FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS is full of memorable and real characters
Nalo Hopkinson’s wonderful treat FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS keeps garnering positive praise.
BOOK RIOT including it among The Best Books We Read In July:
After I finished this book, I wanted to just hug it to my chest and sigh contentedly. FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS hooked me from the introduction. Every story feels like a perfectly formed separate entity, but pulling them together is the effortless blending of the fantastic and the mundane. These are exactly the kind of stories that I love: rooted in reality without being restricted by it, populated by dynamic and compelling diverse characters, and varying in subject and tone throughout. Expect horror happily sidling up to a cozy domestic narrative about a missing chicken. Nalo Hopkinson’s brief introductions to each story just added more interest to each, and added her to my list of authors that I want to bump into at a coffee shop.
While this is an eclectic collection of stories, Hopkinson does bring cohesion to the work through her foreword, introductory comments to the stories, and note about the author. Together, the foreword and comments about individual stories set the stage for the reader, whereas the note about the author also reflects on Hopkinson’s approach and major concerns. Falling in Love with Hominids is a wonderful treat for Nalo Hopkinson fans and a fantastic introduction for new readers.
Hopkinson does some beautiful things with the art of writing, her imagination is without bounds, and she challenges both readers and writers to go beyond what we see as the status quo. The book is filled with characters of colour, with LGBT characters, with characters who, one way or the other, are memorable and real and get to take part in some amazing stories. From this collection, I definitely want to see more of her work; she is without a doubt an author to keep an eye on!
I really enjoyed this introduction to Nalo Hopkinson’s work. I can’t wait to read more of her work in the future because I loved the speculative worlds in this short story collection. I particularly enjoyed the stories with sensuous and visceral character transformations. I liked the grounded sense of realism in the worldbuilding and diverse mythos across the stories.
For more information on FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover art by Chuma Hill
Design by Elizabeth Story