M. Darusha Wehm

If home is where the heart is, what happens to the heart when there is no home?



A novel in short stories…

The White Cloud left Old Earth many generations ago. Its voyage to its new home will take many dozens of generations — thousands of years.

The tale bounces around in time, each story not clear whether it takes place before or after the one before. The stories themselves don’t necessarily follow linear narrative flow. Often a story begins with an older character looking back on their show more lives.

This wasn’t an easy read, but it was an beautiful one. Many of the central characters are depressed — not despairing, just empty. They feel the weight of the endless, interminable journey.

Some of the stories resonated with me more than others. The aro-ace love story between Steve and Keith was absolutely wonderful. Beatriz and Oki’s tales both stuck with me. But the Captain’s Log was the one that stuck in my mind.

if you enjoy science fiction short stories and a fresh approach to gender, give this book a try. show less

Act of Will by M. Darusha Wehm is the second book in the author’s Andersson Dexter novels and is as wonderful if not better than the first book, Self Made. It is a cyber-tech sci-fi novel rich in fascinating characters living in a world where the virtual and real have melded.

The book continues the story of detective Andersson Dexter (Dex) of the Cubicle Men, now in the middle of a complicated relationship with fellow squad member Annabelle Lewis. A missing co-worker leads him into an show more investigation and puts him on the trail of a serial killer.

The crime plotline of the book is fairly standard serial murderer story, but the author brings a fresh angle to it by tying both the killer and the crimes into her sci-fi world. She keeps the cat-and-mouse perspective creepy and suspenseful and the killer walks in the nameless shadows until the very end.

But as brilliantly as Ms. Wehm weaves her thriller, it is the characters and the society of her virtually integrated world that make this novel truly shine. Her characters breathe and feel, are flawed, and have sticky, messy problems in a world where lines of gender, law and reality have blurred and often disappeared. It is a future world you can see evolving from our own, but one in which people are still seeking love and escape.

This is the second novel starring the character Andersson Dexter, but it can be easily read as a standalone novel (though I recommend reading both just for the delight of it). Act of Will it is a stellar book. show less

If you like your sci-fi full of cyber-tech, intrigue, moral questions and just that slight touch of nihilism, then you should read Beautiful Red by M. Darusha Wehm. It is a well-written, well-crafted and engaging novel.

It is the story of Jack, who works as a security officer in a world where corporations run the show and most human interaction takes place in a virtual environment. One day she stumbles on some anomalous security breaches which lead her into the path of a radical protest group show more that may be engaging in sinister and criminal activities.

The author, M. Darusha Wehm, knows how to write credible characters and how to create a realistic, potential society. She shapes a complete civilization where you feel the characters could exist comfortably. As a reader I felt her postulated world could easily come in to existence as a possible future.

I enjoyed Ms. Wehm’s point of view and her plot was both interesting and provocative. Many of the themes woven into the novel’s structure tackle compelling societal questions. I highly recommend this book. show less

I greatly enjoyed this deeper exploration of the Mars that M. Darusha Wehm established in their Nebula-nominated interactive novel from Choice of Games. This isn't a story about high drama or stakes; no, it's about people on Mars who are working and living and loving, and how they come together to start a resistance movement.