This book makes me so excited to try more from NK Jemisin. There are definitely highs and lows, as is true for most short story collections, but overall, this showcases the range of her imagination and, even more intriguingly to me, her consistent thematic content

I don’t think I could be more excited for this.

Multiple Hugo-winning author N.K. Jemisin is known for her expansive series, like the incredible Broken Earth Trilogy or Inheritance Trilogy, full of dynamic world building and vast scopes. Here, in How Long ‘til Black Future Month, she collects her short fiction, written between 2004 and 2017, which manages to dazzle even in the shadows of her epic works or her own admittance that ‘once upon a time, I didn't think I could write short stories.’ Simply said, there seems to be nothing Jemisin can’...

Updated to add additional reviews for stories that are in this collection. "The Storyteller's Replacement" and "Cuisine des Mémoires" are nominated for a 2019 Locus award.Goodreads has pulled together a couple of my Jemisin short story reviews and dumped them here, since they appear in her new short fiction collection, How Long 'til Black Future Month?. As it turns out, I've already read and reviewed some of her other stories in this collection, and am reading some additional stories I haven't r...

3.5 starsI absolutely *LOVED* this author's Broken Earth trilogy (starts with The Fifth Season) so I was really excited to pick up this collection of short stories. However, and it pains me to say this, I am not sure why this collection was published because the majority of the stories didn't particularly 'wow' me. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy some of them, there were a handful I actually REALLY wish were expanded into a full length novel because I enjoyed them so much. But most of them...

I think I just need to accept that I cannot get into short story collections haha. So many of these were a hit or miss for me that overall I felt very lukewarm and stuck in the middle. Jemisin is definitely a great author and she has really cool concepts. I appreciate the various ways she tried to experiment with her writing style throughout these stories. Unfortunately, I either end up not liking them as much or I like them enough but get frustrated that it’s not longer and feels incomplete! My...

Based on the title, I was expecting How Long ‘til Black Future Month? to be a little more sci-fi leaning and/or a lot more overtly political. But as Jemisin points out in her introduction, just being a black woman writing sci-fi and fantasy that features black characters is a political act. Occasionally she does reference real-world events, such as the terrific “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters”, about a young man and his elderly neighbour trying to

my becoming-a-genius project, part 5!in case you somehow missed parts one and two and three and four clogging your feed for the past 4 months (and thank heavens for small mercies), here's the situation: i have decided to become a genius.to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.i've been meaning to pick up something by NK J...

God this was brilliant. I’ll come back later with a full review for every story in the collection. For now - Average rating: 4/5Final rating: 4.5/5Update 3/4/20:Ok let's talk about how good this collection is. I'm obsessed with N.K. Jemisin and I've only read 2 books by her at this point, so I can only imagine how that obsession will grow with time. This is a thoughtful, inventive collection that takes so many risks and almost every single one of them pays off. How Long 'til Black Future Month

"I am writing the stories that I wish someone had written for me when I was younger." - N.K. Jemisin on the video for her fresh and well deserved MacArthur Fellowship. This collection shows so much of the range of the mind of N.K. Jemisin, and I can't wait to see what she does next.I purchased this book as part of a bundle of speculative fiction by black women writers from Sistah Scifi and I have been reading it since July. I set it beside my working space and would read a story when I needed to...

This was, I’m ashamed to admit, the first N.K. Jemisin book I’ve ever read. I don’t say this because I subscribe to the belief that there are books which are “required reading” in the fantasy genre (because I absolutely don’t), but rather because on reading the stories in How Long ’til Black Future Month, I was struck by just how damned gifted Jemisin is as a writer. And yet I’m only finding that out now.But then, “gifted” isn’t really the best word to use here. These stories are very much a ref...

[edit: my review was only for the titular story. Apparently goodreads decided to merge that with the collection of the same name.]This was a pretty awesome, original short story about alien contact. It was told in the form of fragmentary documents: reports, IMs, recorded conversations, etc. There were also visual and formatting elements, but unfortunately I was unable to read this on the WIRED site because of pop-ups, so I pasted it into a text document and was not able to see the images. Still

I finished and it only took 5 days. Go me!I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this. From Jemisin I’ve only ever read The Fifth Season, and my relationship with that was only lukewarm. I did know that she had some fantastic ideas for worlds and narrative choices though, so I was hopeful.I’m happy to say that every single story in this book reaffirms what I’ve stated above. Jemisin is truly a creative genius and her writing is top notch. (And best of all, I didn’t come across any that were sup...

3.5 stars. What follows is my massive breakdown of all the stories. There were some absolute gems in this, but some I also found overly complicated.The Ones Who Stay and Fight - 3 stars. Great concept, falls a little flat in execution for me due to it being so short, no build up. Lots of telling and no showing. The City Born Great - 2.5 stars. Feels frenetic and confusing and missing a lot of the backstory which would have helped. Most of the time I had no idea what was going on. However, great

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/nk-jemi...***Hey, Great job, Goodreads! This review was for a single short story, The Evaluators, but maybe also for another short story, "The Narcomancer." Idk, because my links are broken and the you re-shelved my review under a collection of short stories. So I should probably delete this review because I have no idea what it's reviewing. Jerks.---carol. 5/19While I had links to the stories, it appears Jemisin had to pull it them from the website and there were,

Impressively varied in tone, voice, subject, and style, this short story collection was wonderfully entertaining and provocative. N.K. Jemisin writes with enormous confidence, takes big risks, and doesn’t settle for the easy way out. Well worth reading.

Incredible collection. Jemisin once again proves her skill, creativity, and sheer innovation in the SFF genre. She is such a versatile writer with so much to say, who creates such intriguing stories and clearly has a lot to say. I would recommend going into this after reading some Jemisin (The Fifth Season!!!) but at the same time, SFF and short story fans shouldn't give this one a miss if they haven't because there is a lot here for everyone. top 3 Favourites:The Effluent Engine: Follows a spy...

Jemisin is a phenomenal writer and every story of hers reflects her talent. She has a knack for telling stories and creating worlds with a lot of depth and meaning and lot of parallels to our real world. This collection of short stories has its own share of some great ones and some not so good ones, but my main problem was that there were a few I just didn’t understand. I’ve felt this before about the author’s works - she writes on a whole other level which is very complicated and not easy for m...

Review to follow

How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? is simply superb. There wasn’t a story in the twenty-two that didn’t impress. Jemisin is a science fiction and fantasy powerhouse, and that is clear by the sheer variety of tales told—there are a dozen novel-worthy worlds crafted in this volume. Jemisin opens with “The Ones Who Stay and Fight,” a direct story response to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It ends with a parallel—a story about a man defending his city, post-Katrina New Orle...