Well, the Internet has been ablaze with news and chatter this week! Lots of interesting tidbits to bring you, so let’s get started immediately if not sooner…
Just about every major book blog brought to you the extract of Brandon Sanderson‘s The Way of Kings from Tor.com. The Speculative Scotsman has a bit to say on the subject, and links through to virtually every pertinent piece of information. I am most definitely excited about this major fantasy release!
June 16th, 2010. Amanda Rutter (guest) | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |
Wings of Fire edited by Jonathan Strahan & Marianne S. Jablon
This is probably not the first sentence you’d expect to find in a review of Wings of Fire, an anthology devoted exclusively to dragon stories, but I thought it best to get it out of the way right from the start.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with dragons. They’re just terribly overused, one of those tired genre mainstays that people who typically don’t read a lot of fantasy will expect in a fantasy novel because they were practically unavoidable for a long time.
June 16th, 2010. Stefan Raets´s rating: 4 | Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, Charles De_Lint, Elizabeth Bear, George R.R. Martin, Holly Black, James P. Blaylock, Jane Yolen, Jonathan Strahan, Lucius Shepard, Margo Lanagan, Michael Swanwick, Naomi Novik, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia McKillip, Peter S. Beagle, Roger Zelazny, Tanith Lee, Ursula K. Le-Guin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
In her debut novel, Laura Bickle introduces us to Anya Kalinczyk, a woman as troubled as her home city of Detroit. Like many of her sister urban-fantasy heroines, Anya has a tragic past and uses it as a reason to push people away. She works as an arson investigator with the Detroit Fire Department and moonlights with a ghost-hunting team. Anya is a Lantern, which means she has the rare ability to consume ghosts and demons. She also has a familiar spirit, Sparky, a fire elemental who takes amphibian form but acts more like a large dog.
June 16th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Laura Bickle | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
Fantasy comes in all forms. Epic fantasy. Dark fantasy. Contemporary fantasy. Historical fantasy. Erotic fantasy. Then there’s The Sharing Knife series by award-winning author Lois McMaster Bujold (THE VORKOSIGAN SAGA, The Spirit Ring, the FIVE GODS novels), which is an altogether different kind of fantasy…
In a familiar world that recalls The Last of the Mohicans, there are two peoples — Lakewalkers and farmers — who are ignorant of each other’s ways.
June 16th, 2010. Robert Thompson´s rating: 4 | Lois McMaster Bujold | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry
How to review a book that is unquestionably excellent at what it’s trying to do, but which I didn’t finish? Happy Hour of the Damned is, in short, shallow, disgusting, infuriating, and damned good at it.
Happy Hour stars Amanda Feral, a fashion-obsessed zombie. Zombies, in Mark Henry‘s world, can stay well-preserved forever as long as they eat a steady diet of human flesh. There’s only one other thing zombies can consume without getting violently ill: booze.
June 16th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 0.1 | Mark Henry | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…