Review: Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

After reading a number of possibly orientalist fantasy stories, I was looking forward to reading "a Golden Compass for the Arab Spring," as one blurb has it.  However, Alif the Unseen, by G. Willow Wilson, reminds me less of The Golden Compass and more of The Historian.

Review: The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

This is a Margo Lanagan novel, so I was pretty sure it was going to make me uncomfortable.  And I was right.

It's the story of an isolated town, a little island fishing community, where something cruel and deviant becomes socially acceptable.  Although the novel reminds me of news stories about Pitcairn Island, the plot's ripped from folktales, not headlines. 

Review: The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

What if you worst insecurities were revealed--not just with words but with physical manifestations, like a rash on your skin or an angry monster that followed you around?  That's the nightmare scenario that plays out in Nalo Hopkinson's The Chaos, the freakiest YA novel I've read since Libba Bray's Printz-winning Going Bovine.