I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

I do not yet have a link, but this review will appear on the CALYX website:

Jan Priddy 640 words
P.O. Box 1442
Cannon Beach, OR 97110
phone: (503) 717-3124
email: andpride@gmail.com



WHAT A FISH LOOKS LIKE, Syr Hayati Beker. Stelliform Press, Canada, 2025, 222 pages, $15.99 US, paper, www.stelliform.press.

Queer, surreal, and dystopic, What a Fish Looks Like traces the end of the world as we know it through a small group of people trying hard to survive the death of forests and oceans, of everything they thought mattered. The world is burning, vine growing before their eyes, and no going back.

Seb might be metaphorically drowning, or reaching for love, or barely surviving but not leaving the planet for a better world on the transport, Exodus 3. Exodus 1 crashed and burned. Exodus 2 might have arrived somewhere safely, but no one has heard. No one knows where the 100 tickets for Exodus 3 came from. There are rumors.

These stories rattle right along, sometimes claiming to be fairytales, sometimes claiming to be letters from Seb to Jay and to Seb from Jay, actual conversations, flyers posted on lamp posts on Heare Street, or a record of recent history as random notes scrawled on a bathroom wall.

In the not-too-distant future, “ecosystems folded like cardboard animals in a pop-up book, goodnight. Science, Government, and Tech withdrew their promises, one by one … Why did we believe them all along?”

Extinct species such as arctic foxes and porpoises have been preserved genetically. An oceanographer, is caught between those running away from a dying world and “ghosting” DNA to transition to an extinct lifeform in order to preserve it.

“In those early days, we laughed at headlines like ‘Hope for the Dodo: Could Humans Adopt Animal DNA?’ Ghosting offices appeared, open for volunteers. It was a pharmaceutical solution, a practical solution. What do you do with extincting species? Inject them directly into your veins.”

After they do, they’re thinking ice and snow and fur between legs and how their friend who carries seal DNA looks tempting. “I find myself filled with the kind of rage that makes me a terrible choice for a polar bear.” Making this choice to ghost is addressed to a former lover who will never return. They lay that earlier experience against this becoming something else.

“It’s not like sharing a bed, struggling at first and then finding a rhythm. It’s not like grafting an apricot branch to a plum tree. It is: your DNA turned into a factory for the DNA of extinct species until the day the world is safe enough that we can let the ghosts out, resurrected. Until then, it’s a shorter life, but maybe less lonely. Maybe that’s all there ever was.”

A teacher, “Mr. D,” struggles with the tragic death of a student and prepares to come out as trans: “The circumstances being that she needed to get out of here before someone decided the wave was her fault” (24). This while oceans are drowning.

The B. Collective, the B. Gay Do Crime Collective, the No Exit Theater, Saint Sebastian the Persecuted, The Paradise. Team Ship. Team Earth. A dangerous vine wraps around the wheels of an overturned self-driving ice cream truck, and Seb is allergic. A production of Antigone, checkpoints all over the cities, masks because the air can kill, fires and ash choke the air, and “guards on the bridges.” This is surreal future destruction enlivened by people with humor and style. “Listen, we’ll say, you can always become anything you want, all you ever needed was people to see you. The rest is adaptation.”

What does a fish look like? Will anyone remember in the future? Will anyone still be here to remember? Does humanity stay put, stick it out, and find a way to survive on Earth? Or does humanity take a chance on escaping to another planet far, far away?

Know that we “can’t save anyone from themselves” and despite the sweet cover of this novel, this is not how we tell a story. See you in the after, and don’t expect a happy ending.



Jan Priddy’s writing has earned an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship, Arts & Letters fellowship, Pushcart nomination, and numerous publications. An MFA graduate from Pacific University, her novel, All the Daughters Sing, finds hope in the world after [most] everyone dies and seeks publication. She blogs at IMPERFECT PATIENCE: https://janpriddyoregon.wordpress.com.

At the end of the world, love persists. Two exes, Seb and Jay, find themselves on opposite sides of a split community: a final ship is leaving earth. Jay has a ticket; Seb has no intention to leave earth behind. The rest of their queer community struggles in their own ways with the end of the world and the question of leaving. All of this is told through two things: a series of letters and messages passed between people, and a heavily edited book of fairy tales that Seb is trying to give Jay.
This is such a weird and beautiful book. It is often hard to follow, but it is so worth it. The writing is fantastic. The experimentation that was done stylistically was very cool. All of it was great.

