“There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.” The brilliant Kazuo Ishiguro’s KLARA AND THE SUN is a slow-burn, page-turner that explores humanity, mortality, and love through the perspective of a sentient AI. In this genre defying dystopian sci-fi story Ishiguro questions whether or not there…
Category: science fiction
Ready Player Two
In Ernest Cline’s READY PLAYER TWO, there is a moment when the antagonist asks the heroes: “Don’t you kids ever get tired of picking through the wreckage of a past generation’s nostalgia?” Sadly, this quote perfectly summarizes my feelings about this book! I loved Ready Player One for its originality and fun escapism, though I…
The Memory Police
THE MEMORY POLICE by Yoko Ogawa is presented as a typical dystopian novel. The book jacket uses works like “Orwellian” and “terrors of state surveillance” but what unfolds over the story is very different than expected. On an unnamed island objects are systematically disappearing. People wake up to realize that photographs, hats, roses, or birds have…
The Need
Long listed for the 2019 National Book Award, THE NEED by Helen Phillips starts out as a standard home-invasion/domestic horror thriller but quickly takes a strange turn into the speculative fiction/sci-fi realm! While her husband is traveling for business, Molly – an paleobotanist and mother of 2 young children – finds herself confronted by an…
Pigs
PIGS takes place on an island on which all the Earth’s trash washes ashore. Four children must collect the trash (plastic, uneaten food, nuclear waste, unwanted advise, ect.) and feed it to six monstrous pigs. This cycle has seemingly been going on forever. Oh yeah, on the island there are also adults whose sole purpose seems to be just to torment…
Severance
I feel like I am super late to the party on reading SEVERANCE by Ling Ma, but better late than never especially when the book is this good! It’s a fresh take on the post-apocalyptic storyline and would def be enjoyed by those who love the genre and those who don’t! The story centers on…
The Rule of Many
THE RULE OF MANY by sister/author duo Ashley and Leslie Saunders is the second book in the fast-paced, dystopian series The Rule of One. Picking up right where the first book ended, THE RULE OF MANY follows as twin sister rebels Eva and Mira Goodwin advance the Common’s revolution against the single-child law by directly…
Booky Nooky 