Review: Exit Party

October 1, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Exit Party
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Pages: 320
Release: September 15, 2026

Emily St. John Mandel’s novels might just not be for me. This is the third book of hers that I’ve read, and I’ve found them all to be quite underwhelming. I find her prose flat and uninteresting. The hook of parallel worlds is en vogue these days, but St. John Mandel does little new with the conceit here.

The plotting and dour tone don’t help matters. It’s a premise that could lend itself to playfulness, surprise, or more creative stakes, but the novel rarely capitalizes on those possibilities. Neither the premise nor its execution was compelling enough to overcome my disinterest in her writing style.

The HBO adaptation of Station Eleven is my favorite piece of television of the past decade, but I was similarly left cold by the source material. Count me in if HBO takes the reins on an Exit Party limited series, but this was not my cup of tea in novel form.

★★¾

Review: Eden at Dawn

September 21, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Eden at Dawn
Author: Karim Kattan
Translator: Jeffrey Zuckerman
Pages: 288
Release: September 22, 2026
Awards: National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist (2026)

A love that transcends borders and curfews and occupation and a massive, summers-long sandstorm.

Karim Kattan’s writing, coupled with Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation, makes for pure poetry. Told from the perspective of the sky—our cheeky and playful narrator—the story is unwieldy and unconventional. The sky is enamored with Isaac and Gabriel, seeking them out in every nook and cranny under its domain in order to bring their story to life.

It’s an intensely felt love story imbued with magic and wonder, where it’s often difficult to distinguish reality from fable.

I loved the way Kattan plays with color to enliven an undersaturated, sandswept world. Rarely are things described beyond simple reds, blues, and greens, but the frequency and repetition of these colors in different combinations consistently conjure vivid and lively imagery.

It caught me off guard in the best possible way, and even when its unconventional approach didn’t entirely work for me, its beauty and emotional pull kept me hooked throughout.

★★★¾

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

Review: The Living Realm

September 16, 2026September 16, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The Living Realm: A Novel
Author: Jordan Tannahill
Pages: 160
Release: September 8, 2026

Vivid, clear-eyed, richly observed and carefully composed. Tannahill conjures the past, present, and that which bleeds between them. Set by a lake that is a place of communal congregation, our protagonist encounters his past in seemingly supernatural ways, with lost loved ones reappearing on those banks at random. The lake serves as a mirror, a window, an ever-evolving membrane between the past and present, a site of witnessing, of seeing and being seen. This is a short but affecting novella that leaves a lasting impression.

★★★★¼

Review: Rabbit, Fox, Tar

September 11, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Rabbit, Fox, Tar
Author: P.C. Verrone
Pages: 304
Release: June 2, 2026

A reworking and recontextualization of the “Tar Baby” folktale, in which a mysterious woman arrives in a seemingly idyllic town, only for every townsperson who encounters her to be irrevocably changed.

P.C. Verrone unfurls his story with a deft hand, balancing fabulism with a disquieting atmosphere that captivated me from beginning to end, while thoughtfully exploring themes of personhood, racial identity, gentrification, and inheritance. A phenomenal debut novel, and I’m excited to see where Verrone’s career goes from here.

★★★★½

My thanks to the public library for lending a free copy in exchange for nothing at all! ☺

Review: The Vivisectors

August 19, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The Vivisectors: A Novel
Author: Missouri Williams
Pages: 288
Release: May 21, 2026

An atmospheric fever dream that’s frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. Missouri Williams conjures a setting where the sharp details of reality have been sanded off. Modern technology exists, but everything feels like a hazy simulacrum of the real world. Only three professions seem to matter: academics, architects, and gardeners. In a deteriorating and depopulated world, the gardens grow unchecked, and only the mercurial bands of gardeners can control them.

This is definitely a vibes-over-plot type of novel, with frequent diversions from the main narrative interrupting the loosely told story, as relayed by an unreliable and detached narrator. I found it all quite entrancing, but never felt like I fully understood what its broad metaphors were meant to represent. Character motivations are often inscrutable, and long, rambling descriptive passages only add to the sense of disorientation. Your mileage may vary here, as this will definitely land with some readers more than others.

