The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
Started: 1/4/19
Finished: 1/5/19
Fun story, couldn’t put it down. I feel like I haven’t read one of those in a while.
speculative
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Started: 12/17/18
Finished: 12/19/18
A couple meet, fall in love, and flee their Middle Eastern city via a magic door. The writing keeps you at a remove from the characters and the story, so you know how the characters are feeling, but you don’t feel how they’re feeling, but it’s well-done. There have been several sentences I’ve read out loud to John because I liked the phrasing so much.
The Book of M by Peng Shepherd
Started: 8/24/18
Finished: 8/29/18
An interesting story about what happens when people lose their memories. This being science fiction, it turns out that memories live in your shadow, and everyone’s shadows begin to disappear.
American War by Omar El Akkad
Started: 1/28/18
Finished: 2/3/18
Speculative fiction, second American civil war begins 60 years from now, the south refuses to give up oil. Told entirely from the point of view of a young southern woman fighting, not for the cause (she doesn’t care about oil), but because the war (and the north) destroyed everything she knew and loved. It felt real and dirty and uncomfortable, and I’m not sure I liked it, but it was good.
An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King
Started: 1/15/18
Finished: 1/18/18
It started out as an interesting family drama in a near-future China where the men vastly outnumber the women, and then it took an unexpected, I think unforeshadowed, violent turn. It’s told from the point of view of four characters, three of whom felt real. The fourth one, who, incidentally, is the one whose plotline took the thriller turn, felt like wish-fulfillment. Or maybe he was just not very smart.
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Started: 1/10/18
Finished: 1/13/18
It’s probably cliche to say so, but The Power is powerful. Roles get flipped, and a lot of that feels viscerally real. As a novel, though, I’m not sure I’d call it great. It feels like an experiment, especially in the framing device – a meaningful experiment, to be sure. It’s just that the novel part of the story feels somewhat unresolved.