“Ring Shout” Review

Jen

The cover of the book is read with a hooded KKK member in in the center the eye holes are ruined with teeth at the top and bottom. Black hands are held up in front of the figure. The authors name is near the top of the hood while the title is under the eye holes. Written by P. Djèlí Clark
Published by Tordotcom, October 2020
185 pages
Completed February 20, 2024

In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan’s ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.

Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan’s demons straight to Hell. But something awful’s brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.

Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

This was a very cool short story. I really enjoyed the characters and the way everything played out. Maryse is a great character and I liked the development of her character as she learned more about what was going on and the resolution of everything. I liked that the story has a good resolution while still living things open for more. The fight isn’t over – because things never really end that way but this story has an ending that serves the purpose of the story.

“The Fallen” Review

Jen

A person is sitting on a road that is broken in pieces and looking into the distance. Around and above them large structures can be seen as if the road was picked up and twisted into air with green branches coming off in various angles. A yellow sun is visible at the middle left side of the page and the sky is purple and blue. Written by Ada Hoffmann
Published by Angry Robot, July 2021
258 pages (some places say 368 but the digital version has less)
Completed February 17, 2024

The laws of physics acting on the planet of Jai have been forever upended; its surface completely altered, and its inhabitants permanently changed, causing chaos. Fearing heresy, the artificially intelligent Gods that once ruled the galaxy became the planet’s jailers.

Tiv Hunt, who once trusted these Gods completely, spends her days helping the last remaining survivors of Jai. Everyone is fighting for their freedom and they call out for drastic action from their saviour, Tiv’s girlfriend Yasira. But Yasira has become deeply ill, debilitated by her Outside exposure, and is barely able to breathe, let alone lead a revolution.

Hunted by the Gods and Akavi, the disgraced angel, Yasira and Tiv must delve further than ever before into the maddening mysteries of their fractured planet in order to save – or perhaps even destroy – their fading world.

This was a fun and interesting sequel to “The Outside”. It sort of has the usual problem of being the middle of a trilogy so things can’t be completely resolved but it also does a good job of setting up where everyone is at and the conclusion that is coming. I really liked that Tiv took the main point of view in this story as she struggles to deal with everything and help Yasira. Their relationship in the book is great. Yasira is struggling to deal with a lot of changes and Tiv continues to be by her side as much as she can. I think some might get a little frustrated with Yadira’s attitude but it really made sense for all that had gone on and the complete change to her reality. The other characters in the book are great and I liked that we got to see more characters and how they are involved with everything going on. I’m looking forward to reading the last book in the series.

“The Lost Dreamer” Review

Jen

The cover has an image of a young woman with light brown skin and long black hair wearing a head band across her forehead in red and blue and a beaded necklace with multiple rows of beads in several different colors. There is a hummingbird on the cover along with flowers and other mostly transparent shapes over the woman's chest. The title is written on the top and the author's name on the bottom. Written by Lizz Huerta
Publisher by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), March 2022
384 pages
Completed January 31, 2024

Indir is a Dreamer, descended from a long line of seers; able to see beyond reality, she carries the rare gift of Dreaming truth. But when the beloved king dies, his son has no respect for this time-honored tradition. King Alcan wants an opportunity to bring the Dreamers to a permanent end—an opportunity Indir will give him if he discovers the two secrets she is struggling to keep. As violent change shakes Indir’s world to its core, she is forced to make an impossible choice: fight for her home or fight to survive.

Saya is a seer, but not a Dreamer—she has never been formally trained. Her mother exploits her daughter’s gift, passing it off as her own as they travel from village to village, never staying in one place too long. Almost as if they’re running from something. Almost as if they’re being hunted. When Saya loses the necklace she’s worn since birth, she discovers that seeing isn’t her only gift—and begins to suspect that everything she knows about her life has been a carefully-constructed lie. As she comes to distrust the only family she’s ever known, Saya will do what she’s never done before, go where she’s never been, and risk it all in the search of answers.

With a detailed, supernaturally-charged setting and topical themes of patriarchal power and female strength, Lizz Huerta’s The Lost Dreamer brings an ancient world to life, mirroring the challenges of our modern one.

This was a really good book. I really liked learning the stories of the two characters and finding out how they intersect. I don’t want to spoil anything but I did think the reveal of what was going on worked well. Saya’s story was a bit more interesting but only because of what she needs to learn about who she actually is. The last couple chapters did feel a little rushed but it made sense given the context and the explanation of things. It also sets up the plot of the next book rather nicely. I’m looking forward to reading it when it comes out.

