25-Word Reviews of 25 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books
From the center of Earth to other worlds.
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Years ago, I made myself a promise: for every science fiction or fantasy book I read, I would read a non-science fiction or fantasy book next. That was around the time I realized I wanted to be a writer; I figured it would do me good to expand my reading horizons in order to expand my writing horizons.
It did me more than good, as several of my favorite books are now from genres I otherwise would never have touched, such as Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard (travel literature) and Charles Portis’ True Grit (Western). Even so… sci-fi and fantasy remain my go-tos.
I need them so badly, in fact, I eventually decided to revise my promise: rather than change genres once I finished a book, I would read a sci-fi/fantasy book and another genre at the same time. As of writing this article, I’m reading Brandon Sanderson’s Rhythm of War (fantasy) and Paul Cartledge’s The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse (history).
Regardless, with all the sci-fi and fantasy I’ve read, I figured, hey, why not do 25-word reviews of 25 of them? It’s kind of a classic format for me by this point, so if you’ve read one of my…
