Category: Fiction Book Reviews

September 5, 2024

Haunting Lights

A review of Jen Storm’s “Little Moons”By Derek Newman-Stille Little Moons is a powerful exploration of the violence inflicted on the Indigenous community, particularly through missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. It is an examination of grief and how grief shapes us, changes us, and can bring some of us closer to traditions while it may also...

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November 13, 2023

Re-membering Jewish History

A Review of Other Covenants: Alternative Histories of the Jewish People edited by Andrea D. Lobel and Mark Shainblum (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022) By Derek Newman-Stille Other Covenants reimagines Jewish history, tracing different possibilities and new paths forward. As a work of alternative history, it remaps the Jewish world and stories and traditions that were familiar become defamiliarized and reimagined....

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October 13, 2021

Indigenous-Settler Relationships in the Zombie Apocalypse

A review of Blood Quantum (2019) By Derek Newman-Stille Blood Quantum, like many zombie movies, is a commentary on consumption. The movie explores the idea of a zombie outbreak that Indigenous people are immune from. It is a powerful commentary on settler-Indigenous relationships, exploring historic and continual settler violence toward Indigenous people, played out in literal acts of attacks, as...

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September 19, 2021

What Do Dragons Eat?

A review of Kim McDougall’s Dragons Don’t Eat Meat (Wrong Tree Press, 2020)By Derek Newman-Stille Part Valkyrie and part Dryad, Kyra Greene walks between worlds. She’s cut off from her Norse roots and has no connection with dryads, and perhaps this allows her to connect to other outsiders and others who are looking for homes. Kyra works in the magical...

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September 17, 2021

Nothing As It Seems

A review of Jamieson Wolf’s Beyond the Stone (Renaissance, 2021) By Derek Newman-stille Nothing is as it seems in Jamieson Wolf’s Beyond the Stone. This is an exciting urban fantasy adventure with many twists and turns and a world standing on the precipice of massive and dangerous change. Not only is the world in a state of change, but so...

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September 6, 2021

Coming of Age at 60

A review of Lydia M Hawke’s Becoming Crone (Michem Publishing, 2021).By Derek Newman-Stille We hear popular, ageist phrases like “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, and “past your prime”. In our society, ageing is presumed to be a process of decline, an increase in loss, and not a time of growth or learning. Yet, of course learning never...

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August 31, 2021

Choices

A review of Liselle Sambury’s Blood Like Magic (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2021)By Derek Newman-Stille Choices. They are something that beleaguer every teen. Teens are constantly having to think about the future, but also about how to acknowledge their past. Voya is known for being indecisive, but now she’s reached an age where she needs to make a decision that...

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May 28, 2021

Aaaaaaand… Now I’m A Supervillain

A review of Natlie Walschots’ Hench (HarperCollins, 2020) By Derek Newman-Stille Natalie Walschots’ Hench is powerful inspiration for the reader to become a villain. Walshots takes her readers into the mind of a temp hench person, exploring what it is like to work for supervillains, but, perhaps more importantly, what it is like to be the victim of superhero violence....

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May 24, 2021

Belonging Takes Place Beneath the Surface

Belonging Takes Place Beneath the Surface A review of Karleen Pendleton-Jimenez’ The Street Belongs To Us (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) By Derek Newman-Stille America is a thin veneer over a much more complex world, and in 1984 when Muscatel Avenue is torn up there are new possibilities and potentials in the mud. In The Street Belongs to Us, Karleen Pendleton...

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April 5, 2021

Ennui in Space

A review of James Alan Gardner’s Ascending (Open Road Media) By Derek Newman-Stille Ascending is James Alan Gardner’s discourse on boredom wrapped up in science fiction. Gardner’s narrator Oar is from a genetically modified species that at the age of 50 literally just becomes bored with the world and lays down to sleep for eternity…. and Oar has just reached...

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