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

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Showing posts from February, 2025

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Strange Horizons Review of Chris and Jen Sugden's High Vaultage

Posted by Eric Hendel February 22, 2025

Absurdism Alternate History Humor Steampunk + Updates

Absurdism Alternate History Humor Steampunk Updates

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Popular Posts

Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang (Review)

(Cover Designer: Kelli McAdams ) Jumpnauts is exactly the opposite of the sort of novel which I expected Hao Jingfang to write, initially in a bad way, but also ultimately in a good one. Hao's debut novel, Vagabonds , was an extraordinarily subtle work of science fiction. Taking the form of a slow-paced and contemplative narrative, that earlier book detailed the deceptively complex story of how two seemingly analogous characters from human settlements on Earth and Mars voyaged to one another's worlds, only to come away from the experience with wildly contradictory views not of the planets they have just visited, but instead their respective homes. Vagabonds represented a novel whose dense and intricate plot wove together the lives of multiple generations of individuals, all of whom struggled to navigate an enduring political and social conflict requiring they confront the weighty question of how utopian societies should define themselves. By contrast, Jumpnauts ...

Strange Horizons Review of Nikhil Singh’s Dakini Atoll

(Cover Artist: Elena Romenkova ) A review I wrote of Nikhil Singh's novel Dakini Atoll is currently up in the most recent edition of Strange Horizons . This book was a very complex and fascinating story that skips between several different interconnected narratives, all of which are ultimately woven together into a work exploring themes of mass media and the nature of human awareness. The main storyline follows an actress named Delilah Lex, who as the novel opens realizes she has become trapped within the simulated reality of the television program she currently stars in (a virtual TV show called " Good Morning Delilah! "). However, this surreal narrative is also interspersed with the experiences of Anita--a corporate agent working for a quasi-religious organization called "Angelinc." There is also a storyline following a friend of Delilah's--a movie director named Fortunato who unexpectedly becomes drawn into an investigation of a mysterious global plague,...

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Review)

(Cover Designer: Tyler Comrie ) Yoko Ogawa's 1994 novel The Memory Police is unusual in part for how subtle the book's premise is. First translated into English in 2019 by Stephen Snyder, The Memory Police is ostensibly the story of a woman living under the rule of a totalitarian police state. There is a focus in this novel not only on the dehumanizing consequences of living in a dictatorship, but also on the quiet acts of rebellion that can be far more significant than they may outwardly seem. However, what makes Ogawa's approach to this material most unique is that, despite certainly being a book about characters who struggle to survive under the rule of an Orwellian government, it's never entirely clear to the reader how the oppressive force in this novel operates. For that matter, even in spite of the very real dangers that Ogawa's characters face over the course of this text, it's never clear to the reader whether or not this oppressive force which drive...

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