book review
Books reviews of the best science fiction stories, texts, educational texts, and journals.
The Shineman’s Magical Diary
**This essay may contain spoilers of the books The Living and The Hunted by Matt de la Peña. It’s a wild thing to see that post-apocalyptic stories have become so popular that there’s now a thriving Young Adult sub-genre sitting next to bone-chilling classics like I Am Legend, The Road, or Cat’s Cradle. As if kids weren’t already over-anxious, authors are now running them through dystopian futurism. A world in which humans have been thrown again into a state of nature is something that, turns out, appeals to teens and tweens as well as to adults. Enter Matt de la Peña and his Y.A. take on the American apocalypse in The Living and The Hunted. This series brings wealth inequalities, political access, and racial privilege front and center to the modern disaster/survival story. “Shy” works a summer gig for an LA cruise line, and as things fall apart (due to a multi-pronged catastrophe featuring earthquakes, fires, tsunami tidal waves, and an emerging, high-mortality pandemic disease outbreak) he comes to rely on a select band of surviving co-workers. “Shoeshine” holds a mysterious, stoic, and at times mythical role in Shy’s band of travelers. Despite some glaring indications that Shoeshine is a real person in this story, it also becomes possible that Shoeshine exists not as an actual character, and only as a fragment of Shy’s consciousness. Shoeshine is a projection of Shy’s representing everything that Shy “cannot” do yet, or does not yet have the will to express.
Philip CanterburyPublished 22 days ago in Futurism
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
What is the book about? Game of Thrones is the first book in a 5 book series called A Song of Ice and Fire written by George R. R. Martin. First published in 1996, Game of Thrones is a fantasy-drama novel. The world, Westeros and the seven kingdoms are entirely Martin's imagination. Game of Thrones is a conquest between rival Houses. A feud for power, honour, justice and revenge.
Varun YadavPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
The Knight's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer
The knight is one of only three Canterbury pilgrims (the others being the parson and the ploughman) whom Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400) treats without a hint of irony in his General Prologue. Indeed, these three characters are more like nostalgic idealizations of people whom Chaucer greatly admired, but they are figures of a bygone age, much to the writer’s regret.
John WelfordPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
The ACOTAR Curse
ACOTAR, or A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J Maas, is easily one of the more controversial books I have seen. I have never seen a series or author that has as many ardent fans or anti-stans. On one hand, you have people who will overlook every problem with the book. On the other, you have people who hate it with a passion and go out of their way to let people know they hate it. I mean, part of it is understandable--this is the series that spawned the 'soap dick' controversy, it is massive. But that's not what I want to talk about today.
Melissa AuPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
Cursed: An Anthology - Review
What’s It About? Cursed is a fantasy anthology edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane and published in 2020 by fantasy publishers Titan Books. It contains twenty stories themed around the idea of being cursed, from reimaginings of Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel to stories about “screaming skulls” and vampire zombies. The authors range from fantasy icons such as Neil Gaiman and Jane Yolen to more overlooked writers. Seven of the stories in Cursed (‘Troll Bridge’, ‘The Black Fairy’s Curse’, ‘Wendy, Darling’, ‘Fairy Werewolf Vs. Vampire Zombie’, ‘Look Inside’, ‘Little Red’ and ‘Hated’) were originally written for older anthology series, but the rest were created especially for this collection.
Fairy Tale FanboyPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
Vein of Love by
Themes Demonology, Hell/Underworld, supernatural, demonic contracts mistrust/deception, seduction/manipulation, arranged marriage, classism
Kayleigh HarrierPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller
Themes: fairytale, fantasy, fiction, classism, caste system, kingdoms & conquest, murder mystery, scheming/plotting, antihero, usurping the throne, kings/courts, villains, female heroines, love story, women’s rights
Kayleigh HarrierPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
Book Review: “Lonely Castle in the Mirror” by Mizuki Tsujimura
I have read many of these strange and twisted books in my time in which ideas of parallel universes and strange differences in worlds get tossed around now and again. I think that the best one of these and possibly one of my personal favourite books of all time was David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” in which the theory of time is explored through a more modern investigation into the butterfly effect and into reincarnation theory. Past and present lives both have an impact on the future no matter how big or small the situation may be. Post-modernist literature lends its hand to so many different ways of telling said stories whether that is out of time order or out of order of worlds and universes. Shows such as “Dark” and “Sense 8” on Netflix have been known to explore the subject of many worlds as well, with the ideas of time mixed up so that the audience should figure it out before the climax and finale. When we explore these books and shows as the audience, we already know we are looking for something twisted and almost overly complex. I had no idea that this was going to be the case in this recent book I had finished entitled “Lonely Castle in the Mirror” by Mizuki Tsujimura.
Annie KapurPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
The Chronicles of Enchantments
Are you looking for a new exciting epic fantasy series to explore? Today is your lucky day; you have transpired upon a new series that will keep you wondering what could happen next!
Mel E. FurnishPublished 2 months ago in Futurism
Novella Series 1 (Part 1)
For this review I will be splitting the novella series into three parts, since it somewhat naturally divides itself into Warhammer 40,000, Fantasy / Age of Sigmar and Others. This time I will be talking about the 40,000 books, which are The Bloodied Rose by Dannie Ware, Steel Daemon by Ian St. Martin and Auric Gods by Nick Kyme.
David HeymanPublished 2 months ago in Futurism5 Life Lessons from the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
So often do we see such kind of advertisements, where a suited-up man steps out of a Lamborghini and says, “Do you want to live the life of your dreams? I earned all the money from in last 5 years by trading bitcoins blah blah…..You can do it too. I will tell you 5 secrets to this achievement.” And the advertisement ends with him leaving in a private jet along with two beautiful ladies. He might even mention how he was a loser like yourself.
Vaibhav BhoslePublished 3 months ago in Futurism
An out of this world process...
I know I am a bit of an eccentric and interested in weird and wonderful stories of what people have experienced on this planet.
Lindsey AstonPublished 3 months ago in Futurism
