story collection – Pleasant Nights

Black Stars collection

Title/Author: The Visit by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Black Pages by Nnedi Okorafor

2043…A Merman I Should Turn to Be by Nisi Shawl

These Alien Skies by C.T. Rwizi

We Travel the Spaceways by Victor LaValle

Clap Back by Nalo Hopkinson

Genre: Afrofuturism

I’m not a sci-fi person. As much as I try to be, and as much as I fully support the Afrofuturism genre, it’s just not my thing. That said, I do enjoy a book here and there. The Parable of the Sower duology by Octavia Butler is a masterpiece. I also loved her Kindred. But other books in the genre were just okay for me. But that’s just me. If this is your genre of choice, you’ll love this book series found on Amazon.

From Goodreads: The Visit: One night in Lagos, two former friends reunite. Obinna is a dutiful and unsophisticated stay-at-home husband and father married to a powerful businesswoman. Eze is single, a cautious rebel from his university days whose arrival soon upsets the balance in Obinna’s life. In a world where men are constantly under surveillance and subject to the whims of powerful women, more than Obinna’s ordered and accustomed routine might be on the line.

The Black Pages: Issaka has returned home to Timbouctou and a devastating al-Qaeda raid. His only hope for survival is Faro, a stunning, blue-beaded supernatural entity who rises free from the flames of her imprisoning book as it burns. Compelled to follow Faro, Issaka is opening his eyes to their shared history and the ancestral wisdom of his own past.

2043… A Merman I Should Turn to Be: Five miles off the South Carolina coast, Darden and Catherina are getting their promised forty acres, all of it undersea. Like every Black “mer,” they’ve been experimentally modified to adapt to their new subaquatic home—and have met with extreme resistance from white supremacists. Darden has an inspired plan for resolution. For both those on land and the webbed bottom-dwellers below, Darden is hoping to change the wave of the future.

These Alien Skies: Copilots Msizi and Tariro are testing a newly constructed wormhole jump that presumably leads to unsettled habitable worlds. Then an explosion sends them off course, far from where they started and with little chance of ever making it back. Now they’re stranded on their new home for the diaspora. It’s called Malcolm X-b. But they’re beginning to wonder how many light-years from civilization they really are.

Clap Back: Burri is a fashion designer and icon with a biochemistry background. Her latest pieces are African inspired and crafted to touch the heart. They enable wearers to absorb nanorobotic memories and recount the stories of Black lives and forgiveness. Wenda doesn’t buy it. A protest performance artist, Wenda knows exploitation when she sees it. What she’s going to do with Burri’s breakthrough technology could, in the right hands, change race relations forever.

We Travel the Spaceways: Grimace is a homeless man on a holy mission to free Black Americans from emotional slavery. His empty soda cans told him as much. Then he meets Kim, a transgender runaway who joins Grimace on his heroic quest. Is Grimace receiving aluminum missives from the gods, or is he a madman? Kim will find out soon enough on a strange journey they’ve been destined to share.

I loved The Black Pages. The opening page has a quote from Fahrenheit 451 on it, so I was hooked. And yes, it’s about book burning, but it’s so much more than that. I immediately was drawn in to the story, more so than any of the other stories. The Visit was also really great. The tables were turned where the world is a matriarchy. The others were good, but just not for me. Please don’t let that dissuade you, though. These are great stories.

Faraway Collection

Titles and Authors:

The Prince and the Troll by Rainbow Rowell

Hazel and Gray by Nic Stone

The Princess Game by Soman Chainani

The Cleaners by Ken Liu

The Wickeds by Gayle Forman

Genre: fairy tale-ish

I love these short story collections that Amazon puts out. I’ve read the Forward collection (ratings: The Last Conversation 5 stars, Ark 4 stars, Summer Frost 4, Emergency Skin 3, You Have Arrived at Your Destination 3, Randomize 3). I loved the first Nameless collection by Dean Koontz and will dig into the second set shortly. I read the Hush collection (ratings: Treasure 3 stars, Slow Burner 3 stars, The Gift 4 stars, Snowflakes 4, Buried 4, Let Her Be 4). The Out of Line stories are all about women who don’t/won’t fit into a box (ratings: This Telling 4 stars, Graceful Burdens 4 stars, Sweet Virginia 5, The Contractors 4, Halfway to Free 5, Bear Witness 4, Shine, Pamela! Shine 4). This collection was really great. And I’m currently reading the Black Stars collection.

From Goodreads: The Prince and the Troll: It’s fate when a man accidentally drops his phone off the bridge. It’s fortune when it’s retrieved by a friendly shape sloshing in the muck underneath. From that day forward, as they share a coffee every morning, an unlikely friendship blooms. Considering the reality for the man above, where life seems perfect, and that of the sharp-witted creature below, how forever after can a happy ending be?

Hazel and Gray: It’s bad enough that Hazel and Gray have defied the demands of Hazel’s foul stepfather. The Monster has forbidden their romance. Now they’ve awakened in the forest, phones dead, hours past curfew. But not far away is a grand estate in the middle of nowhere. The door is open. In this short story about choosing your own path, the fury of the Monster that awaits them back home may be nothing compared to what lies ahead.

The Princess Game: The victims are the most popular girls in school, each murdered and arranged in a grim fairy-tale tableau. To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning—but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play.

The Wickeds: Envious queen? Evil stepmother? Kidnapping hag? Elsinora, Gwendolyn, and Marguerite are through with warts-and-all tabloids, ugly lies, and the three ungrateful brats who pitted them against each other and the world. But maybe there’s more to the stories than even the Wickeds know. Is it time to finally get revenge? After all, they’re due for a happily-enough-ever-after. Even if they have to write it themselves.

The Cleaners: Gui is a professional cleaner at A Fresh Start, scrubbing away the unpleasant layers of memory that build up on the personal objects of his customers. Memory-blind himself, he can’t feel those wounds. Clara can, and she prefers them irretrievable. Until her sister, Beatrice, ultrasensitive to memory, raises one that could change Clara’s mind. For Gui, the past is gone. For Clara and Beatrice, deciding what to remember reaches to the heart of their shared history.

I loved The Cleaners. Hands down the best of the bunch for me. The Wickeds was my least favorite. It was just a little too happily ever after for me. The rest were all four stars, and I really enjoyed them. You could breeze through this collection in a day for sure. Most took me less than 30 minutes to read. If you have Prime and a Kindle (or the app) don’t miss these stories.