This was pretty cool - a collection of speculative fiction (plus a couple of essays) themed around social justice movements. It is named, of course, for Octavia Butler, who has never written a book I didn't love; the works here follow in her example. It's a fantastic idea for a collection, and the execution broadly lives up to it.

There were, it has to be said, a small handful of pieces here that I just bounced off. These are far overshadowed by the rest of the book, however. A lot of the stories here are good. Some are absolutely excellent, and the effect of them all together is compelling. Of my favourites, though... I really enjoyed "Revolution Shuffle" by Bao Phi (liberating American internment camps amidst a zombie outbreak); "The Token Superhero" by David F. Walker (navigating superhero status while Black); "Black Angel" by Walidah Imarisha (a fallen angel intervenes in police brutality); "The Long Memory" by Morrigan Phillips (memory keepers are isolated and brutalised in order to remove social safeguards); and "Runway Blackout" by Tara Betts (shapeshifting models refuse to conform to imposed beauty standards). As you can see, there's a fantastic range of approaches here, and that's something I find very appealing. That's the advantage to an anthology over a collection, a lot of the time - there are so many different authors coming from so many different perspectives that there's bound to be something for everyone.