OtakuChris Kluwe’s debut fiction novel, Otaku, hit bookshelves everywhere in March of 2020. Kluwe is a former NFL player, lead designer for the tabletop card game Twilight, and author of a nonfiction collection titled Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies.
Dreamland BurningIt has been a long time since a book has struck me in the sort of way Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham struck me. It’s the sort of book that is devoured, read with the sort of all-consuming fervor that makes a person look up bewildered when the phone rings, or wondering when exactly the sun set. I loved this book. This book is important. It matters.
The Novel of the Tumpinamba IndianWhen I heard that a novel written by a surrealist artist was being published in English for the first time, I knew I needed to read it. I was fascinated, both by the subject matter and the writer. The Novel of the Tumpinamba Indian is a surrealist take on the Spanish Civil War and was written by E. F. Granell, artist and revolutionary.
In CalabriaBooks steeped in myth and folktale are ones that I am always drawn to, so it is with no surprise that I found myself with a copy of In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle.
Claudio Bianchi needs no one, opting to remain on his farm with his animals and his poetry to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. But one day a unicorn that, if he isn’t mistaken, is about to give birth wanders onto his farm and calls it home. Suddenly entrusted with this magical appearance, he finds himself beset upon by those who want the unicorn for their own ends, some of whom refuse to take no as an answer.
AutonomousA book I had my eye on for some time was Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. This is a book about autonomy, what makes someone autonomous, and a race across the globe as an illegally distributed drug begins to rack up an unexpected death toll.
Autonomous is, in a lot of ways, very dystopian. Or it wanted to be. I can’t help but feel that everything wrapped up much too nicely to be considered dystopian. (In the traditional sense of the genre and not counting the Young Adult Dystopians that relate more closely to dark fantasy/sci-fi than to adult dystopian).
Exit WestExit West by Mohsin Hamid is a short book involving a new love, brewing war, and magical doors. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year, this is a book that begs to be read.
The story is about two people, Nadia and Saeed, as they meet and fall in love in the days just before civil war breaks out in an unnamed country. Nadia and Saeed are thrown together, not just for love but for survival in an ever changing, increasingly dangerous world. Then the rumors of the doors start – doors that open to other places. Sometimes it’s a bedroom, a bathroom, an office building, but the important part was that it was not Here, somewhere not torn apart by war. Their goal? To go through one of these doors.
Welcome to Looking Glass Reads! We review speculative fiction novels as well as manga, light novels, and graphic novels.
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