sci-fi
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The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark: REVIEW
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins shot to the top of my most anticipated reads of 2024 after reading P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout, which is one of my favorite SFF novellas of all time. Clark’s writing is among the best in the SFF community, and his world-building in Ring Shout is immensely captivating. I went into… Continue reading
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Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa – REVIEW
Lost Ark Dreaming pulled me in with the promise of Snowpiercer meets River Solomon’s The Deep. What more could I want? I love it when speculative fiction really “goes there,” like both Snowpiercer and The Deep did. Please give me brutality, economic divides, and world collapse in speculative fiction. I want to think and feel… Continue reading
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Time’s Agent by Brenda Peynado – REVIEW
I have always loved books about time travel, especially those that involve multi-dimensional travel, which made me immediately curious about Time’s Agent. One of my favorite Young Adult series is Claudia Gray’s Firebird series, which involves interdimensional travel, an intelligent group of protagonists, and a corporation that wants to exploit the dimensions for its own… Continue reading
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There is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes, Jr. – Review
I’ve been excited to share my review of There is a Rio Grande in Heaven for a long time now. This anthology blew me away and resonated with me deeply. It’s difficult for an anthology to have no misses at all, but Ruben Reyes, Jr. accomplishes that feat in this debut. Continue reading
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One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon – REVIEW
If you read contemporary young adult fiction, you’ve probably heard of Nicola Yoon. Her wildly popular novels The Sun is Also a Star and Everything, Everything adored by readers and were even made into movies. To be perfectly honest, her young adult novels never appealed to me. However, Yoon’s upcoming adult debut, One of Our Kind, is a very… Continue reading
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Ten Books I Need to Read This Year
Does anyone else keep only a small selection of physical books? I used to keep up with all the book boxes and special editions and had huge shelves of physical books, but I realized that I wasn’t ever actually reading the books on my shelves. While there are certain books I buy multiple editions of,… Continue reading
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Hobtown Mystery Stories Vol. 1, The Case of the Missing Men by Kris Bertin – REVIEW
The Case of the Missing Men is volume one in the graphic novel Hobtown Mystery Stories and follows a high school Detective Club that solves crimes around Hobtown (population: 2,006). When the Club gets their first real case to solve, they start to uncover weird things happening under the surface of their town. The Case of the Missing Men is… Continue reading
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The Cull, Volume 1 by Kelly Thompson and Mattia De Iulis – REVIEW
The Cull bills itself as Something is Killing the Children meets “The Goonies,” which sounds right up my alley. Its summary reads like a Karen McManus young adult mystery-horror, which hooked me. Five teen friends leave their homes in the middle of the night to shoot a film at the beach, but one of them is lying to the… Continue reading
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Ten Hugo Finalists I Picked Up This Week – ROAD TO THE HUGOS
In case you missed my Sunday Post, the 2024 Hugo Award Finalists were recently announced. One thing I realized very quickly after the announcement is that I am very behind this year. While we wait for the Voter Packet to be prepared for the voters, I desperately needed to start reading some of the finalists… Continue reading
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Sunday Post – Hugo Nominees and Thoughts
Welcome back to Back Shelf Books for another Sunday Post! How is it already April?? It feels like it was just January! I can’t believe we’re a quarter of the way through the year already. The 2024 Hugo Award nominees were announced this past week. While I’m extremely disappointed in what happened with the 2023… Continue reading