Reviews

Winter Is Coming Author: Jennifer McMahon Friends, I am well and truly over the zombie pop-culture craze — movies, TV shows, action figures, you name it (I'm looking at you, The Winter People). So I was a bit irked when I realized I’d been tricked into reading a zombie thriller novel. Then things got weird. Haunted houses full of secret compartments, a madwoman’s hidden diary, Indian wise women, cursed rings, evil woods where shadowy figures lurk… there’s a whole lot of creepy paranormal phenomena, but does it add up to a good story? Since their father’s death, rebellious teen Ruthie [...]

Is DNA Destiny? Neal Stephenson is one of those authors who has my automatic loyalty: whatever he publishes, I’ll read (or at least try heroically, with regard to Anathem). But his last couple of books have been hit-or-miss for me, and I was a little nervous about what techno-doorstop might come next… until I realized it was about an apocalypse! Yes, Seveneves is a fully respectable and literary outlet for my end-of-the-world obsession. And if you can look past some pretty unlikely scenarios, it’s an impressively large-scale vision of the future, including some thought-provoking ethical questions on genetic modification and [...]

Shining a Light on an Ultra-Rare Medical Condition I first learned about “Anna Lyndsey’s” remarkable life story (the name is a pseudonym) through a magazine excerpt of her memoir, Girl in the Dark, and was so fascinated that I immediately wanted to read the whole book. Ironically, many readers who didn’t like the book felt that it would have worked much better as a magazine-length article. But I thought the occasional digression or overwrought description was a small price to pay to hear the story of a person who’s so light-sensitive that she must live indoors in complete darkness 24/7. [...]