Two early reviews for Nalo Hopkinson’s forthcoming collection FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS.

From BREE’S BOOK BLOG!:

The stories in this collection are great. There’s a very dynamic feel to them and the characters are well-developed given the page lengths. I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that there was a good deal of variation in length. While many of the stories are about what I’d consider average length for a short story (around the 15-20 pg mark), there were some short but sweet additions to the collection as well.

One of the best parts for me was the introductory paragraphs. At the stories’ starts, there’s a brief introduction in Nalo’s words about the inspiration or prompting for the stories. Some of these are funny and others more serious, but I enjoyed the contextualizing of the tales. It added value to my experience.

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Overall, it was a fantastic collection with a lot of variety and satisfying stories.

CIVILIAN READER:

Falling in Love with Hominids was one of those rare books that grabbed my attention and refused to let me do things like take notes or jot down tidbits I wanted to write in my review. This is a book that reeled me in for all the right reasons and made it nearly impossible to take my eyes off the page. Every reader will surely find something to love, as this collection is often hilariously funny, deeply tragic, intensely engaging, and strongly steeped with fantastic elements. Any author who can connect chickens to dragons via a genetic family tree is obviously doing something special with their writing.

It is refreshing to read an author who appears to not give a damn about genre conventions, boundaries or norms. Instead, Hopkinson provides one vivid, gripping story after another and presents a collection that demands to be noticed as a work that ignores the typical standards we see in speculative fiction all while expanding the boundaries of the genre. Falling in Love with Hominids isn’t so much groundbreaking as it is genre-molding, and Hopkinson is showing anyone who’s looking how truly unique, interesting and engaging science fiction and fantasy can and should be.

For more info about FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, visit theTachyon page.

Cover art  by Chuma Hill.

Design by Elizabeth Story.