Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: April 2010

Ferren and the White Doctor: Vivid representation of a future-Earth

Ferren and the White Doctor by Richard Harland

This Heaven and Earth trilogy is original, exciting, interesting reading, but I still feel that with a little more work it could have gone from good to excellent and been placed among the likes of Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials. Like those books, these deal with conflict between the forces of Heaven and the beings on Earth, but are set in this world, many years into the future.

After scientists discovered that there was indeed life after death,

The Silver Mage: Disappointing end to Deverry

The Silver Mage by Katharine Kerr

In The Silver Mage, the fifteenth book in the very long-running Deverry series, Katharine Kerr seeks to wrap up those last few plot points and bring the sequence to a resounding end.

Oh dear. I’ve followed this series faithfully, to the extent of doing a full re-read in preparation of the release of this final book, and I am more than disappointed with the way Kerr has finished things off.

This series has been limping along for a while,

April 12th, 2010. Amanda Rutter (guest)´s rating: 2 | Katharine Kerr | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Tales from the Perilous Realm: Glimpses and Echoes of LOTR

Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is a passage in one of the stories collected here that accurately sums up the content of the book itself. In “Leaf By Niggle,” J.R.R. Tolkien describes a painting that the artist Niggle has been working on:

It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots… Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture.

The Stones of Green Knowe: Very sad to see its end

The Stones of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston

The Stones of Green Knowe completes Boston’s series, and aptly takes us right back to the beginning of Green Knowe: to its original construction in 1120 A.D. The very first of the Green Knowe children is Roger, the grandson of a Norman Earl, who is excited beyond words at the building of a two-storied stone house, complete with windows. Roger’s days are spent watching the flocks and exploring the construction site, with as much attention given to historical accuracy and detail as one would expect from Rosemary Sutcliffe.

Lady of Avalon: Help, I’m lost in the mists of history!

Lady of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Lady of Avalon is a set of three sort-of-related stories about priestesses on the Druid isle of Avalon, during the centuries preceding Bradley’s stunning Mists of Avalon.

And they’re OK, in general. I especially liked Viviane’s story; I learned more about what made that complex character tick.

Unfortunately, certain details of the history set up by Bradley in Mists were contradicted in Lady of Avalon.

April 11th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Marion Zimmer Bradley | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Primavera: A fascinating story

Primavera by Francesca Lia Block

Francesca Lia Block’s novel Primavera is the sequel to an earlier novel Ecstasia, which should probably be read before continuing with this one. I hadn’t read Ecstasia, and though this didn’t prevent me from grasping what was going on here, I couldn’t help but feel that some of the action that takes place would have been better understood and more poignant had I previously read Ecstasia.

From what I gathered here,

Crossover: Action-packed SF adventure

Crossover by Joel Shepherd

Australian author Joel Shepherd came to my attention via his excellent current fantasy series, A TRIAL OF BLOOD AND STEEL, which I was so impressed by that I decided to check out his earlier novels. Crossover is the first novel in his CASSANDRA KRESNOV trilogy, and was also his first published book, back in 2001 in Australia. The series is now also in print in the US thanks to Pyr, with lovely and evocative cover illustrations by Stephen Martiniere.

April 9th, 2010. Stefan Raets´s rating: 4 | Joel Shepherd | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Edge of Ruin: Science vs superstition, round two

The Edge of Ruin by Melinda Snodgrass

The Edge of Ruin (2010) is a direct sequel to The Edge of Reason, an excellent present-day fantasy novel by Melinda Snodgrass in which Chtulhu-esque beings use religion to generate emotions like fear and anger, enabling them to enter our dimension. It’s an unusual and original concept that led to a fascinating novel.

Unfortunately The Edge of Ruin is not quite as strong as the first novel in the EDGE series.

April 9th, 2010. Stefan Raets´s rating: 2.5 | Melinda Snodgrass | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain: Essential companion

The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

After the five-part Chronicles of Prydain came to a close, fans of the series requested more stories from Lloyd Alexander, and he obliged with this anthology. There are eight short stories in all, set in Alexander’s Welsh-inspired land of Prydain in the time before our favourite Assistant Pig-Keeper was born, and each one includes familiar characters or legendary circumstances from the original books. In particular, many of the tales pit the forces of light and life against the main antagonist of the saga: Arawn,

Ghosts of Manhattan: Has serious problems

Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann

I’ve been lukewarm to George Mann’s Victorian steampunk novels set in London, finding them mostly adequate: quick-paced but a bit flat and somewhat too beholden to cinematic cliché. They are intermittently entertaining and lively, but never quite get all the way to good. Mann’s new novel, Ghosts of Manhattan, is similar, but set in America this time. It’s perhaps a step above the London novels in quality.

It’s 1926 and America is in a cold war with a British Empire that still stretches over much of the world.

April 8th, 2010. Bill Capossere and Terry Weyna´s rating: 2 | George Mann | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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