"Lost in Translation"
by Edward Willett
Published by Endless Sky Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$26.99
ISBN 978-1-998273-58-4
It took me several days to complete Regina author and publisher Edward Willett’s far-future science fiction novel, Lost in Translation, as it required taking copious notes to keep the various humans and aliens straight, and to follow the out-of-this-world plot. Of all the Willett books I’ve read, this one’s been the most challenging, but I’m guessing that it is this very multitude of strange, double-consonanted characters; weird planets inhabited by “the Seven Races;” special abilities; the complex hierarchy of command; and violent wars that would have true sci-fi afficionados heralding this well-crafted novel.
The book opens with Jarrikk, a bat-like, red-eyed S’sinn creature on planet Kikks’sarr, who’d been hobbled from flight due to an attack by humans (“bloody-handed murderers”). This attack also resulted in the death of his youngling fellow S’sinns—his “brothers.” Jarrikk understandably fosters a huge hatred toward the three murdering humans, who left behind “a pile of bloody meat indistinguishable from any dead beast.” The author scores A+ for gore.
Trouble’s been brewing on Kikks’sarr ever since humans arrived to the planet—the S’sinn no longer live in their “airy treetop structures,” and instead, for safety, have withdrawn into “high mountain caves.” Jarrikk’s first order of business is to let Flight Leader Kitillikk know what’s happened to his mates, then to repeat the sober story for the Hunters. A retaliation starts a human/S’sinn war.
Another thing about Jarrikk: a flightless S’sinn has few options; they include suicide, or taking the Oath and working for the Translators’ Guild. Translators “never lie,” and they must “Link” with other Translators, who are few and far between. Linking requires dual injections, which spread “Programming,” and using the “warm silvery cord” to connect the parties’ via a “contact patch behind [their] right ear.”
Jarrikk’s required to Link with a human, Kathryn, who has been suffering since her parents were slaughtered by S’sinn on the “farming planet” called Luckystrike, “a thousand light-years from Earth.” Both Kathryn and Jarrikk can empathetically read others. Poor Katy always gleaned her parents’ emotions, and after their obliteration she was whisked to an orphanage on Earth. Her trauma catapulted her into “bondcut” … “an endless emotional loop”). Due to their perception and empathy, both Katy and Jarrikk are indoctrinated into the Guild of Translators, which serves the Commonwealth. The Translators “cannot lie under Programming.” Their responsibility is to translate during trade negotiations.
This complex story is not unlike what’s unfolding in real-world geopolitics right now. There are violent wars over territory, and one despotic figure, in particular—in this story it’s Flight Leader Kitillikk—is hell-bent on destroying anyone or anything that stands in the way of obtaining power through war. We have NATO, this book has the Commonwealth, which decrees that “̒the war between the S’sinn and the humans is ended,’” because “̒trade has been disrupted. Innocent ships have been destroyed,’” and there will be “̒serious economic consequences …’” Sound familiar?
With attraction, revenge, and regeneration therapy also in the mix, Willett’s created a 309-page interstellar storm.
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“Broken Realm”
By Jenna Greene
Published by Shadowpaw Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$24.99
ISBN 9-781998-273546
Jenna Greene’s action-filled fantasy novel, Broken Realm, stars seventeen-year-old seamstress and loner, Keely Thompkins, and Briggs Ray, an eighteen-year-old woodsman and outsider. The pair are vaguely connected in the “real” world (they’d attended the same school), but when they meet in the woods and both see and touch “a faint distortion between a pair of high-branched trees” with a “strange, multi-coloured shimmer” and “faint heat,” the pair are transported into a realm in which they’ll be fighting for their lives, without even knowing why. What they do know: after passing through the portal and discovering their village has disappeared, they both now sport unusual parallel lines on their skin—Briggs on his wrist, Jenna on her shoulder blade.
The major strengths in this 350-page, slow-burn romance are the characterizations of the leading pair (both of whom battle demons); Greene’s ability to write riveting action scenes; and the detailed description of something called “The Frosting,” where winter instantly descends … and takes lives with it. These terrifying and icy descriptions are where Greene shines, ie: “[Briggs] spied whorls slithering across the ground, creeping over cobblestones and up concrete foundations. Grey steps turned frosty. Trees were wrapped with ribbons of ice.”
