Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto (4🌟)

Asleep is a collection of 3 stories, all of them sharing moments of women sleeping and having bizarre dreams. Death is also present in the stories, with characters grieving their loved ones and coming to terms with their loss.

The first story is called Nights and Night Travellers. It follows  a young woman, Shibami,  and her cousin Mari,  coming to terms with the death of Yoshihiro, Shibami's older brother. As with most of her novels, this story is about grieving, remembering the dead, not with fatalism but with peaceful acceptance.

The second story, Love Songs, follows a young woman, Fumi remembering a toxic relationship with a man who was going out with another woman, Haru. In fact she recalls more memories of Haru, who is now dead, than of her lover. This was my favourite story :)

In the last story, Asleep, we meet yet another woman who has recently lost her best friend after she committed suicide. She is going out with a married man whose wife is in a coma with little hope of recovering.

My book was published by Faber and Faber in 2001. It has 177 pages.

The Dreaming Void - Peter F.Hamilton (4.4🌟)

The Dreaming Void is a hard science fiction novel with elements of space opera and fantasy (?). It deals with themes like cloning, body enhancements, consciousness downloading and religious fanaticism. This is the first book in the Void trilogy which takes place in the same universe as the Commonwealth saga, only, more than, one thousand years after.

This novel narrates two (connected) stories told in alternate chapters. The first one which, I believe, takes place in "reality" in the far future in year 3589, and the other takes place in a strange planet, maybe in a different universe/dimension (?), with people with telekinetic powers, living in primitive conditions. The plot in the reality timeline takes place in multiple scenarios (planets, cities, spaceships) and follows several characters' stories in parallel.  The plot in the other dimension is simpler, following one main protagonist.

The main concern of all plot lines taking place in 3589 is the Void. Supposedly a black hole it was discovered later that it was something else. Something that has been devouring the galaxy  and everything it contains for millions of years. The Raiel, an alien species, has been researching the Void for millenia from a space base thousands of light years from the edge of the Void.  They have built a wall, a kind of barrier using Dyson Spheres, to deter anyone from entering the Void. It is believed that such an act would trigger another devourment phase.

However in one small planet on the edge of the Commonwealth  (union of planets) there is a growing cult of people who believe that their destiny is waiting for them inside the Void. The "Living Dream" came to life after an astrophysicist, Inigo, started to have dreams of a young man with outstanding telekinetic powers and who lives in a planet inside the Void. Thanks to his neural implants, Inigo is capable of broadcasting his dreams into the "gaiafield," a network of information and emotions. As the Living Dream gain political and economical power they make plans to build technologically advanced starships to go on pilgrimage. This causes concern among the central government of the Commonwealth, the Raiel and other species who believe this crusade will destroy the galaxy.

Opinion: wow! I loved this novel. So many interesting characters, so many stories. This is an intricate narrative and one has to devote some quiet time to understand and absorbe names, technologies, science and history, all interwoven in an amazing tale.

Regarding characters and their interwoven plots, I would like to highlight, first the way Hamilton describes them: not too in depth, but enough to keep the reader interested and engaged. There is one character called Aaron, who is a man on a mission to find Inigo, but with no memory of who and why he is on that mission. He has a set of body enhancements which are fun to read about. Another character called Paula Myo, a woman more that a thousand years old, and who, I believe played an important role in the Commonwealth saga (haven't read it yet.) She's got an interesting past and I loved her attitude.  Next is Araminta a seemingly average woman. At the beginning her story seems disconnected from the rest but then we get a mind blowing twist and understand why she is there. Finally, Mr Bovey an interesting minor character, not because of what he does but because of what he is: a multiple (man), that is, one consciousness/personality in multiple bodies.

Another interesting aspect of the novel is its massive scale in terms of time and space. The Raiel and the Void have existed for millions of years. Humanity now moves across the galaxy in faster than light spaceships. All of this massiveness is rightly explained and justified throughout the novel.

To finish, one thing I didn't quite like was the nature of the story in Inigo's dreams. Much more fantasy than science fiction I would say. Hard for me to follow at some points and the reason why this book is not 5 stars.

Oh and the ending was .... I need book 2 Now!



My book is a paperback published by Pan McMillan in 2014. It has 647 pages.

Ofrenda a la Tormenta / Offering to the Storm - Dolores Redondo (4.4🌟)

Offering to the Storm is the third book in the Baztan saga. It was written originally in Spanish in 2014 and then translated into English in 2017, published by Harper Collins. I read the Spanish edition: Ofrenda a la Tormenta.

