The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
Read as part of CBR13bingo: myth I made it a point to know as little about this book going in. I knew that it was a fantasy set in a mythical New York City that involved a family. That was it. And I think that’s the best way to read this book. There is something horrifying that happens in the first third (or does it?) that made it difficult to read but Victor LaValle’s writing style is easy enough to fall in and out of. […]
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
The titular devil in LaValle’s The Devil in Silver comes in many forms. Its most obvious is the monster that roams the halls of the New Hyde psychiatric ward at night, attacking patients who leave their doors unlocked. When Pepper is committed against his will after committing a crime he doesn’t fully remember, he quickly comes face to face with this evil. Along with some of his companions on the ward, he sets out to solve the mystery of this hushed up resident of the […]
The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
In my long standing tradition of judging a book by the cover, I grabbed this book based on both title AND cover. The premise sounded interesting: a dark fairy tale take on postpartum depression. In the end, I found a trippy book full of all kinds of weirdness that was more than the sum of its parts. The protagonist, Apollo, is the child of a Ugandan refugee and a New York parole officer. Raised by a single mother after his father disappears, Apollo becomes interested […]
A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers by Victor LaValle
FYI, the cover of this in person is so cool. You eventually can see the word “history” hidden behind “future”. Wow. What a great collection. I didn’t give any story less than four stars. Some stories resonated with me very much because some of them read as things that could totally happen in a year or less with the ways things are going on in the United States right now. Other stories had a very strong fantasy element (which I liked) but didn’t seem […]
You can’t escape Lovecraft’s influence if you, like I, read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror. But until now, I had never read any of Lovecraft’s works directly just interpretations of them by authors like Neil Gaiman. I was aware that he is considered problematic due to racist beliefs that even for his time were extreme but I wasn’t sure how much of that bled into his actual work. Well, thanks to my book club I got to find out firsthand. Our assignment this month was to […]
The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
This wasn’t a bad book. The writing was good enough that I blew through it in about 3 sittings and I wanted to keep reading, so there’s that. But I was disappointed. And I feel guilty that I was disappointed, especially since Lavalle is a talented writer and a lot of things in this story worked really, really well. But there was also a lot that didn’t, at least for me. I can’t appropriately talk about this book without spoilers, so stop reading here if […]
