Articles by: Mary Woodbury

A.S. King’s Me and Marvin Gardens, Review by Kimberly Christensen

Me and Marvin Gardens by A.S. King Middle Grade Fiction Published by Scholastic Trades Review by Kimberly Christensen Everything around twelve-year-old Obe Devlin is changing. New subdivisions keep springing up behind his house on the acres of land that once belonged to the Devlin family. Obe’s former best friend, Tommy, […]

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Oil on Water, Helon Habila

Click here to return to the series This month we travel to the Niger Delta, and I am thrilled to talk with Helon Habila, the mind behind the novel Oil on Water, Travelers, and other great reads. About Oil on Water Set in the Niger Delta, this story has journalists […]

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Rory Power’s Wilder Girls, Review by Mary Woodbury

This review may contain spoilers. Wilder Girls (Penguin Random House, July 9, 2019) helps to usher in a type of wild fiction that deals with ecological collapse. In the story, teenagers at the Raxter School for Girls are quarantined on an island off the coast of Maine. They’ve been sequestered […]

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Remember Tomorrow, Amanda Saint

A dystopian future that echoes the present times. A reflection of society in a stark, unforgiving mirror. Unsettling, honest and unputdownable.” Susmita Bhattacharya, author of The Normal State of Mind “A chilling descent into the chaos that lies in the hearts of men. A searing portrait of a dystopian future […]

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Latitudes of Longing, Shubhangi Swarup

A recent take on the state of writing argues that novelists have been complicit in maintaining silence around global warming and climate change…They have obsessed over everyday life, but overlooked larger units of time and place. In the aftermath of such a critique of the genre of the novel, Shubhangi […]

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Sisyphean, Dempow Torishima

With this stellar debut volume–a “mosaic novel” depicting a world of infinite biomorphic perversity that feels at once surreal yet authentic; estranging yet welcoming; otherwordly yet familiar–Dempow Torishima gives the world a book of fantastika with very few literary precedents. –Paul Di Filippo, Lotus Mag …Frankly, this is in line […]

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Dyschronia, Jennifer Mills

Jennifer Mills’ Dyschronia has climate at its core. In the book, the sea around the small town of Clapstone vanishes. Sam, her main character, has a unique sense of time: she can see into the future, but is she predicting what is going to happen or is she ensuring that […]

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Side Chick Nation, Aya de León

The author takes the story on an interesting journey, exploring colonization, climate change and the US government’s response to Hurricane Maria. Side Chick Nation is an entertaining, insightful, satisfyingly feminist read. –Black Enterprise Fed up with her married Miami boyfriend, savvy Dulce has no problem stealing his drug-dealer stash and fleeing […]

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The Philodendrist Heresy, Interview with Jed Brody

About The Philodendrist Heresey Danielle Gasket’s search for ancestral secrets is imperiled by warring factions that agree about nothing but that Danielle must die. Danielle’s home is a dystopian city beneath the earth’s surface. People have lived underground for so long that knowledge of the surface is preserved only in […]

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The Girl in Red, Christina Henry

Between climate change and the fear of impending war, civilization’s collapse feels closer every day. In her latest novel, The Girl in Red, Christina Henry explores what comes after society falls apart. –Paste Magazine Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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Wanderers, Chuck Wendig

This is Wanderers, Chuck Wendig‘s (Star Wars: Aftermath, Blackbirds) epic new novel of a dark future that weaves everything from social media to climate change to artificial intelligence into its complex, multi-viewpoint narrative. –Scyfy Wire Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell

On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the story of a small African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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Oval, Elvia Wilk

Wilk entwines a classical sensibility with biological determinism—she almost suggests that humans have reached the final phase of a natural decomposition process, like cells programmed to grow and then atrophy. –The New Yorker In the near future, Berlin’s real estate is being flipped in the name of “sustainability,” only to […]

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Wilderness Wars, Barbara Henderson

Wilderness Wars slow-builds menace from its nail-biting opening to its stunning apocalyptic climax. This is a golden eagle of a book—it grabs you in its talons and won’t let go. A thought-provoking and often frightening study of what happens when you mess with Nature and Nature decides to fight back. […]

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The Ice Shelf, Anne Kennedy

Well, there’s eco-poetry (serious and important), and The Eco-Comedy Video Festival (naf so far, unfortunately), so I think eco-fiction is still fresh. God knows we need gallows humour when contemplating the state of the planet. -Author interview, Stuff, New Zealand The Ice Shelf is an electrifying allegory for the dangers […]

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