Category: Review

Review: The Book of Records

Leave a comment

Title: The Book of Records
Author: Madeleine Thien
Pages: 352
Release: May 20, 2025

At its core, this is a tale of a father and daughter–adrift in the shifting sands of time. As they recount how they arrived at The Sea, a nebulous crossroads where time folds in on itself, they strike up a friendship with three neighbors–notable figures from history–each offering up prudent tales from their own lives.

Thien deftly explores the power of stories and their telling, the transient nature of time and memory, and the permanence of love and connection. Her writing is elegant and measured, with the intimate father-daughter relationship being the most effective and affecting aspect of the novel. The lengthy interspersed stories relayed by the historical figures, while clearly well-researched, bog down the narrative momentum, slowing the pace more than necessary.

The deeper Thien wades into philosophical territory, the harder I found it to keep up, which I see as more of a personal shortcoming than a flaw in the book. She operates at a philosophical frequency beyond my level of understanding, making significant portions frustrating and difficult to parse. While I never quite grasped the full scope of what Thien was trying to convey, I suspect more erudite readers will have better luck.

★★★

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

Review: Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost

1 Comment

“He can reflect all he wants but will not be able to pilot that flash of inspiration into the harbor of his memory. It has gone adrift and shimmers on the horizon of his imagination.”

Title: Strange and Perfect Account from the Permafrost
Author: Donald Niedekker
Translator: Jonathan Reeder
Pages: 196
Release: May 20, 2025

Based on the true story of Dutch explorers seeking the Northeast Passage, only to be thwarted by the weather, the expedition finds itself marooned in the Arctic. They wisely repurpose their ship into a livable abode to withstand the brutal elements. Our unnamed narrator does not survive the ordeal, but his newly unthawed corpse has enough wherewithal to recount his tale after 400 years on ice. While the story’s premise is rooted in the realities of climate change and our warming planet, it doesn’t dwell on this theme beyond a few subtle mentions. 

Such an odd and fascinating premise gives way to a richly imagined, beautifully translated, and appropriately wry tale. The narrator’s scattershot musings touch on life–his own and otherwise–his career as a poet, why he prefers rivers to seas, the geese’s annual migration overhead his icy grave, the state of exploration in the 16th century, and plenty more. There’s no sensible order or structure to his thoughts as he hops around, eventually admitting that he’s providing a “less-than-coherent narrative.” Agree! 

★★★★

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

Review: Portalmania: Stories

Leave a comment

Title: Portalmania: Stories
Author: Debbie Urbanski
Pages: 320
Release: May 13, 2025

Exceedingly dark, with unflinching portrayals of intimate partner violence and the isolating weight of otherness, Urbanski’s prose nonetheless shines as a compulsively readable beacon, propelling us from one uncanny world to the next.

The ever-present portals symbolize opportunities, threats, or escapes, their importance shifting depending on the characters’ perspective and circumstances.

The stories themselves are interlinked, featuring recurring motifs and situations. The characters even feel like carbon copies of the same person, with only subtle differences, as they navigate their respective worlds. These similarities lead to a sense of sameness across many of the stories, yet there is enough thematic variety to make this a bold and satisfying collection.

Favorite stories: “LK-32-C,” “The Dirty Golden Yellow House”

★★★★

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

Review: The Country Under Heaven

Leave a comment

Title: The Country Under Heaven
Author: Frederic S. Durbin
Pages: 336
Release: May 13, 2025

Evoking the majesty and grandeur of the Old West, Durbin spins a stirring yarn about the aftershocks of battle and the struggle to overcome what haunts us.

Durbin’s A Green and Ancient Light was one of the first books I reviewed for The Speculative Shelf in 2016, and it has stayed with me to this day. It’s a thrill to return to one of his worlds. At the time, I wrote: “He creates a setting filled with such beautiful imagery that opening the book felt like being transported to the nameless countryside each and every time.” The same holds true here, as the American West comes to life, down to the last flower petal and blade of grass.

While I found Ovid Vesper’s journey and visions intriguing, the loosely connected chapters often felt disjointed and could have benefitted from fewer characters and a more streamlined plot.

★★★½

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

Review: Exit Zero: Stories

Leave a comment

Title: Exit Zero: Stories
Author: Marie-Helene Bertino
Pages: 208
Release: April 22, 2025

Bertino tackles heavy themes like grief, estrangement, divorce, and disconnection with the winning charm and dry wit that made her 2024 novel Beautyland such a standout. Her writing is both funny and emotionally resonant – brimming with life, verve, humor and heart.

