Author Archives: Daniel (@MKNN)

Reading Well: The Ember in the Ashes Quadrology by Sabaa Tahir

Posted on December 8, 2022 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Yep, I’ve been quiet on here long enough to read all four of these … Sabaa Tahir‘s debut novel, An Ember in the Ashes (2015), starts the series, and is followed by A Torch in the Night (2016), A Reaper … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{ Am in catchup mode here for a while, and am trying to change some of what these contain. We’ll see how it goes. } Storm of Locusts (2019) completes the story Rebecca Roanhorse began in Trail of Lightning, and … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on September 6, 2022 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Y’all know I love me some Helen Oyeyemi (surprisingly, Ginger Bread is the only of her novels I’ve written up here). Her 2014 novel, Boy, Snow, Bird is, I think, among her best, mixing her evocative language, her leanings toward … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Posted on August 26, 2022 by Daniel (@MKNN)

There are two competing reactions to Ocean Vuong‘s 2019 memoir, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The first is that Vuong is a stunning writer, as in one whose sentences and paragraphs can literally stun you, making you look up from … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Kingdom of Copper & The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I enjoyed S.A. Chakraborty‘s opening novel of this trilogy, The City of Brass, and the second (The Kingdom of Copper; 2019) and third (The Empire of Gold; 2020) were satisfyingly more of the same. There’s not a lot to say … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Familiars by Stacey Halls

Posted on July 13, 2022 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{It has been over 8 months since I published one of these. Unsure why, but I do, at the end of the day, like having a record of what I’ve read. So over the next few months, I’ll catch up, … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: How Long ‘Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Daniel (@MKNN)

How Long ‘Til Black Future Month (2018) collects short stories from N.K. Jemisin‘s career dating back roughly twenty years, meaning they stretch before she was one of the faces of contemporary imaginative fiction. It’s a fun collection to read, perhaps … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Book of Night Women by Marlon James

Posted on October 7, 2021 by Daniel (@MKNN)

With The Book of Night Women (2009), we’ve now gone through Marlon James‘ entire corpus (see John Crow’s Devil, A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Black Leopard, Red Wolf). The Book of Night Women is the most explicit, direct, … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams

Posted on September 3, 2021 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Illness Lesson (2020) is Clare Beams‘ debut novel. It is set in the final quarter of the nineteenth century in small-town New England. It’s a complex novel to summarize in typical Reading Well terms: at the most abstract, The … Continue reading →

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Reading Well: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Posted on June 17, 2021 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I stumbled across a list–I believe in The Washington Post–of fantasy novels written by women with an Arabic / Middle Eastern / Indian influence (and shame on the Post for lumping all of that together in a single Orientalist vision, … Continue reading →

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