Reviews

Reconstruction: Stories by Alaya Dawn Johnson

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bahareads's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

review to come - I'm going to review this when I get back to Miami so I can talk about each of the stories more in-depth. Some of the stories were so GOOD and others did not resonate with me.

An exceptional collection of thoughtful and provocative speculative fiction ranging from magical realism to dystopian scifi. Even the least appealing stories were conceptually intriguing, and the best of them were both intellectually and emotionally stimulating.

honnari_hannya's review

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4.0

I deeply admire Alaya Dawn Johnson's writing style and she is one of my favorite authors for sure, so I was definitely excited to dive into these short stories—and I was not disappointed. ADJ always manages to blow me away with such beautiful language, paired with soul-crushing pathos even within such short pieces and so many deep questions about humanity, love, faith, race and dichotomies, that she wraps up in these gorgeous science fiction/fantasy worlds. And she doesn't hold your hand through any of these works. I won't say that every story was a 5/5 for me, obviously, as I would have rated the whole collection that way if it were—but the ones that hit me really hit me right in the feelings.