“The Climate Book” Review

Jen

The cover of the book has vertical stripes of blue, white and red in various shades that represent the average temperature in a given year. The stripes on the right are blue and the ones on the left are red. The title and editors name are written on the cover one word for each line from top to bottom. Edited by Greta Thunberg
Published by Penguin Press, February 2023
464 pages
Completed January 25, 2024

We still have time to change the world. From Greta Thunberg, the world’s leading climate activist, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.

You might think it’s an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope – but only if we listen to the science before it’s too late.

In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts – geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders – to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild’s strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried?

We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.

There is a lot of information in this book and I probably need to re-read some of it at some point. Each chapter of the book is by a different person with their one bit of information about Climate Change. Everyone needs to understand and accept how serious the issues are and that something has to be done. But as we learned with COVID it’s very hard to get people to change their habits if they feel like changes are impacting their way of life or freedoms. But we do need to change. We need to understand how much damage has already been done to the Earth and that if we’re to survive much longer we need to make changes.

“Against Technoableism” Review

Jen

The book cover is green and yellow with images of various assistive technology displayed all over the over. There are wheelchairs, hearing aids, canes, crutches, wheelchair vans, medication, glasses and more. The title is written near the top left and subtitle near the bottom right with the authors name to the left.Full Title: “Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement”
Written by by Ashley Shew
Published by W.W. Norton, September 2023
158 Pages
Completed January 13, 2024

When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described “hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn’s disease and tinnitus,” there was no returning to “normal.” Suddenly well-meaning people called her an “inspiration” while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don’t want what the abled assume they want—nor are they generally asked. Almost everyone will experience disability at some point in their lives, yet the abled persistently frame disability as an individual’s problem rather than a social one.

In a warm, feisty voice and vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. To forge a more equitable world, Shew argues that we must eliminate “technoableism”—the harmful belief that technology is a “solution” for disability; that the disabled simply await being “fixed” by technological wizardry; that making society more accessible and equitable is somehow a lesser priority.

This badly needed introduction to disability expertise considers mobility devices, medical infrastructure, neurodivergence, and the crucial relationship between disability and race. The future, Shew points out, is surely disabled—whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It’s time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world.

This was a really good book – though it’s really meant for non-disabled people who don’t already know about the various issues discussed in the book. Most of the information in the book is stuff I’m already aware of as a disabled person. I wear a hearing aid and I know all too well that technology doesn’t fix everything. I’m still deaf if I don’t have them on or if the battery is running out or any number of situations. They also don’t work well in all situations because they amplify all sounds not just speech. So I’m always going to have difficulty in loud crowded situations. The book talks a lot about these kinds of situations where people assume everything can be fix with technology and that people won’t be disabled anymore. That’s not going to happen. Technology can do a lot of good things but there is a huge issue of people acting like technology can fix everything so there are no more problems for disabled people. Which results in people getting angry when people don’t use the technology.

“Never Whistle at Night” Review

Jen

Around the edge of the cover are various images of plants, flowers and animals (a snake, mouse, frog, snail and butterfly). The title of the book is in the center with the subtitle above it and the names of the editors below it. Full Title: “Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology”
Edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Published by Vintage, September 2023
384 Pages
Completed January 12, 2024

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

I always say this but anthologies are a fun way to be introduced to a group of new authors all at once. In this case there were a few author’s I’ve already read but it was good to see more of their work. There were a few stories I didn’t really understand but overall I really enjoyed this anthology. It was a good mix of types of horror stories where sometimes the horror came more from people (colonizers) rather than the supernatural which is to be expected when reading Indigenous stories. This will be another anthology where I look up all the authors and see what else they have written.

“The Outside” Review

Jen

The cover is filled with black metal spirals that look like snake skin - squared areas with bolts. There is a character in a red spacesuit standing on one of the spirals. The book title is at the top of the cover and the authors name at the bottom. Written by Ada Hoffmann
Published by Angry Robot, June 2019
400 pages
Completed January 6, 2024

Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive that could change the future of humanity. But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone aboard. The AI Gods who rule the galaxy declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy – if she’ll help them hunt down a bigger target: her own mysterious, vanished mentor. With her homeworld’s fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or the rebel scientist whose unorthodox mathematics could turn her world inside out.

