Reviews of Science Fiction and Fantasy novels by Jessica Strider, a former bookseller and avid reader. You'll also find shout-outs to SFF books, medieval history book reviews, tidbits and more.
I worked at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto for 10 years, until it closed in 2014. During my time there I planned themed endcaps and did author interview displays.
For several years I contributed book reviews, New Author Spotlight posts and a Recommended Readings with Professionals column on the SF Signal website.
I've got a BA in Medieval History from the University of Toronto.
I'm an avid photographer and crafter, and started making my own greeting cards a few years ago.
Strange Horticulture is a video game developed by Bad Viking and published by Iceberg Interactive. It's an interactive story where you play a character who's recently inherited their uncle's plant shop. As you help patrons by giving them the flowers they ask for, you gain pages in your botany book that help with the identification. Letters and other interactions lead you to locations on a map where you can find new plants for the shop. Meanwhile, a horrible murder has taken place and people involved with it come to you for various forms of aid.
The game is a lot of fun. I love plants and herbals, so putting the book together and reading about the plants was great. The story has several points where you can choose between 2 plants to give someone, a decision that impacts future options and the ending of the game. There is some mention of the occult, and you have the ability to personally kill one person. I've gotten 3 of the 8 endings so far. The game also has some mapping puzzles to solve, which keeps things interesting. A few of the puzzles were challenging until I figured out their trick. The visuals are gorgeous, including the petable cat that sits and sleeps on the counter. It's a point and click game, so there's no time based stress involved. The controls are easy to figure out and it takes about 6-8 hours to play through the first time.
I highly recommend the game if you like plants, the occult, and simple puzzles.
Pros: sweet story, gorgeous and inventive setting, interesting magic
Cons:
Cursed to become a statue for performing an illegal act of sorcery, Terlu is surprised to be awakened in a snowy forest. She finds herself on an island full of enchanted greenhouses whose magic is failing. Their keeper, Yarrow, believes she can fix them, but she doesn't know how to and isn't sure it's worth the risk of performing more illegal magic.
I loved the book. It's the second in the Spellshop series but stands alone very well. I haven't read the first book yet, but plan to after reading this. The stakes were mostly low key, so I never felt stressed about how the plot would be resolved. And I really needed to read something cozy and unstressful. The few tense moments the book had were filled with hope and heart and people doing their best, working together in difficult circumstances. Terla and Yarrow were both honestly good characters who wanted the greenhouses to survive for each other to be happy. The food Yarrow cooked sounded delicious, though I did start to wonder why everything tasted like spring or summer to Terla.
While the idea of greenhouses on their own isn't inventive, Durst fills them with a mix of practical garden vegetables, beautiful flowers, and exquisite magic. Some of the rooms and the creatures within are wondrous and I'd love to visit for real and see them for myself. The sentient plants were a mix of fun and annoying, but I love the idea of them and enjoyed the variety of personalities on display. I loved how magic worked in this world. As someone who's studied several languages, it was neat seeing Terla parse the various meanings words can have and experiment with spells. I loved the winged cat and feel that more fantasy worlds should include them.
The romance was understated and sweet. It progressed naturally and felt measured. There's nothing on the page beyond a few kisses and cuddles, making this appropriate for YA and adult audiences. It is LGBT friendly, with one lesbian couple showing up a side characters later in the book.
If you're looking for a feel good romance with a lot of plants and no spice, this is for you.
The book consists of 8 chapters in addition to the introduction: Beginnings; Expanding World: A-Group; C-Group and Pan-Grave Cultures Move In; Nubia’s First Empire: Kerma; An Interlude with Egypt; Nubia’s Second Empire: The Napatan Period; Nubia’s Third Empire: The Meriotic Period; and Beyond the Meroitic Empire. There’s a forward by Henry Louix Gates, Jr. that explores what Nubia and Egypt meant to enslaved Africans in America, and why learning about ancient African nations and their accomplishments was so important to black Americans.
The book follows the chronological history of Nubia, as we can piece it together through archaeological evidence. The early chapters are fairly short, as there isn’t much evidence or material objects. There are at least a few photos per chapter illuminating the text. The chapters get more detailed as empires rose, since they left significantly more behind. The book constantly compares the artwork, homes, clothing, and habits (as well as can be determined) to the more well known Egyptian one. So we’re told that Egyptian artwork is more formulaic, while Nubian artwork has more of a naturalistic look, with freer forms and curvier figures. I was especially interested to learn the ways Nubian metalworkers experimented with enamel to create mixed forms much earlier than appeared elsewhere in the world.
In addition to images of artworks, the book also has some floor plans for palaces and temples, diagrams of houses, etc.
It’s fascinating learning about such a little known culture. Their artwork deserves to be known in its own right, separate from that of Egypt. Hopefully this book will encourage people to learn more about the Nubians and their culture.
My thanks to Yale University Press for allowing me to read an advance copy of Ancient Nubian Art: A History, by Rita E. Freed. It's an interesting look at an ancient African nation that's been largely overlooked due to its proximity to Egypt. While it had periods where the artwork of the Nubians was similar to that of the Egyptians (due to the nations conquering each other), Nubian art also has a lot of originality to it that's worth studying in depth for its own sake. The book can be dry and academic at times, but it has some great artwork. I'll be posting my review of it in a few days.
Lushly illustrated with stunning artifacts, this volume is the first comprehensive and accessible publication to explore the art, architecture, and material culture of ancient Nubia.
