Smorgasbord Fantasia

I had bought The Wall by John Lanchester a few months back, before the lockdown frenzy hit us. I finally picked it up last week, dusted it off my bookshelf and started reading it. Only to be sucked into this disquieting fable that kept me wondering and puzzling out a lot of the allegories and metaphorical references, not quite sure if I was even right.  Despite the lacklustre writing about one of the most 'uninteresting' protagonists ever (An entitled, misguided new adult conscripted into national duty to protect the boundaries of a island nation, UK from refugees and immigrants trying to climb up and over to get citizenship within this nation) I realised the novel could be about anything. Climactic changes? Human resilience ? Heroism? undaunted sense of patriotic duty? xenophobia? right-wing nationalism?  Despite all this, I actually enjoyed the book. A LOT.  I cannot exactly pinpoint the reasons for my enjoyment. Because this novel definitely stops a mile off the "lit...

 Paulo Bacigalupi for all the awards and citations that he has won, for some reason has flow low below my author radar. I have three books of his, including the acclaimed debut Windup Girl that's been gathering dust on my shelves for a while now. No, really it is my fault and just that my TBR has always been bursting at the seams but I think, this time I deliberately took a break to just start reading this YA book, Drowned Cities - companion book to the award-winning Shipbreaker - and trust me, I just got effortlessly sucked into the grim and action-packed story set in this futuristic America, reduced to a set of drowning cities subject to global warming and an ever-present war going on.  Paulo's writing is like a sucker punch to your gut. Here, he masterfully crafts up an absolutely bleak futuristic world, a make-believe grim world, devoid of hope, ravaged by constant war, pointless deaths and mindless destruction. America has devolved into multiple strongholds and cities -...

By now, I have become a convert at the cult of Jay Kristoff , the masterweaver of fantasy and sci-fi tales full of lyrical beauty, wickedly cool action adventures and heart-wrenching plot-twists that will keep you yearning for more, as he continues to churn out novels by the dozen [ I mean, does this guy even sleep? 'Hell no, Sleep is for the weak!'] This is my fifth book by Jay Kristoff and yes I see the repetitive patterns - young girl protagonist with a secret history behind her birth, growing up pangs like either a finishing school or the loyal friendships or hesitant first loves along with tons of ubercool world-building elements, that ever-present humor that can either have you rolling your eyes in the head or rolling on the floor in splits, cinematic action sequences unfolding in slo-mo and an unbelievable ending as tension levels mount beyond Mount Everest to erupt in a gut-wrenching reveal that will have you gasping, in disbelief and terror. LIFEL1K3 features...

Defender is an eminently readable debut - remarkable in it's grey and dismal rendition of a dystopian world where people, hearing voices in their head, have all chosen to end their lives, making Earth a barren desolate landscape. Population is thus scarce in GX Todd 's post-tragedy America and so that makes a lone traveler named Pilgrim who rides through this lonely landscape something of a rare breed - doubly so, because he has come to a sort of non-violent agreement with the voice in his head, which he refers to as Voice . Their squabbles and arguments are colorful and so when the Voice convinces Pilgrim to stop at a roadside lemonade stand, for a teenage girl selling lemonade, Pilgrim just gives in without argument. And even decides to take her on as a passenger. The first human being he has spoken to, in one hundred fifty one days straight. While there is a premonition that warns him against this, he relents anyways and soon discovers, that Lacey - the precocious hi...

Even though epic fantasy is my favorite genre when it comes to speculative fiction, I find of late I've been veering more into 'easier' sub-genres to read, like urban fantasy or the dystopian settings. Now easier of course is a relative term as I generally tend to blast through the urban/dystopian settings relishing the pace and thrill of a novel set in times and a world, familiar to the ones we are in. And so, when I first requested for Resistance, the debut novel from Mikhaeyla Kopievsky that is the first part in an intended series, Divided Elements - the premise looked familiar and a path, well-trodden before. The world after an unexplained apocalypse, in a time possibly in the future with the society divided into clear hard hierarchical stratas called Elementals based on their affinity to different forms. Called out as Air, Earth, Water and Fire. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized that this one, was different. I was in for a shock with this book. In...

Raven Song is the first book in this series called Inoki's Game , by IA Ashcroft  introducing us to this dark, dystopian world, teetering after a nuclear holocaust, filled with magic and inexplicable dangers. I took this up on a whim after I read the premise of the book. I signed up for the blog tour ( and as usual, I got a bit late in posting the review!) and started the same, the last week of my holiday season hoping I could whizz through it. Alas - a combination of reasons saw me plod through it and not wrap this up in time. Well, mainly two reasons. The pacing of the novel and of course, the new year rush that crowds in on your time. About the Book A century ago, the world burned. Even now, though rebuilt and defiant, civilization is still choking on the ashes. Jackson, a smuggler, lives in the shadows, once a boy with no memory, no name, and no future. Ravens followed him, long-extinct birds only he could see, and nightmares flew in their wake. Once, Jackson thought...

