Book Review – Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep ed. by Peter Öberg

Goodreads Synopsis:

26 short stories from the new wave of Swedish speculative fiction writers.

Forget about cheap furniture, meatballs and crime fiction. Sweden has so much more to offer. Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep contains twenty-six stories from the new generation of Swedish writers of science fiction and the fantastic. Stories ranging from space horror and post-apocalyptic nightmares to tender dramas. Stories with steampunk horses, android uprisings and cheeky goblins. Stories that are action-packed, wise, silly, beautiful, surreal and horrifying.

Review:

So, for those that don’t follow me on Twitter, I recently got back from a holiday to Denmark with a short day-trip to Sweden and so naturally it seemed like the perfect time to try and find some Danish and Swedish SFF to read. Thanks to the fantastic SF in Translation website, I was able to find this gem and it was only 99p on Kindle so I just had to get it. Plus it means I can now cross off Sweden on my Read Around the World challenge! Hurrah!

Given that there are 26 stories in this anthology, it’s to be expected that some would be much better than others but I was pleasantly surprised by the consistently strong quality of all the stories. Indeed, although I liked some more than others they were all fantastic. The range of stories included was also fantastic from one focusing on AI (which lends its name to the title of the collection) to another focusing on interpreting wisdom from an ancient music player (Jump to the Left, Jump to the Right). They were all fantastic and as with any collection, it’s hard to talk about them all without writing thousands of words.

If you have an e-reader and like SFF then I strongly recommend this collection. It’s incredibly cheap (I mean seriously you’re paying less than 4p per story) and is definitely worth it.

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Book Review – Fungi ed. by Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Goodreads Synopsis:

A collection of fungal wonders…and terrors. In this new anthology, writers reach into the rich territory first explored by William Hope Hodgson a century ago: the land of the fungi. Stories range from noir to dark fantasy, from steampunk to body horror. Join authors such as Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Nick Mamatas, W.H. Pugmire, Lavie Tidhar, Ann K.Schwader, Jesse Bullington, Molly Tanzer and Simon Strantzas through a dizzying journey of fungal tales. Feast upon Fungi. 

Review:

I really enjoy Jeff Vandermeer’s weird fiction, especially that involving mushrooms, and so when I discovered an entire anthology based on Fungi I was incredibly intrigued. It’s a brilliant idea for a short story collection as there are so many interesting ways you can explore fungal fiction.

This collection started out very strong and there are some fantastic stories in it with ideas such as a fungi submarine and a house haunted by fungi although I was a bit let down at the very end which was a poem rather than a short story and I felt that it wasn’t the best way to end such a great collection. Perhaps if it had been midway it would have been a bit better, as it meant that my last memory of the anthology was somewhat meh despite the fact that for most of the collection I’d been loving it.

Despite the slightly weak ending, I was a big fan of most of these stories and am likely going to re-read some of them to write individual short-story reviews to highlight my favourites which I think I’m going to do in advance of future reviews of short story collections.

For those that are fans of weird fiction or want to read lots of bizarre fungal fiction then this is the anthology for you!

Book Review – New Voices of Fantasy ed. by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman

Goodreads Synopsis:

What would you do if a tornado wanted you to be its Valentine? Or if a haunted spacesuit banged on your door? When is the ideal time to turn into a tiger? Would you post a supernatural portal on Craigslist?

In these nineteen stories, the enfants terribles of fantasy have arrived. The New Voices of Fantasy captures some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years, including Sofia Samatar, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Alyssa Wong, Usman T. Malik, Brooke Bolander, E. Lily Yu, Ben Loory, Ursula Vernon, and more. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic).

So go ahead and join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.

Review:

So my bf bought this book a while ago and was raving about how incredible it was after reading just a few stories and kept recommending it to me (partially because he knows how much I love Selkies and any story containing them but also just because I love Fantasy in general) and I was super lucky to get an ARC from the publisher a few days ago and I just devoured this collection.

It’s always hard to review short story collections, and it’s even harder to review this one because I absolutely adored every single story in it and just wouldn’t know where to start. They are all so creative and fantastic and well written and I’m definitely going to hunt down more work by all these authors! I’d heard of quite a few of the authors already, and indeed had actually already read the short story by Ursula Vernon (which is probably one of my favourites of the collection).