This book starts about a month after the events at the end of The Legacy of the Bones (El Legado de los Huesos, original in Spanish). We follow again Inspector Amaia Salazar who is called to investigate the death of a baby girl, initially declared as victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Salazar and her team realise that the girl was asphyxiated by her own dad. Awful as it sounds this is only a snippet of a complicated network of macabre and perturbing events which date back several decades in the past. Suddenly the dad tries to steal the girl's body during the funeral. He says, to carry out with a rite. Salazar's instinct takes her to look for recent, similar cases of SIDS in the area. What she finds is horrific and it takes the team back to revisit close cases (the basajaun and tartalo, from book 1 and 2 of the trilogy) which are connected and apparently just the tip of the iceberg of an occult network of sadistic killers.

Opinion: I think this might be the best book of the trilogy. I surely love the three books. However, this one scores for the outstanding way in which Redondo connects the cases from the 3 books in a way that makes sense, and which is interesting and entertaining. More points for character development, Inspector Salazar, SubInspector Etxaide and Judge Markina. Obscure characters which are not always present but are intriguing and add to the story such as Rosario, Amaia's mother, Flora, Amaia's sister, Father Solorzano. Dead characters who still play important roles are as well excellent additions. Finally, more points for the gothic, obscure atmosphere (which is present in the 3 books) and the creepy, disturbing scenes of the crimes. I totally recommend this trilogy to any thriller and crime novela fan.

My book is the Spanish edition published by Ediciones Destino, Editorial Planeta. It has 539 pages.

Fledgling - Octavia Butler (3.9🌟)

Fledging is a vampire novel, but not a horror one. Obviously it has some disturbing scenes showing what vampires do. However I would call this a coming of age and social criticism novel focusing on discrimination and racism.

Fledging tells the story of a 53 year old child vampire who has to rediscover herself, relearn what and who she is as well as the customs and protocols of the society she belongs to. The novel starts when she wakes up badly hurt and with amnesia inside a cave. She wanders around and hunts wild animals to satiate her hunger. She is later rescued by a man, Writgh, who saw her walking on the road. He is worried for her and tries to take her to a hospital or the police. She doesn't want to go to any of those places although she doesn't know why. She tries to escape and he grabs her. She ends up biting him.

No, she doesn't kill Wright but loves sucking his blood. Wright doesn't panic but is surprised by the pleasure this girl has given him. The young vampire asks the man to help her find out who she is and he accepts right away.  This is the start of a bizarre relationship. This is more than weird but I guess this is what vampires do with their prey. She needs Wright for food and protection and he needs her because he is attracted to her in more than one way. To start their search they go back to were the vampire child woke up. They explore a ruined, burnt house and later find her father.  He calls her Shori and takes the couple with him to his house hold. There she learns that her mothers and sisters died in a fire and that she is the only survivor. He wants her to live with him now but she is not sure and wants to go back to Wright's house to think. Little did she realise that this would save her life again as her father and brothers are killed in a other house fire.

Opinion: this is not what I expected. I have read other science fiction novels by Butler and thought this one would have a scifi twist. No. I also assumed this could be a horror story and I was wrong.  I can't complain though. This is a well written, well tought out vampire story. Butler reconfigures the vampire mythology in an intelligent and interesting way. She creates and ancient society with history, customs, traditions and norms that has coexisted with humanity without being discovered. She creates the symbionts, humans who willingly live with vampires, in remote locations. Symbionts are used for their blood but in return they are given healthy longer and comfortable lives. Their relationship with vampires is odd to say the least. Some sort of sexual partners, who are also family and friends but with whom they cannot procreate as they belong to different species.

I found most of the charactees interesting especially Shori. She is well constructed, growing and learning from start to end. The relationships between vampires and symbionts were hard to swallow at the beginning. Particularly Shori's. She is an underage vampire child who is not ready to mate yet but who has sexual desires (for vampires and humans). However this is well accepted in her society.

On the negative side, I found the first half of the novel not that interesting. Yes, we follow Shori in her learning process and we see her doing nasty things but the reason for all this to happen is not clear until the last few chapters. And this was not a plot twist. It was more like filling a hole in the story for me. All the elements of social criticism are justified and make sense but I wanted more before the end.

My edition was published in 2007 by Grand Central Publishing. It has 310 pages.