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Africa Risen (2022, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 4 stars

From an award-winning team of editors comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the …

A rich sample of speculative and fantastical short fiction

4 stars

This is an extremely varied collection from African and African Diaspora writers of speculative and fantastic fiction. For whatever reason(s) I'm not a huge fan of short form fiction in general, but I did find some of these stories quite memorable/compelling.

The Blue House (Dilman Dila). IRL (Stephen Barnes) Mami Wataworks (Russell Nichols) A dream of electric mothers (Wole Talabi; nebula nominee) A Knight in Tunisia (Alex Jennings) The Sugar Mill (Tobias Buckell) When the Mami Wata Met a Demon (Moustapha Mbacke Diop) Some of the stories I found a bit tough going. In at least some cases (Peeling Time / Deluxe Edition by Tlotolo Tsamaase) this is arguably because they are too powerful at conveying certain horrors.

Other stories were quite whimsical and fable like. So there is probably something for everyone in the book, but perhaps will love everything.