Reviews and Comments

Primarily science fiction poetry with some horror elements. Plenty of humor and anger and playfulness and pain and thought. Some of the standouts for me: “Perish and Live Forever,” “The Payphone,” “Last Act of a Doomed Man,” “The Things That Killed Us: A History through Art,” and the title poem.

(New in 2025, no star ratings on my reviews. Two of the reasons: 1. numerical ratings are simplistic quantifications of the experiential; 2. I’ve realized my own x/5 ratings have reflected my mood of the moment more than my evaluation of the work.)

This is an anthology of stories, poems, art, and hard-to-categorize works dealing with AI and the other algorithms that threaten our humanity. The breadth and depth of creativity here is inspiring, a team of John Henry artists showing up that steam hammer (only without destroying themselves in the process).

A Ruritanian reimagining of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” featuring linguistic invention, zombie hares, and heroic deeds by an aunt of Beatrix Potter. As always, Kingfisher is imaginative and entertaining.

A heist caper set in the Middle Ages, with the loot being the bones of St. Nicholas. A dash of queer romance. Based on actual events.

Thoughtful, richly informative, and entertaining. My one tiny complaint is the lack of an index, because I’d like to use this book as a reference work. However, the lists are easy to find and as useful as they are fun: “10 Horror Movies About Black-White Race Relations Not Named Get Out,” “The Baddest Black Horror Villains,” untitled lists such as horror movies with Black leads, and more.

An anthology of queer monster stories—as in, the monsters are queer. I didn’t realize when I bought the book that it’s YA. I wish books like this had been available when I was a young adult, and I wouldn’t hesitate to give this book to a young adult in my life.

This collection has eco-horror, body horror, folk horror, the horrors of war, even food horror and library horror. It has straightforward storytelling, non-human narrators, and visual poetry. Some stories will make you laugh, some will make you cry, some will make you think, some you will try to forget. Content warnings in the back.

An interesting and thought-provoking work on the history and possible future of humanity. The scholarship is broad, which makes me (perhaps unfairly) skeptical of its depth. Sapiens covers a number of complex topics in an accessible way, so I assume some tiny percentage of what I learned from this book is misinformation.

No Gods, No Monsters is a weird book on many levels, from the unreliable omniscient(ish) narrator to the ant teleportation circles and the finger-eating dragon boy. It’s also a book that asks meaningful questions, both personal and social, and answers them in the ways that life does: enigmatically, heartbreakingly, surprisingly, or not at all. This is not a book to skim: there are many characters and a multitude of storylines, and the prose is worth paying attention to. A rewarding read.

A wonderful, creepy anthology that’s perfect for not reading late at night when you’re alone in the house. The stories feature a variety of styles, themes, and approaches, ranging from folk horror to cosmic, from conventional narrative to experimental. Writers I‘m familiar with are here, like Nnedi Okorafor, Nalo Hopkinson, and Tananarive Due, but I also discovered a few new names for my bookshop.org wishlist.

You have to have a taste for literature that actively resists making sense, but if you do, this is rewarding.