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Turning planets into origami

Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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CBR14 Bingo: Cold (the majority of this novel is set in spaaace, which is famously very cold) It would also work for Star and Series.  Official book description: Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade his mind in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed by an alien enemy. Many escaped, but millions more died. So mankind created enhanced humans ­such as Idris – […]

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse by John Joseph Adams & Others

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I’m putting together a new class for work that is supposed to cover cross-cultural perspectives, but also be speculative, but also be relevant to ‘kids these days’, so what better place to start than with an anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction specializing in pandemics! Chocked full of terrifying tales, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse includes a variety of authors from different places, cultures, and perspectives all writing about humanity’s deepest and darkest fears. From deadly spores and burning suns to viruses and carcinogenic air, this anthology mines for […]

Who fears fantasy tropes?

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

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Take an ancient prophecy, a genocide-fueled war, a post-apocalyptic setting, a reluctant teacher, band of friends, and a powerful heroine with anger management issues and you have Who Fears Death. This was award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor’s first novel for adults after publishing a few YA novels. This novel feels more like a hybrid of the two formats. The romance and coming-of-age aspects of YA with the more mature themes of an adult novel. Okorafor threw every fantasy trope she could into this brutal novel to […]

If 28 Days Later and The Road had a daughter

The Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff

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This was Round 2 of my ongoing “what’s going in in the world of Irish science fiction?” quest. (Round 1 was here.) First off: great title, no? I was instantly intrigued, especially with the description, and I liked this weird sense I was getting of the post-apocalypse as a site of feminist possibility rather than just endless misogyny and threatened sexual violence. (Sigh.) The premise is straightforward: Orpen lives with her mother and her mother’s partner, Maeve, on an isolated island off the coast of […]

The world is falling apart, but the magic is coming together

The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

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This felt like a post-apocalyptic story within a post-post-post-apocalyptic story. In the aftermath of the last Fifth Season (a catastrophic event that causes massive destruction and changes the face of the Earth for an unspecified amount of time; the last one started in the first book), Essun finds herself in a new community, with everyone learning how to live and work together. There are bandits and bad communities, internal strife, lack of food and resources, and the usual post-apocalyptic worries. Of course, this being an […]

Late to the party, but so glad I finally made it!

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

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I knew this would be good (pages and pages of CBR reviews told me so), and I was not disappointed. There was some truly incredible world-building, some interesting writing choices (second-person point of view chapters?), and characters I wanted to hug or fight battles with. I can’t wait to read the next one! It feels silly to recap the plot when everyone has read it already, but here goes (in case this review is the final straw that pushes you into reading it and joining […]



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