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Personal blog devoted to long-form book reviews and criticism.

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Showing posts from August, 2019

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Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Posted by Eric Hendel August 30, 2019

Absurdism Contemporary Fantasy Fantasy Humor Reviews

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Review: Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal

Posted by Eric Hendel August 15, 2019

Contemporary Fantasy Fantasy Feminist Works Reviews Science Fiction Short Fiction Anthologies

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Review: Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

There's a deliberately unsettling quality to Hao Jingfang's 2016 novel Vagabonds, and I think this derives in part from how the story skillfully balances itself between two contrasting genres of fiction. First translated into English by Ken Liu in 2020, Vagabonds follows a woman named Luoying Sloan who voyages to Earth from a far-future martian colony several generations after a deadly interplanetary war. Hoping to bridge the gap between two politically and socially isolated societies, Luoying spends five years studying alongside the "terrans" of Earth, eventually learning to navigate the complicated and politically fraught issues that divide both planets. Normally this would imply that Vagabonds was the story of a protagonist seeking to build unity between two isolated societies, and yet Hao's novel (the English edition prints the author's surname first) is not actually the story of Luoying's experiences on Earth, or the pro

Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

It's very easy to poke fun at religion, and that's paradoxically why it's usually a good idea not to. All an author needs to do is throw in a few comments about biblical plot holes, or maybe point out some of the more glaring logical inconsistencies evident in theological concepts such as omnipotence, and suddenly they've made themselves at least seem smart. That is, it's "fun" to look at something someone else values and see it as stupid, just like it's comforting (at least for a time) to convince yourself that the driving force behind the lives of so many people is actually meaningless.

Review: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

It may seem strange to say that Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy is a series whose political and social themes have been under-appreciated. However, this was my main impression when recently rereading the first book in this series -- 1995's The Golden Compass (which, incidentally, is also published under the title of Northern Lights in the United Kingdom). While the complete His Dark Materials trilogy is frequently characterized as an extended allegory for the dangers of religious institutions, after rereading this book, this ultimately struck me as somewhat misplaced. While it's true that the characters of the His Dark Materials trilogy eventually declare -- and win -- a "war on God," I think the assertion that Pullman's work acts only as an allegory against religion misses a fundamental aspect of what he accomplishes with this story. Pullman examines not only themes of corruption and abuse of power, but also the complicated and someti

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