Library Wars: Love & War is, quite simply, about fighting against censorship and the banning of books. In this fictional near-future Japan, the Media Betterment Committee was formed about 30 years prior to protect the population from unsavory materials. Unfortunately, the MBC took things to a whole new level, where it is a common occurrence…
Jane Austen’s books are so timeless and classic, it’s easy to forget that many of her characters’ problems and the stories’ plots are based on the social mores of a specific time and place in history. It’s only when reading Diana Peterfreund’s Persuasion-inspired For Darkness Shows the Stars that I came to realize how critical…
It’s hard to grade a book that tries to be several things and has very different outcomes in each. The romance isn’t great. The world building is interesting. Most characters are well-developed. The ethical questions are salient. Ultimately, I think, Landry Park tells us more about ourselves than it does about its own world. About…
Recently I pulled up to a three-way stop at the same time as another driver. Feeling generous I waved to her to go ahead of me and followed her sedately down the road. Minutes later a car that missed their stop sign plowed in to her. She was fine, the other driver was fine but…
Zombie romance. Yeah, I can’t be the only one who has qualms about putting those two words together. Rotting corpses just aren’t that romantic. Being the last hope for humankind, however, with a handsome former-CEO turned zombie outbreak survivor searching for his missing sister definitely has the makings of an intriguing zombie romance. Megan Fletcher…
Post-apocalyptic novels are typically not something I seek out, but the pandemic elements of this novel intrigued me. Initially, I was worried that the book might be too gloomy and dismal, which ended up not a concern. Still, the book wasn’t a complete success for me. After the pandemic killed her parents and decimated the…
Did you ever watch the TV show Jericho? It’s a dystopian tale about what happens when a group of people use small nuclear devices to set off minor atomic bombs (as if there is such a thing!) in numerous areas of the U.S. The resultant chaos leads to three separate countries forming out of the…
If you’ve entered a bookstore in the past three years, you’ll probably know about the Hunger Games; it is quite possibly the biggest young adult publishing phenom since Harry Potter. After finally reading the dystopian trilogy, I had a hard time making a judgment: Certainly, they are good. But are they great? Part of my…
I am loving the new trend towards post-apocalyptic romance.It’s good to know that even if the world goes to the dogs – or chimps, apes, or killer whales – there will still be love, community, and humanity. That’s probably too rosy a future for some sci-fi fans, but for those of us that are romance…
Right now is a great time for those who love post-apocalyptic sci-fi. I am reading three different series with that theme and just finished watching the last episode of Dollhouse, which had a post-apocalyptic thread running through its season closers. I was surprised – and delighted – to find that romance has joined the bandwagon…