Buy on Amazon Fellow Travellers follows a young time traveller named Bindra on a crazy adventure between many, many centuries as a fellow time traveller attempts to mess with time. There's a train crash. Disaster physics. Moral dilemmas. Action-packed fight scenes (with time travel, who would have thought). But most importantly, the book is a philosopher's dream come true.. When I finished reading the story, I realized, at its core, that Fellow Travellers was a giant trolley problem in disguise. I'm sure you've heard of trolley problems before. A trolley is heading toward a platform. If it cr ..read more

A Darkness Beckons (Hollow Fate Book 2) By Herzman, Todd I’m going to be sparse on details because I’m reviewing a sequel. Don’t want to spoil people who might be reading this without reading Book 1! I enjoyed A Dark Inheritance: Book 1 of the Hollow Fate series. Todd Herzman is an expert worldbuilder, and his character narratives weave together with grace. While in Book 1, I felt like a few of the character plotlines sporadically felt too disconnected from one another, Book 2 raises the stakes and continuously intersects every character’s narrative with the stories of the others. I loved ..read more

If you love reading about badass women who can handle themselves in a fight, care deeply about the world, and have fulfilling sex then this book is for you! Kit Rocha’s Deal With The Devil is a fast paced post apocalyptic action-romance following a team of women and a team of men as their lives become interconnected. The women—Nina, Dani, and Maya—are genetically modified librarians recovering digital files of lost books several decades after a solar flare leads to the fall of the United States. The men—Captain Knox, Conall, Gray, and Rafe—are enhanced protectorate soldiers on the run from the ..read more

Buy on Amazon While I may disagree with President Obama's response to many issues faced during his presidency, as well as his approach to criticizing many people further to the "left" of his politics, his writing in A Promised Land explores his experience of the presidency through a profoundly personal lens. Every person should read this book to dive into the personal world of a U.S. President. You can't help but hear his words--especially with President Obama narrating it himself--and believe he tried his best, even if he made mistakes. And the long-form narrative, exploring his rise to the ..read more

If you’re fascinated with mythology and enjoy a new take on tired tropes then Gods of Jade and Shadow is for you! Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow delivers on its back cover promise as a “cross-country odyssey [that] will take [Casiopea Tun] from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.” Casiopea Tun, our willful 18 year old heroine, is a near-slave on her family’s wealthy estate in a small town when she accidentally releases and binds herself to a Mayan God of Death. Their ensuing adventure to help him reclaim ..read more

If you long to explore diverse worlds and love character-driven stories, then To Be Taught If Fortunate is for you! Chambers's To Be Taught If Fortunate is a delightfully compelling story of four astronauts and their noble journey to explore exoplanets—not for profit, but for the purpose of gaining knowledge and cataloging the life they find there. It explores our world in the not so distant future, and takes real problems—such as climate change—and projects how spaceflight might be molded by them. Buy on Amazon Each of the four main characters feels viscerally real and human, struggling with ..read more

The beauty of literature: you can take any narrative—any genre—and reformulate it into a new story. In Talented: A Dystopian Superhero Origin Story, SE MacCready lays the foundation for a world filled with superpowered heroes, villains, and everything in between. Buy on Amazon It’s fundamentally character-driven, and the devastating moments of heart-wrenching brutality are where MacCready’s writing shines the most. Cameron Monroe, daughter of a brilliant entrepreneur, is thrown into a world she doesn’t fully understand with only part of her memories available to remind her of a lost past. She ..read more

I didn’t know what to expect when I started The Hands We’re Given, a cyberpunk novel by O. E. Tearmann. The story was more intriguing and riveting than I could have imagined. Buy on Amazon Tearmann explores a futuristic world set in the 22nd century, where corporations control everything. Our heroes attempt to survive on the outskirts of civilization as “Dusters,” rebels against the corporate overlords. Aiden and Kevin, our two unlikely friends. I don’t want to spoil too much about this story (and so much is easily spoiled), but at its core, it’s a profoundly human tale, dealing with real iss ..read more

History is often written by the victors. Yet modern historians have endeavored to approach the stories of the past with a nuanced eye, addressing ideological paradoxes and forgotten tales. After first listening to the soundtrack of Hamilton, I decided to dive into the story that inspired the Broadway show, listening first to the audiobook of Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton and now Chernow’s biography of Washington. I dove into these behemoth tomes not just for learning and inspiration from the broadway show. I’ve hinted over the past few years that I’m crafting a climate fantasy novel insp ..read more

I’ve had Brian McClellan’s Promise of Blood (Book 1 of the Powder Mage Trilogy) on my list for years. Magic mystery, kings and revolutions, war and prophecy? What’s not to love? And flintlock fantasy adds a unique twist to the mix, intertwining gunpowder weapons with magic (when epic fantasy usually trends toward medieval technology). Buy on Amazon I’m also reading the Powder Mage books in part for research into the genre of flintlock fantasy. It’s no secret I’m writing an epic fantasy series which I’ve identified as a “flintlock climate fantasy.” If I’m to write a good book, though, I need t ..read more