Roseanna Pendlebury Under Review:Luminous. Silvia Park. Simon & Schuster, March 2025. Luminous, the debut novel by Silvia Park, follows several protagonists in a near-future reunited Korea, centering on crimes committed against robots. Robots fill this imagined future. They work as nannies, receptionists, and secretaries, are adopted as pets and children, and are even programmed as … Continue reading An Existence Predicated on Submission: Review of Silvia Park’s Luminous
Author: Roseanna
A London-based reviewer mainly interested in scifi and fantasy, but occasionally prone to dabble in historical and mythological fiction. Currently an editor at Hugo and Ignyte award-winning fanzine Nerds of a Feather. When not reading, can be found playing rugby, collecting too many crafting hobbies or attempting to learn how to fight with a longsword.
Small Press Dispatch: The Uncertainty of Faith
Roseanna Pendlebury So far in this column, all the novellas I’ve discussed have been published as books, by small presses who produce ebooks and physical copies available to purchase, in a similar model to novel production. While this a significant part of the current novella ecosystem, it is not all of it, and today I’ll … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: The Uncertainty of Faith
Small Press Dispatch: Earth and Hearth
Roseanna Pendlebury One of the beauties of the novella is that it can function as a single extended metaphor—a trick it shares with shorter forms, but with a bit more room for elaboration. In The Sheltering Flame, Ruthanna Emrys takes the idea of self-discovery as an ongoing journey, and joins it with a landscape given … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: Earth and Hearth
Small Press Dispatch: The Cruelty is the Point
Roseanna Pendlebury The Red Labyrinth is where people are sent when they break the Red King’s laws. Zoja Rose’s crime was learning to read, compounded by her use of this knowledge to learn more about the history of her country. When the story begins, the reader only knows that she will go on, in the … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: The Cruelty is the Point
Small Press Dispatch: Trapped In Flesh
Roseanna Pendlebury When is a myth retelling no longer a myth retelling? That is, when is it no longer a reworking of an existing text, but something new? One of the frequent criticisms levelled at myth retellings is that there’s a homogeneity to the genre—in the stories told, the approaches used, and who is telling … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: Trapped In Flesh
Small Press Dispatch: The Thing You Do When Crying Isn’t Enough
Roseanna Pendlebury In Syr Hayati Beker’s What A Fish Looks Like, a book of fairytales is transformed by annotation into a collection of new fables, more suited to the climate-change-ravaged future of its setting. In between the fables, and sometimes in the middle of them, are fliers and graffiti and letters and posters that tell … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: The Thing You Do When Crying Isn’t Enough
Small Press Dispatch: Pilgrims of Time, Pilgrims of Memory
Roseanna Pendlebury The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa, translated by Polly Barton, is about not one, but several journeys. Or, no perhaps not even that. It is about travel, in all of the senses—through time, through space, through memory and, crucially, through emotion, moving from a traumatic event and its aftermath towards a place … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: Pilgrims of Time, Pilgrims of Memory
Small Press Dispatch: Once Upon a Time, Functionally
Roseanna Pendlebury One of the critiques often found in novella reviews (and of which I have more than once been guilty) is “this was a novel that was trimmed down to length”. This sentiment often results from the feeling that nothing in the story has a chance to breathe. Martin Cahill’s Audition for the Fox … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: Once Upon a Time, Functionally
Small Press Dispatch: The Marvelous in the Mundane
Roseanna Pendlebury What does the fantastic look like, in a story? Sometimes it follows known patterns and tropes—wizards and monsters and the hero’s journey—but sometimes it can be something simpler and stranger. Hwang Jungeun’s One Hundred Shadows, translated by Jung Yewon, is the second sort. It felt, on reading it, akin to the experience of … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: The Marvelous in the Mundane
Small Press Dispatch: The Voice of the Hills
Roseanna Pendlebury One of the questions that gets passed around in the book club I’m in is “What will be your most vivid memories of this book a year from now? Or will it just leave a vague impression?” I think about this a lot when reading books now, especially because so many do slip … Continue reading Small Press Dispatch: The Voice of the Hills