Hi! I’m Adela, the newest ‘blogger in residence’. I look forward to posting on here more in the future!
Recently, I reviewed a book by the name of Eat The Sky, Drink The Ocean. The book was billed as a collection of sci-fi short stories, so not being a huge fan of the sci-fi genre, I was a little skeptical at first. But it turns out my preconceptions were wrong!
Eat The Sky, Drink The Ocean is a collection of speculative short stories – some in graphic format, some in text – by Australian and Indian women. Many of the seventeen stories are collaborations between an author and/or artist from each country. They span everything from the rewriting of a Shakespearean character and a futuristic time-travelling version of MasterChef, to the story of a modern-day Indian heroine and non-conformity.
Whilst the book is marketed as ‘a collection of sci-fi and fantasy writing’, it is just as much centered on contemporary issues such as women’s rights, pollution and body image. It was in fact conceived as a collection of feminist writings not long after Jill Meagher was murdered. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book. Many of the stories are dystopian (a genre which I don’t enjoy), but I found the political themes balanced it out enough to make it a highly enjoyable book.
I very much enjoyed Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean, a collection of politically-themed speculative fiction, and would recommend it to an age bracket of 12-16.