“People like you save yourselves by devouring Russia, and people like me–by devouring our own souls. Russia is nourished on the souls of her sons–she thrives on them. Not by the righteous ones, but by the cursed.” So says Sasha (“Sankya”) Tishin, the protagonist of “Sankya,” Zakhar Prilepin’s novel about “communofascist” Russian opposition group the […]
Read more "“Sankya” by Zakhar Prilepin"I read this book with conflicted feelings: on the one hand, I was impressed by what a talented and insightful writer L’Engle was even so early in her career, and on the other, compared with her later works, it’s clear here that L’Engle hadn’t quite hit her stride. What for another writer would be a […]
Read more "“A Winter’s Love” by Madeleine L’Engle"The problem with writing woman-centered, feminist, or matriarchal texts is that we don’t actually have a lot of good examples to pull from. Our art and archetypes have been filtered through millennia of misogyny, so that all the storylines, tropes, topoi, cliches, and everything else that goes into making a novel have a base setting […]
Read more "“Ahe’ey” by Jamie Le Fay"Two brothers fall in love with the same woman. Instead of settling it sensibly, or at least by dueling, one of them climbs up an enormous ladder they’ve been constructing, and refuses to come down for years. And rather than just letting the ladder fall, the other props it up till he dies and is […]
Read more "“Froelich’s Ladder” by Jamie Duclos-Yourdon"Although serial killers are not normally my thing, I’ve been reading these illustrated novels based on the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper with interest. Rather than focus on the pathologies of Jack the Ripper’s mind, and the goriness of his methods, this books put the spotlight on how his victims lived, and […]
Read more "“Apologies to the Cat’s Meat Man” by Alan M. Clark"His father disgraced and impoverished, Felix the Fox uses his cunning and magical training to ferret out secrets for paying customers. When he’s called upon to investigate the mysterious death of a young man from a patrician family, Felix finds himself in the midst of a black magic cabal with sinister intentions. “Murder in Absentia” […]
Read more "“Murder in Absentia” by Assaph Mehr"“Badlands” is a peculiar novel, although it’s only a novel in a very loose definition of the word. But it is stunning nonetheless. An Englishwoman travels to South Dakota with her American boyfriend Adam, who has agreed to represent Henry Blackfoot, a Sioux man who’s initiated a lawsuit against a local white farmer whose land, […]
Read more "“Badlands: New Photo Edition” by Melinda Camber Porter"A fast-paced and vividly rendered story of dark magic, “Darkstorm” is full of twists and turns. Merris Bryar is an acolyte mage in Aerysius who stumbles into a conspiracy between high-ranking officials of her own country and Caladorn, their sworn enemies. Before she knows what is happening, she has to flee to Caladorn and take […]
Read more "“Darkstorm (The Rhenwars Saga #1)” by M.L. Spencer"Meeting with My Brother (Weatherhead Books on Asia) Korea is divided and families are torn apart. What would it really be like to finally find the family you’ve never met? Would there be any common ground, or are the divisions between the two countries two great even for blood to overcome? Such are the questions […]
Read more "“Meeting with My Brother” by Yi Mun-Yol"All the Galaxies Some time in the near future, after another failed referendum on independence, Scotland is torn apart by seemingly senseless violence. Meanwhile, a boy finds himself exploring the planets of the dead in his own post-life body, with his faithful childhood dog companion at his side. “All The Galaxies” defies genre distinctions. It’s […]
Read more "“All The Galaxies” by Philip Miller”"
E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman 