A Dream Wants Waking by Lydia Kwa My rating: 2 of 5 stars A Dream Wants Waking is a speculative fiction novel set in the ancient city of Luoyang, China, ostensibly in the year 2219 CE. This is a complicated story, with a considerable cast of characters, and a mythology woven around genetic AI beings and modifications. There’s a lot going on here. You’d better stay sharp when reading. This isn’t a story written for…
The Third People by Lee Burton My rating: 2 of 5 stars Lee Burton is a new author to me, one I came to, I must admit, because he is a Canadian writer, living and working in Newfoundland. He has garnered a few accolades in his time, most notably the Percy Janes First Novel Award, and a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. In his biography, it’s noted: Though his stories are diverse,…
All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac My rating: 2 of 5 stars Brian Thomas Isaac’s debut novel comes with a long list of awards and almosts: Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize A National Bestseller Winner of the 2022 Indigenous Voices Awards’ Published Prose in English Prize Shortlisted for the 2022 Amazon Canada First Novel Award Longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2022 An…
The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi My rating: 3 of 5 stars Joshi creates an interesting story about a young woman’s struggle to find a place in the restrictive and classist society of India. The author deals sensitively, and in the end devastingly, with herbal preventative contraception tisanes, the moral and societal landmines which explode in the heroine’s life, and the destruction of her livelihood which had been primarily as a henna artist of great…
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik My rating: 5 of 5 stars Reader note: I’m reviewing the entire nine novels of the Temeraire series in this review. Such a surprise awaited when I flipped to the first page of His Majesty’s Dragon: Napoleonic naval adventures married seamlessly and believably to an aerial component via dragons. All disbelief suspended. Stunningly delightful. That surprise was further augmented by Novik’s impeccable research, the solidity of her character and…