fiction
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Review of The Devil in a Forest by Gene Wolfe
I enjoy a good fantastical forest novel as much as the next guy. Gene Wolfe’s dependably polished writing delivers thrills and chills in this relatively early work. Set alongside Fifth Head of Cerberus, and Peace, The Devil in a Forest reads almost like children’s literature. That is not to say…
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Review of The Bridegroom Was a Dog by Yōko Tawada
Only valuable as a distraction from dry Realism or for those interested in surreal imagery. If you are looking for an easy read, there are worse choices than Tawada. This small edition is curiously random, which is one of the trademarks of her style, but unlike her other books, it…
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Review of Seduction of the Golden Pheasant by Damian Murphy
I suspect the author has spent some time abroad. Such were my impressions while reading this novella, steeped as it is in the aura of its locales. Seduction of the Golden Pheasant provides us a brief glimpse at Damian Murphy’s implementation of oodles of subtext. Several of his stories function…
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Review of The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq
While the descriptive passages are gorgeous, I tired of the narrative and the narrator about 2/3 of the way through. My reading was hindered by some inconsistencies in the prose, which tended to ebb and flow, ranging from excellent evocation of dense imageries, conjured with immaculate confidence, to forced, teetering,…
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Review of 2020 on Goodreads by Various
My reading status and accompanying thoughts at the end of 2020 are as follows: Some mixed reading experiences this year. In the pursuit of a better reading year in 2021 I am not going to follow trends as much, or read as many reviews. My backlog of TBR grows as…
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Review of Mimi by Lucy Ellmann
Mimi is not Lucy Ellmann’s best work, but this book was still intelligent and more entertaining than 99% of inanimate objects on this planet. Ellmann’s acerbic brand of feminism doesn’t really work with the goofy male narrator, as other reviewers have pointed out. You most certainly won’t like this plastic…
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Review of The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada
This book is a prime example of the commercial bent of recent Japanese translations. It is a case study in how to underestimate your readers. It is a case study in how to underestimate your readers. It was well-marketed to adults by a very reputable publisher. Of course it is…
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Review of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Listened to this whole audiobook on an all-day bike ride. I loved sinking in to the uber-omniscient narration so much that I repeated the experience with his similar book, Starmaker, on a similarly exhausting fifty-mile ride. This novel is a survey of 1930s European society extrapolated and speculated upon until…
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Review of Sleepwalker in a Fog by Tatyana Tolstaya
This second collection by Tolstaya is a brief, inconsequential, but enchanting volume, reminiscent of Cat Valente’s Deathless, or similar quirky, literary, bold tales, congealed together by the old fashioned setting and the unfixed narration. On the whole, it was not focussed enough to move me, but entertained me all the…
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Review of Justine (The Alexandria Quartet #1) by Lawrence Durrell
The start, I hope, of a long-term interest in this author. Highly impressed on every level, I am. At first his style seems forced, but it winds, riverine, recapitulating itself, strengthening as it goes along, so that it is clear, having read much of Henry Miller, that their friendship bled…
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Review of It Takes Death to Reach a Star by Stu Jones
I received an advanced review copy of the book without knowing anything about the authors beforehand. Immediately, I was not sure about the title. “It Takes Death to Reach a Star” brings to mind a corny line from a sci-fi movie, something a character says right as they press the…
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Review of Reflections of Destiny by Benzon Ray Barbin
One of the first things you’ll notice about this debut novel is the striking imagery. While not always fantastical, it does not shy away from surprising and otherworldly moments.The setting has a baroque atmospheric quality, with many points of reference on which the short scenes tend to hang. It deals…
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Review of The Outlands (The Outlands Saga #1) by Tyler Edwards
I was pleasantly surprised by The Outlands. The book has movement, action, and fast pacing. The writing rarely slows down, offering a new layer or concept page by page. A labyrinthine world unfolds, depicting the ins and outs of thievery. As orphans in Dios, our main characters are subservient to…
