Drew Hayden Taylor is an author, playwright, journalist and filmmaker from the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario. A fan of classic sci-fi, he explains in the foreword to this slim short story collection that he set out to “take traditional… science fiction characteristics and filter them through an Aboriginal consciousness.” This effort came after years of fruitless attempts to find a market for an Indigenous creator driven sci-fi anthology, and the subsequent decision to just write an entire collection of his own. (Happily, multiple such anthologies do exist today, some which I think even predate this collection.) I expected these stories to all center characters from Taylor’s community, but instead he incorporates a diverse range of Native characters: Kanien'kehá:ka radio station operators meeting the apocalypse, an Anishinabe man in space grieving the death of his grandfather, a Kwakwaka’wakw boy who converses with a talking robot.⁣
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This collection was quite creative and a lot of fun, and I think it successfully met Taylor’s objective of playing with tropes and traits of classic science fiction. For me this sometimes meant the stories were a little less interesting, because they were tackling the canon with a twist rather than reaching in more unexpected directions, but perhaps this is an unfair complaint because isn’t everything (in science fiction and also more broadly) reacting to what’s come before?⁣
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Cw for suicidal ideation, discussions of death and genocide

I know I say this all the time, but reading along with The Stacks Book Club is one of my favorite parts of my bookstagram experience. Last month’s pick, The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America by Marcus J. Moore was, for me at least, the classic Stacks experience, i.e. reading a book I never would have picked up if not for the podcast. Music isn’t really my wheelhouse and I was almost entirely unfamiliar with Kendrick Lamar, but I still enjoyed reading this brief biography, which discussed both Lamar’s early career and rise to prominence as well as the way his music has been a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. I always prefer works of biography/history that progress chronologically, so I found it sometimes difficult to follow the timeline after this book jumped around a little at the beginning. The lengths of time spent on different periods of Lamar’s life to date felt sort of uneven too, but overall this was a pretty smooth and informative read. It was fun reading it while listening to To Pimp a Butterfly, especially cool when several times the chapters and songs lined up without intervention. Of course, best of all was the fascinating discussion the book sparked with The Stacks Pack.

I knew I was going to love this epic military fantasy trilogy, and I’ve been right so far! It’s hard to review sequels, but fortunately I know a lot of booksta friends have been reading this series so this review feels less ‘shouting into the void’ than some series reviews can. For me, The Dragon Republic started out much slower than The Poppy War and took quite some time finding its footing, surprising given the volatile place Poppy War left off, but I still loved reading it throughout. Rin remains a favorite character and I would pretty much follow her anywhere. I love how she's challenged in this book in her understanding of the world, and I'm excited to see that play out more. I don’t want to say anything that will spoil The Poppy War for those of you who still need to read it

Reza Farazmand is the author of Poorly Drawn Lines, a short-form webcomic that regularly gets me laughing and screenshotting to share its signature dry humor with friends. When I saw that he was publishing his first graphic novel, I was suddenly and without warning on an indie bookstore’s site clicking ‘add to cart’

FOODIE ADVENTURES IN SPACE!⁣⁣
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The Sol Majestic follows a sixteen year old boy named Kenna who’s spent his life traveling the galaxy at the whims of his proud Inevitable Philosopher parents, last bastions of a dying religion who aim to enlighten and feed the masses, no matter the expense to themselves or their starving son. But, on Savor Station he meets Paulius, the eccentric head chef of famed restaurant The Sol Majestic, who’s so taken by Kenna’s plights he dedicates his staff to preparing a feast to honor Kenna and revitalize the Inevitable Philosophies. The Sol Majestic becomes the first home Kenna has ever known, and he’s forced to choose how much he will sacrifice to repay their extravagant belief in him.⁣⁣
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I came to this book for the luscious food descriptions and the exciting premise of the unique struggle to maintain a high caliber restaurant in the depths of space, but surprisingly the heart of the book was Kenna’s coming of age and forming his own beliefs after being raised in the indoctrination of his parents’ Inevitability. Kenna’s push/pull between his life changing experiences at The Sol Majestic and the weight of everything he’d been raised to believe felt so authentic, and I loved closely following his journey, even as he screwed up and committed hard to disastrous courses of action. Most of all, his relationships with the other glorious characters of this novel were so special, vibrant, and carefully rendered like a perfect consommé. I absolutely loved reading this book, which brimmed with hope and refreshed my soul.⁣⁣
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Cw for slavery, torture, suicide.