The stories run the gamut of topics and it was amusing to see simple setups veer so wildly off course. In “Can Only Houses Be Haunted?,” a bickering couple finds that the peaches they bought from a roadside farm stand are haunted by a malign spirit. In “Exit Zero,” my favorite of the bunch, a daughter inherits a house from her estranged father – along with an unenthused, flatulent unicorn living in the backyard. Some stories, like “Edna in the Rain,” in which a woman’s ex-boyfriends literally rain from the sky, end abruptly or feel undercooked. But the majority are satisfying – both absurd and poignant in different ways.

★★★½

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

Review: Vanishing World

1 Comment

Title: Vanishing World
Author: Sayaka Murata
Translator: Ginny Tapley Takemori
Pages: 240
Release: April 15, 2025

An off-kilter and unsettling page-turner, Vanishing World tackles declining birth rates, widespread loneliness, social isolation, and the rise of unhealthy parasocial relationships – issues that feel even more relevant today than when this book was first published in Japan in 2015.

In a world where copulation has gone out of style, Amane longs for the days of old. Yet she quickly learns how difficult it is to swim against the current of established societal norms, no matter how bizarre they may be. Everyone around her feels slightly unhinged, as though facsimiles of real people, adding to Amane’s feelings of isolation. 

This was a tough one to put down and it certainly goes out with a bang. Murata’s dry, matter-of-fact prose is engrossing, even as she hammers home certain ideas and themes to the point of excess. 

★★★½

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

Review: A Drop of Corruption

1 Comment

Title: A Drop of Corruption
Author: Robert Jackson Bennett
Pages: 432
Series: Shadow of the Leviathan #2
Release: April 1, 2025

Unshackled by the need for extensive world-building, Robert Jackson Bennett has room in this sequel to craft a more complex and satisfying mystery, centered around his winning duo of lead characters. It succeeds as both a mystery and a fantasy novel, blending the two genres beautifully.

While I’m more invested in the evolving interpersonal dynamics between Ana and Din than the “Mystery of the Week” plot in each installment, this sequel lays the groundwork for even richer character development to come in future books.

A Drop of Corruption is a more assured, exciting sequel than its predecessor, and I look forward to seeing where the overarching story goes from here. 

★★★★

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

Review: Metallic Realms

1 Comment

Title: Metallic Realms
Author: Lincoln Michel
Pages: 320
Release: May 13, 2025

A full panoply of sci-fi delights—perfect for genre fans, the terminally online, or anyone caught up in fan culture, geekdom, or general sci-fi nerdery.

Metallic Realms is absurd, incisive, and a (toxic) love letter to classic science fiction, viewed through a sharply modern lens. It details the formation and eventual dissolution of the Orb 4, a group of writers creating short stories set in a shared sci-fi universe while living in a squalid apartment in present-day Brooklyn.

Told through the eyes of Michael Lincoln (a thinly veiled self-insert of author Lincoln Michel… or not, if Michael Lincoln is to be believed), the novel features one of the most hapless, oblivious, deeply unwell, totally unreliable, occasionally sympathetic, but almost always off-putting narrators of all time. He truly believes he’s chronicling the group that will usher in a new Golden Age of Science Fiction, and we are along for the bumpy ride.

The interstitial chapters, each a short story set within the Metallic Realms, are not mere pablum or window dressing. They’re inventive, closely tied to the “real-world” of the novel, and filled with endless geeky goodness.

As someone who enjoys taking very trivial things extremely seriously, I found this to be an exceedingly enjoyable read that I couldn’t put down. It’s a delightfully meta concept, executed to perfection. Count me in for OrbCon 2025.

★★★★½

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

Review: The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Leave a comment

Title: The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Author: Haruki Murakami
Translator: Philip Gabriel
Pages: 464
Release: November 19, 2024

Our main character inhabits two parallel worlds—one is the “real world,” and the other is a “dream world” reminiscent of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi: a nameless city with labyrinthine streets that feels disorienting yet mesmerizing.

The story is told in an understated and straightforward way, with little drama but plenty of pleasant imagery. Some elements felt downright cozy, though they lacked significant dramatic heft. The main character grapples with existential questions about his inner worldview and his sense of self, which are represented through the parallel worlds he experiences. Is the walled town a construct of his mind? A physical manifestation of the complex bond he shared with his first love? Who’s to say?

Murakami abandons the eponymous city for the “real world” early on, and the farther the narrative distances itself from that place, the harder it becomes—for both the main character and the reader—to return to what we once remembered. The plot clumsily attempts to weave these threads and worlds back together, but the resulting knot felt unsatisfying to me.

Many reviews have noted that Murakami has told similar stories more effectively in the past, so surely this is not the ideal book to start with as a Murakami neophyte—but here we are. I suspect I would connect better with his earlier works, as his writing and style resonated with me, but the story itself felt half-baked.

★★★

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