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 |
Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sorcery edited by Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders
Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword & Sorcery is a book I’ve been eagerly anticipating ever since it was first announced in 2009. I was particularly excited about the anthology’s impressive list of contributors which includes several authors I enjoy reading like Glen Cook, Greg Keyes, Scott Lynch, Joe Abercrombie, Garth Nix, Tim Lebbon, Caitlin R.
June 15th, 2010. Robert Thompson, Stefan Raets and Greg Hersom´s rating: 4.5 | Bill Willingham, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Garth Nix, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Greg Keyes, James Enge, Joe Abercrombie, Jonathan Strahan, K.J. Parker, Lou Anders, Michael Moorcock, Michael Shea, Robert Silverberg, Scott Lynch, Steven Erikson, Tanith Lee, Tim Lebbon | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 20 comments |
Mother Aegypt and Other Stories by Kage Baker
When Kage Baker died from cancer earlier this year, I was regretful that I had never gotten around to reading any of her work. I had always heard good things about her writing, both from friends and from other writers, and had seen she had been nominated for a number of writing awards I value. I always intended to get around to it, but we all know what our reading piles are like and I never did. Wanting to read her work,
June 15th, 2010. Guest´s rating: 4 | Kage Baker | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Queen of Sinister by Mark Chadbourn
The Queen of Sinister, the middle book in Mark Chadbourn‘s DARK AGE trilogy, introduces a different set of characters from book 1, The Devil in Green. This is a bit surprising, because the author’s earlier AGE OF MISRULE trilogy, which describes the events leading up to the start of the DARK AGE books, focuses on the same characters throughout all three books. So, rather than offering a continuing story,
June 14th, 2010. Stefan Raets´s rating: 2 | Mark Chadbourn | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll
I know Bones of the Moon by Jonathan Carroll has gotten really good reviews, and is supposed to be the source material for the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman, but 50 pages in to the story, I didn’t care about any of the characters and the only fantastical thing that had happened was the main character, a self-involved woman named Cullen, started having weird serial dreams about a talking dog and a young boy named Pepsi.
June 14th, 2010. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 0.1 | Jonathan Carroll | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Snow Queen by Eileen Kernaghan
The Snow Queen arrived on my doorstep on an unseasonably cold March day. I grabbed a blanket, curled up in my favorite chair, and read the book in a matter of a few hours. The Snow Queen is a short novel, a single-sitting book if you’re a fast reader like me, yet more enchanting than many longer works. Nothing is superfluous here; Eileen Kernaghan tells the story she has come to tell — a mythic reworking of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale of the same name — and that’s it.
June 14th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Eileen Kernaghan | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In the first few pages of Soulstring, I was worried that I was reading another book about a spoiled princess who was going to do nothing but complain about how hard she suffered in her privileged life. But by page thirteen, I was deeply engrossed in the story of a young woman who is hated by her parents for the sin of being the firstborn and a girl. Soulstring is a high fantasy story about a young woman who has to discover a way to reclaim the magical power that has been taken from her by her father,
June 13th, 2010. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 4 | Midori Snyder | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
I thought I was sick unto death of vampire novels until I read this one. The Stress of Her Regard reminds me of Anne Rice at her best, some years ago, except with more action and less description of the carpeting.
The story centers around the nephelim, Lilith’s brood. Seductive, serpentine, and deadly, they are succubi and vampires, draining blood and vitality from their hosts even as they inspire them to creativity. One of these beings attaches itself to Byron and Shelley’s circle of expatriate poets,
June 12th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Tim Powers | Mythopoeic Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
Here Lies Arthur is a YA deconstruction/demystifying of the King Arthur legend. And a pretty thorough demystifying at that. Philip Reeve doesn’t simply knock Arthur down a peg or two from chivalric magic-sword-wielding king of the Round Table, say, by making him simply a Roman general or an English chieftan who rallies the locals against the Saxons. No, Reeve takes him all the way down; in this incarnation Arthur is a small-minded petty brigand whose major qualities are that he is: boorish,
June 12th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Philip Reeve | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
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…