Books shelved under “Ebook”

Last year around this time, I enjoyed A Palace Near the Wind. A River from the Sky is the essential and satisfying conclusion to this duology. I received an eARC from Titan Books and NetGalley in return for a review.

Literally picking up where the first novella leaves off, A River from the Sky follows Lufeng’s attempt to flee with her siblings and reunite with her sister, Sangshu. Lufeng wants to tear down the…

Short story collections are, as I always say at the start of every review of one, a hard sell for me. I love novels. Indeed, I identified a lot with what Samantha Mills says in her afterword about writing long novels in her youth and only recently getting around to learning how to short story. That’s true for me as a writer and a reader. Nevertheless, I liked The Wings Upon Her Back enough that…

The promise of an epistolary novel about AI intrigued me. It has been a long time since I read a good, contemporary epistolary novel! Your Behavior Will Be Monitored attempts to tell a unique and moving story about the boundaries between artificial intelligence and personhood. However, I’m not sure Justin Feinstein has said anything new here, and the impersonal nature of much of the “letters” belie the usual warmth found in epistolary novels. I received…

Spotlight on Keza, and I couldn’t be happier. I love her irascibility as a cover for her loneliness and trauma. Claudie Arseneault’s talent for assembling an ensemble cast of complementary characters is one of the strengths of Chronicles of Nerezia. Now, in Lost Traditions, we get a close-up on Keza and some of her concerns. I received an eARC in exchange for a review.

The Wagon crew are nearing their destination and hoping—Aliyah…

What if we were the pets to alien conquerors? Not an original yet definitely an intriguing premise. After the Fall is a surprisingly pathos-filled romp through an Earth ravaged by the Greys, where one man and his master struggle to eke out a living on the margins. I can’t say I loved it, but like many science-fiction humour novels, that could be more me than the book. I received an eARC from NetGalley and St.…

Elizabeth Kolbert is such a fantastic writer, and when Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World was available on NetGalley, I jumped on it. Thanks to Crown for the review copy! This book is a collection of Kolbert’s essays about the natural world and especially climate change. They showcase Kolbert’s talents but, more importantly, serve as testimony to the anthropogenic era of our planet. Oddly enough, I think this collection might be…

Space: the final frontier. Except it’s actually many frontiers. The history of spaceflight is fascinating precisely because of its incremental nature. Humanity didn’t suddenly venture forth into deep space, and obviously we have a ways to go yet. So I love reading about this history, and the Gemini program is something with which I was not very familiar. In Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, the Untold Story, Jeffrey Kluger chronicles this program. I…

You know your girl loves a time loop. So when I realized one of my favourite contemporary authors wrote a time-travel secondary world fantasy, my jaw dropped. Has Christmas come early?? The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow’s latest, might be my favourite novel from her thus far (I would have to reread The Once and Future Witches to be sure). Despite being in no uncertain terms a romance, its time-travel mechanics are timey wimey in…

When The Great Math War became available on NetGalley, you would not believe how quickly I windmill-slammed to request it. My university education is actually in mathematics (I hold an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics, a Bachelor of Education, and minors in English and philosophy). I wrote my honours thesis on ZFC set theory and the Banach–Tarski paradox. So I was already familiar with the overall ideas Jason Socrates Bardi presents here—yet I was…

Sometimes you can’t shake the idea that you’ve forgotten something. In Ruined History, the sixth book of The Chronicles of Nerezia, this feeling haunts Aliyah quite literally. As they navigate the expectations placed upon them by friends and foe, they learn a lot about themselves—but there is still so much missing. Claudie Arseneault’s storytelling continues to be a fun combination of thoughtful, creative, and fulfilling. I received an eARC in exchange for a (long…

Did I ever think I would read a nonfiction book about maple syrup? No. Yet when the opportunity arose thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House, in exchange for a review, I jumped. I love maple syrup as much as the next sweettoothed Canadian! Peter Kuitenbrouwer brings a uniquely suited perspective to chronicle the history and economics of the industry with writing that feels as comprehensive as it is warm.

Kuitenbrouwer’s history is smartly organized,…

Memory has always fascinated me. I consider myself someone of below-average recall: my memories feel hazy, disordered, disappointing. The chance to revisit some of my memories with perfect fidelity on a big screen? Wow. The Second Chance Cinema is that rare novel with a perfect premise for me. Thea Weiss sets it up so neatly: a couple, engaged, stumbling on a mysterious movie theatre. Alas, the secrets they’ve kept are more banal than bombastic, and…

Every so often I read a book I had convinced myself I was excited to read only to discover I wasn’t. Not “I was excited but this book let me down” but rather “I thought I was excited, and now I realize that excitement was something else all along!” That, unfortunately, is the fate of Queen Demon by Martha Wells. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for a review, and I…

Just because you’re an expert doesn’t mean you can write a popular political science book…. That, unfortunately, is the lesson I take away from So You Want to Own Greenland?: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump. Elizabeth Buchanan is nominally an expert in polar geopolitics. However, her book about the contentious history of Greenland’s settlement and sovereignty is anything but interesting. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Melville House in exchange for…

I requested the eARC for Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World purely on the basis of its title, and Mark Waddell did not disappoint. This is a book that delivers exactly what I expected—which is to say, I knew going in that this book would not be groundbreaking in any way, and that’s fine. It was exactly the kind of absurdist fantasy I was hoping for.

Colin is a low-level employee of Dark Enterprises,…

Humans have screwed Earth and the only option is to rush outwards into the stars, ad astra per aspera style. Oh wait, you’ve heard this one? Synthetic Eden really hopes you haven’t. Alexander Titus and Sean Platt have crafted a space colonization narrative that isn’t so much planetary romance as it is planetary horror, with a side order of social breakdown thriller. It has its moments, and I kept reading until the end because I…

Um, OK. Wow. Rude. Seriously, it’s so inconsiderate of C.L. Clark to just go and write a gut-punch of a concluding volume to this incredible trilogy. This is one of my favourite modern epic fantasy series, and if you haven’t picked up The Unbroken or The Faithless yet, then run, don’t walk to your nearest indie bookshop or library because wow. I’m giving this book five stars and actually retroactively want to go back…

Unexpectedly healing and wholesome, Lessons in Magic and Disaster is queer, witchy, and compassionate in just the right amounts. Anders manages to acknowledge the effects of intergenerational trauma while at the same time holding characters to account for their individual bullshit. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for a review.

Jamie is a graduate student writing her thesis on a fictional novel (Emily) by a real eighteenth-century novelist (Sarah…

If I claimed to remember anything of Baker Thief, Claudie Arseneault’s aspec mystery romp involving a genderfluid baker, I would be lying. Five years is too long for this reader to remember details of books. Nevertheless, when Arseneault announced a sequel to this story, I jumped at the chance to read a review copy. Painted Flock is just as enjoyable and fun as my review of Baker Thief tells me I found that book.…

I was intrigued by the description of Sam Kean’s latest book. I love learning about history in various new ways! So I was pleased to receive an eARC of Dinner with King Tut from NetGalley and publisher Little, Brown and Company. Indeed, one cannot fault Kean for his scrupulous commitment to embodying experiential archaeology—this book reads like a Discovery channel series, back when Discovey channel was good.

Kean is upfront and warns us that the…