Kings and queens of Nubia reigned over one of the largest empires in the ancient world and had contacts extending north to Greece and Rome, south to sub-Saharan Africa, east to the Red Sea, and west across much of the Sahel. Even a quick look at Nubia’s artifacts reveals the incredible creativity of its artists, architects, craftspeople, and thinkers. Despite their significance, the achievements of ancient Nubia are little known to the public and are often viewed as a subculture, a derivative offshoot of Egypt, Nubia’s northern neighbor. Nothing could be further from the truth. During its over eight-thousand-year lifespan (beginning around 8000 BCE), Nubia indelibly shaped the art and architecture of the ancient world, an influence still felt today.
Ancient Nubian Art is the first comprehensive and accessible treatment of Nubian artistic culture and showcases its vast range—from ceramics, sculptures, and jewelry to tombs, temples, and palaces. Rita E. Freed, curator emerita at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which has the largest collection of Nubian artifacts outside the Nile Valley, contextualizes the development of Nubian art against a vivid backdrop of kingship, power, worship, identity, gender, technology, and internationalism. Her text is accompanied by a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and sidebars by expert voices from the field.
Pros: interesting characters, constant plot twists, suspenseful, thought provoking
Cons:
What would you do if there was a scientific way of finding THE ONE, that one person in the whole world who completes you? This is the story of 5 people who take the test, get their matches, and discover that finding THE ONE isn’t at all what they expected.
The book is a near sci-fi psychological suspense. While I did anticipate a few twists, the characters made so many unexpected decisions and were thrown such wild situations that I was on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next.
The book cycles through the five protagonists, and leaves you on constant mini cliffhangers as they discover something new before the narrative swaps to the next character. This keeps things fast paced and interesting. The characters themselves were intriguing and varied, with all of them coming from different backgrounds and wanting something different from their match. It’s interesting seeing what they’re willing to give up and do for their matched partners.
I found the premise thought provoking and the author does a great job of showing how a variety of people react to finding their match. While a lot of the turmoil the program unleashed is hand waved away by some of the protagonists, it’s clear that this has largely reshaped the world and how people approach marriage and relationships.
I though the ending followed the consequences of the protagonists choices and so felt satisfying.
The book picks up a few months in our world after the events of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known. Nancy, living in the Halls of the Dead, where time passes slower, is forced to flee when the hungry ghosts start killing her fellow living statues. She asks her former classmates at Miss Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children for aid, and though it’s against the school’s rules, they embark on another quest.
The book has a beautiful lyricism to it. McGuire’s prose often reads like poetry with a lot of pointed commentary on the human condition. Though the Halls of the Dead have shown up in previous books, we get to learn more about it and it’s rulers. We also get to learn more about Talia, who’s briefly mentioned in the previous book.
It’s cool seeing how the kids’ various talents help them solve the problem. The novella’s the perfect length for this adventure.
Pros: Skarsgard is brilliant as Murderbot, really good special effects and sets, interesting characters, good soundtrack, social commentary, thought provoking, lots to discover on subsequent viewings
Cons: uncomfortable to watch at times the first time through, a few gauche sexual comments
The first time I watched the show I’d only read the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells that this show is based on, All Systems Red. That was in 2018, so while I remembered the premise of the book, I couldn’t remember any details. I thought the story was interesting, the characters were fun, and the special effects and set designs impressively realistic. I also thought the show had a lot of cringey, uncomfortable moments.
The second time I watched the show I’d read all of the books and stories. This time I realized that the show is designed to be uncomfortable on one side and shocking on the other. The books are all told from Murderbot’s point of view. And Murderbot finds human interactions awkward and uncomfortable. By making the show uncomfortable to watch at times, the directors are putting US in Murderbot’s shoes. We feel uncomfortable because IT feels uncomfortable. My third time through I started noticing just how brilliant an actor Alexander Skarsgard is as Murderbot. While horror and discomfort come easily to its features there are very tiny, very subtle facial movements when it’s happy. On the flip side, several scenes are incredibly shocking and while Murderbot is nonchalant in the face of violence, the humans aren’t, so this time we’re put in THEIR shoes. Because of the shock you can’t appreciate the humour of Murderbot’s commentary in those scenes until you’ve watched them a couple of times and – like it – have become inured to the violence of their world.
The show also does an incredible job of showing not telling. There’s a scene in episode 7 where Murderbot is fighting an enemy SecUnit and the humans are ‘helping’ as a visual play on the sarcastic comments Murderbot scatters all over the books. It’s even funnier when they’re congratulating themselves for the good job they did in the next episode and we get flashbacks of what actually happened.
The musical score by Amanda Jones is great and reminds me of background music in the Portal games by Valve (composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky). The theme song for Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon is surprisingly addictive.
The show does deviate from the text in a lot of places. Several new plot twists were added to make up the run time for the season and most notably, except for Mensah the humans never really trust Murderbot.
I did find LeeBeeBee’s sexual comments genuinely uncomfortable, and not just in a Murderbot kind of way. Those scenes make it harder to wholeheartedly recommend the show to everyone I know who likes science fiction.
This is a show that, like the books, really benefits from contemplation and revisiting.
After finishing the show I came across a video called The Murderbot Ending is Different in the Best Way by Pete Peppers that covers Murderbot’s journey of emancipation. It’s really good and mentioned several things I’d missed. It contains full spoilers for the show, so only watch it if you’ve seen all the episodes.
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