Readers, writing
June 16, 2023 — Blurbs aside, it’s always exciting when a book you’ve written (or even, sigh, published) gets noticed. And Rachel A. Rosen’s Cascade has gotten noticed! What follows are excerpts from, and links to, reviews and commentary on Rachel’s first novel. Going the internet way, I’ll do my best to order them in reverse chronological order.
If you have reviewed Cascade and it is not listed here, please feel free to comment or to send me an email to let me know (geoffrey.dow (a) bppress.ca). — GD
June 15, 2023 — Rachel on Goodreads
Environmentalism and eco-collapse, magic realism and politics collide in Cascade with a side dish of queer romance, activism and robust alternative earth world-building. The characters are realistic, rough around the edges politicians, academics and activists and not all their actions are noble. In fact you can see how all of humanity got to be here …
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January 17, 2023 — Dale Stromberg
Cascade is a novel driven by an inner moral urgency, political without being superficially polemical, ultimately moving and inspirational of sober consideration of real perils our own world faces.
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October 16, 2022 — Independent Book Review
A novel of climate apocalypse and magic.
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October 16, 2022 — Anna Otto on Goodreads
Rachel Rosen is masterful at building worlds and creating relatable characters. She has created a Canada that’s once recognizable and yet completely different from the country we know and love …
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September 21, 2022 — Sam Perlo-Freeman on Goodreads
Cascade is mind-blowingly good – part urban fantasy, part apocalyptic horror, and part political thriller. House of Cards meets Lovecraft (minus the racism obvs.) meets, perhaps Nalo Hopkinson, with a strong side-order of Joe Abercrombie’s grimdark humour.
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September 21, 2022 — Holly on Goodreads
If Terry Pratchett was a pissed off revolutionary, this is what he would’ve written. This book will hurt you and you will love it.
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July 26, 2022 — K.A. Excell on Goodreads
Deeply political, this book reminds me of L. E. Modesitt Jr.’s Imager Portfolio, if the Imager Portfolio had included hints of cosmic horror and occurred in the center of a magical and ecological apocalypse.
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July 26, 2022 — I. Merey on Goodreads
4D characters; a whiplash political plot that ramps UP (not down); great dialogue (accents and colloquialisms ENSNARE me, ok?); and just the right touch of body-horror. This book has everything: brains, heart, vision, and a sphincter! Rosen is one of my great author finds of 2022 …
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July 26, 2022 — Rohan O’Duill
What starts out as a political thriller with magic, quickly evolves into a quick-witted action-filled fantasy that explores climate change, activism, corruption, racial profiling, brutality and the chaos inflicted on the world through popular politics. This is all held together superbly through Rachel’s beautiful writing style and storytelling ability.
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July 5, 2022 — James Davis Nicoll
Imagine a Canadian version of the TV show The Thick of It, set in Canada, where Malcolm Tucker isn’t an obscenity-spewing Scottish PR mavin, but an equally foul-mouthed Newfoundlander who just happens to be an actual wizard. Also the whole world is on fire, and the only people not arguing over which colour dixie cup of water should be used to extinguish the fire are the people reaching for jerry-cans full of naphtha.
This is as Canadian as a child’s unmarked grave near a shuttered residential school and not just because it mentions the Family Compact by name.
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June 30, 2022 — Littleblackcart on Goodreads
A fantasy/science fiction mashup that involves gritty politics and neutral magic and is set aggressively in Canada, this is a nihilist-friendly novel with a diverse cast of characters, and a pretty interesting set of villains.
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June 27, 2022 — Kapten Siri on Goodreads
Cascade is a fast-paced, well written, multi-layered story, told with wit and dark sarcasm and told through the eyes of five very different characters.
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June 22, 2022 — Sun on Goodreads
Hilarious, diverse, and visceral.
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I couldn’t put this down. This would be a dystopian world were it not alarmingly recognisable. It’s an alternate history, fantasy, political satire, I don’t even know how to categorise it. If you enjoyed reading Baru Cormorant or The Fifth Season, or have ever watched Avenue 5 and thought it was the best thing ever, you’ll love this. Every single sentence is a treat.
April 7, 2022 — Dream Fractal on Goodreads
Cascade is a seamless mix of Cosmic horror, urban fantasy, and House of Cards politics with stunning prose and an incredible cast of characters … In the same vein as Charles Stross’s Laundry Files and China Miéville’s Bas-Lag, Cascade is as much about the failures of electoral politics and journalism to stop fascism and climate change as it is about the shattering of reality by magic and Cthulhu rising from the sea.
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