★★★¼

My thanks to the public library for lending a free copy in exchange for nothing at all! ☺

Review: Seek Immediate Shelter

August 14, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Seek Immediate Shelter: A Novel
Author: Vincent Yu
Pages: 304
Release: May 5, 2026

A short story collection (masquerading as a novel) with an incredible hook—a text alert about an incoming missile sends a community into a frenzy. This cataclysmic pressure valve opens and the delicate psyches of the residents we follow are laid bare. Yu plays with expectations in an amusing way, as you never know where in each story the missile alert will blare or how the character will react to it.

Each of the subtly interconnected stories has an emotional hook that sucks you in, exploring familiar themes of familial strife, parent-child discord, falling in love, falling out of love, despair, hope, addiction, and the cracks within us that can sometimes turn into fissures.

Each character’s portrait is tenderly rendered and moving, as Yu dives deep into their headspace under extraordinary circumstances. And while the collection never reaches the heights that such a stellar premise might promise, it still gels well and is a worthwhile read.

★★★½

My thanks to the public library for providing a free copy in exchange for nothing at all☺

Review: The End of Everything

August 9, 2026Leave a comment

Title: The End of Everything
Author: M. John Harrison
Pages: 208
Release: October 13, 2026

Surreal. Ethereal. Eerie. Off-kilter. Awash in extreme, casual violence. Difficult to parse with little plot or story to cling to. At times, like if Jeff VanderMeer wrote My Favorite Martian. At others, so slipstream as to be ungraspable. Its strangeness is a feature, not a bug, and while initially intriguing, its opacity becomes overwhelming by the end.

I can certainly see how this would benefit from another readthrough, which likely boosted it among Booker Prize judges – but I’ll leave the rereads to them. Once was enough for me.

★★¾

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

Review: Ply

August 5, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Ply: A Novel
Author: Hernan Diaz
Pages: 464
Release: September 29, 2026

Having not read his prior work, but being aware of his growing literary stature, I was pleasantly surprised by the accessibility of Diaz’s writing. His lyrical prose expertly conjures a dilapidated but vibrant, thrumming city that persists amidst its deterioration. Evocative descriptions include a river that “doesn’t run but oozes…like molten ore” or vacant warehouses reclaimed by roots that have “clawed their witchy fingers into the plaster…with an invisible slowness…in the gentlest of tantrums.” I loved these descriptions. I was equally drawn to the way he explores the main character’s background through flashbacks that add depth and texture to her character.

The second half of the novel abandons much of what I enjoyed about the first half, however. An abrupt pivot from first- to third-person narration feels gimmicky and doesn’t justify itself by the book’s end. That, paired with plot beats that require heavy exposition of quantum theory, really dragged things down. The more it leaned into this, the more I leaned away. I appreciate the time and effort Diaz put into untangling the book’s thornier quantum entanglements,* but the story is worse for it.

In all, Ply is most effective and affecting when it drills deep into its characters, and much less so when it gets tangled in convoluted quantum mechanics. That said, I really enjoyed Diaz’s writing and felt that the extended time I spent in this world was worthwhile.

★★★¼

*The acknowledgements section really shows how seriously Diaz took the research for the novel.

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

Review: Blacktail

July 28, 2026Leave a comment

Title: Blacktail: A Novel
Author: Scott Hawkins
Pages: 288
Release: September 1, 2026

Lynx that speak in platitudes, wolves that write poetry in urine, and house cats that worship the Forest God. In Blacktail, Scott Hawkins’s (very) dark fantasy, we see our world through the eyes of a wolf-dog whose personal quest for revenge becomes much stranger and more mythic as it moves toward its conclusion.

There’s an intentional discordance between the brutality and disturbing imagery of the main quest and the absurdity interwoven throughout the narrative. House cats with names like “Miss Prissy Pants” show up. Dogs worship their piles of “food-rocks” (kibble). Car demons controlled by “two-legs” (humans) stalk the “black path” (road). This discordance is amusing but often jarring, as these sillier elements undercut the dark edge of the story.

It’s a quest novel, but the pacing is somewhat stilted, with Blacktail jumping from one interaction to another as new creatures are placed in his path. This keeps the quest from gaining enough narrative momentum to earn its final denouement. Ultimately, I was consistently engaged and quite gripped by the tale, but it never quite fulfilled its promise for me.

★★★½

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