Alex Jennings (1) (1979–)

Wildly inventive and unique world-building, so grounded in the love for a city and community. I felt nostalgic for this city I haven't seen in 20 years and connected to the author who can love a place the way others love their family. I'm positive there are many clever references to the real world that I didn't even clock; and that's ok, they are special treats for those who love this city too.
I didn't get solid reading time for this book; I picked it up in breaks and sometimes only got to show more read 3 pages in a day. I share that to say my opinion might be different had I read it straight and with full attention. There's a lot in flux in this story, setting, character, POV, timeline, and at some point I was convinced I'd missed a major reveal or flat out skipped a chapter. I had to take it on faith that the story would resolve in a way that made sense. In the end it was worth it, and I look forward to seeing what else this author produces. I also look forward to someday being able to travel safely and experience the vibe of New Orleans again. show less

Note: I received an Advance Reading Copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

Because of my love for SFF literature, I keep up with a few blogs, twitter accounts, newsletters and sites. I would have to have lived under a rock not to have been aware of the fight of women and POC (and women POC) writers to be read. I have to admit, I struggle with this a lot. Not to give them their time, but with the problem of how to select the works I read. On the one hand, I don’t want to show more think about what and who I read. About who the writer is, where they are from, what their background is and how this is covered in the subject matter. I just want to read. On the other hand, I am aware that what I am reading, what I am noticing, what is or was winning awards went through a biased pre-selection, and that means I am missing out on good stuff. While I find it hard to comit to a reading strategy prefering women, POC, LGTBQ or non-English writers (I just want to read what I want to read) I do aim to be aware of “the other” writers, to broaden my (white, western but feminine) viewpoint.

Anyway, long story short, I do like to read works, especially science fiction, from different viewpoints, and an anthology like New Suns; Original Speculative Fiction by Poeple of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl, makes finding them no issue at all. In this anthology 17 original new stories are collected, alle written by people of color.

Overall it was refreshing to read stories that were based in different settings. Even when reading speculative fiction, settings can be very white/Western-based (or seem that way, through my own white Western glasses). However, several stories in this anthology have a distinctly different starting point, and it took me a while to get comfortable. Which is exactly the reason anthologies like this should exist, so it succeeded there. The stories are truely speculative, ranging from future/near-future SF like “The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex” by Tobias Buckell (which also shows NYC as a sort of third world tourist destination for Aliens that are clearly more well-off than anybody on earth) and “Dumb House” by Andrea Hairston (about resisting smart technology in your life, something we should already be considering IMHO). Some are more fantasy/gotic like, like “Kelsey and the Burdened Breath” by Darcie Little Badger (about spirits) and “The Freedom of the Shifting Sea” by Jaymee Goh (about a seacreature and her loves). Some are more re-imagined history and fairy tales, such as “Burn the Ships” by Alberto Yáñez (about the arrival/presence of non-natives (called Dawncomers) to the lands of the natives of middle-America) and “Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire by E. Lily Yu (a great retelling of the emperor’s new clothes, and one that hits close to home too).

My favorite story was “The Freedom of the Shifting Sea” by Jaymee Goh, because the way she has imagined a seacreature (or is it traditional Malaysian? To my shame I don’t know) that is truely different from us. It is not a human with a tail, it is inhuman in every way. Very refreshing and interesting to read.

All in all this collection is a very well balanced collection, that introduced me to a lot of new (to me) POC writers, and I highly recommend it to all lovers of spec-fic out there! Four stars. show less

New Suns is what it says on the cover, and it is astonishingly good. I only recognized two of the authors, and as we all know an anthology of this type can be a mixed bag, but every story was good and several were great! I usually skip out on at least one story per collection, but even the weaker entries kept me intrigued. My favorites were "The Virtue of Unfaithful Translation" by Minsoo Kang , "Burn the Ships" by Alberto Yanez, and "The Shadow We Cast Through Time" by Indrapramit Das, but show more this is a strong collection.

