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Blog | Eric Hendel

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

February 22, 2025

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Strange Horizons Review of Adam Oyebanji’s Esperance

(Cover Designer: Adam Auerbach ) I have a review of Adam Oyebanji's novel, Esperance , out in the most recent issue of Strange Horizons , which can be read at this link . Oyebanji's first novel, Braking Day , was a book which I was lucky enough to review for Strange Horizons back in 2023, and it was exciting to have the opportunity to return to this author's work and discuss what ultimately turned out to be a very different narrative. While Braking Day was a hard SF space opera that dealt with the social upheaval experienced by the crew of a decaying generational starship, Esperance is more of a surrealist modern-day crime thriller with sci-fi elements. The book's plot in part follows a police detective named Ethan Krol who, as the story opens, is assigned the task of investigating a bizarre murder. Concurrent to this story however is what at first seems an unrelated narrative following an enigmatic woman named Abi Eniola, who as her half of the novel begi...

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

(Cover Artist: Ernst Haas) There's a way that Ursula Le Guin's 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven is often described, and I want to start this review by talking about why this is a summary of this book which I disagree with. Generally, the way I've seen The Lathe of Heaven characterized is that it is the story of a man named George Orr, who believes that everything he dreams becomes real. Terrified of this power, George is ultimately assigned therapy with a psychiatrist named William Haber, who sets out to cure George of these (supposedly) delusional beliefs in his brain's ability to change the world. In time however Haber reveals himself to actually be a mad scientist with a god complex--a man obsessed with finding a way to manipulate the reality-bending power of George's dreams so as to remake the world in his own image. Soon, George realizes that he must do whatever he can to keep the power of his dreams from Haber's control, and in so doing protect the univ...

Myst: The Book of Ti'ana by Rand Miller with David Wingrove

(Cover Artist: The Leonheardt Group) Rand Miller and David Wingrove's 1996 novel Myst: The Book of Ti'ana was a strange story to read, because while there was a lot about this book which I enjoyed, I also finished it fairly sure that the most interesting story the novel has to offer is not the one which the authors have succeeded in writing. Taking the form of a prequel to the prior installment in the Myst Trilogy (1995's Myst: The Book of Atrus ), The Book of Ti'ana is set many decades before the start of that earlier work. Following a woman named Anna who stumbles across the thriving subterranean civilization of D'ni, The Book of Ti'ana details how Anna befriends a citizen of this insular society named Aitrus. This is a character whose name, it should be noted, closely mirrors that of the protagonist of the earlier book except for a slight difference in spelling, but who nevertheless is explicitly indicated here to be an entirely different person. It'...

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