Five Great Books Set Outside the UK and USA

Let's face it: when you're from the UK or the USA, you're pretty lucky in how much fiction, and non-fiction, is set in  or  is about your country. It's not hard to find settings you can relate to on a personal, nostalgic level, as well as all the people who inhabit those familiar spaces.

One thing I really enjoy, however, is when I come across books that aren't set in these typical places, especially if they're set on a completely different continent. My reading habits still have a lot of broadening to do, I still find myself reading mainly books set in the UK or the USA written by white authors from the UK or the USA, but I'm constantly trying to read more books set in places that are completely foreign to me in all the best ways. So today I thought I'd share five books with you that aren't set in the UK or the USA and, if you haven't already, hopefully you'll want to read them, too! (I've also just realised that all five of these books are debut novels...)

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

The novel I've read most recently from this selection, Adébáyọ̀'s debut was released earlier this year and was one of my most anticipated releases of 2017. I loved it. Set in Nigeria, where the author is from, the story follows a married couple desperate for a child whose relationship begins to unravel when a second wife is brought into the family. It's fantastic, so worth reading, and I'd recommend it for fans of Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

Set in Amsterdam, this book was EVERYWHERE when it was released a few years ago. As much as I love historical fiction I was wary to pick this one up at first because I was worried it had been over-hyped, but when I read it I thoroughly enjoyed it. 17th century Amsterdam came to life for me in this book and Jessie Burton writes exquisitely. A three-part adaptation of The Miniaturist is coming to the BBC later this year, so now's a great time to read it if you haven't already!

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

This is such a good book to pick up during winter, Kent captures the barren yet beautiful Icelandic landscape wonderfully, but as this book is a novelisation of the final days of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland in the 19th century, it'll probably make you cry. I'm actually going to Iceland in December, so I might have to give this one a re-read.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

If sci-fi retellings of fairy tales aren't something that interests you then I don't understand you these books aren't for you, but personally I love this series - it's so fun! One thing I also really love about it, though, is that none of the books are set in either the UK or the USA (the final book, Winter, is set on the moon!) with Cinder being set in a futuristic version of China, in New Beijing to be exact. I have lots of other books set in Asia on my TBR, and if you have any recommendations I'd love to hear them!

Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

If a month goes by where I haven't mentioned this book on my blog, assume I'm ill. I think you all know by now that this is one of my favourite novels and its originality is a huge part of that. Not only is this book set in Mexico City, but it focuses on witchcraft in the 1980s where our protagonist, Meche, learns to cast spells with her vinyl records. How can you not want to read that?

Have you read any of these? What are some of your favourite books set outside the UK and USA?

Review | Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Certain Dark Things

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

My Rating: 

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Here in the city, heavily policed to keep the creatures of the night at bay, Domingo is another trash-picking street kid, just hoping to make enough to survive. Then he meets Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers. Domingo is smitten. He clings to her like a barnacle until Atl relents and decides to let him stick around.

But Atl's problems, Nick and Rodrigo, have come to find her. When they start to raise the body count in the city, it attracts the attention of police officers, local crime bosses, and the vampire community. Atl has to get out before Mexico City is upended, and her with it.

I received an eARC of Certain Dark Things from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Check out my review of Signal to Noise here!

Certain Dark Things has probably been my most anticipated read of 2016 after I adored Silvia Moreno-Garcia's 2015 debut, Signal to Noise, to the high heavens. If you've been following my blog for a while you're probably sick of me talking about it. With Certain Dark Things not being released until October I was waiting impatiently for it until it happened to pop up on NetGalley and I was lucky enough to receive an eARC four months early. Naturally, I started reading it immediately.

And? I really liked it. Like, a lot.

After loving Signal to Noise as much as I did (and still do) one of the things I was most excited about was Moreno-Garcia's take on vampires, and I'm so pleased to say she did exactly what she hoped I would: she took existing tropes, played around with them a little, and created something completely, wonderfully different. She weaves vampirism into Mexican folklore and Aztec history so brilliantly, creating several different subspecies of vampire in the process.

One of these vampires is our heroine, Atl, who fills me with joy. Atl is more of an anti-heroine than a heroine, the kind of protagonist I feel as though I've rarely seen without a penis. Maybe I'm just not reading enough of the right books (which is probably the case, what with there being so much to read) but I don't meet characters like Atl often enough. She's not always likable - in fact she's probably not the kind of person I'd want to have as a friend because I think it'd be a very one-sided friendship - but she's compelling, and throughout Certain Dark Things I was always eager to see more of her and learn more about her.

