Speculative
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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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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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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
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Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie – REVIEW
Ann Leckie has been on my science fiction TBR for a long, long time now. I desperately need to read her Imperial Radch Series, including her 2024 Hugo-nominated novel Translation State. For that series, though, I want to start at the beginning. So where do I start with Ann Leckie until then? An anthology of… Continue reading
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Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons by Frank Tieri and Inaki Miranda – REVIEW
Is there a more epic combination than Godzilla and pirates? What about Godzilla, pirates, a monster island, and a secret society involving the Queen of England herself? Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons is a conspiracy-filled story that will keep you reading cover to cover. Continue reading
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Bad Dreams in the Night by Adam Ellis – REVIEW
Like most 90s kids, I grew up on scary stories and urban legends. One of my favorite shows as a kid was “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” A show where kids sit around a campfire and take turns telling ghost stories shouldn’t work, but it did. In a lot of ways, Adam Ellis’s Bad Dreams… Continue reading