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Review of Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon honed his catchy thriller-esque atmosphere into a tense road novel reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s off-kilter weirdness and soft-dystopian Straw Dogs-style manhunts. An addictive read with dark undertones establishing the prescient consequences of social media, drugs, cloning, the morals of biological and artificial relations and other deep and…
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Review of Waiting for Gaudiya & Other Stories by Erik Martiny
Despite the reference to Beckett in the title of the collection and some passing moments within, this collection of short stories borrows little and invents much. As the opening quote intimates, Martiny invests in a continual creation of reality in real-time, through uncanny conjuring of the absurd, straddling the reader’s…
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Review of The Cutest Girl in Class by Quentin S. Crisp
I have already come to expect greatness from the publisher Snuggly Books. This did not let me down. It is an intriguing descent into a particularly uncanny-valley subculture. It left me wondering where the name Sooki comes from. Urban Dictionary offers a number of possibilities. Turns out it is not…
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Review of Eight Dogs, or “hakkenden”: An Ill-Considered Jest, Being the First 14 Chapters of Nansao Satomi Hakkenden by Bakin Takizawa
“The Hakkenden” is the nickname for the longer titles by which this monumental novel has been known since it appeared in Japan in serial form. Bakin was one of the most prolific authors of all time, and wrote historical novels in a variety of styles. His work might be superficially…
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Review of Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions by Neil Gaiman
Started out strong but ended up inconsistent. Whereas the much-touted Gene Wolfe produced unpredictable story collections of genre-bending, unconventional tales of varied length culled from a wide selection of magazines over decades, IMO any of Wolfe’s collections are better than the totality of Gaiman’s output. It is not just that…
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Review of Third Winter’s War (Seventh Realm, #3) by M.L. Little
This third book continues in the Seventh Realm to bring us more of what every reader is likely to adore from the first two including a large cast of colorful characters and an intriguing plot with expert world building. It begins where the last book left off and shapes into…
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Review of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Lawrence’s elegiac style is marred by obnoxious repetitions, which act as “sort of” nervous tics, that “sort of” “quite” extend his characters’ ranting and raving to “quite” lengthy caricatures, with insinuating speech patterns and rambling social commentary. A lot of uncensored, “softly” lit bad behavior, “softly” heaving against cultural etiquette,…
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Review of The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
Why Updike?This book was more libidinous than a high school boy’s locker room. But that’s unfair. I’m sure not all locker rooms are this bad.Hyperdetailed. Meandering. The man could write description. But, in so many cases he dwells on images we can do without. Plot and characters go out the…
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Review of Cryovacked (The Galactic Culinary Society, #3) by D.R. Schoel
In the tradition of Golden Age Science fiction, D. R. Schoel provides another episode from The Galactic Culinary Society. At times I think of Red Dwarf, Dr. Who and other light entertainments while reading this author’s stories, though they definitely have smarts. At bottom, this is another easily digestible smorgasbord…
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Review of A Phantom’s Vengeance by Marco Mizzi
Starting off, you will notice impressive world maps. I always spend way too much time reading and gazing at fantasy world maps at the beginnings of books with other-world settings. Then, throughout my reading I am constantly waiting for specific locations on the maps to be mentioned in the text.…
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Review of The Shivering Ground & Other Stories by Sara Barkat
In this generous and surprising collection, enigmatic mysteries intrude upon an elegiac setting. A precocious protagonist discovers a dislocation from the every day. Media intrudes in multifarious forms, and inanimate objects or nature blend with the human elements in a well-orchestrated interplay of fantasy and gothic revelations.They seethe with cognitive…
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Review of Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
Never thought I would rate a romance 5 stars. Its literary stylings help. Replete with typical ups and downs, as common throughout the genre as physicality, and lust, it nonetheless triumphs in my mind on several levels. Sure, it has very damaged and possibly suicidal, and most definitely flawed, and…
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Review of The Maples Stories by John Updike