Editor Nisi Shawl assembled this collection on the basis of identity, part of a decades long quest to get more people of color in speculative fiction, but what's fascinating is a clear thematic link. Each story is about kinship, about the kinds of people we call family, the bonds between people who are more than friends, and how those bonds linger on. This is speculative fiction descended from Octavia Butler, rather than the technocratic impulses of Campbell's vision of the genre, and the questions posed and answered are really novel.

Absolutely recommended! show less

I'm always hungry for voices in Speculative Fiction who have the gift of seeing the world - past, present and future - differently and who can help me step out of my world and into theirs.


I bought Nisi Shawl's 'New Suns - Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color' because I was already a fan of two of the writers, Karin Lowachee and Rebecca Roanhorse,

I'm happy that, from the seventeen stories in 'New Suns', I've found another seven new-to-me writers whose work I'd like to see more show more of.

I've given a brief outline of what appealed to me about my favourite stories in this collection and some details on the authors. I've listed the stories in the order that they appear in the collection.

I encourage you to try this collection. Your favourite stories might be different than mine.



'Deer Dancer' by Kathleen Alcalá
'Deer Dancer' is one of those (very) short pieces of speculative fiction that sparkle in the imagination like a shard of blown glass: bright, unique and with sharp edges.
In eight pages or so, a series of short scenes showed me a young woman called Tater and the communal life she leads in a future version of our world, a couple of generations after large scale climate change has forced people to find new ways to live. It's a story filled with magic and strength and hope. You can find my full review HERE


Kathleen Alcalá is a Clarion West graduate and instructor, the award-winning author of six books, a recent Whitely Fellow, and a previous Hugo House Writer in Residence. Her latest book, The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, explores relationships with geography, history, and ethnicity.



'Coming Home To Atropos' by Steve Barnes

Steven Barnes' 'Coming Home To Atropos' has humour so dry it leaves you desiccated. Then you realise there was no humour, only long-deserved revenge.
The skin of an infomercial, designed to attract rich white folks who want to end their lives in comfort on a Caribbean island, is slowly peeled away to show the grinning skull underneath.

This is a sharp-edged story that cuts deep.


STEVEN BARNES is a New York Times bestselling author, screenwriter and educator who has written more than thirty science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels. Octavia E. Butler called Barnes’s Endeavor-Award winning novel Lion’s Blood “imaginative, well researched, well written, and devastating.”






'Unkind of Mercy' by Alex Jennings

Unkind of Mercy by Alex Jennings is a very disquieting tale, with a new kind of supernatural threat in New Orleans.

The threat itself is well-conceived and skilfully revealed but what really sells the story is the accuracy and credibility of the everyday life of the nineteen-year-old woman who stumbles into the threat. Everything about her life feels real and relatable, which makes the threat much more convincing.


Alex Jennings is a writer /teacher / performer living in New Orleans. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Tunis (Tunisia), Paramaribo (Surinam) and the United States. He constantly devours pop culture and writes mostly jokes on Twitter (@magicknegro).





'Burn The Ships' by Alberto Yáñez

'Burn The Ships' by Alberto Yáñez is a chilling riff on the conquest of the of Peru seen from the Inca point of view and with a very different ending, that challenges not just conquest but patriarchal theocracy.

This is a deeply atmospheric story about a clash of cultures, the nature of magic and a struggle between the submission of male magebloods to a hungry god and the anger of female magicians who will not abdicate their responsibility for the lives of their people to a god who sits back and does nothing.



Alberto Yáñez is a writer of fantasies, poetry, and essays on justice, agency and art, pop culture, and the absurdity of life. With the eye of a natural editor, he’s also a photographer with a documentarian’s approach to taking pictures.





