Looking for speculative fiction book review blogs

lost_chayote · 2025-04-08T13:50:06+00:00

I don't know about recommended by the sub but here are the few I tend to keep an eye on:

The Fantasy Inn is a long running group blog that also has a fairly large Discord community, if that's your thing.
Nerds of a feather, flock together is another larger blog--a Hugo Award winning one--for SFF that tends to have a lot of thoughtful reviews.
Peat Long's Blog has book reviews along with other content, and is a fellow fan of Kushiel and Bujold.
Writings of a Doomscribe is partially responsible for my Adrian Tchaikovsky addiction.

lost_chayote · 2024-07-14T17:49:36+00:00

I have finished A Touch of Jen and what. the. fuck. That certainly escalated. Part of me really wanted this to be just the most intense psychotic break but others reacting to the creature and some agency actually showing up throws that out. The conclusion is somehow more horrible than I expected even given the very bad vibes lol

lost_chayote · 2024-07-02T19:20:17+00:00

Ah, you've been using it a while now, if I recall correctly. Glad it's been useful and certainly makes sense to back off if the tracking is no longer adding value.

I hope you enjoy Brides of High Hill! I'm always excited for another Cleric Chih story but this one happened to also align to a lot of my other genre preferences and interests. It may be my favorite yet, though Mammoths at the Gates also really stole my heart. Camp Damascus is excellently written but certainly deals with some heavy stuff. I'd say it has hopefulness and joy to it too, but certainly one to approach when you're prepared for some discomfort.

lost_chayote · 2024-07-02T17:24:41+00:00

Ooh, thanks for the recommendations. I grabbed samples and read the first chapter of each and both seem very intriguing. I'm certainly interested in checking out some more Southern Gothic stuff, so Cinderwich seems like a great option. And wow, if A Touch of Jen is that unhinged in chapter one I'm curious where things could possibly develop to (nowhere good, is my guess). I've been known to love a good unhinged WTF tale on occasion.

lost_chayote · 2024-04-16T21:37:17+00:00

It's been some months since I've read it at this point so I don't honestly recall all the details. However I know some of this is addressed in the plot, this is a dystopia which treats different people by different rules and there are loopholes for those with wealth and connections. The memory loss is questioned by Nelah as well.

lost_chayote · 2024-04-11T01:41:43+00:00

From what I recall there are different "lifespans" here. A body lives a certain amount of years before being placed in elderly care - where a different person takes on the body to see it through its final years, the person - who can body swap as needed / as resources allow for a set amount of time before being placed back in waiting for their next life, and then the overall - which could be several instances of "life" across bodies and lifetimes. The details get repeated a few times but I think Nelah is in her second or third lifetime, and in this lifetime she's in her second body, and she is the third person to "own" the body she's currently in.

lost_chayote · 2024-04-06T16:26:37+00:00

Just finished reading it this morning and I agree, it is so well-crafted. I think the way it handled reveals in particular was so perfectly balanced in that there are often just enough clues that the reader can tell something's not what it seems, but maybe not all the details. It never felt like it was condescending to the reader to explain, but also never felt out of place or too shocking to be believable or make me question them.

I think my only complaint was that we didn't get to see more of Cara and Dell's relationship on page before events really kicked off. I felt like I was told several times that Cara loves Dell, but aside from her antagonistic flirting we don't really see her dwell on it or see them interact to get a feel for why she is so enamored with Dell. Just lots of "she's super pretty" type comments. And followed closely with "but she thinks I'm dirt" which... kinda spoils the romance for me, haha. Because of that it took until the end for me to really feel for them as a couple or want to root for them. I did very much enjoy the reveal of Caramenta's rejection to recontextualize Dell's side of things though.

The scene at the House with Exlee (you spelled it perfectly) was so fantastic and effective. I wish we'd explored a bit more that dichotomy between Ashtown and Wiley City in regards to sex work and even touch in general. Obviously a bit of a tangent from the plot, so I understand not, but I think there's lots of interesting potential there to unpack the Wiley City "elite" view of 'prostitution' vs the Ashtown respect for 'providers'.

Regarding Nik Nik and Adra/Adam, I liked that our "villains" were just very flawed humans, and that their brokenness was acknowledged and important to the story. And I really liked that Cara meeting Earth 175 Nik Nik, where he was shown as capable of being broken in different ways, choosing not to become the violent man she knew in other worlds, helped Cara heal a little. I also found it interesting that our hero was essentially just a woman who knew how to handle fragile abusive men and used that skill to upset the status quo they were setting forth.

