The four books I read in September

Chimaera by Alice Thompson (in Translation by Paul Bruijn and Molly van Gelder) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 🌶️

This science-fiction novel was kindly gifted to me by the brand new publisher of the Dutch edition of the book, Uitgeverij Annex.

You may find this novel to start out a bit cliché; a manned space mission looking for a substance that will ameliorate the state of earth. This one starts out as such, but quickly turns into something more mystical. This is because our protagonist, Artemis, is aboard as a dream researcher and is there to perform her own research. An important complexity to the story is the fact that part of the team of astronauts are AI systems. Getting to know the characters, I immediately found myself suspicious of these “dryads” since they are very fast learning and almost behaving as real humans.

They are travelling to a mysterious moon, where we find out the members of a previous mission disappeared…

Overall, I found this story to be quite weird, but in a good way. The atmosphere is confusing and you’re constantly questioning what is happening. I don’t dislike books written in a dreamlike state, and this was officially my introduction to science-fiction, so giving this 4 stars!

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 🌶️

This is a work of peak black woman and feminist representation. It covers so many different backgrounds and ways of upbringing that is really eye-opening and immersive. I loved reading about each and every character and piecing the puzzle together since all lives are intertwined somehow.

Carrie - Stephen King ⭐⭐/ 🌶️

Not what I expected from a King novel. I wanted scares, gore, suspense. And all I got was a mega predictable and spoiler filled novella about powerful, yet misunderstood girl.

Katabasis - R.F. Kuang ⭐⭐⭐/ 🌶️🌶️

R.F. Kuang is an auto-read author for me. Luckily the audiobook was immediately available on Storytel, which I enjoyed reading over the course of a month.

Katabasis is even more heavy on the scholarly theme than Babel, hence the difficulty to keep top focus while listening to the story. The rating is caused by my inability to concentrate while listening. I'm sure I didn't grasp all intricacies.

Some special character building as well, I couldn't wrap my head around Alice being so nice about Peter's boner while sleeping under a tiny blanket.... Also glad I never went for a Master's degree or further education than my two Bachelor's. 🤷‍♀️