About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Nora Roberts
Pan The New York Times Book Review For roughly the first quarter of Nora Roberts’s postapocalyptic saga Year One, all the formulas for a good thriller are deployed to magnificent effect ... The epidemic that follows, eventually wiping out billions, is described with relentless brutality as governments collapse and things fall apart. In power and poignancy, this segment of Year One is a match for end-of-the-world classics like Stephen King’s The Stand, Nevil Shute’s On the Beach and the better zombie apocalypses. And then the tension just … stops. Once the bulk of the human race is dead, the pace of events slows drastically ... As a venerated romance writer with hundreds of books under her belt, Roberts could have brought an exciting perspective to the postapocalyptic subgenre. Romance novels tend to center character and emotion in a way most science fiction and fantasy novels can’t or won’t — but for some reason Roberts chooses not to do so in Year One. This results in a story of shallow people, striving for not all that much, in an implausible world. A frustrating disappointment.
Andy Weir
Pan The New York Times Book Review The problem is that it’s a whole city of Mark Watneys. Characters constantly crack wise, but this doesn’t quite disguise their shallowness, or the leaden dialogue and repetitive narration. The protagonist is Jazz Bashara, a young Saudi woman, Muslim but secular, who’s lived on the moon since she was 6. She talks and acts like a Middle American white man — with occasional stereotypical exceptions, as when she must pretend to be a prostitute. Then she talks and acts like a Middle American white man pretending to be a prostitute ... This is a heist narrative at heart — but it lacks the core elements of modern heist narratives: no team of charming specialists, no surprise plot twists. That may be fine for 'hard' science fiction fans who prioritize idea over execution, or who simply crave well-researched technical speculation presented as fiction. Otherwise, this is a 300-page film pitch that, like its predecessor, will probably be more appealing after it goes to Hollywood.
Ann Leckie
Mixed The New York Times Book Review ...at the end of the day, this is a saga of children struggling to meet the strict obligations of family and adulthood, which makes it a microcosmic mirror of what the Presger have demanded of humanity. It does get convoluted, however. Provenance feels clumsier than the Radch novels in many ways, possibly because there are fewer galaxy- or character-transforming moments to pull the reader along. As an example, Hwaean society’s gender pronouns (his, hers, eirs and its) don’t flow as well as the 'universal her' of the earlier stories, though one gets used to them. Ingray and her companions aren’t nearly so compelling as Breq and company, either. Still, the novel stands well as a sort of thematic coda to the Radch trilogy, and should please those who like tea with their space opera.
Ed. by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin
Rave The New York Times Book Review These then are not Disneyfied tales of wish-granting tricksters, but stories of people burning like djinn and djinn as fiery people. The collection ranges widely in style and perspective, making room for the title poem by the Egyptian writer Hermes as well as poetic prose by the Canadian writer Amal El-Mohtar and a distinctly feminist take on wizards and harem intrigue by the British fantasy writer Claire North ... Nearly all of the stories are haunting, reflective and firelight-beautiful, but there are standouts. Jamal Mahjoub’s 'Duende 2077' is the most explicitly rebellious simply for its premise, which posits a futuristic Caliphate after the fall of Christian/Western hegemony. Nnedi Okorafor’s 'History' is gloriously gonzo, following an Ibo-trained African-American sorceress as she gives the performance of her career to an audience of literal gods ... Exquisite and audacious, and highly recommended.
Caitlin R. Kiernan
Rave The New York Times Book Review Despite the apocalyptic narrative, this is a character study, focusing on the two agents and layering exposition over their respective quirks ... Kiernan’s writing — starkly visual, tongue in cheek and disturbingly visceral — carries the day as the story churns toward its uneasy conclusion. And since the door is left open for future stories (and other futures) featuring Immacolata and the Signalman, let’s hope Kiernan will delve further into their adventures.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Positive The New York Times Book Review The main character is the transformed New York, and Robinson gets it more right than wrong. The novel deftly conveys its unnerving strangeness through interludes and asides: 'New York, New York, it’s a hell of a bay' does have the ring of a culture adapting itself ... Yet it is refreshing to see a futurism that acknowledges the innate resilience of the city and, by inference, of humanity itself. Amid this, many liberties can be forgiven. These streets will still make you feel brand new, Robinson suggests, even in a future when they’re soaking wet.
Veronica Roth
Pan The New York Times Book Review ...seems destined — designed, even — for film adaptation ... There’s some jumbled, vaguely science fictional worldbuilding involving spaceships and people from planets of darkness or planets of heat, but frankly Roth could’ve set the whole thing on a single planet and cut down on the potential special effects budget. This story is simpler than it sounds, and even more clichéd than this synopsis suggests. It will doubtless make money hand over fist.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Mixed The New York Times Book Review Domingo and Atl’s story — despite being forged amid a gang war — frankly feels prosaic in comparison with this vibrant world. Moreno-?Garcia’s terse prose compounds the problem; it beautifully illustrates Domingo’s deceptive simplicity, but otherwise feels distractingly choppy. There’s more than enough richness elsewhere in the story, however, so one hopes that return visits to this urban fantasy world are in the offing.
Nisi Shawl
Mixed The New York Times Book Review Shawl’s refusal to gloss over history’s ugliness, and the palpable depth of research that bolsters her depictions, creates a sort of moral and aesthetic void. The reader is left willing, even eager, to accept the escape that Shawl offers: an imaginative alternate history, in which a coalition of Western socialists, Asian inventors and indigenous people fighting the Belgians form a new nation called Everfair ... It’s soaring, high-minded stuff, and Shawl does a marvelous job of demonstrating the capabilities of the steampunk subgenre ... Yet the story suffers from too many jumps in time, overly quick transitions of scene and mood, and the inclusion of too many characters.
Indra Das
Positive The New York Times Book Review ...a chilling, gorgeous saga that spans several centuries and many lands ... Das imparts [his] messages delicately, as filigree on a story already gilded in rich imagery and harrowing conflict ... Readers will savor every bite.