grants you marriage and children. A blue ticket grants you a career and freedom. You are relieved of the terrible burden of choice. And once you’ve taken your ticket, there is no going back. But what if the life you’re given is the wrong one?


When Calla, a blue ticket woman, begins to question her fate, she must go on the run. But her survival will be dependent on the very qualities the lottery has taught her to question in herself and on the other women the system has pitted against her. Pregnant and desperate, Calla must contend with whether or not the lottery knows her better than she knows herself and what that might mean for her child.


An urgent inquiry into free will, social expectation, and the fraught space of motherhood, Blue Ticket is electrifying in its raw evocation and desire and riveting in its undeniable familiarity.

My Thoughts: I know I have often been critical of feminist leaning dystopians, but this sounds different. It sounds like a woman questioning the system that is telling her what to do with her womanhood. She ends up in a situation she wasn’t supposed to and starts to question everything. I like that concept.

Interlibrary Loan by Gene Wolfe

Published: June 30, 2020

Goodreads

Synopsis: Hundreds of years in the future our civilization is shrunk down but we go on. There is advanced technology, there are robots.

And there are clones.

E. A. Smithe is a borrowed person, his personality an uploaded recording of a deceased mystery writer. Smithe is a piece of property, not a legal human.

As such, Smithe can be loaned to other branches. Which he is. Along with two fellow reclones, a cookbook and romance writer, they are shipped to Polly’s Cove, where Smithe meets a little girl who wants to save her mother, a father who is dead but perhaps not.

And another E.A. Smithe… who definitely is. 

My Thoughts: This is the second book in a series, but I can’t seem to say no to it. It’s another Tor release, and I generally really love what they offer. This sounds like an interesting take on AI and the idea of transferring consciousness after death.

Take My Money! Sunday

by Stefani

The Archive of the Forgotten by A.J. Hackwith

Expected Publication: October 6, 2020

Goodreads

Synopsis: In the second installment of this richly imagined fantasy adventure series, a new threat from within the Library could destroy those who depend upon it the most.

The Library of the Unwritten in Hell was saved from total devastation, but hundreds of potential books were destroyed. Former librarian Claire and Brevity the muse feel the loss of those stories, and are trying to adjust to their new roles within the Arcane Wing and Library, respectively. But when the remains of those books begin to leak a strange ink, Claire realizes that the Library has kept secrets from Hell–and from its own librarians.

Claire and Brevity are immediately at odds in their approach to the ink, and the potential power that it represents has not gone unnoticed. When a representative from the Muses Corps arrives at the Library to advise Brevity, the angel Rami and the erstwhile Hero hunt for answers in other realms. The true nature of the ink could fundamentally alter the afterlife for good or ill, but it entirely depends on who is left to hold the pen.

Why I’m Excited: Earlier this month, I reviewed and really enjoyed The Library of the Unwritten. This is the next book in the series!! It sounds so good. I want to read it badly. I have requested an ARC of it but haven’t gotten one yet…..some one give me one, please!

Fauna by Christiane Vadnais

Expected Publication: September 22, 2020

Goodreads

Synopsis: In a near-future world ravaged by climate change, who will win in the struggle between humanity and nature?

A thick fog rolls in over Shivering Heights. The river overflows, the sky is streaked with toxic green, parasites proliferate in torrential rains and once safely classified species – humans included – are evolving and behaving in unprecedented ways. Against this poetically hostile backdrop, a biologist, Laura, fights to understand the nature and scope of the changes transforming her own body and the world around her.

Ten lush and bracing linked climate fictions depict a world gorgeous and terrifying in its likeness to our own.

Fauna, Christiane Vadnais’s first work of fiction, won the Horizons Imaginaires speculative fiction award, the City of Quebec book award, and was named one of 2018’s best books by Radio-Canada.

Why I’m Excited: I am a giant sucker for post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. It can be so exciting and fun when it’s done right. This one sounds fantastic. Human evolution taking a turn that might jeopardize human existence. I love it!