This is a profoundly heavy book, about a thirteen year old boy dealing with the aftermath of the violent rape and attempted murder of his mother. I’m glad I was able to take my time reading this one, and appreciate the privilege to step away from the difficult content when I needed to. Erdirch’s prose here is (as always) crisp and luxurious, and the North Dakota reservation setting felt clear as day around me. Young male protagonists toppling over the edge of puberty and into adulthood aren’t my favorite subjects, and this focus lent the book some awkward moments, like our protagonist’s fixation on his aunt’s breasts which I could not deal with. This lens from Erdrich was such an interesting choice to me, focusing on the devastating real issue of violence against Indigenous women from the viewpoint of the rippling effect on the men and boys in their lives. (Erdrich writes in the afterword that more than 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime, and that 86% of rapes and sexual assaults against them are perpetrated by non-Native men.) Even with this framing and the way that the protagonist, through his youth and inexperience, misses some of what is going on, his mother never feels like a caricature. Though the book wasn’t fully about her, she was the center of the story for me.⁣ This book asks big questions about how we move on from violence and horror and betrayal, and I know I'll be sitting with it for quite some time.
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Cw for rape, violence, domestic abuse, murder, death

Built on Yoruba folktales and oral traditions, these stories don’t really read like “fantasy” but I agree with an argument that sees traditional stories as influential early fantasy precursors, although worth noting that they are stories that represent real supernatural beliefs in a way that modern “fantasy” mostly does not.⁣
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The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead’s Town follows the first person account of a man who sets out on a quest through mortal and spiritual realms to find his deceased palm-wine tapster. He calls himself “Father of gods who could do everything in the world,” and he’s tested by those he meets on his journey to live up to this name. He must outwit those who seek to harm him, and perform various tasks set forth by those who he hopes will give him information about his tapster’s location in return. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a similarly wild adventurous story, another first person narration about a young boy who is driven into the Bush of Ghosts and spends many years being captured by various ghosts and traveling between ghost towns unable to find his way out. Each ghost and town is different and he struggles to navigate an ever-changing set of unknown new rules.⁣
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These whimsical, never-straightforward stories captivated and entertained me. I marveled, I laughed, I turned another page and now I can’t stop thinking about these two adventures, their many strange settings and characters, and Tutuola’s distinctive voice. Honestly, what a treasure.⁣

Reading this book really drove home for me Gay’s impressive range. I’ve read Bad Feminist, Hunger, and An Untamed State, and this 2017 short story collection was so unlike any of them. As the title suggests, these stories gather around a theme of women who are “difficult”, or perhaps only believe themselves to be so. The stories move between suggesting dark fairy tales and depicting cruel realities. Multiple stories explore experiences of rape, losing a child, women coping with violence or tragedy through seeking out abusive lovers, and myriad reasons to have an affair. This is a tough, effective collection, although by the end I felt some of the stories became less impactful for how they continued to circle the same themes. As a lifelong Michigander I loved the recurring use of a Northern Michigan setting, especially in Allison’s favorite story, “North Country”, which lived up to her high praise.⁣
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Cw for kidnapping, rape, violence and domestic abuse, death of a child, miscarriage.

It was charming and delightful to return to these favorite characters. I didn't love the entire book being in emails, they sometimes felt awkward how the information was crammed in that you'd probably not actually put into an email, but for the most part it worked.

This was a compelling return to the world of Robopocalypse, but I didn't love some of the ways the story changed from what felt set in the first one. It was also a bit more difficult to follow the chronology. I can't figure out if the ending is meant to be a cliffhanger or an interesting ambiguity, but I'd read more for sure.