It’s also interesting that the story is
timeless: we don’t know where this real world is, or when the story is taking
place.
We immediately learn about Keely’s crippling phobia concerning doors and crossing thresholds—a specific kind of agoraphobia—which mostly confines her to the attic room where she works. “Her goal was to endure, not thrive,” Greene writes.
Keely’s mother died years before, and, in his perennial grief, her father’s disinterested in his daughters, but at least Keely has family; Briggs has no recollection of ever having one. “̒No one claimed me,’” he tells Keely. His childhood consisted of “begging for crusts while wearing ill-fitting, threadbare clothes,” and school was a place to keep warm during the winter. Now, as a woodsman, he could earn money, though it was “barely enough to survive on.” Fortunately, having “lived half his life outdoors,” Briggs is able to start a fire and forage tubers to keep them alive.
I do have a gripe with this author’s distracting and frequent habit of beginning sentences with gerunds (“ing” words), ie: “Taking the book back, she cracked the spine.” Strong, active subjects and conjugated verbs create more direct and engaging sentences; gerund phrases often add unnecessary length to a sentence without adding clear meaning; overusing sentence-beginning gerunds blurs the flow of thoughts and bores readers; and this practice can also lead to dangling modifiers. Avoid!
But back to those strange marks. After much effort, the young pair learn that they “bear the symbol of the gods,” and it will be up to them to repair “The Great Rift” that separated the Twin gods, Ahisa and Menor, and caused the world to transform—and not in a good way. Can they do it?
Greene has previously published other YA and children’s titles. See more: jeannagreen.ca .
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family, and Healing”
Edited by Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.95
ISBN 9-781779-401281
The anthology Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family, and Healing, edited by Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan, is a collection of personal essays, poems, letters and interviews that gives voice to LGBTQ+ Muslims and, in doing so, it creates a community for both authors and readers.
The text presents opportunities to learn about the personal struggles, traumas, and joys inherent in the lives of LGBTQ+ Muslims around the world, and it illustrates how storytelling is a transformative tool in healing from self-hatred, racism, family complexities, faith issues, societal expectations, alienation, and abuse. The editors consider the book “an intervention in both LGBTQ and Muslim communities, addressing the erasure of queer and trans Muslim voices from mental health discourse and from within their religious and cultural spaces.” It collectively highlights “the stormy convergence of faith, queerness, and mental health,” and opens with a powerful introduction by Imam Muhsin Hendricks, “one of the world’s first openly queer Imams,” whom, we learn, was “murdered in cold blood” in February 2025. This tragic fact alone underscores the often threatened existence of LGBTQ Muslims, and demonstrates why these voices need a stage.
Thawer is a Toronto-based social worker, psychotherapist, and author who “explores intersections of mental health and systemic oppression,” and Khan is an associate professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University who changed her own focus from trauma to healing. They’ve organized the anthology into four parts to address “Identity and Family;” “Struggles and Resilience;” “Healing and Transformation;” and “Community and Spiritual Practices.”
In Part One, writer Sami Sharif addresses their difficult relationship with their mother, “born and raised in one of the poorest states in India,” and how they—“a queer boy in the suburbs of Ontario”—can reconcile their very different lives and experiences. Sharif explains that “relief” came once they “reframed [their] journeys (safar) as overlapping rather than being in opposition.” Now they can “embrace [themselves] as two weirdos (ajeebon) making it through this life together (saat milkar).”
Some of the authors of these raw pieces have understandably used pseudonyms. In her essay “Samajhdaar,” Y.K. speaks of being an outsider. “By the age of fourteen, I knew that nobody had ever loved me … I craved just one word, one word that would make me feel complete.” During university, mired in shame re: her queerness and feeling she’d disappointed her parents, she writes: “I broke my heart every day, healed my wounds, and waited for my next misfortune to arise.”
Ayan Yusuf Karshe, an anti-oppression educator, has also struggled with identity, and, with a Somali-born mother who lived years in Saudi Arabia, the Canadian-raised Karshe had to learn—through workshops and reading—how to show their “ostracizing” mother more empathy. “Belonging is a lifelong journey,” Karshe writes.
Other powerful contributions include essays on self-care and creating new faith communities; a letter to an inner child; and a lyrical essay, “The Garden is My Home,” which ends “I am not broken (over and over); I am broken open. Alhamdullilah—praise God.”
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