Really, my review for this is simply just “read them” because each story is so different and so magical that you can only experience it by reading. For those that don’t read much Fantasy, it’s also an excellent introduction to some of the authors to keep an eye on that might not be as well known as they deserve. For those that are keen Fantasy readers, you’ve likely also heard of a lot of these authors and these pieces are all fantastic introductions to their work and will definitely leave you wanting more from all of them. The editors did a fantastic job selecting all these stories with the result being an incredible book that is just overflowing with such fascinating and varied stories.

In short, I highly, highly recommend this book and indeed I enjoyed it so much I can see myself re-reading and reviewing some of the individual stories later just so I can keep telling people about how fantastic this collection is.

Book Review – Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Goodreads Synopsis:

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is the first anthology to broadly collect solarpunk short fiction, artwork, and poetry. A new genre for the 21st Century, solarpunk is a revolution against despair. Focusing on solutions to environmental disasters, solarpunk envisions a future of green, sustainable energy used by societies that value inclusiveness, cooperation, and personal freedom. 

Edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, Sunvault focuses on the stories of those inhabiting the crucial moments when great change can be made by people with the right tools; stories of people living during tipping points, and the spaces before and after them; and stories of those who fight to effect change and seek solutions to ecological disruption.

Review:

I’m a huge fan of Solarpunk, I really enjoy the aesthetics of it and so when I saw this anthology I knew I just had to get it. I consider myself very lucky to have received a copy of the ARC and it’s a book that took me a while to get through as I wanted to savour each story.Firstly,

Firstly, this is not just a collection of short stories. Poems and art also feature in this collection and so for that reason I would recommend a physical edition if possible. My Kindle is rather old and in black and white and so I was not able to fully appreciate the artwork although hopefully it’ll look better on newer Kindles. I’m also not a fan of reading poetry on Kindles as I feel the layout of the page is very important and I just prefer having it in physical form.

As this is a collection, I don’t want to discuss any of the pieces in too much detail as I feel that as with any collection, everybody will have different likes and dislikes and so if I focus on what I enjoyed, it might put some people off due to having different tastes. I will say that the stories covered a wide range of scenarios and I adored seeing all the futures that the authors had imagined. One in particular, involved living in shuttles in different layers of the atmosphere, was a setting I particularly enjoyed.

Indeed, I feel that the only complaint I can have about this book is that it has left me with a huge hunger for more Solarpunk stories which I know is going to be difficult to fill. If you know any, I would be more than happy to receive recommendations from you!

Anyway, this is a collection that I highly, highly recommend to anybody who enjoys Sci-Fi or is interested in Solarpunk. If you don’t know what Solarpunk is, then I highly recommend reading up on it because it’s by far one of my favourite genres and leads to some incredibly beautiful artwork.

Book Review – The Djinn Falls in Love & other stories

Goodreads Synopsis:

A fascinating collection of new and classic tales of the fearsome Djinn, from bestselling, award-winning and breakthrough international writers.

Imagine a world filled with fierce, fiery beings, hiding in our shadows, in our dreams, under our skins. Eavesdropping and exploring; savaging our bodies, saving our souls. They are monsters, saviours, victims, childhood friends.

Some have called them genies: these are the Djinn. And they are everywhere. On street corners, behind the wheel of a taxi, in the chorus, between the pages of books. Every language has a word for them. Every culture knows their traditions. Every religion, every history has them hiding in their dark places. There is no part of the world that does not know them.

They are the Djinn. They are among us.

With stories from: Nnedi Okorafor, Neil Gaiman, Helene Wecker, Amal El-Mohtar, Catherine King, Claire North,  E.J. Swift, Hermes (trans. Robin Moger), Jamal Mahjoub, James Smythe, J.Y. Yang, Kamila Shamsie, Kirsty Logan, K.J. Parker, Kuzhali Manickavel, Maria Dahvana Headley, Monica Byrne, Saad Hossein, Sami Shah, Sophia Al-Maria and Usman Malik.

Review:

I received this from NetGalley and I was so excited as I’d heard of quite a few of the authors in this book and I loved the idea of reading a collection of short stories based on the Djinn.

Because it’s a collection of short stories, it’s difficult to discuss too much as they were all so different in such brilliant ways. One thing that struck me though was that I constantly kept adoring each and every story. There were some that were weaker than other, but there wasn’t a single story in this collection that I didn’t enjoy and all the interpretations of Djinn were fantastic. They took place in diverse settings, with diverse characters and were just a delight to read. I had to stop myself from rushing through the book so that I could stop and savour each story.

I would definitely recommend this collection of short stories as they were all fantastic and have given me a bunch of new authors to look up!