Author Archives: Jeff Xilon

Book Recommendation: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Posted on by

Quick note before I get into my thoughts on Mexican Gothic and why I recommend it. I have created a little explainer of my approach to book and short fiction recommendations and you can find it here.

First things first. The foremost thing you need know about Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s MEXICAN GOTHIC is that it is a horror novel. The second is that, while everyone’s taste and tolerance for horror varies, it is a legitimately scary and disturbing horror novel. If you’re familiar with Stephen King’s three types of horror (the gross-out, horror, terror) know that this book fulfills all three.

If that sounds like a warning you’d be right. If it sounds like criticism you’d be wrong. MEXICAN GOTHIC is a horror novel and a horror novel that manages to move past creepy to actually scary is one especially deserving of the designation and of attention.

Continue reading →

The Jazz Chain – Link 6: Max Roach

Posted on by

So this is about a year late, but to all cliche about it: better late than never, right? So here it is the long awaited sixth link the The Jazz Chain. For people new to The Jazz Chain it’s pretty simple: I am taking a tour through Jazz through a six degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of model. I started with one of my favorite albums of all time in any genre: Art Blakey’s Orgy in Rhythm. Then I took one of the “sidemen” from that album, Sabu Martinez, and went and listened to one of his albums, one where he was the band leader: Sorcery! And that’s the pattern. For each album I listen to I pick one of the contributing players and listen to an album of their own and so on and so on. The last album in the chain was Johnny Girffin’s 1957 debut, Introducing Johnny Griffin. The drum player on that album was the legendary Max Roach and that is who we’re here to listen to today. With his album Drums Unlimited.

Continue reading →

Book Recommendation: The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Posted on by

I haven’t done much writing about novel length work in quite a while so I think I better lay out some ground rules and expectations before diving in to my thoughts on THE CITY WE BECAME by N.K. Jemisin. You can find those in a post I’ve made here. Call it my recommendations policy. Of particular importance: I don’t think I get super spoilerly in this recommendation at all, but as with probably any and every recommendation it’s best to assume there may be spoilers below. Now, on with the recommendation for this wonderful book!

Continue reading →

Past FIYAH Stories Featured in the Roundup

Posted on by

One of my favorite speculative fiction magazines, FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, got a lot of deserved and overdue attention this past weekend and has acquired enough new subscribers to move into paying their writers SFWA pro rates. This has really brightened my day!

Along with the impromptu subscription drive efforts I noticed many people asking about back issues. You can buy back issues of FIYAH and they’ve also put together back issue bundles for each of their previous years of operation. That being the case I thought a little roundup of the FIYAH stories I’ve included in past roundups would be in order.

Please note: EVERY issue of FIYAH is excellent and I am not issuing these as any kind of authoritative “best of” of the magazine. That’s not how my roundups work. I read widely and I put a selection of things I personally particularly enjoy into my roundups in the weeks I do them. I don’t usually read issues of any magazine back to front in order all in one go so stories I choose to include in round ups are never a commentary on the other stories in any particular issue of any particular magazine that I don’t, that’s just not how my process works.

That said, if you’re looking for some back issues of FIYAH here are some stories I enjoyed in the past and what I said about them then. I’ve edited out some commentary that’s irrelevant to the actual stories for here and it should be noted that over time how verbose I’ve been when discussing stories in my roundups has generally grown and also waxed and waned. The amount of words I spilled over any story has no bearing on my views of it’s quality. If I included it in a roundup it’s because I like it and think it’s well worth people’s time.

Continue reading →

2020 Short Fiction Round Up 4

Posted on by

Hello and welcome back to another round up of short SFF speculative fiction I’ve enjoyed recently. And wow did I really enjoy these. I think we’ve got some lighter stuff than we’ve had in recent roundups, though not everything here falls into that category. We also have a return of a couple authors I’ve featured in previous roundups. Octavia Cade, whose short fiction is a must try for me, becomes the third author I’ve recommended at least three stories of and Charles Payseur, who is, in my opinion, the premiere short spec fiction reviewer out there, has his second appearance in my roundup. And now for the actual stories:

“When We Were Patched” by Deji Bryce Olukotun from Escape Pod 730

This is a fun story and one that has left me pondering many little pieces of it. It seems pretty straightforward: it is a story about a futuristic kind of extreme tennis match as told by the AI assistant to the referee for the match. What shakes things up is that as an AI with it’s own thoughts and opinions Theodophilus finds itself as much in conflict with the referee Malik as the two fierce competitors of the match do with each other. What I find myself pondering still is how trustworthy of a narrator Theodophilus is and how much our own feelings about sport and the right and wrong way for athletes to behave might influence how much we want to trust the AI. I also really appreciated all the generally subtle but very effective worldbuilding that happens in this story.1Though I don’t think I’d particularly like the highly corporate world it hints at. Finally, though the sports match is the secondary conflict in this story it still paints a picture of a great championship match that the sports fan in me can’t help but appreciate, especially in this sports-less time we find ourselves in.

Continue reading →