Our other protagonist, Domingo, was also a lot of fun. Moreno-Garcia has taken something of a stereotypical character - a geeky 'nice guy' who doesn't have much luck with the opposite sex or any other aspect of his life - and made him genuinely nice. Did I find Domingo annoying? At times, yes, but he never felt like a cardboard cut-out, and it was really refreshing to read a book in which the main character is homeless; I don't know about you, but I don't come across homeless protagonists all that often.

I enjoyed the relationship between Domingo and Atl, but it was also ultimately the reason that I gave Certain Dark Things four stars instead of five. I was a little disappointed that there was a romance between the two of them, purely and simply because, to me, there wasn't really any chemistry there beyond Domingo thinking Atl was stunning and Atl thinking Domingo was useful. Perhaps that is all their romance is - not every romance has to be the biggest love story to ever rock the world - but I loved their chemistry as friends, and throughout the first third of the novel I got excited that I might be reading a book about friendship rather than love. In some ways I was, but I adored the chemistry between Meche and Sebastian in Signal to Noise (and I know I shouldn't be comparing the two, because they're completely different novels) so I couldn't quite invest in this relationship as much.

That being said, this book is still bloody wonderful. It's the first time I've read a vampire novel that's made me feel like I'm reading something new, something fresh, and I love how in parts it's gritty and nasty and dark. There's an ensemble cast at work here, from our heroes to our villains to all the people that get caught in the cross-fire, and I think what I loved most about Certain Dark Things is that it's a story about a few hectic days in one city, like someone has taken a snapshot of this new, bloodthirsty Mexico and turned it into a book.

If you haven't read any of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's work yet then I don't quite know what you're doing with your life, she's a fantastically fresh voice in the world of speculative fiction and Certain Dark Things is proof of her creativity. It's being released this October, just in time for Halloween, so pre-order your copy now and meet the vampires you never knew you needed.

Review | This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This Strange Way of Dying: Stories of Magic, Desire and the Fantastic

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

My Rating: 

Spanning a variety of genres—fantasy, science fiction, horror—and time periods, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's exceptional debut collection features short stories infused with Mexican folklore yet firmly rooted in a reality that transforms as the fantastic erodes the rational. This speculative fiction compilation, lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting, weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human. Perplexing and absorbing, the stories lift the veil of reality to expose the realms of what lies beyond with creatures that shed their skin and roam the night, vampires in Mexico City that struggle with disenchantment, an apocalypse with giant penguins, legends of magic scorpions, and tales of a ceiba tree surrounded by human skulls.

Check out my review of Signal to Noise here!

You should all know by now that I adored Silvia Moreno-Garcia's debut novel, Signal to Noise, and with her second novel, Certain Dark Things, not being released until October I turned to her short fiction for my next fix.

This Strange Way of Dying is a collection of speculative fiction, much of which incorporates Mexico and Mexican mythology; I loved the Mexican setting in Signal to Noise, so I was really excited to read more stories set in Mexico, especially as it's one of the countries on my Travelling Bucket List.

First of all: let's all marvel at that glorious cover. Isn't it beautiful? Something about short story collections really seems to attract pretty covers, which is great for shallow people like me who like to fill their shelves with aesthetically pleasing books. Even if this book were terrible I still wouldn't be able to fault that cover.

Luckily, This Strange Way of Dying isn't terrible at all. I'll happily admit straight away that I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Signal to Noise, but I wanted to make sure I didn't compare the two all that much anyway because novels and short story collections are two such different art forms. In fact the only complaint I could make about the stories in This Strange Way of Dying was that some of them weren't long enough; a few I happily would have read even more of because I was so interested in Moreno-Garcia's characters.

There are fifteen stories altogether in this collection, and there were five of them I particularly enjoyed; 'Bed of Scorpions' and 'Jaguar' were two of the stories I would have loved more of, particularly as they both featured women becoming empowered and gaining the upper hand in their respective situations. In fact women gaining the upper hand seemed to be a recurrent theme in many of the stories throughout the collection, such as in 'Shade of the Ceiba Tree', a dark and melancholic story steeped in folklore, and 'Bloodlines', which I especially loved because it featured witches.

My favourite story in the collection, however, was definitely 'The Doppelgängers'; it was so creepy, but so well-written.

I love Moreno-Garcia's imagination; she's one of those writers whose love for speculative fiction is clear, and now that I've read this collection I'm looking forward to reading her other collection, Love & Other Poisons, and her next novel. Basically I'm happy to read whatever this woman releases, and I'm so pleased I discovered her last year. If you haven't checked her out yet, you're missing out!