Jakkattu Series gets off to a fantastic start with this blistering action-packed alien contact story set in a dystopian earth featuring two remarkably gutsy female leads, rebelling against the ruling tyrants. I confess I haven’t read the prequel stories, Avendui 5ive set in the same world or the earlier works of PK Tyler . But when I got a review copy, my interest was piqued by the “Margaret Atwood of the indie scene” comparison. And after having rushed through this one, I am definitely looking to reading anything else from her. A year, when xenophobia has been termed as the word of the year by Dictionary.com, this book truly brings out a different dimension to that word. A startlingly original novel, The Jakkattu Vector is the first in a series that chronicles a disturbing contact story of aliens arriving on a ravaged earth destroyed by environmental disasters, but with veiled intentions and genetic experiments that go horribly wrong. The story begins on an exuber...

So Forget Tomorrow has a really interesting premise: What if your future was already decided and you receive your future memory on your seventeenth birthday? Makes for a crackling mix of science fiction/time travel/dystopian themes, huh. Pintip Dunn writes engagingly well and I was swept into the story right from the beginning– chiefly through the lovely portrayal of Callie, the protagonist of the story. We enter the world – with Callie a day shy of her seventeenth birthday in Amerie, where technology has taken over lives and your future is decided and handed over to you as a memory dictating how you would live to achieve the said future. Now Callie, on expected lines, deviates from the said pattern. Her memory is pretty disturbing, where she walks into a hospital and then kills her own sister, Jessa. Crimes like these usually end up in arrests – by the Future Memory Agency. Callie trusting the authorities obviously doesn’t want this horrifying future to come true and turns he...

Okay – I will admit it. Dreary dystopian settings featuring an anti-hero will always be a weakness for me. This book was an impulse buy. And what an emphatically right decision it has turned out to be. Having never heard of the book or the author before, it was just the premise that drew me in. A New York devastated by a series of dirty bombs – now shunned by all, the society clearly divided between the extremely rich and the waste-pickers. And the spademan, a garbage-collector turned hitman sifting through the detritus. Picking through the rich – man and woman alike, not asking any questions, pocketing the money and moving on. Spademan – we never really get to know the real name of the protagonist – a sociopath with no qualms about the violence is a known assassin among quiet circles who gets the job done without any fuss. And his latest assignment is to track down and hit a girl. Unfortunately for him – he is not a killer of unborn children. Finding out that the gi...

Of late, only a few books tend to leave me disturbed. Gets me thinking beyond the premise and execution of a story well done. I remember Lord of the Flies did that for me – but I was much younger then. Hardly second year of college. And now Pierce Brown – an author possibly around the same age as me – goes on to write a crackerjack of a debut, Red Rising and charms the hell out of an audience jaded with the dystopian genre. Including me . I admit, the hype engine and the prepublication heaps of praise lauded onto the young author kept me away from this book. But after having blown through this stellar fusion of ‘ Lord of the Flies ’ meets ‘ Enders Game ’ featuring one of the most cold-hearted yet remarkably endearing 16-year old hero, I must say – everything is justified. And the debut deserves more. Red Rising features Darrow – a gifted 16-year old miner deep in the bowels of a terraformed Mars – mining the underground caves for elements to help complete the “Terraform...

A richly woven tapestry of intoxicating Japanese Mythological elements (Iron Samurai with Chain-saw Katana? Golly yes! Thunder-Tigers? Never heard of those, but give me some more please!!) and elaborate Steampunk fantasy; featuring a precocious 16-year old coming into her own – Jay Kristoff's explosive much-talked about debut Stormdancer was well on its way to be a runaway success even before the book launched. The hype and explosive premise surrounding the book was higher than the lethal volcanic fumes from Mount Doom of Mordor. So imagine war and politics, love and magic colliding against a bewitchingly exotic backdrop of Japanese steam-punk where loyalties shift with the direction of the ever-howling winds and the reddish bloody skies are forever wreathed in clouds of betrayal. Stormdancer goes a step further than all of this. Love it or hate it, this book is in-your-face – World-building at a scale hitherto un-imagined. It’s perhaps YA – in its treatment of the heroine ...

The Girl with All the Gifts is perhaps the most heart-rending dystopian post-apocalyptic fiction that I have ever read till date. A book that is pure gold and shines through the clutter that clogs the genre fiction today. One of Orbit ’s biggest US releases this year – it came in UK in January this year – this book surpasses all my other post-apocalyptic/zombie reads (Yes. Put The Passage , Reapers are Angels , Aftermath and Newsflesh trilogy down in that list please!) By far the most satisfying read in this genre and I’m not exaggerating. Maybe it’s because Carey decided to spin this tale mainly from the point of view of the protagonist ( the Girl with all the gifts ), a ten-years old sweet young child. It is a great move. In addition to making a reader bask in the sweet innocence of a young child exploring the wonders of the world and then slowly proceed to unravel mysteries and thus mature along the way, it also fulfills the purpose of lulling them into a false sense ...

The Detainee by Peter Liney was a book that came to my notice when I was reading the Kindle blog – I was extremely intrigued by this post and decided I had to read the book. Something about it set me off – thinking and wanting badly to read about this dystopian society. So the wonderful folks at Jo Fletcher books obliged me (you guys are simply the best! And not because you sent me the book but you always come up with such amazing books!) and sent me a copy when I landed in California. And I gobbled this book up in two days flat. So the word dystopian sets off a particular image in your brains. (For those of you who love Dystopia as a genre – here’s a 2014 list .) About a ruined landscape, rotting environment or the polar ice caps melted down and the most common, a nuclear holocaust. But with The Detainee, don’t expect a romp through a nuclear wasteland and a band of survivors tripping through the abandoned country-sides and empty yawning highway bridges of the world. No ...