'The Freedom of the Shifting Sea' by Jaymee Goh

'The Freedom of the Shifting Sea' by Jaymee Goh gives a 'mermaid' story that seems somehow more grounded and plausible than most and imagines a relationship that need not end up in pain and sacrifice, possibly because men are not involved.
I liked that the 'mermaid' is portrayed as alien and different, capable of great violence, who has a different sense of time passing but is still a person and a person who can be fascinated by women but sees men as a nuisance to be dealt with.


Jaymee Goh is a writer, reviewer, editor, and essayist of science fiction and fantasy. She graduated from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 2016, and received her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Riverside, where she dissertated on steampunk and whiteness. She is a Malaysian citizen currently living in Berkeley, California


'Blood And Bells' by Karin Lowachee

I liked the energy of the speech pattern, almost a dialect, that Karin Lowachee told 'Blood and Bells' in. It helped to immerse me in a future where rival gangs are struggling to survive. It was never so dense that it got in the way and it gave a very distinctive flavour.

The world-building is deft and rapid, quickly creating a culture of violent confrontations, tribal loyalties and endless strife. The plot doesn't give in to the environment. Instead, it focus on the personal, on family and on finding a route to freedom.


Karin Lowachee is a Guyanese-born Canadian author of speculative fiction. She s the author of four novels, Warchild (2002), Burndive (2003), Cagebird (2005) and The Gaslight Dogs (2010).








'Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

'Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an almost-fragment of a story, a sliver of a different reality but it's a sliver that slips between the lower ribs into your liver.

I liked how normality was made to feel fragile and difficult to sustain, as if it were an illusion you cling to to distract yourself from the darkness you know is inside you but are trying not to deny.


Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of the novels Gods of Jade and Shadow, Certain Dark Things, Untamed Shore, and a bunch of other books. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu's Daughters). She describes herself as 'Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination.'


'Harvest' by Rebecca Roanhorse

'Harvest' by Rebecca has a tone that I found irresistible. Its a siren call or seduction, possession, submission and sacrifice. It's filled with blood and beauty and deeply felt grief and the total satisfaction that comes of surrendering yourself to someone you are intoxicated with.

This is the story of Tansi, who falls in love with a Deer Woman, for whom she harvests hearts. The story starts with a warning:
NEVER FALL IN love with a deer woman. Deer women are wild and without reason. Their lips are soft as evensong, their skin dark as the mysteries of a moonless forest. A deer woman will make you do terrible things for a chance to dip your fingers inside her, to have her taste linger on your tongue. You will weep before it is over, the cries of one who has no relatives. But you will do whatever she asks.
But who listens to warnings like that? Especially when they're young and in love and well-trained in butchering meat?


Rebecca Roanhorse is a Nebula and Hugo Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her work has also been a finalist for the Sturgeon, Locus and World Fantasy awards. Her novel Trail of Lightning was selected as an Amazon, B&N, and NPR Best Book of 2018. She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pug.



'Kelsey and the Burdened Breath' by Darcie Little Badger

This is a cleverly wrought 'What if?' story. It takes an original idea, 'What if everyone knew that the last breath of dying people and animals carried their essence somewhere?' Then it thinks through what that would mean. Where would last breaths go? Would they need any help? Then it adds two more 'What ifs': 'What if they didn't want to go?' and 'What if some of them were predators?'

What makes this more than a neat story about the consequences of a good idea is that the story focuses not on the ideas but on a woman living alone in her dead parents' farmhouse with the Last Breath of her dog, Pal for company. Kelsey is the person who gives Last Breaths the help they need. She' also the one who gets called on the rare occasions when Last Breaths are a threat. The story is richer both because Kelsey is likeable and relatable and because Kelsey's journey isn't really about what Last Breaths do but about the choices the living get to make.


Darcie Little Badger s an Earth scientist, writer, and fan of the weird, beautiful, and haunted. Her first novel, ELATSOE, is coming Summer 2020!

She has a BA in Geosciences from Princeton University and a PhD in Oceanography from Texas A&M University. show less