Kunjana Parashar

I know Adil Parashar, who uses the pen name Aranya for their writing, in many capacities: poet, friend, curator, editor. One thing that’s common across all these personas is the innately polyphonic nature of both his poems and his thoughts – something that’s easy to see in his book The Map is Not the Territory.

I wish I could say I had enjoyed Chris and Jen Sugden’s novel High Vaultage more than I did, because there are many individual elements of this story which work extremely well. Functioning as a stand-alone novelization of the audio fiction podcast Victoriocity (a work which was also co-written by the authors), High Vaultage is set in a steampunk version of the 1800s.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall since reading and loving his debut novel The Saint of Bright Doors (2023). Though it’s a challenging book, The Saint of Bright Doors left me awestruck. It’s an innovative and captivating story that plays with genre conventions in a way I’d never seen before. I knew Rakesfall would be challenging too, but I also knew that I could trust the author to deliver another thought-provoking and exciting story.