If you, like me, love quirky and original fantasy stories, I advise you to dive right in. If you, like me, admire tough writing that’s not afraid of the grit, dive right in. If you, like me, want to hang out a while with characters rich in their own traditions, dive right in. This is storytelling at the top of the heap.

Jane Yolen (from the introduction)

Powerful and dreamlike, this intergenerational meditation on family, mortality, and hope is far more than the sum of its parts.

Publishers Weekly

Barbara Krasnoff’s The History of Soul 2065 is, simply, a remarkable book, combining elements of both fantasy (ghosts, spirits, magic time/space portals, demons) and science fiction (cyberspace/virtual reality, and other elements in a multi-generational story that (a) I heartily recommend, and (b) I’m ready to nominate (or add my nom for) this year’s Nebula Awards.

Daniel Dern, File 770

In the acknowledgements, Krasnoff notes that she was inspired by her own family history, but none of the stories are ‘absolutely true’. Even so, they ring with truth and the weight of history – not just personal and family history, but the weight of a people’s history.

A.C. Wise, winner of the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic

This epic mosaic novel, made up of 20 connected short stories, is a literary gem, both profoundly moving and deeply human as it delves into the supernatural, fantasy, the real historical horrors of the Holocaust, and even science fiction. 

B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

Through the lives of Rachel and Annie, Krasnoff reconfirms the book’s central thesis that the past and future, the living and the dead, are inextricably intertwined—that even the brief presence of someone in our lives can alter our course and sometimes alter the course of the world.

Anthony Cardno, Strange Horizons

If you enjoy quiet passionate stories that reward the reader, this book is for you. 

The Little Red Reviewer

Intriguing stories from the world of Humperdink and Sholem Aleichem, that return us to a time when a world that is achingly familiar and wonderfully strange is coming into being among the Jewish children, beginning the imaginary journey of marvels forth and back between then and today.

Samuel R. Delany, Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Atlantis: Three Tales, Dhalgren, and the Return to Nevèrÿon series

Krasnoff creates a world so excessively alive, both with woe and human kindness, that history can’t contain them, and thus, they leak into haunted, uncanny realms.

Carlos Hernandez, author of Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

With its echoes of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens, Barbara Krasnoff’s multigenerational, phantasmagoric saga kept me turning the pages at a rapid pace.

James Morrow, World Fantasy and Nebula Award–winning author of Galápagos Regained

There’s a lot of heart in Barbara Krasnoff’s collection, The History of Soul 2065—the warmth of home, the lies of families, the demons that lurk in trees, myths both great and small. It tells the fantastic history of two families, their journey through time, what they kept and what they lost. Plunge into The History of Soul 2065, there’s nothing like it.

Jeffrey Ford, World Fantasy and Nebula Award–winning author of Ahab’s Return: or, The Last Voyage

The more I read this book, the more deeply I was impressed. Yes, impressed: in the sense of being indelibly marked by Krasnoff’s stories. I’ve been—ever so gently—cicatrized.

C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award–winning author of Bone Swans: Stories

As a writer of mosaic novels—short stories that connect to tell a larger one—I admire the craft, humor, and emotional storytelling that Ms. Krasnoff brings to her work.

Richard Bowes, World Fantasy Award–winning author of Minions of the Moon and Dust Devils on a Quiet Street

“An Awfully Big Adventure” works because the author believably creates a young point of view who struggles with questions that we all face. Ben becomes the vehicle to carry the story’s weighty concerns.

James Van Pelt in Black Gate

The writing is just beautiful. It walks the line between eerie, thoughtful, emotional, and just easy reading.

The Writerly Way

Attention fantasy fans: One of the best books of the season might have slipped under your radar. 

BookBub

Most Krasnoff stories leave the reader with a little hope and a sweet tenderness, no matter how dismal one’s circumstances may be. 

APB-SAL

Give the book a read. I think you’ll be charmed as well. 

Yip Abides