I was first introduced to Lois-Ann Yamanaka through Blu’s Hanging (1997). So, I thought I was prepared for the series of heartbreaks that ensue from her seventh novel, Behold the Many (2006). I was wrong. The opening scene, alone, reveals how sexual and racial traumas carved onto a young woman’s body are also manifest in the landscape…

Sandi Tan’s debut, The Black Isle (2012), is a dark and wild coming-of-age story that left me wide awake after finishing it late in the night. The novel is part-horror and part-historical fiction that spans 480 pages. The protagonist, Cassandra, is gifted (or cursed) with the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. She is…

In Daniel José Older’s YA fantasy novel Shadowshaper, Brooklyn, New York comes alive as a character more than just a mere backdrop. Older is a former EMT, who has been riding the ambulance through the streets of New York for eight years. In various interviews, he has mentioned how influential his experience as a paramedic has been…

Aztec god Tezcatlipoca’s name roughly translates to “smoking mirror,” which refers to the mirrors made in obsidian that were used for rituals. This summer, I read two books that offer very different versions of this deity: David Bowles’s middle grade fantasy novel The Smoking Mirror (2015) and Ernest Hogan’s science fiction novel The Smoking Mirror Blues (2001),…

Set in 1980s Tokyo, Don Lee’s Country of Origin is a detective novel that brings together a troupe of characters who are all half-heartedly searching for something or someone. Tom Hurley, a Junior Officer at the American Embassy in Tokyo, receives a call from Susan Countryman, who has not heard from her sister in a month. Her sister,…