вЂњThe Rest Of Us Just Live HereвЂќ by Patrick Ness is an original and insightful look at coming of age on the sidelines of other peopleвЂ™s lives. McGrath is a fast-paced Wierd West adventure. This quarter, I read three books that did that for me: вЂњThe Fifth SeasonвЂќ by N K Jemisin is epic science fiction with a human heart, вЂњThe DevilвЂ™s RevolverвЂќ by V.

I love fiction that challenges me to look at things in fresh ways or comes up with new twists to old tropes. It looks at how blind the wealthy and powerful become to the reality of their situation, how hatred and the need not just for justice but for vengeance, builds in the enslaved and how neither side will willing acknowledge this. The novella seems to me to be about the corrupting effects of slavery on a society whose wealth depends on the work of slaves but whose sense of worth is maintained only by denying the humanity of those slaves. I enjoyed how Una McCormack slowly built up my understanding of Monica Greatorex, both by showing me how she sees her current and past self and by letting me see the things about her to which she is mostly blind. вЂњThe UndefeatedвЂќ (2019) is a beautifully crafted novella about unconscious privilege, ubiquitous slavery and their consequences as seen through the eyes of a memorable, if not always reliable, narrator, Monica Greatorex. IвЂ™ve bought another of his novella, вЂњ A Dead Djinn in CairoвЂќ and IвЂ™m hoping that he will go on to write some full-length novels. One of the things that I liked about this story was that all the good guys are women or girls, all but one of them is black and all of them kickass in their own ways. The story involves a wicked plot that could bring great destruction, a swashbuckling Haitian airship captain who is strong on technology but refuses to give ground to the old African Gods who call to her, innovative steampunk-ish science that has a dash of magic in it, two black nuns who seem closer to voodoo than Christianity, fanatical soldiers with a scary leader and, at the centre of it all, an engaging, fourteen-years-old goddess-possessed black street child who calls herself Creeper. вЂњThe Black GodвЂ™s DrumsвЂќ (2018) is a sparkling little novella, set in an original and uplifting alternative history in which, in the late nineteenth century, New Orleans and Haiti are independent nation-states and the American Civil War had a different ending.

Best reads 2017 fiction