Book Reviews

Are we alone in the universe? This is one of the first questions that comes along when gazing upon the stars. If not, then one of the immediate questions is when (if at all) we will encounter intelligent extraterrestial life, and how this will unfold. This book presents one possible first encounter in striking fashion. Definitely worth a read.

When hundreds of priests gathered in the tiny Icelandic town of Ísafjörður in 1925, things did not go as planned. Jón, the youngest and most beautiful bishop in Iceland’s history, had intended to disprove the country’s growing spiritualism. Instead, a mountain collapsed, god appeared (in all too small clothes), water turned to wine, fish grew as large as men, and, did everyone just strike deals with the devil?

This is commonly recommended as a good entry point to The Culture book series which envisions a quite utopian humaniod inter-galactic civilization. In the Culture, humanoids and AI machines live together essentially without laws, currency, or scarciity. Although the Culture is largely utopian, adjacent civilizations are not, and the Culture often tries to make contacts with such civilizations to make them more compassionate and just. This book centers around a renown game player from the Culture who is sent as an envoy to an empire build around a type of game. Through following this envoy we experience the jarring differences between the two societies, where the more "barbaric" one bears many similarities to the real world.

It's always good to try something new every once in a while, and this was the first drama/contemporary fiction book I've read in a long while. The writing is mostly slow-paced, depicting the protagonist, Violette tending to her graveyard. It is this emphasis on day-to-day events that sets the tone for the novel, painting a (mostly) believable world and its people.

How would human civilization look if it had survived for a billion years? This is the key idea Clarke poses and explores in this novel. It is well written and proposes some believable answers to that question.

This is a great speculative novel about a dystopian California in 2026, where the climate crisis has caused havoc, and society has collapsed. Lauren lives in a small middle-class gated neighborhood, but when they eventually become overrun by addicts, arsonists, and looters, she starts her journey north in search of a better life than modern slavery.

The Dwarf is the personification of evil. He detests love, and only gets pleasure from hurting others. He is the evil within each of us.

Sadly enough, this book was quite a disappointment to me. As successor to The Three-Body Problem, it again tries to pose some thought provoking questions. But in the end these interesting nuggets were far too few, and the remainder of the book felt flat and unimaginative.

This might be the first book I have read twice, first reading it maybe 15 years ago as a child. After reading some of Le Guin's other works, with generally older demographics, I decided to revisit this young adult novel to see her prowess therein. Her writing continue to impress, and I would warmly recommend it for people around 11-14, or older people who want a nice coming of age magical adventure.

Before reading this book, I had heard so much about it. It had a wildly successful TV series, and I had heard that its thoughts around women's rights and fascism had many connections to the political climate of 2025. It has also been banned in several US school libraries for being morally corrupt, which stirs some interest. However, although it is a great book, I found myself not overly Atwood's style of writing, which sadly caused this to fall slightly short of my high expectations.

When Japan outlaws Christianity in the sixteen hundreds, a few Portuguese Jesuit priests try to sneak into the country to investigate the fate of their teacher, as well as continue to spread their religion. The book is written in large part as a collection of letters from one of these priests, and we get to follow him during his treacherous journey. I would recommend Silence to you who enjoy slow books, religious arguments, and preferably are knowledgeable of Jesus' journey in the Bible.

There is a certain magic to reading a great book, without going into it with any notion of what it is about, or that you'll like it. When I started reading this book, I knew nothing more than what's written on the cover, which describes it as "A novel about myself" and its excellent blurb: "Den här boken är självupptagen, odräglig, oklar, klok, viktig, förvirrad, onödig. Kort sagt, den säger helt olika saker till olika personer."

This one is up there with Burmese Days as some of the most repulsive books I have read. It centers around a married woman in South Korea as she is driven to insanity by different men in her life. It includes themes of domestic violence, the patriarchy, and more broadly shame and desire.

This coming-of-age collection of short stories, taking place in Swansea in South Wales, are inspired by the authors childhood and young adult years. The stories cover topics such as poverty and alcoholism, but also lust and death. Dylan Thomas is by many placed among the best poets of the twentieth century, and this literary prowess could be seen throughout the book.

This is a short story focused around colonialism and exploitation, and seems to have originated from Le Guin's exasperation about the morality of exploitation in the U.S's foreign politics, such as the Vietnam war and atomic weapon testing. It takes place in her universe of the Hainish Cycle, and tells a story of humans trying to colonize a planet with other pre-existing native humanoids. It is definitely worth a read at its measly 100 pages.

I became completely enamored by the writings of Le Guin, when rediscovering her through reading The Left Hand of Darkness. Therefore, I had very high expectations when reading this book, and although it was good, it did not really capture the same magic as the aforementioned book. I do recommend reading it if one enjoys Le Guin's style, as she still excels with the idea of exploring thought experiments, but I would probably recommend starting with one of her other books.

Everybody has heard of Frankenstein's monster, but I never knew much more than that it was misunderstood and driven away by humans. Frankly, I did not assume the story or writing would be that interesting. This turned out to be completely wrong, it definitely being worth a read at its mere 200 pages.

I went into this book essentially blind and became very pleasantly surprised. It centers around a black woman, Dana, from the 1970s who several times gets transported back in time to a farm in the antebellum south. It is written as a memoir, and its strength lies in re-living the slavery on such a farm from the eyes of a (at the time of writing) modern woman.

This book follows the poor orphan Oliver Twist, who is born and raised at a communal workhouse, and after escaping to London, involuntarily gets involved in the criminal world. One of its main messages is how terribly the poor are treated, seen by the upper classes as lazy slobs who don't want to work.

Neuromancer was an early and very influential work within the cyberpunk genre. This made it a big hit, as it created a novel and immersive cyberpunk world, full of avatars and cyberspace.

I read Snow Crash when I desperately needed a break from Neuromancer, and found it similar, but more enjoyable and well-written in many ways. It might have one of my favorite opening chapters of all time, and proceeds to create an incredibly immersive portrayal of a cyberpunk ultra-capitalistic America after a world-wide economic collapse. Over 30 years later, its portrayal of technology and the metaverse are still relatively realistic and thought provoking.

I happened to stumble upon this book (partly due to a recommendation by ChatGPT) and did not have that large expectations. However, it caught me completely off guard and became one of my favorite books in a long time, even though it is over 50 years old. Le Guin has included an excellent introduction, where she partly describes her science fiction books as large thought experiments about the consequences of altering reality.