If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Shepherd’s website lets authors suggest their favourite books on a theme. Rohan O’Duill picked science fiction with working class heros to match Cold Rising. Read his suggestions here.
book report corner
Book Report Corner
by Zilla N.
“Better for a beautiful woman to be terrifying than terrorized, she decided.” In Mewing, those are the only options available, and everyone is beautiful.
I have a notoriously low tolerance for gore or body grossness, and I found myself squinting during reading this book, unwilling to look away despite the squelching of my gut. I think Margo would have approved of my body’s response, that strange mix of fascination and revulsion, beauty and horror, seduced and repelled in equal measure. I’m certain the thing in the basement would have approved.
Mewing‘s gender politics are as visceral as its characters. Beauty is a standard created by and for men, but women are the ones best at making each other bleed. There’s hardly a man in sight—I can’t recall a single line uttered by a human male character—as women destroy and reconstruct each other for fleeting moments of validation. Men may hold ultimate power, but it’s women who enforce it.
Steel your stomach, and read this book.
The most wildly entertaining book journeys around the multiverse
If you’re looking for your next great read, how do you find it?
Shepherd’s website lets authors suggest their favourite books on a theme. Ira Nayman, editor of The Dance (an anthology that contains “Do You Love the Colour of the Sky” by Rachel A. Rosen), picked books about the multiverse. Read his suggestions here.
Book Report Corner
by Rachel R.
A mysterious American-style diner appears in an English field, as do a collection of strange objects. These are all linked to a substance that causes a person’s desires, linked to their most nostalgic memories, to manifest. Unfortunately for everyone, this particular nostalgia is fatal—and spreading. Rao, who can discern truth from lies, and Adam, his partner (in espionage, though they both wish it were otherwise) are sent to investigate. The novel flashes back and forth between the investigation and their traumatic backstories.
Usually, when we refer to a book as “reading like fanfic,” we don’t mean it in a complimentary sense. When I say that this book reads like fanfic, I mean that it does what really good fanfic does in exploring the interstitial spaces between adventures, relishing in the transformation of subtext to text, with uncommonly strong character work for what is essentially military sci-fi. The worldbuilding and character backstory feel deeply lived in, as if the story itself is a cathartic coda to a TV show I have been watching for years in hopes of resolution. It’s a book that inspires discussion and meta-analysis and fanaticism.
Ultimately, the authors take everything I like—a strong core sci-fi metaphor, spy hijinks, disaster gays, body horror—and stuff it into an entertaining and weirdly poignant read. I deeply resented the fact that I had to go to work in between reading this. I love Rao a normal amount. I swear I’m fine. Please read this so that I don’t have to rave about it by myself.
Book Report Corner
by Tucker L.
Zilla Novikov’s eye-bulgingly original metafictional tale is told through her increasingly desperate permutations of the same query letter. Rejection upon rejection upon rejection is the conflict. Also, “Ian broke the coffeemaker and no one’s been able to fix it.”
The stakes? Look, we’re in climate apocalypse, and we’re trying to publish our novels before we die.
Read the whole review by Tucker Lieberman (author of Most Famous Short Film of All Time) here.
Book Report Corner
by Zilla N.
Remember when you were 14 years old and you sat on the edge of your bed and put a new CD in your Walkman and your headphones over your ears and as you listened to the music you thought, “This musician has been here, inside my bedroom, inside my skull. They must have been here. They understand.”
And then you got older and you weren’t 14 anymore and that sense of wonder from someone who understands a part of yourself you’d never been able to articulate doesn’t happen so often, and besides, most feelings are universal so what’s the magic in someone perfectly encapsulating a sensation, a feeling, that everyone has anyway. It’s not special. It’s not about you, alone in your bedroom, wondering what it would look like to find a connection.
This book hit me like a burning dump truck.
There’s a special kind of lonliness that’s not queer specifically, anyone can feel it, but it hits the part of myself that doesn’t know who I am and who anyone else is either, not in their entirety, not what it means to be an authentic self, to stop reaching for something perfect and bury white hands in the filth and squalor because it’s better to feel unclean than nothing. Anything’s better than being cold.
If you’re queer, or lonely, or burning, read this.
Book Report Corner
by Rohan O.
I received Corrupted Vessels as part of a book box I bought from tRaum books, so I had no idea what to expect when I started reading.
I don’t think I have ever come across a cover that gives me such similar vibes as what I felt while reading. It is inspired, even if I have to hide it away because it disturbs me, lol.
The writing in this book is fantastic and Briar’s ability to create such real and vivid characters is second to none. All the characters have aspects that I recognised from people I know in the real world, and I was immediately caught up in their world and their problems. The building tension through the story is masterfully done, and there were parts that distressed me more than any fiction I can remember. This is a beautifully sordid little book that whisks you away into its unsettling world.
There is also an excellent little bonus story.
This book is so good that even if it’s not your jam, you will thoroughly enjoy it.
Book Report Corner
You’ve probably heard by now that a bunch of Night Beats authors wrote an anthology, Instant Classic, with the proceeds donated to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières to support their crucial work.
It felt a bit too circular to review our own book, so here’s what Michelle Browne, author of The Meaning Wars, had to say about it.
“A joyous, pitch-black, vicious read, Instant Classic is a scathing, direct hit on the experience of writing in the current era. It’s a grim business, this metafictional genre-spanning tale of corporate malfeasance and exploitation, and the people struggling to get by in the margins. Rife with metafictional references to the other stories in the volume, the shorts have a unified vision and vibe that cuts like the folded layers of Japanese steel.”
“This book might not hit for people outside the industry, but that’s okay. For the rest of us, who slave and dream over backlit screens and messy nests of pages, welcome. Unite. The only thing we have to lose is our chains.”
The best books where the narrator won’t stay out of the (meta) story
Book Report Corner
by Rachel R.
This is a gritty, gripping tale in the tradition of Golden Age sci-fi but with very contemporary sensibilities. Olgo, an agent for a megacorporation whose CEO has found religion and a sudden conscience, is sent to Mars to ensure that the company’s subcontractors adhere to labour standards. Suong is a 12-year-old worker in an industrial city who dreams of the stars. Their paths become entwined when Olgo runs afoul of a corrupt cartel determined to suppress the underground unions that have been emboldened by their efforts.
If you love works like the Expanse (realistic physics, working-class characters) and badass + adorable child duos, this is absolutely the novella for you. It’s a quick, action-packed read with a ton of heart, and an exciting introduction to the Cold Rush universe.
Night Beats Extended Universe 