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Myst: The Book of Atrus by Rand and Robyn Miller with David Wingrove

September 25, 2019

(Cover Artist: The Leonheardt Group) Some books end up succeeding not necessarily by the skill with which they were written, but instead the dedicati…

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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 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 universe from h...

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

(Cover Artist: Dan Funderburgh ) Occasionally I'll read a book whose ending completely alters the nature of the story that preceded it, and which as a result requires that I fundamentally rethink my opinion of how that story functions. While this is almost always a good thing (it means that I have a ton to say and think about when it comes to discussing that novel), it also makes writing a review of that book difficult. I can't easily discuss what I feel is the most important aspect of the story without spoiling its effect for future readers, and yet I also can't easily justify not discussing this very element of the book, because doing so risks misrepresenting what I feel is the most important thing that the book accomplishes. Nnedi Okorafor's 2025 novel Death of the Author is this sort of work. Much of Death of the Author is divided between two parallel narratives, both of which at first appear to be seeking to accomplish subtly contradictory goals. In one o...

Babel by R.F. Kuang

(Cover Illustrator: Nico Delort ) R.F. Kuang's 2022 historical fantasy novel Babel (whose complete title is " Babel or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution ") was a book which I ended up feeling intensely conflicted about. In one respect, the majority of Babel's narrative represents a fascinatingly original work. Set in a partially fictionalized version of Britain during the early 1800s, Babel focuses primarily on the experiences of a boy from Canton, China who is inducted into a world-famous college in Oxford. The early half of Babel's narrative revolves around themes pertaining to the politics of translation, and how colonialist systems of power weaponize language as a tool of oppression. Throughout all of this, Kuang also simultaneously constructs one of the most original and fascinating magic systems I've ever seen in the fantasy genre, and skillfully overlays her story's subtly built supernatural...

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This blog does not use generative AI. All of the articles and reviews posted here were written by me, and I have done my best to block web crawlers used in training commercial Large Language Models from accessing this material.