Now that Bingo is over, I’m getting around to reviewing all the books I read this summer and autumn that didn’t fit into Bingo Squares. One of my favourites–an unexpected favourite–was The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (or, as I believe it is called in the US, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle). When I found the link on Amazon, it was rated #1 for science fiction. I don’t think that’s an apt comparison, however, because part of the charm of this book is that it […]
Bee biology re-imagined through the language of human dystopia
The Bees is a very weird and cool book that’s a third-person narrative of a literal bee, navigating the dystopian politics of her hive. There are a lot of tropes in here that are not exactly unique to this book among the glut of other dystopian fiction, but the framing of the insect colony is novel. While, naturally, some liberties are taken with facts, the structure and major events of the novel are based on known entomology of bees and how hives operate. All that […]
Spent the Whole Book Unsure What to Make of It
Maybe years of reading young adult books, including plenty of dystopian fiction (always trilogies, because nothing is ever allowed to just be one damn book in YA world), has made me unfairly picky about what I consider good young adult dystopian fiction. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for this particular story. But I spent the entire time reading this book being unsure what I really thought of it, and by the end could only conclude that this meant it was just mediocre. Which […]
Staging a space mutiny, one day at a time.
For some reason, my 2018 books have not been page-turners, and I am not sure why. I’ve picked up a lot of books that are enjoyable but not dying-to-see-what-happens good. This was one of the few exceptions, recommended to me by my avid sci-fi reader husband. The best way to go about this book is to just dive in with no expectations. It is…a bit confusing. There are whole sentences that I couldn’t really parse, but got the gist of, enough to keep reading and […]