Category: Review

Review: The Antidote

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Title: The Antidote
Author: Karen Russell
Pages: 432
Release: March 11, 2025

Karen Russell uses the historic Black Sunday dust storm as the backdrop for her interwoven, intergenerational, and inter-temporal slice of American history – complete with a prairie witch who can unburden her patients from painful memories, a sentient scarecrow, murder, mayhem, dust, and basketball. Russell’s dust-choked world is perfectly rendered with beautiful prose and well-researched detail, the heavy dose of magical realism seamlessly woven into this historical-fiction tale and bringing unexpected life to a barren world.

She unpacks the “collapse of memory” in fascinating ways, offering the perspectives of the land and its collective inhabitants – each of them ill-informed, or at the very least, ill-at-ease, shaped by forces they cannot fully comprehend.

The Antidote has all the makings of a modern American classic, and I know it will stick with me for a good long while.

★★★★½

My thanks to my public library for providing me with a post-release copy in exchange nothing at all!

Review: Slow Gods

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Title: Slow Gods
Author: Claire North
Pages: 448
Release: November 18, 2025

From one novel to the next, Claire North effortlessly leaps across genres, crafting unique, engaging, and consistently satisfying stories. Slow Gods is no exception—an imaginative and fresh space opera fronted by a self-deprecating pilot with infinite lives, staring down a universe-spanning cataclysm.

I loved luxuriating in North’s language and her worlds: living ships, distinct gender systems, and the unknowable deep black of space that seems to lurk at the edge of our waking consciousness.

It’s less a tightly plotted, propulsively paced piece of fiction and more a high-stakes drama filled with expansive ideas and a singular protagonist. I enjoyed my time with it all the same, and I’ll gladly follow North wherever she jumps next. 

★★★¾

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Emergency

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Title: The Emergency
Author: George Packer
Pages: 416
Release: November 11, 2025

A compelling and creative spin on dystopian fiction, The Emergency is a prescient fable chronicling the collapse and reformation of a nameless city-state.

The novel works best in its opening section, depicting societal collapse through the eyes of one family within this contained “city by the river.” It is especially timely, with clear parallels to our present moment as characters grapple with conspiracy theories, backlash against wokeness, debates over immigration, cancel culture, and tribalism. 

Once the protagonists venture into the countryside and encounter the more feral responses to the titular “Emergency,” the story grows unwieldy and less narratively satisfying, with shifting alliances and more thinly drawn characters. A bit more focus and less sprawl might have made these undercooked elements feel richer. 

★★★

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Cape Fever

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Title: Cape Fever
Author: Nadia Davids
Pages: 240
Release: December 9, 2025

Engaging prose and a mysterious, claustrophobic setting create tremendous suspense in this excellent historical thriller by Nadia Davids.

Set in the 1920s within an unnamed colonial empire, Cape Fever immerses us in the inner turmoil of Soraya Matas, an overworked and underappreciated housemaid. Davids deftly shapes Soraya into a more-than-meets-the-eye protagonist, one whose thoughtfulness and quiet wisdom are clear to us even as her devious employer, Ms. Hattingh, demeans and degrades her. As Soraya’s circumstances grow more perilous, she’s visited by the ghosts that haunt the house.

Davids weaves the supernatural seamlessly into a clear-eyed exploration of class and culture, guiding the story toward an expected yet deeply satisfying twist. 

★★★★1⁄2

My thanks to the publisher, NetGalley, and Edelweiss for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Sunset at Zero Point

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Title: Sunset at Zero Point
Author: Simon Stålenhag
Pages: 192
Release: December 9, 2025

Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag adds another entry to his brilliant alternate-history oeuvre, this time telling a cohesive, cinematic story anchored by a compelling sci-fi hook and a tender romance between longtime friends, all brought to life through his stunning retro-futuristic artwork.

Stålenhag makes economical use of his brief word count as he bounds through time, offering glimpses into the complex relationship between Linus and Valter against the backdrop of a mysterious exclusion zone where marvels abound.