This was a strange but really good book. The “AI Gods” were essentially created by humans a long time ago out of their computer systems and then grew to become god-like figures because they’re so powerful. People believe in them and worship them like they would other gods, except these gods are real not like the old religions of the past to paraphrase the book. Makes for an interesting read. What also makes it interesting are the two main characters who are both autistic but were both treated very differently. Yasira was given all the supports she needed growing up while another character was beaten into being “normal” – didn’t work out so well. The world building is interesting and I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll just leave it at wanting to know if what I suspect about the universe they’re in is true based on various plot points that came up.

2023 in Review

Jen

Reading Stats

61 Books

20,992 Pages Read

Average length 346 pages

Average reading time 4 days

50 Fiction / 11 Non-Fiction

18 Fiction Anthologies

41 Novels

2 Non-Fiction Anthologies

5 Memoirs

4 Essay Collections

Top Ten Books in No Particular Order with links to my reviews

“Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection”
Edited by Madeline Dyer
Type: Fiction Anthology
“We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir”
Written by Samra Habib
Type: Memoir
“The Thirty Names of Night”
Written by Zeyn Joukhadar
Type: Novel
“A Master of Djinn”
Written by P. Djèlí Clark
Type: Novel
“The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred”
Written by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Type: Essay Collection
“We Don’t Swim Here”
Written by Vincent Tirado
Type: Novel
“Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019”
Edited by Ibram X. Kendi with Keisha N. Blain
Type: Non-Fiction Anthology
“Invisible Son”
Written by Kim Johnson
Type: Novel
“To Shape a Dragon’s Breath”
Written by Moniquill Blackgoose
Type: Novel
“The Free People’s Village”
Written by Sim Kern
Type: Novel

“Mata Oti: Eyes of Death” Review

Jen

The cover is mostly blue and shows the upper corner of a persons face so just their eye and cheek are visible. The eye is bright yellow while the rest of the faces is tinted blue. There is a strand of DNA displayed diagonally across the cover as well.Written by Lani Wendt Young
Published by National Library, National University of Samoa, August 2021
295 pages
Completed December 25, 2023

From reclusive librarian to warrior guardian… Iva must safeguard her two nieces as Samoa battles a mutant variant of the deadly virus that’s raging across the world. It transforms people into savage creatures beyond all hope. She’s afraid, but determined to get the children through hordes of the infected to an emergency evacuation plane. It’s a race against time though as the variant rampages through her own veins. Can she fight off the Change for long enough so they all survive?

This was very good book – I really liked the characters and how things played out. The situation starts out very similar to the COVID pandemic with everyone trying to stay safe. The island of Samoa manages to keep the virus out for a while but things go from bad to worse pretty quickly once the virus hits. It also ends up being an engineered virus that got out of a lab accidentally which makes things much worse for everyone. There’s a lot of things going on beyond it just being a virus and the ending makes that very clear as well.

“A People’s Future of the United States” Review

Jen

The title of the book is written across the black cover - one word on each line in various colors. The names of the editors are at the bottom of the cover.Full Title “A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers”
Edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams
Published by Random House Publishing Group, February 2019
432 pages
Completed December 24, 2023

In these tumultuous times, in our deeply divided country, many people are angry, frightened, and hurting. Knowing that imagining a brighter tomorrow has always been an act of resistance, editors Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams invited an extraordinarily talented group of writers to share stories that explore new forms of freedom, love, and justice. They asked for narratives that would challenge oppressive American myths, release us from the chokehold of our history, and give us new futures to believe in.

They also asked that the stories be badass.

The result is this spectacular collection of twenty-five tales that blend the dark and the light, the dystopian and the utopian. These tales are vivid with struggle and hardship—whether it’s the othered and the terrorized, or dragonriders and covert commandos—but these characters don’t flee, they fight.

Thrilling, inspiring, and a sheer joy to read, A People’s Future of the United States is a gift for anyone who believes in our power to dream a just world.

This was a really dark and interesting anthology. All of the stories take a potential dystopian scenario and run with it. All of them involve marginalized and oppressed people becoming more so due to things that are already problems in this country. The book was published in 2019 so a lot of ideas come from the actions of then President Trump – only catastrophic for a lot of people. It’s interesting reading it now in 2023 knowing that things did in fact get worse because of the COVID Pandemic. And while we don’t have President Trump anymore, we’re will dealing with COVID and various other issues that that have developed. The stories all show how the various characters are fighting to survive against what has happened. All of the characters still have hope for a better future despite everything that has occurred.