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Sean Sheehan's 4 reviews

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine (Teixcalaan)

Aliens and StatecraftArkady Martine’s A Desolation Called Peace, like A Memory Called Desire to which it is the sequel, is entertaining and intelligent speculative fiction. Martine’s fiction embraces soaring fantasy mixing imagination with politics; future scenarios with present colonialisms; and a traumatic e...

9.0/10

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The Exhalation by Ted Chiang

The titular tale in Ted Chiang’s second collection of short stories, The Exhalation, is written with a pictorial clarity that cannot fail to engage the reader. The cyborg narrator, a student of his beings’ anatomy, knows the physical borders of his hermetically sealed world for he has travelled to its edge and seen the enclosing wall...

7.5/10

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Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020 by M John Harrison

An Unsettled World: M. John Harrison’s short storiesMore reliable than this book’s retro sci-fi front cover, the author’s first sentence is one to read for first impressions and future expectations. The opening words of the eponymous tale in Settling the World: Selected Stories by M. John Harrison a...

9.0/10

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The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M John Harrison

This intriguing and, one cannot help thinking, intentionally puzzling novel by the acclaimed writer M. John Harrison, justifies China Mieville's praise of the author as someone who 'writes fantasy and sf, though of a form, scale and brilliance that shames not only the rest of the field, but most modern fiction.'Only two &ndash...

9.4/10

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