The gift of loving. The heart’s projection in a face. Poetic logic extrapolated into pullulating prose. Rhythms of the distracted interior. The quiet calm of an assured mind. The heady grandeur of a passing fancy. Every stiff tonsure and allure of wafting tendrils of silken hair. A magniloquent breeze. Heartfelt…
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Review of The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
A brilliant premise, executed in an intimate way. Reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451. A rich commentary on our language-centric, media-absorbed, screen-focused, noise-cluttered, maximalist, data-encumbered, socially dependent, spectacle-obsessed, death-in-life, attention-hoarding, anti-filial, pseudo-environmental, chemically enhanced, status-updating, soul-denying, disengaging ubermodern lives. A slow burn of acidic satirical documentation. A writer to watch, with a…
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Review of The Maze of Transparencies by Karen An-hwei Lee
A work of genius and unfathomable eccentricity. In a post-societal literal data migration to physical clouds an obsessively cataloguing vehemently organic gardener pontificates on his dysthymia in a voice infused with shades of contemporary zeitgeists through which the reader perceives a softly dystopian alternate reality where rampant “affluenza” afflicts the…
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Review of A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
This book is a synthesis of subtle magical realism, well-rounded characters, and straightforward storytelling. I love learning about Japanese history and culture and this novel reminded me of that love. Ozeki provides snide commentary, learned context, surprising twists, humor and pathos. It contains ample literary chops and old-fashioned family drama…
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Review of The Phoenix Rises (Beyond Imagination, #1) by P. Benjamin Mains
Epitomizing an appreciation for superhero culture, this novel launches the reader into a wacky adventure amid a casual narrative voice, and approachable, easy to follow prose. I recommend you sink into the first person perspective and let the cinematic quality of the novel spirit you away. The pop culture references…
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Review of Art Farm: A Dark Comedy by Marc Dickerson
Sometimes I think of the literary landscape as a sort of ‘art farm’ where creations are formulaically manufactured en masse, racing against a never-ending quota to fill shelves, which after a period of years, become landfills. We build civilization on top of these landfills, until archeologists dig the fragments back…
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Review of Victorian Songlight: The Birthings of Magic & Mystery by Kathy Martone
The first thing the reader will notice about this novel is the rich texture of the setting. This thought-provoking tale is set in the Ozark Mountains right off the bat, providing a luscious ambiance for the plot. It is a setting equipped with the authentic feel of its time and…
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Review of Shadows on the Hudson by Isaac Bashevis Singer
I would like to point out to any would-be literary authors that adultery is not a fundamental physical law of the universe. I. B. Singer first ensorcelled me through his stories. Those are recommended for any fan of Chekhov or Maupassant. But like those two masters, this one’s technique becomes…
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Review of Everything and Nothing by Jorge Luis Borges
This volume collects a few pieces not found in Collected Fictions including “Nightmares,” “Kafka and His Precursors,” “The Wall and the Books,” and “Blindness,” plus several famous, masterful tales. In “Blindness,” Borges discusses the various qualities of his blindness, along with similar instances in literary history: Milton, Joyce, Homer. A…
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Review of Traveller – Inceptio by Rob Shackleford
In accidental time travel books you usually have to put up with a lot of antics, but this one is more about exploring two worlds throughout history – the ancient and the modern, contrasting their ways of life. The life of scientific research is bolstered by detailed scenes and precise…
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Review of The Easy Life in Kamusari (Forest, #1) by Shion Miura
The Easy Life in Kamusari is an easy read. It is compulsively readable, and I loved it. It is one of the most pleasant novels I have read in my life. It is not as humorous as Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, but it is frequently chuckle-inducing. Read…
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Review of The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems by Charles Simic
I’ve never understood the appeal of Selected Poetry or Stories collections, especially when an author releases multiple a la Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. The acceptable approach seems to be: Take your favorite ten poems from your favorite five previously published collections and slap on five new poems to justify the…
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Review of The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