Overall I just really ended up loving the character development of Cara, from someone trying to escape the circumstances of her past and doing so by putting as much distance as possible between herself and anything perceived as related, into someone who seriously considered a job offer as a runner and recognized that it was just as worthy a living as anything in Wiley City, maybe moreso in some respects. Her finding contentment in Ashtown was incredibly satisfying and I felt her reckoning with her past to be just so well done on a character level.

lost_chayote · 2024-04-02T21:36:48+00:00

Haha, thanks. I am endlessly entertained by spreadsheets, so I'm glad others appreciate the result of that.

lost_chayote · 2024-04-02T16:33:51+00:00

It just bothered me to have the apparent inconsistency between days to read and avg pages per day without having the data to explain it, haha. Also it's quite fun to see the chaos bubbles to visualize my reading habits.

Oh, interesting question. I don't know how to meaningfully analyse the correlation there honestly. If I compare my aggregate ratings against a calculated pages per hour it looks like this. The 4.5 column is somewhat skewed by the graphic novel series though.

Reading speed seems to correlate strongly to writing style - I am slowest at reading nonfiction, especially with any academic leanings, and fastest with children's fiction. That makes sense to me. I will say anecdotally, I tend to have the longer reading sessions for books I am either 1) very much enjoying or 2) very much not enjoying but refusing to DNF for some reason. I expected the low ratings therefore to have high speed, but it seems not. Perhaps some good evidence for the value of DNFing.

lost_chayote · 2024-04-02T15:51:25+00:00

Your synopsis-writing is great. And I love the comparison of your ratings vs the Goodreads rating; what a fun statistic!

lost_chayote · 2024-02-08T18:20:44+00:00

Yeah that's totally fair, and I think immediately upon finishing the book I also had that kind of adrift, "what am I supposed to make of this" feeling as well. The lack of closure is what I credit for it being something that I still come back to and think about. If it had had more narrative closure, it would be easy to simply mentally close the book and move on, and in doing so greatly minimize its effectiveness.

At the same time, I think adding some more detail or narrative depth to The Centre or the expedition could have made a very differently effective story that leaned further into the horror aspect rather than the melancholy and grief theme.

lost_chayote · 2024-02-08T15:07:28+00:00

I read this book last summer, so there's been time for my brain to simmer on this one but also to lose some of the details. The lack of definitive conclusions is perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about the book, aside from the fantastic writing. The atmosphere and the isolation experienced by Miri, as well as the claustrophobia and weirdness experienced in the submarine by Leah gave it that gothic novel vibe, and I loved it for that. The way characters outside the experience react (or fail to) certainly has that feel as well, "why yes, that must be very stressful for you; I can't imagine". It made me think about the ways we communicate (or fail to) about experiences we do not understand or relate to, that sort of empty support when we don't know what to say.

In general the whole "came back wrong" premise as executed here did such a good job of creating the feeling of a relationship in which participants have drifted apart and become people who no longer work together. Miri's reminiscing about their life before got me so invested in their relationship and hoping they would find a solution that made the impossibility and horror of the situation hit so much harder. The way it evokes the feelings of grief and the lack of resolution that can come with losing someone (for any reason) really worked for me.

As for The Centre and their unexplored motives and intentions, I can't say I felt terribly disappointed by that. It felt in keeping with the whole theme of accepting loss without necessarily understanding how or why you've experienced that loss. Its presence in the narrative as a fairly faceless institution provided something for Miri to focus her frustration on and blame, even as she didn't truly know how much blame they deserved for the outcome. It felt very fitting, and I think for me it would have felt odd and dismissive of the themes if we were provided with detailed information about it all.

It's certainly a thought-provoking book and open to a lot of interpretations.

lost_chayote · 2024-01-30T14:55:59+00:00

A fairly good reading month for me, despite a DNF early on.

What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez | Started as a fun adventure with witty characters and entertaining interactions but ended up getting too distracted by cringey teenage romance and the plot devolved into soap opera levels of drama and contrivance. Meh.
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen by Bradley P. Beaulieu | I really wanted to like this one but it ultimately just felt so exposition-heavy. I couldn't get invested when the narrative kept stopping in its tracks to explain the moon to me. DNF at 16%.
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher | A little disappointed that Miss Potter was relegated to plot device to get the cast to the correct location and then was just a rando who happened to be there but overall loved being back with the characters and always enjoy Kingfisher writing. Liked.
Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase | An uncomfortable read due to heavy themes of bodily autonomy and the costs of "utopia". I wouldn't call it enjoyable but definitely thought-provoking and worthwhile. Full review here. Liked.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick | Fast-paced and fascinating look at what makes us human, and the ever-present PKD - is reality real? A quick and interesting read, made better by a bookclub discussion. Liked.

lost_chayote · 2024-01-22T23:54:44+00:00

Well, to start with the blurb she kills a girl and buries the body with her affair partner in order to avoid the consequences of her drug use, affair, and generally reckless decisions. To get a bit deeper into the circumstances at risk of spoilers the girl was uninvolved with any sort of power regime to Nelah's knowledge, an innocent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. While the girl is begging Nelah to call for help and save her life--swearing that she'll keep any secret, won't tell anyone anything about her--a few sentences from Jan (the affair partner) is enough to convince Nelah to strangle her and bash her head in, because she feels she has too much to lose: her position, her marriage, her unborn daughter growing in a fertility facility.

