Kimmerle doesn’t dwell on the violence; her focus is on telling the story without elaboration or obfuscation to best communicate her belief that every scoop of dirt contributes to long-overdue restorative justice for the dead, the broken, and their families.
Tag Archives: Lovely prose
‘Archive’ Alternates Between Magical and Heartbreaking
The Archive is a novel, but its parts, while interconnected, are fit together in such a way that they can be separated from each other. But all of these parts, though excellent on their own, come together to make a whole far grander than their sum.
‘Babel’ a Fascinating Course in Linguistics and Labor
Although Babel takes place in the first half of the nineteenth century, the message about colonialism and a supposed superiority of one country or race is one for today. So is the eventual turn toward solidarity among the outcasts and the working class.
A Different Kind of Chosen One in ‘Grace’
The Chosen One is a staple of the fantasy genre, especially in YA, but it’s the attempts to contort or subvert it that I tend to find the most compelling. Emily Thiede stretches the trope like silly putty in her debut, This Vicious Grace. Alessa was chosen by Dea to be this generation’s bearer ofContinue reading “A Different Kind of Chosen One in ‘Grace’”
‘Harvest’ Gives Bumper Crop of Chills
Rural towns and wide-open fields have proved fertile material for horror stories for decades. What moves in the corn? Nothing good, probably. But in Ann Fraistat’s What We Harvest, it’s what’s underground—what’s in the very soil—that you have to watch out for. The farmland that 16-year-old Wren’s family has worked for the last six generationsContinue reading “‘Harvest’ Gives Bumper Crop of Chills”
‘What Moves the Dead’ a Creepy Gothic Horror
The Twisted Ones, T. Kingfisher‘s take on Arthur Machen’s short story The White People, has still left me, three years after reading it, uneasy around dolls and deer skeletons (which, to be fair, I encounter more often than the average person). The picture on the cover of What Moves the Dead was of a mangled-ish rabbit andContinue reading “‘What Moves the Dead’ a Creepy Gothic Horror”
‘Crane Wife’ Questions Identity, Relationships
No close relationship is totally straightforward; that’s impossible whenever two people entwine themselves around each other for whatever purpose. But romantic relationships, and the relationships we have with ourselves as beings who may get into romantic relationships, are fraught with all manner of expectations and suppositions—often implicit and inherited from our families and/or the societyContinue reading “‘Crane Wife’ Questions Identity, Relationships”
‘Thistlefoot’ Brings Extra Emotion to Folktales
Home is where the heart is. In the case of GennaRose Nethercott’s debut novel, Thistlefoot, home can be wherever home chooses to go. And along being the resting place for the heart, home is also where generational trauma from an entire community comes to roost. The Yaga siblings were once close. Helping their parents runContinue reading “‘Thistlefoot’ Brings Extra Emotion to Folktales”
‘Signal to Noise’ Full of Spellbinding Nostalgia
Way back in my childhood days, the 80s had passed recently enough that nothing about them was cool. The 70s, sure, but the 80s? As if. Time has a way of making old things new again, though, as evidenced by the Stranger Things kids and all the other 80s properties stirring up nostalgia and retroContinue reading “‘Signal to Noise’ Full of Spellbinding Nostalgia”
‘Sea of Tranquility’ Dizzying and Beautiful
I’ve heard raves about Station Eleven for years, as well as, more recently, The Glass Hotel. But my first attempt into Station Eleven didn’t get me far so I just assumed Emily St. John Mandel wasn’t a writer for me. I’m not sure how to quantify how wrong I was. Because within pages of Mandel’sContinue reading “‘Sea of Tranquility’ Dizzying and Beautiful”
Ring Reads 