While I did not think the full intensity of Sebald’s vision was sustained throughout this meandering book, I was at times ensorcelled. The reportage was in-depth enough to intrigue. Orbiting the biographical themes, historical contexts and tidbits, the author, with his critical brilliance, presents, massages, and salivates over a garrulous…
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Review of Critical Hit: A Gaming Mystery by W.M. Akers
Critical Hit promises a hybrid of adventure and mystery. And it delivers on its promise. First off, I was intrigued by the well-designed maps in the front pages, which seemed to promise a dual setting.The first is Tennessee in 2003 and the second is the fantasy locale created for sport,…
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Review of Did You Read The News? by Jack Merwin
The first thing you will notice about Did you Read the News is that it has an approachable learning curve. The world building is delivered casually, by closely following the main character’s life. The beginning lulled me into a false sense of security since it was peaceful both in the…
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Review of Shadow Of The Wicked by Douglas W.T. Smith
Douglas Smith’s Shadow of the Wicked takes place within a realm called Three Kingdoms. Firstly, I was highly impressed with the cover design and map design, and the perfect formatting of the book. I believe this will appeal to fans of Game of Thrones or Wheel of Time, though I…
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Review of The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard
Should be read after Crash. Human as landscape, industrial wasteland as superorganism. The mathematical formulae of asexual coitus. Fiction as abstract art. Pale, sapped, inhuman dreamscapes. Traffic jams. Meteor-scored faces, etched in ghostly moonlight. A skeletal William S. Burroughs mannikin was strung up in Ballard’s closet, dressed as Marilyn Monroe,…
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Review of I Call Him HIM (I Call Him HIM #1) by Scott W. Kimak
Combining a quick pace with believable dialogue, the first-person narration has personality from the prologue onward, and builds tension with precise description. Though the perspective shifts, and we get many varied views of the skewed world of the book through the well-rounded characters, it remains a breakneck reading experience. Mystery…
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Review of Children of Time (Children of Time, #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I’m extremely picky when it comes to science fiction. The longer a book is, the more I begin to dissect the sentences, which too often contain extraneous syntax. This one is sprinkled with a sloppy dialogue tag and unnecessary gesticulations clutter the dialogue every once in a while. A few…
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Review of Survival: A Sci-Fi/Horror, where reality begins to bite. by Chris Wright
Guided along by smoothly flowing prose, the reader will perceive a consistent building tension in this genre-bending novel. Parts of it almost read like diary entries, and provide intimate details as well as high-level backstory description.Full of subtle tension and propelled by the interactions of realistic characters in a sequence…
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Review of Dadaoism by Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp
One must look closely at the cover to appreciate the art. Words, portmanteau or apropos to the content, beginning with the longest word and decreasing slowly into the four-letter expletive at the bottom, cascading into one another. These key terms suggest some of the tricksterism to be encountered in the…
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Review of Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes by Mark Samuels
A solid collection of unsettling short stories in the vein of Machen, Poe, and Ligotti. Mark Samuels appears to be able to hold his own when compared to these giants. His command of language is only matched by his superb imagination. Darkness infuses every atmospheric example of traditional storytelling. While…
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Review of Pleasant Tales II by Justin Isis
Isis doesn’t disappoint. In this collection, he shows versatile and snide talent, facetious and chameleonic mastery, satiric and oneiric brilliance. He is a stark commentator on modern mores and a profound pursuant of personal stylistic innovation. A mesmeric and elegiac offering from a grossly under-appreciated storyteller. I think you will…
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Review of Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver
I surprised myself with this second reading by not wanting to give the collection 5 stars. Carver’s first collection is relatively short – as was everything he published – the man was not very prolific. I’ll review his major publications as I get through them in the LOA collection, then…
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Review of The Narcissus Variations by Damian Murphy
Another unsettling and atmospheric novella from Damian Murphy, who has concocted an aesthetic all his own comprised of dense subtext, dark, elaborate interiors, and esoteric rites, woven into an ongoing meditation on the mortal soul and the responsibility of the artist. This one centers around the Kin and an enigmatic…
L. S. Popovich 