I don’t even know what this book was trying to do, like fish or spaceship or fairy tales?? Notes on napkins and posters and hashtags, I swear half of it was scribbles and I felt like I was reading somebody’s recycling bin instead of a story. I kept waiting for the plot to happen but instead it was dance floors and climate change and six fairy tales that weren’t fairy tales and maybe a fish but maybe not?? Confusing and messy and by the end I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or cry or just throw it in the ocean with the rest of the fish that apparently don’t exist anymore.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The most ethereal and poetic post-apocalyptic novel I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I found the blend of genre, from retelling, to poetry, to epistolary (with the inclusion of several pieces of ephemera) to be unique and haunting. Through these disparate pieces, the story of catastrophic climate change, queer love and heartbreak, and human survival rings beautifully true.

I want to read it over and over again, to write out some of the quotes that resonate, and to more fully put together those pieces in my head, if I can.

Wow. What an extraordinary book. A sci-fi in the form of a collection of fairy tales, all haunted by climate catastrophe. The writing is exquisite: complex, experimental, torn between metafiction and myth. Dark, tragic even, but there is a thread of hope in how community forms around disaster.

Publishing date: 04.09.2025 (DD/MM/YYYY)
Thank you to NetGalley and Stelliform Press for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

TLDR: A collection of possibly related stories told through various kinds of "media" (books, napkins, letters, art, you name it), while our two main characters struggle with the coming end of the world. I think that might be summarized correctly ...

My positives:
- Dreamy and strange
- Had some very important topics told in a new and interesting way
- A way of storytelling that I hope get refined and brought to other books (mixed media is always cool)

My negatives:
- A little too dreamy and strange maybe
- Hard to know when, where, and who
- Left me more confused than I have ever been while reading
- You have to get really deep into the book before the puzzle pieces start falling into place

I think this one is another for the collection of "Not for me, sadly". The premise is great, I love mixed media, I love overly queer stories, I love the subjects tackled in the book, but ... I just can't for the life of me tell anyone what I really read.

I don't think I will be recommending this to anyone. I have no idea who would like this.

Giving this 2 stars. Great premise, flawed execution, and I remember almost nothing of what I read.

Well, I don’t think I really Got this one. The premise sounded incredibly magical, but in practice it’s much more spec fic, with a touch of sci fi and magical realism, than clear SFF. If I’d known that, I might not have requested it, because I prefer much ‘harder’, more obvious magical/sci fi elements!

The main thing that didn’t work for me is what NEVER works for me with these things (even though I insist on continually trying): I didn’t find it hopeful. I found it so, so bleak, and depressing, and heartbreaking. I don’t think that was the author’s intent – and some of the other early reviews I’ve seen make it clear that not everyone has this takeaway for this book. But this was painful to read – it’s really a story about climate collapse, and snippets of these different lives as the planet is dying and human civilisation is falling apart (or so I inferred from the not-Snow Queen story?) And like – nothing is fixed? We see climate protesters etc around the edge of some of the stories, but they don’t accomplish anything, we’re still going down, so???

I don’t know.

<this is what theater is: the thing you do when crying isn’t enough.>

The set-up is amazing, though: the framing is that there is a book of fairytales, and the stories we read have been written over them – modern, very queer reimaginings of stories like The Matchstick Girl and The Snow Queen. But between the stories, we also have flyers and letters and things, scribbled on by one of a handful of interconnected trans and nonbinary people who are trying to survive, and (some of them) decide whether or not to leave Earth on the last spaceship. It’s very mixed-media, and I LOVED that, I wish we saw that so much more often!

<Question: Is the ax part of the forest for its wood handle?>

The stories themselves…Well, I didn’t Get them. And apart from the Snow Queen and Red Riding Hood ones, I couldn’t tell what fairytales they were supposed to be retelling (although I’m guessing the mermaid one was meant to be the Little Mermaid? Somehow?) But I loved all the queer rep – specifically, so many trans and nonbinary characters, which made me SO FREAKING HAPPY – and I loved the way some of the stories were told, especially the Red Riding Hood one, which is framed like it’s a series of transmissions/queries between different machines? I think? Seb – arguably the main character? – writes notes in the introduction to the book-within-the-book, the collection of fairytales that is being written over, and I enjoyed those immensely. The writing itself is objectively excellent; Beker has a wonderful way with words, and a twisty, let’s-experiment imagination that felt playful and wickedly smart. I’d really like to read more from them in the future, even if it never gets more overtly fantastical than this!

With the caveat that I found this very depressing, I’d recommend this one to anybody interested in mixed-media stories, especially readers who are pining for trans and nonbinary rep. What a Fish Looks Like is a beautiful book, even if I definitely wasn’t smart enough to understand or catch everything it was doing. I’m very glad it exists, even if it’s not quite for me.

