In Joe Ambercrombie’s Best Served Cold, Revenge is a Tired Trope
Why do some revenge stories work and others, like Best Served Cold, fall flat?
Book Reviews
Quitting Haruki Murakami
The originality that captured my attention in his early work is now just recycled, a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.
Tilling the Prose of Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland
Smarsh demands the reader to defy stereotypes, to see the complexity of a person, instead of the image of a single mom with a baby on her hip, standing in the screen door of a trailer with a cigarette dangling off her lip.
Educated: Abuse, Trauma and Escape
In Educated, Tara Westover escapes the abuse and trauma of a family who has a deep distrust of public education, medical science, and the government.
Vulnerability and Interior Lives in The Goblin Emperor
The Goblin Emperor inverts some classic fantasy tropes.
The Astral Delight of The Luminaries
Part murder mystery and love story, set during the New Zealand gold rush as characters orbit and collide in a dramatic tour de force.
There Are No Individuals in The Overstory, No Separable Events
Richard Power’s novel, The Overstory, is a complex, spreading network of roots and branches. The characters interact, are invented, relate and yet seem not to realize their influence.
The Feather Thief Untangles the Knots on The Natural History Heist of the Century
Edwin Rist is the feather thief. Was he a young man, too easily indulged by parents, and full of obsession? Was Edwin a detached manipulator?