Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: February 2010

Don of the Dead: Fun, fluffy, forgettable

Don of the Dead by Casey Daniels

Former rich girl Pepper Martin, reduced to dire financial straits, takes a job as a cemetery tour guide. When she falls and hits her head on late mobster Gus Scarpetti’s mausoleum, she gains the (rather inconvenient) ability to see Gus’s ghost. Gus enlists Pepper to solve the decades-old mystery of his murder. While trying to get to the bottom of the case, Pepper learns that a ghostly “boss” can be hazardous to a girl’s love life and job prospects, and maybe even her life itself.

February 21st, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Casey Daniels | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Sword: Quintessential B-grade sword-n-sorcery

The Sword by Deborah Chester

The Sword is the first of a high-fantasy trilogy and is little more than a prologue for whatever follows. What I mean by that is this: in terms of actual plot development, very little happens here. Each paperback in this trilogy is about 400 pages long (1200 total), so this could easily have been a 2-book saga with little to no impact on its quality.

As for the story itself… There are some books you can read when you’re tired, some you can’t,

February 21st, 2010. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 2.5 | Deborah Chester | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Dream of Perpetual Motion: Wild, vivid, inaccessible, strange

The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer

FORMAT/INFO: The Dream of Perpetual Motion is 352 pages long divided over five parts, with each part divided into numbered segments. Also includes a Prologue, an Epilogue, and four Interludes. Narration alternates between the first-person and the third-person via the narrator of the book, Harold “Harry” Winslow. The Dream of Perpetual Motion is self-contained.

March 2, 2010 marks the North American Hardcover publication of The Dream of Perpetual Motion via St.

Spellwright: Remarkable debut

Spellwright by Blake Charlton

FORMAT/INFO: Spellwright is 352 pages long divided over 46 numbered chapters, a Prolog, an Epilog, and a World Map. Narration is in the third-person, mainly via the protagonist Nicodemus Weal, but also includes narratives by Grand Wizard Agwu Shannon, the druid Dierdre, sentinel Amadi Okeke, and the villainous “creature.” Spellwright is the first volume in a trilogy, but many of the book’s major plotlines are satisfactorily concluded, while the closing chapters set up events for the upcoming sequels. The second book in the trilogy is currently titled Spellbound.

February 20th, 2010. Robert Thompson´s rating: 4 | Blake Charlton | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Angelica: SFF with a strong romantic streak

Angelica by Sharon Shinn

The settlers of Samaria were brought there from a distant world, cupped in the hands of their God. Jovah settled them on this harsh land where they could find a new start far away the technology that had torn their old war apart, and then blessed them with angels — winged messengers to intercede with Jovah on the mortals’ behalf. Now, a few hundred years after settlement, the Archangel Gaaron has three problems.

First, he has to convince the Edori woman Susannah to be his bride and the titular Angelica,

February 20th, 2010. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 4 | Sharon Shinn | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Brooklyn Knight: A really fun story!

Brooklyn Knight by C.J. Henderson

Professor Piers Knight is the charming, handsome, and intelligent curator of the esteemed Brooklyn Museum. He has in possession the mysterious “Dream Stone” — an artifact that may hold the key to unraveling an ancient and dangerous mystery. But Knight is not the only person who is aware of its importance. With the help of his gorgeous assistant Bridget and his knowledge of magical items, Knight must protect the stone and solve the riddle in order to keep a global disaster from happening.

CJ Henderson‘s Brooklyn Knight proves to be a very entertaining read.

February 19th, 2010. Justin Blazier´s rating: 3.5 | C.J. Henderson | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

When Charles Ludwig Dodgson first began to tell the story of Alice’s adventures underground to the three Liddell sisters, he had no idea whatsoever the impact that his work would one day have in the cultural history of humanity. Is there a person alive in Western civilization that doesn’t know of Alice, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat? I seriously doubt it. Writing under the pen name of Lewis Carroll,

Thoughtful Thursday: I wanna know what love is

Did you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day? Isn’t commercially mandated displays of affection wonderful? When you get beyond the flowers and jewelry and chocolate and uncomfortable underwear, what you’re left with is a wonderful core — the breathtaking beauty of two people coming together in a relationship of pure happiness. Or at least that’s the way fairy tales make it look.

So, if Moulin Rouge! is right, and “Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!” why is it so hard to depict love in a book?

February 18th, 2010. Ruth Arnell | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 14 comments |

Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3: New authors for my watch list!

Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3 edited by Kevin Brockmeier

On a hypothetical chart, with high epic fantasy in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien and Stephen Donaldson on one end and (for want of a better term) the magical realism of Gabriel García Marquez and Graham Joyce on the other, the twenty stories in the excellent Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3 fall, for the most part, close to or smack on the latter extreme of the scale.

A Chat with Celia S. Friedman

We’re big fans of C.S. Friedman (see our reviews here) and are pleased to present this interview which was conducted for FanLit by our friend R.K. Charron. Thanks, RK!

Celia S. Friedman was born in 1957. She is the author of the SF novels In Conquest Born, The Madness Season, and This Alien Shore, and the highly acclaimed SFF trilogies THE COLDFIRE TRILOGY (Black Sun Rising,

February 16th, 2010. Guest | C.S. Friedman | Author Interviews, Giveaway! | 10 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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