🐟 Bookish Thoughts
I genuinely don’t know what I just read. This was a very short book (around 150 pages) but instead of feeling quick and easy, it left me more confused than anything else.

I recognize that I might not be the right reader for this type of story.

I can see it finding the right audience among readers who enjoy abstract, or unconventional storytelling.
——-

📖 Final Score: 2 stars
📅 Pub Date: September 4, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for the advanced copy. All thoughts are my own.

I love an unconventional narrative and structure and this novella is that: experimental and alluring in its design and language. That said, there is still a constant theme of love and loss throughout that I felt was beautifully captured through the ephemeral writing, which is told in an epistolary format of varying POVs, letters, notes, and other bits of remembrances.

At once lyrical and mournful… This haunting and poignant tale tells the individual stories of a group of friends who come together, separate and fracture while the world crumbles and violently morphs around them through climate change as some prepare to leave this world while others commit to stay. There is a deep sense of loss and longing in the individual tales, both for friends and lovers and for the earth itself, with flashes of hope for renewal and rebirth. I found this book to be quite beautiful and moving, and has managed to achieve its rightful place as a modern-day fable.

Alas, this one didn't really click for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

This is a really neat idea for a story, and I loved the idea of the presentation, but I found it all a bit too floaty for me to make sense of. I wasn't really sure where things were happening, when things were happening, and who the characters even were. I often struggle with second-person POV, and there was a not-insignificant amount of it in these stories. The first story being second-person was a mistake, because it makes it that much more difficult to figure out what's going on in an already pretty opaque book.

I think also there were too many ideas for a book this short and structurally atypical? It seems rather mean to say that, but it felt like ideas got brought up and then abandoned, e.g. ghosting was important in the first story and seemed to be a big deal for Seb, but then it did not seem to matter anywhere else in the book, and it really felt like most of the fairy tale adaptations were like that.

Of the 6 major short stories, my two favorites were "Playlist 4Merx in Times of Sea Levels Rising" and "Antigone, But With Spiders". They were the most clear to me and also spoke to my own experiences the most, as someone about to enter teacher training and a theatre kid. I respected "Five is the Other Shade of Red"'s hustle, but I was so wildly confused about the technology in it that I couldn't understand where it fit. The ideas in "Root Systems" and "Server Farm Queen" were neat, but I had really no idea how they fit into the larger story other than thematically. I kind of don't give a singular damn about Seb and Jay's relationship if I'm being so open and vulnerable right now, so "What a Fish Looks Like" was just not something that I cared about, and the aforementioned second-person only made it worse.

I am a fairly literal person though! This might be your cup of tea if you're into more experimental/poetic stuff.

✨This one left me confused for most of the book. Told through letters to exes, friends, and lovers, it took until about 70% before I understood what was going on. There’s a fascinating premise—Earth is dying and humanity is moving to a new planet—but I struggled to connect with it due to the abstract structure.✨

✨If you enjoy experimental, nonlinear storytelling, this might be for you. It just wasn’t the right fit for me.✨

A compendium of short stories, that all get related through a main story, about two ex lovers dealing with the end of the world.
This is one of the weirdest books I've read, and I have read a lot of weird books recently.
It was a challenging book, but I am not quite sure if I mean it as a good thing.
The description promised a sci fi retelling of classical stories, honestly besides the names I could not relate the stories with the classics.
Overall it was an interesting read, however I do not know if I recommend this one, its confusing, I do not like the ending of the stories since they are open an not very hopeful, to be sad I dont read a book I just see the news.
It was kind of disappointing, the cover gave me very high hopes I guess.
Thanks to NetGalley for this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a dreamy, experimental novella that has the queer community coming together in a world ravaged by climate change to decide whether or not to leave Earth or to stay.

At some point in the near-ish future in a coastal community, the Earth is ravaged by a warming climate, with sea levels rising, rogue waves that destroy towns, and fecund vines that are taking over the city. Species extinction is common. There are few fish left, replaced by oceans of plastic. The spaceship Galactic Exodus 3 is leaving in 10 days, and there are those who want to go, and those who choose to stay on Earth.

Beker is a nonbinary, queer Turkish-American writer, and their website notes they’re “in search of the queer love language of climate change.” Honestly, that’s a great descriptor for the overall feel of this book. The novella is told in a series of six fairytale retellings in different styles, along with letters, graffiti, notes and art, that weave a story of a group of friends who meet at the local club, The Paradise. Though the storytelling seems fractured at times, it’s not: the narrative is roughly chronological and comes together nicely as a story that addresses climate change, love, loss and transformation.

