Writer and software engineer in the US Midwest. I enjoy poetry, horror, some f/sf, some mystery, some literary fiction (but not the kind where the main character is a professor and nothing happens).
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Disclaimer: The author is a friend of mine.
Proof of the Sun is a short chapbook of poems about the author’s experience of childhood sexual abuse. The writing is beautiful, though that seems odd to say given the subject matter. Ott tells her story with incisive honesty, expressing anger and pain, of course, but also finding hope and even humor in her experiences.
A collection of stories in the realm of the fantastic. Lee was a master of diversely sumptuous prose styles, though her pacing might be too leisurely for today’s taste. She had a sharp sense of irony, and a vivid and twisted imagination. The orientalism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, all common in her time, spoil parts of these stories now.
And lo, Vernon Lee’s prose style was like unto that of William Morris, wearing the garb of former times; save that her every sentence was festooned with irony, in contrast to the sober demeanor of his.
Exactly the book I needed in today’s political climate.
At the far end of our universe, on the twin planets of Werel and Yeowe, all humankind is divided into …
"Carl Streator is a solitary widower and fortyish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on …
A Shirley Jackson Award winner, so my response is probably idiosyncratic. The characters are bizarre, believable, and deep — some monstrous, some merely broken. The prose is good, outstanding in places. The plotting is manipulative. I think that’s meant to reflect the theme, but a better and deeper story could have been told with less misdirection. Probably most horror fans will rate this book higher than I do. (Since this platform doesn’t allow fractional points, I’m rounding up from 3.75.)
In a far future city, where you can fall to a government cull for a …
Science fiction horror with both ideas and heart. And I always enjoy a good revenge tale, especially if class warfare is involved.