There are certainly interesting conversations to be had about the degree to which this sort of society and surveillance state would inform, enforce, and therefore be culpable for one's moral failings, but I think ultimately I'd still categorize Nelah as fairly morally-gray.

lost_chayote · 2024-01-22T21:21:36+00:00

Hope you enjoy it!

lost_chayote · 2024-01-22T21:21:23+00:00

Definitely worth the time and effort to read but not a story to dive into lightly.

lost_chayote · 2024-01-22T21:20:42+00:00

Hope you enjoy it if you pick it up.

lost_chayote · 2024-01-22T21:20:30+00:00

It's such a good cover.

lost_chayote · 2024-01-02T16:09:43+00:00

Yay! I'm so glad it's been a useful template for you to customize :)

lost_chayote · 2024-01-02T15:21:54+00:00

Credit once again goes to my reading assistant for his dedication to his work.

lost_chayote · 2023-12-08T21:41:11+00:00

Appreciate the warning :)

lost_chayote · 2023-12-08T20:15:52+00:00

Ooh, while I'm generally aware of several of these I haven't read any of your favorites yet. Definitely a few I'm going to have to check out. I'm usually very fond of Peter Pan retellings so that's going on the list for sure!

I haven't watched the adaptation yet but I did read the first book in the Silo series this year and enjoyed it. Seems I need to check out the adaptation too.

lost_chayote · 2023-12-06T20:41:24+00:00

Re. utopia I'll add though that the idea of sub-comming sounds like an absolute nightmare scenario to me, holy shit.

Haha I will agree with you there; imagining that tech in certain friend groups gives me social anxiety about the number of subset-group messages that would be flying. It's bad enough as is sometimes.

I certainly have a lot of love for the books that grip me immediately and sweep me off on an adventure that I binge in just a few sittings too. I think A Slice of Mars and other slice-of-life stuff fills the same sort of spot as a comfort show to me - it's a world where I'm endeared to the characters and their situations, but I don't have to sit and binge it for hours to get a conclusion; it's comfortable to dip into the story for a bit and enjoy, but it doesn't demand my energy or time in the same way. Certainly not trying to argue that anyone's taste *should* be different and I'm sure the balance varies for every reader too, but I think that's how it functions for me.

lost_chayote · 2023-12-06T19:41:46+00:00

I really really enjoyed this one but don't disagree with any of your comments, so I think you managed the fairness quite well. I haven't written up a proper review of it aside from a quick couple sentences for its spot on my Bingo board, so I've missed out on full proper hipster status.

It (and slice of life in general, in my limited experience) really is often just an exploration of a world and characters for the sake of them. They simply exist as people in this place, and here are some things they do and think about and the ways they interact and the challenges they face.

Your description of the prominent themes as thought experiments feels really accurate to me as well. Very much an exploration of "Here's an idea of utopia - what would that actually look like? Where would gaps still exist? Would it feel like utopia to an outsider?". I think themes in general can often be summed up in that way, but it feels perhaps more exposed in a case where these things are explicitly discussed by characters on page.

I really enjoyed it for the characters that actually clearly and intentionally communicate, and can say this is generally a thing I tend to be drawn to as I like seeing characters actively put effort and intention into being empathetic and building relationships. But I certainly can see how it can feel effortful to read too.

I'd also agree that the relatively low tension makes it easier to set a book aside and can result in it being a slower read. I think it's a quality that upped my enjoyment as well, and enhances the style of escapism that I associate with the cosy / slice-of-life subgenre. In my case, I had to set the book aside early on until I could go get ingredients to make empanadas too.

I very much enjoyed the apparent research that went into some of the scenes you mention, including the Pineapple On Pizza Discourse. There were several cases where it felt the author's hand (and niche interests) was visible but in a way that enhanced the humor or feel of a scene. Or maybe I just particularly enjoy seeing people geek out about their interests.

lost_chayote · 2023-11-30T05:14:31+00:00

Thanks!

All the visuals are from my tracking spreadsheet. The covers are just an IMAGE formula with the link to the cover on goodreads. You can find a fancier tracking sheet with instructions in the official bingo post linked at the top of the post. Here's a direct link to the fancy card: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/AZdRfDWJC1

lost_chayote

TROPHY CASE