And if you have fairytales as a centrepiece to a novella, you can bet that transformation will be a central theme. In “What a Fish Looks Like,” a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, humans can choose to transform into extinct animals. My favourite of the retellings was “Playlist 4Merx in Times of Sea Levels Rising,” which was a take on The Little Mermaid. It plays with transformation in different ways, with main character Max exploring her life as a transgender woman, while the sea and Merpeople transform, and plastics transform fish and oceans.

For a short book, Beker has introduced a fair amount of complexity; this is a book that you could read once, and then again and likely find new concepts to ponder. I enjoyed the poetics of the book, and the sense of exploration I got as I read. The picture of climate change that emerged was unsettling, to the point that it hit kind of close to home, as our fire season rages here in Canada. And the last page? It got me wondering about the plot once again.

I’d recommend this interesting, evocative, queer sci-fi, climate fiction novella that will make you think.

Thanks to Stelliform Press and NetGalley for a gifted copy for review.

Thank you to SFWA and Syr Hayati Beker for the arc copy for this review.

What a Fish Looks Like is a culmination of interconnected stories following the same group of people, told through many different POVs. It is far into the future and climate change has drastically changed the planet. Some sci-fi and fantasy elements are sprinkled in. I requested this ARC because the description mentioned that queerness and climate change are simultaneously explored, and I was not disappointed.

I usually like to summarize books at the beginning of their reviews, but What a Fish Looks Like is not something I think I can summarize effectively. I’m honestly not sure that I even fully absorbed the story. This is literary fiction, so it focuses more on diving into complex themes and less on plot. That isn’t to say that there isn’t substance to this book, because there definitely is substance. I loved how hard my brain had to work at some points to understand what was going on.

The writing and formatting absolutely takes some time getting used to. I personally enjoy when authors experiment with the formatting in their books, and the formatting in this was intriguing. It kept me engaged and had me asking questions. I got confused about whose perspective we were reading from at times, but I was already confused and mind boggled so I didn’t mind.

Being a bisexual trans masc that has a Bachelors in conservation biology, What a Fish Looks Like was an amazing read! The different queer themes and experiences explored, the effects of climate change on a future planet, and the looming grief of the situation all came together to give me a mind bending time reading. I resonated with many queer struggles and metaphors and was fascinated at how they were intertwined or paralleled with climate issues.

I will also be posting reviews on TikTok and Fable (@fantasylobster). They will be posted 7/27/2025 and remain up indefinitely.

So this story is split into two parts that interconnect. Our main storyline follows a group of queer friends, lovers, and exes. The earth is dying, and there is a ship that is going to take a limited number of people to a different planet. Nobody knows if it’s better than where they are now or worse, but some people are willing to take that risk. This book delves into the struggle of abandoning the only home you’ve ever known for the unknown. And the difference between the people who want to leave and the people who still think this world is worth trying to save. And the fights and inner turmoil that arises from a choice like that. The other storyline is a collection of past stories about members of said group of people and their experiences in this dying/changing world.

I thought all the stories were really interesting; they were all supposed to be retellings of fairytales, and they were very unique. I will say, the narrative was a bit confusing at first. I had a hard time for probably the first story or so to get into it. But as soon as I did, it was very captivating.

Neat near future fairy tell retelling anthology with the connected thread throughout of a friend group and community slowly dying off and how they choose to face it (done entirely via epistolary). Pick this up this fall.

What a Fish Looks Like is a post apocalyptic book about why we tell stories. The cover and title immediately caught my eye and the description didn't disappoint either so, going into this, I was very excited.

The start of the book is very light and enjoyable. The problem? It stays that way. I got around halfway through before DNF-ing. I was really rooting for this one but eventually got to a point where, even if the plot picked up, there wouldn't be enough room to tell the story Beker set out to tell.

As soon as I started reading this, I knew I was in for something special. Playing with form and including a metanarrative along short stories, I ended up absolutely adoring this. It so accurately depicted living on the edge of climate change/capitalism/of the feeling that disaster is always looming yet trying to find hope in the community around you, refusing to give in. It's gorgeous and tragic and speaks so much to right now. I cannot recommend this enough.

This was really weird even for someone like me who thrives on weird book but honestly I absolutely loved the weirdness. This book not only had a really unique plot but the way it's written was so unique. I loved everything about this. Its a really short book but still it tells such an amazing story in such a unique way. I can't wait to get more for Syr Hayati Beker