Biff Mitchell's 3 favorite reads in 2023

This is one of the most compelling magical realism stories I’ve read lately.

Set in Japan, mostly in a family home in the mountains (once used as a breeding ground for silkworms, the young Natsuki forms a bond with her childhood friend, Yuu, that’s swiftly ended when the two children are caught having sex and then separated until, years later as adults, they are brought back together (this time with Natsuki’s husband.

The three want to escape the life-stifling hold of the Earthlings and their baby-producing factory, and take refuge in Natsuki and Yuu’s childhood fantasy of being aliens. Isolated in the mountain when winter cuts them off from the rest of the world, they subject themselves to a horrifying attempt to shed their Earthling selves with murder and the ultimate self-sacrifice.

Earthlings is a compelling adventure into magical realism. I could have kept reading this book well beyond the end. It was captivating writing and an immensely consuming story.

Madeleine Maxwell is recruited by a historical research organization where historians study and visit the past. Unfortunately, some people want to use the organization's ability to time travel to make money.

This sets up a rebellion outside the organization and internally. But Madeleine thwarts an internal insurrection and chases off the evildoers from outside.

This book reads smoothly and quickly with lots of action balanced with some crazy time travel theory and characters you could probably enjoy an afternoon tea with.

This was light reading and the kind of thing to take to the beach or on vacation. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

A quirk of nature has caused some animals to evolve so that they think and communicate like humans but still look like animals (only bigger) than they were.

As they try to integrate into normal human society, they are met with prejudice to the point of genocide.

The slow, precise way this is done is disturbingly like the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 30s and has, even more disturbingly, many parallels in today’s world.

The story is fast-paced and entirely credible, even though the main characters are animals that talk and think like humans. I particularly liked the ending while, at the same time, wishing that it could have been different. But it fits the reality we live in.

This book says so much about the world we live in and the deterioration of the more decent side of our species as the world sinks into a right-wing and neo-Nazi quagmire.