BookOwl

  4/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* Because I am curious about mythology from around the world, Alternative Alamat: Myths and Legends from the Philippines, edited by Paolo Chikiamco, was an easy choice to pick out from the library. A collection of short stories—by various authors—taking place in the modern day and based on Filipino mythology, Alternative Alamat was a very interesting and culturally rich anthology. Until Spanish occupation, Filipino mythology was a geographically defined phenomena, with each region having slightly different words and characterizations of mythical figures like Anagolay, Hukloban, and Mariang Makiling. A sort of unification of these myths and legends coincided with a greater sense of nationality post-occupation. Coincidentally, those deities were the subject of my two favorite stories from the anthology: “Ana’s Little Pawnshop on Makiling St.” and “Remembrance.” In the author’s note preceding “Ana’s Little Pawnshop,” I learned that the story dealt wi...

4/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* The Deep Sky is a debut speculative science fiction whodunit by Yume Kitasei, although it is definitely about much more: climate change, environmentalism, extremist movements, space exploration, and the complicated relationships between best friends and those between parent and child. Asuka is one of 80 of an all-female crew selected to board a ship—the Phoenix —to a new world— “Planet X” —as Earth is in a full climate crisis. (One of Asuka’s most formative memories is spending time with her family in a tent camp in California because the old growth forests were on fire.) These future astronauts are expected to raise a generation of children about halfway through the journey to their new world. “They would sleep through the next 3,650 sunsets over this place. They would never stand here again. But then, that was the nature of time. You could never return to the same point, just a facsimile of it.” After being awakened from 10 years of cryogenic ...

  4/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* “With very few adult primary feathers coming in at the tips of its wings it could not fly yet, and eyed me angrily, not taking its orange glare away for a minute, like a gremlin that has not quite come into its full power but knows it won’t be long.” Yes, owls are gremlin-adjacent, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them any less! (The above quote describes a baby Eagle Owl.) I have a feeling Miriam Darlington, author of The Wise Hours: A Journey into the Wild and Secret World of Owls, would agree with me. This book is both a love letter to owls and nature, as well as a memoir of a difficult time in Darlington’s life. I have been fascinated by owls since I was very young, and The Wise Hours was a fantastic homage to a raptor that historically has been a bad omen and today is somewhat more accepted by the general public. Not that people aren’t still somewhat superstitious, but owls are viewed in an increasingly positive rather than negative light. (I...

  3.5/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* “The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not…yet, I occurred.” Dune Messiah , the second installment of the science fiction “Dune Chronicles” series by Frank Herbert, receives a conflicted 3.5/5 stars from me. On one hand, it was nice to revisit the Dune universe, yet I felt a bit disoriented by the fact that it picks up 12 years after Dune . Not to mention that the atmosphere is more cynical and political than the feeling of hope and revolutionary transformation, of not just a political transformation for the better, but an environmental one as well. Lastly, and most disappointing, the book suffered from a dearth of strong women characters, who spend the book mostly focused on producing an heir and protect...

  4.5/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* Coming back to this series is such a pleasure! Volume four of the “Lore Olympus” series sees Hades and Persephone continuing their slow-burn dance around each other. Persephone wishes to enact some boundaries, to see if a romantic relationship between them will develop gradually, instead of all at once. They both have work to do on themselves so as not to bring the baggage into their potential future together. On Hades’ side, he has to make some changes in his personal life. His on-off relationship, in which Minthe employs emotionally abusive tactics against him, is starting to wear him down. Moreover, he has an unhealthy entanglement with Hera, Zeus’ wife, that he has to extract himself from. (Hera is in her own abusive relationship and uses these occasional hook-ups as revenge, as much as Hades does when getting back at Minthe.)   If you know Greek mythology, you know that the Greek pantheon is a mess. While Hades is a complex and lovable chara...

  5/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* Kindred by Octavia Butler is what I would describe as science fiction mixed with historical fiction and horror elements. I am not surprised that this book has been adapted into a TV series. Octavia Butler has an ingenious way of getting to big truths, which is clearly on display in Kindred. Our protagonist is Dana, a burgeoning writer recently married to fellow author, Kevin. The book itself takes place in the summer of 1976 yet still feels modern. After only a few days of being in their new California apartment, Dana finds herself traveling back in time to antebellum Maryland (early 1800s). Where she lands is near a plantation run by the Weylin family, and she is mistaken for a runaway slave that dresses like a man (e.g., wearing a shirt and pants, not the simple dress worn by slave women of the day). It is at this plantation that she meets a young Rufus, heir apparent to the plantation. Rufus turns out to be one of Dana’s ancestors. Despite hersel...

  5/5 stars *Spoiler alert!* “History is not kind to us We restitch it with living Past memory forward Into desire Into the panic” I have finally read Audre Lorde and I am kicking myself that it took this long! What a treasure I was missing out on. Black feminist queer icon and civil rights activist Audre Lorde has a writing style that is searing, incisive, yet lyrical and graceful. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde gives readers access to almost all of her work in one powerful volume of activist poetry that blends the real with the mythical. Throughout the volume, we experience history as seen contemporaneously by her, such as the struggle to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa and the civil rights fight in America. Even though she is no longer with us (she passed in 1992), her poetry echoes presciently, hauntingly with our present moment, where issues of destructive foreign policy, racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination are not ghosts but are still...