Tag: Sci-Fi

Review: Seek Immediate Shelter

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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

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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

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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: May We Feed The King

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Title: May We Feed the King: A Novel
Author: Rebecca Perry
Pages: 264
Release: October 20, 2026

At first, this book seems destined to be the most interesting novel about the procurement and placement of fake fruit you’ll ever read. Soon after, though, we’re swept into an unnamed kingdom and placed at the feet of a nameless king, oh so burdened by the weight of his crown.

Both narratives are equally engrossing and could have carried novels on their own. Perry pairs them instead, inviting us to juxtapose two lives shaped by grief and the weight of expectation. The decorator possesses a freedom the king can only dream of: she tells the story, arranges the objects, and creates a scene of her own making. The king, meanwhile, is beset by the ceaseless gossipmongering of his court and has little control over the story being told about his reign. Only when he learns to harness those narratives and use them for his own ends can he begin to free himself from them.

I’m still mulling over exactly what these two stories achieve together. Individually, though, they’re both engrossing.

Through silky-smooth prose and an eye for exacting detail, Perry has stitched together two wholly entrancing tales. Each is worthy of your time. I enjoyed this greatly.

★★★★

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

Review: The Moon Papers

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Title: The Moon Papers: A Novel
Author: Emmalea Russo
Pages: 336
Release: June 30, 2026

What begins as a delightfully off-kilter chronicle of the impending launch of a massive art installation, Moon2, eventually strikes a discordant note as the unfocused and unrestrained narrative loses any semblance of cohesion.

I did find much of the commentary surrounding the creation of a second moon to be biting and sharply observed. Each character responds to the imminent launch in different and often amusing ways, ranging from deep skepticism to general indifference. I just wish the narrative gelled better overall, because there is a lot of interesting writing from Russo here. At times, it made for intoxicating reading; at others, it felt as though the novel was drunk on its own supply.

★★★

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

Review: Ode to the Half-Broken

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Title: Ode to the Half-Broken
Author: Suzanne Palmer
Pages: 416
Release: April 28, 2026

A dyst-hope-ian novel about a robot outrunning their past, which is hard to do when someone has stolen your leg! Suzanne Palmer moves main character Be around the post-apocalyptic landscape, slowly building a ragtag found family along the way. A wise-cracking cyborg dog, a human mechanic, and a speechless drone all join the fray.

I enjoyed much of what Palmer is doing here. The writing is accessible and the pacing is swift. The plot is convoluted at times and the flashbacks halt narrative momentum, but the heart and humanity at its core make it a refreshing and winsome read.

★★★½

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advanced 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: 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.