THE PLOT: ‘Edge of Here’ by Kelechi Okafor is a speculative short story collection. In the near-future, technology allows you to explore an alternate love-life with a stranger, experience the emotions of another person through a chip implanted in your brain and view snippets of a distant relative’s life with help from your DNA. But it can also lead to oppression and government surveillance. This collection explores Black womanhood in a world similar to our own, utilising fantasy to question contemporary society and where it may lead us.

RATING:  There isn’t enough speculative and science fiction published by Black women and I love the intention of this collection. The ideas behind each story are extremely clever and imaginative, bringing Black womanhood to the fore in a way that doesn’t feel too forced or stereotyped. However, the execution wasn’t quite for me. The distant 3^rd person narrators feel too much like ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’ and I kept wanting to edit the sentences to feel more natural. Despite solid premises, many of the stories felt rushed and needed stronger editing, so it’s three stars from me.

GOOD BITS:  Interlinked short stories are my favourites and I loved how each story in this collection is set in the same world and how they all have subtle references to each other. For example, even though ‘The Ally Chip’ wasn’t my favourite story for the use of exposition, I loved how it appeared in other stories and we got to see the impact of its creation. Additionally, it was great that all our protagonists weren’t framed in terms of trauma or stereotypes. My favourite stories were ‘Blue’, ‘Broom’, and ‘The School Run’.

NOT SO GOOD BITS:  The writing style felt basic, as if they were 2^nd draft sketches of story ideas, rather than honed narratives. The balance of scene and summary felt off, and some stories were rushed trying to cram events that would’ve been more impactful to ‘live with’ the characters. Most of the stories had a frame narrative where the key events took place in backstory and I felt like they could have been linear and used the frame as a twist to escalate the plot. I also felt they could’ve been more nuanced, especially with the white characters who were so overtly racist that they felt like caricatures. My least favourite stories were ‘The Watchers’, ‘The Ally-Chip’ and ‘The Other Man’.

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to fans of ‘The Parable of the Sower’ by Octavia Butler, Black Mirror and ‘The Secret Lives of Church Ladies’ by Deesha Philyaw.

Thank you to Trapeze Books for sending me a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. This book is available to buy in my Black Debut Authors list on Bookshop.Org (here).