What Yolande House has been reading lately:
Since I returned to Canada two years ago and secured a library card, I’ve been voraciously reading all the books I can get my hands on, like memoir and my favourite fiction genre, science fiction and fantasy. Here are my favourite SFF books that I’ve read over the last few months:
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor is one of my favourite reads so far of 2022. It’s a novella, so be prepared for a fast-paced story that will leave you wanting more—and luckily Binti is the start of a trilogy.
A young woman, Binti, yearns to travel beyond her small Himba village and see the rest of the universe. Unknown to her family, she applies to a university many worlds away and, once accepted, sneaks off to travel by spaceship to her new life. Then tragedy strikes. I adored the worldbuilding in this fascinating novella, and how so many aspects of the narrative are so different from what I’m used to reading in sci-fi. This is also a great book to listen to by audiobook, as the voice actor is fantastic and her reading adds so much depth to the story. I’m looking forward to book two once it arrives from the library.
Another SFF author I’m enjoying lately is N.K. Jemisin. (I know I’m late to the party. If you love sci-fi and fantasy and you haven’t read her work yet, you need to!) I picked up The Fifth Season, the first book of the Broken Earth trilogy, intending to read the first page, and before I knew it, hours had passed. As with Binti, I was fascinated with a world so unlike others I’ve come across in SFF. The craft of this book blew my mind as well. No spoilers, but the way the author sets up the story is pure brilliance and had me flipping back through the pages to see how she did it.
While I waited for the rest of the Broken Earth trilogy to arrive from the library, I picked up another N.K. Jemisin book off my partner’s bookshelf. Again, I foolishly thought I could read a few pages of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms before bed. Instead, an hour later I had to force myself to set it down, and over the next couple of weeks, I headed to bed early so I could read it for an hour or two each night.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first book of the Inheritance trilogy, an earlier series by N.K. Jemisin. It’s an action-packed high fantasy involving castles, gods, and emperors, whereas the Broken Earth trilogy deals with a post-apocalyptic world where magic users are the most marginalized. The ending of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was surprising and satisfying, and if my partner owned the other books in the trilogy, I’d probably already be finished reading them by now. Alas, I’ll wait for the library books to arrive before digging in again.
If you’re looking to immerse yourself in a completely different world, I highly recommend any of these books. Try reading a few pages (or listening for a few minutes) and see if you can put them down!
Yolande House, originally from Fredericton, NB, taught English in South Korea for six years and now lives in Toronto. Her creative writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Grain, Joyland, PRISM international, and elsewhere. Her creative nonfiction piece "Your Contract Will Not Be Renewed (And You Have Two Months to Leave Job/Apartment/Country)" was published the the new all-creative nonfiction issue of The Fiddlehead. She can be found online at www.yolandehouse.com. Currently, she’s revising a completed childhood memoir.
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