Octavia Cade

There is such fantastic power in Cade's writing, and this brief collection screams with passion and with stories worth whole worlds.

Stelliform Press has become a favorite of mine ever since I discovered them, and so I expected great things from this collection. Yet, I was still blown away. Cade's writing marries speculative thrills and high-concept stories with a passion for science, the environment, and the natural world. While the stories range through genres, with a few being closer to horror and many being closer to near-future sci-fi or even potentially near-future realism, they come together in a collage of insight and nuance that screams with emotional intelligence and a desperate hope for the world. Cade's natural story-telling ability is alone worth seeking out, but the ideas and characters here are so unique and real, the book is perhaps the most powerful collection I've read, and I adored it.

Some of my favorite stories in the bunch: "You are My Sunshine" (the title story), "Tidemarks", "Inside the Body of Relatives", "The Streams are Paved with Fish Traps", "Tranquility", and "You're Not the Only One".

But in truth, I'm sure I'll re-read the whole collection.

Absolutely recommended.… (more)

The weight of this slim novella sends a riptide of vision into the reader within the first few pages, and Cade's powerful prose and storytelling never let up from there. As the story unfolds, becoming all too real a something that I could envision for our struggling world, what begins as horror and sorrow moves forward into a terrain of wonderfully careful suspense and revelation which, in the end, comes full circle to the emotions Cade pushed on the reader to begin with. Despite wanting to look away, I read the second half of this novella in one sitting, and the weight of it will stay with me for some time.

Absolutely recommended.… (more)