The Best of All Possible Worlds

Karen Lord's second novel carries deliberate echoes of Ray Bradbury's classic Mars colonisation stories. It's refined, meditative and life-affirming, and its exploration of gender politics and ethnology confirms Lord as the natural heiress to Octavia Butler and Ursula Le Guin * Financial Times *
An engrossing picaresque quest, a love story, and a moving character study of two very different people coming to understand themselves . . . Lord is on a par with Ursula K Le Guin * Guardian *
An episodic quest with a Caribbean-flavoured mix of societies * Sunday Telegraph *
A rewarding, touching and often funny exploration of the forms and functions of human culture. Plus, it has flying monks - a universally improving ingredient! * SFX *
The author is clearly a class apart, and doubly so in terms of her prose . . . Utterly astonishing * Tor.com *
A real delight to read * Fantasy Book Critic *
A sweet and gentle and sorrowful novel, written with warmth and wit and wonder . . . sumptuous * Speculative Scotsman *
The kind of novel that truly illustrates what science fiction is capable of doing. Lush and yet not overwhelming, it is a love story firmly rooted in a story of humanity told with alien cultures * Best Fantasy Stories *
The imagination behind her galaxy and its variation of the human race cannot be faulted * Sci-Fi Now magazine *
An intelligent, slow-burning, love story with rewards along the way * Starburst *
Reads like smooth jazz comfort food, deceptively familiar and easy going down, but subtly subversive * Nalo Hopkinson, Los Angeles Review of Books *
A fantastic read with very unique, memorable characters * Bibliosanctum *
Lord is perhaps aiming to take over the mantle of Ursula Le Guin as the mythmaker of sci-fi. Ms. Lord's thoughtful and engaging novel is a gentle fable that concentrates on human relations * Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal *
The sheer scale of this novel is impressive . . . this book gives new meaning to the phrase that still waters run deep * Speculating on Speculative Fiction *
Deft storytelling, a stellar (or would that be 'interstellar'?) cast of root-worthy multiracial characters and a riveting slow-burn love story. A must-read!' * Mala Bhattacharjee, Romantic Times *
If you like sweet friends-to-lovers romances, this is a wonderful and rewarding example * Heroes and Heartbreakers *
A fascinating and thoughtful science fiction novel that examines adaptation, social change and human relationships . . . that rare beast: a true original * Kate Elliott, author of the Crown of Stars series and The Spiritwalker Trilogy *

Science fiction doing something new and fascinating

* io9 *
Rewarding science fiction for emotional grown-ups * Mysterious Galaxy *