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reviewed Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence (Hardcover, 2022, Harper Voyager) 5 stars

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret …

Babel

5 stars

Content warning I don't think I can review this without some vague spoilers

reviewed How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

How High We Go in the Dark (Hardcover, 2022, William Morrow) 4 stars

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work …

How High We Go in the Dark

4 stars

A series of bleak, gritty glimpses of what's in store for us over the next few decades.

The tone is lightened a bit here and there with injections of optimism, but I think it works against itself a little when the optimism feels unwarranted.

The way that the characters from the different stories are linked reminds me a bit of Cloud Atlas (although I only saw the movie (sorry)).

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reviewed Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr

Wondrous Journeys In Strange Lands (Paperback, 2020, Interlink) 3 stars

Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award.

In a tent …

Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands

3 stars

I enjoyed the setting, and some of the substories were compelling, but as a whole it was too rambling and incohesive for me.

I feel like it would have worked better as a series of stories about different people from the same village or whatever instead of repeatedly being like "despite being in the middle of this incredibly urgent life crisis, the main character decides to spend six months teaching an older woman to fold laundry" or "despite having a very bad outcome two chapters ago, the main character decides to engage in exactly the same dangerous behavior with no additional precautions"

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