SFF Reviews - Science Fiction and Fantasy

Review of A Guide for Working Breeds by Vina Jie-Min Prasad The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 2, Edited by Jonathan Strahan, Purchase Anthology A tough guy character plus a sweet and kind rambler equal a fantastic pair, and here they're AI! Might be one of my favorite character combination styles (tropes?) in fiction. What a great start to this collection! A lovely, layered story, plus epistolary narratives are one of my absolute favorites. It really does put you right in the moment, with these characters you quickly become fond of. Support us on Ko-fi -  https://ko-fi.com/ohjustbooks

Review of Kali_Na by Indrapramit Das (7558 words) The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1, Edited by Jonathan Strahan, Purchase Anthology A cyberpunk style story set in India, Kali_Na focuses on our protagonist, a lower caste girl named Durga, and an AI Goddess simply named Devi. Devi is the Hindi word for Goddess - she is simply that. Not one of the many Goddesses from Hindu culture with a rich and varied life and stories, and this is an important distinction. No, she is just generic Goddess 2.0, to whom devotees may ascribe any quality they choose, one who will bless everyone with their own particular type of request, instead of having to ask specific Goddesses for specific things. A product of capitalism, she was supposed to be every Goddess in one. But maybe they forgot to code out the qualities of Kali Maa. And then we see a shift. The sheer power and scale of this story was reminiscent of the scale and scope of Hindu sagas and tales. A truly fantastic story and ...

Review of Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias S. Buckell New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, Purchase Anthology First of all, "Tourist Industrial Complex" is pretty genius, so I've already got my expectations raised. This was exceedingly well-written, and I don't mean plot or prose or arc or any of those things specifically - I mean it was all tied together in this fantastic piece that will keep you on the edge of your seat till the very end. Earth has become a tourist destination, a delightfully "primitive" one at that, and it has affected all of humanity in varying ways - but mostly bad. This story isn't just surface level science fiction, it is also about how excessive tourism can hamper the local economy and the people. There's also shades of colonialism, in that the outsiders just do not care about the people whose land they've stolen. As someone originally from a country that was previously col...

Review of The Bookstore at the End of America by Charlie Jane Anders (7380 words) Tor.com, Oct 2021, Read Online or Purchase Anthology Exceedingly well written and suffused with emotion and hope, I kept intentionally slowing down while reading this. The plot was so interesting and tight that I wanted to know what happened next, but at the same time, the prose was so lovely that I wanted to slow down and enjoy it. A great problem for a reader to have! The pacing and build up was fantastic too. At this point I must say that the story was set in a dystopian future where America has been split in two halves, and both pretty much hate each other. In a funny quirk, dual citizenship is still an option! Nevertheless, while being a dystopian tale, it still has a spark of hope and friendship - after all, it's set in a bookstore! Support us on Ko-fi -  https://ko-fi.com/ohjustbooks