For those that dig his signature aesthetic, Netflix adapted Stålenhag’s The Electric State into a feature film – but I’d also highly recommend the phenomenal, under-the-radar Amazon series Tales from the Loop (2020), loosely based on Stålenhag’s earlier work of the same name. 

★★★★

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Lightbreakers

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Title: Lightbreakers
Author: Aja Gabel
Pages: 352
Release: November 4, 2025

Emotionally resonant and deeply felt, Lightbreakers plumbs the complex depths of love, loss, and grief through the eyes of three individuals caught in a tide of mourning and the “indestructible fiber” that can bind a family even when one strand is severed.

When Noah, a grieving quantum physicist, is recruited by an eccentric billionaire (are they ever not eccentric?), he gains access to a time machine that allows him to travel back to visit his 3-year-old daughter, just prior to her death. Gabel wisely avoids alternative timelines and branching paths, keeping the story grounded in the present and in the deep wounds that Noah and those in his orbit are working through.

I enjoyed my time spent with Lightbreakers and found Gabel’s prose quite lovely. Though heavy at times, it is never overwrought nor exceedingly bleak. I’m ill-equipped to vet any of the physics or quantum mechanics at play, but Gabel succeeds in making the science of time travel feel semi-plausible and always in service of the emotional heart of the novel.

★★★½

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Lucky Ride

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Title: The Lucky Ride
Author: Yasushi Kitagawa
Translator: Takami Nieda
Pages: 272
Release: October 7, 2025

What a lovely book.

The resident cynic in me was utterly charmed by this heartwarming tale of a down-on-his-luck insurance salesman who stumbles into a mysterious taxi that changes his life. Told as a parable, the story delivers a simple but moving message about living with positivity and generosity.

The “luck” the characters accumulate is the result of good deeds, but it functions more like karma than chance. Your choices add up, and their effects ripple outward, benefiting not only you but also future generations of your family. Good actions lead to good outcomes…eventually.

The Alchemist meets The Good Place: the messaging is straightforward, yet life-affirming and emotionally resonant. It won’t change your life, but it will put a smile on your face.

★★★★

My thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Sympathy Tower Tokyo

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Title: Sympathy Tower Tokyo
Author: Rie Qudan
Translator: Jesse Kirkwood
Pages: 208
Release: September 2, 2025

In near-future Japan, all criminals, now reclassified as Homo miserabilis, are considered victims of circumstance and are treated with extreme empathy. They are housed together in Sympathy Tower Tokyo, a hyper-egalitarian facility with conditions so humane that prisoners prefer to stay even when offered their freedom. The book follows Sara Machina, the tower’s architect, who grapples with the ethical consequences of her creation.

Qudan’s novel is surreal and conceptually fascinating, but ultimately left me cold. Its unclear structure and indistinct points of view make the narrative feel scattered and emotionally distant. For a story so rooted in the idea of empathy, it’s curiously devoid of warmth – an effect that may be intentional, but left me feeling hollow by the end.

Qudan’s meditation on the evolution of the Japanese language is compelling, particularly the universal idea that “words determine our reality,” a theme that threads itself throughout the book. Still, whether due to Jesse Kirkwood’s translation or the source text itself, Sympathy Tower Tokyo never quite connected for me.

Note: in keeping with the source material – roughly 5% of this review was generated with AI.

★★★

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley & Edelweiss for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Lucky Day

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Title: Lucky Day
Author: Chuck Tingle
Pages: 240
Release: August 12, 2025

Mr. Tingle, I was not familiar with your game. What a wild ride this was. 

The blend of absurdism and horror is beautifully done. Tingle’s twisted imagination shines brightest in the breathless sequences of gore and surreal terror. There’s a scene in a wave pool so gruesome it will make me think twice before dipping my toes into the deep end ever again.

Some of the broader, more otherworldly strokes – e.g., cosmic centipedes and literal voids in spacetime – kept me from fully embracing the premise. But the slick pacing ensures that no beat overstays its welcome, propelling the story forward with relentless energy. 

Count me as a Tingle fan from here on out. This was a bloody good time.

★★★½

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.