Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: July 2012

A chat with Carrie Vaughn

FanLit welcomes our regular guest Stephen Frank. He’s a big fan of Carrie Vaughn’s KITTY NORVILLE series and he had a chance to talk with her about the newest installment which was released today. Thanks, Stephen!

We are pleased to have with us today Carrie Vaughn, bestselling author as well as the ingenious creator of my personal favorite fictional radio show host: Kitty Norville. Her latest novel, Kitty Steals the Show is being released by Tor today. Comment below to win a copy.

Stephen Frank: Hi Carrie.

July 31st, 2012. Stephen B. Frank | Carrie Vaughn | Author Interviews, Giveaway! | 11 comments |

Ether Frolics: Nine Tales from the Etheric Explorers Club

Ether Frolics: Nine Tales from the Etheric Explorers Club by Paul Marlowe

The motto of Etheric Explorers Club, translated from the Greek, is “to seek, to discover, to return home.” These explorers dedicate themselves to investigating the ways in which the spirit world touches the physical world. Unfortunately for the explorers, most of these meetings between the spiritual and the physical are dangerous.

Paul Marlowe’s Ether Frolics is a collection of short stories that provide accounts of the explorations of the ether since the end of the Victorian era.

Magazine Monday: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue 100

Beneath Ceaseless Skies has just published its 100th issue, and it’s a double issue in celebration. That means there are four stories instead of two, and they’re very good stories at that.

The first, “In the Palace of the Jade Lion” is by Richard Parks, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite short story writers. It’s set in the Kingdom of Zhao, which seems an awful lot like China. The protagonist is a poor young scholar named Xu Jian, who has won a posting as an Official Censor in a remote northern province.

July 30th, 2012. Terry Weyna | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart: 25 works by an accomplished stylist

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Caitlín R. Kiernan is a powerful writer, with a prodigious vocabulary, a mastery of prose and the ability to ground a sentence with a perfectly chosen detail. Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, published by Subterranean Press, contains 25 works by this accomplished stylist. Many of the works have graphic sexual imagery and intense sexual violence. In many cases that is the sole intent of the piece.

I have no complaints at all with the line-by-line prose, but the anthology is a mixed bag.

The Great Bazaar: More stories by Peter V. Brett

The Great Bazaar by Peter V. Brett

Shame on me for not having read Peter V. Brett’s The Warded Man and The Desert Spear yet. I have them on audio and I look forward to reading them — I just keep thinking that I’ll let Mr. Brett get further along in the series before I jump in (the series has been progressing slowly, but book 3, The Daylight War, comes out next February). Yet I’m attracted to Brett’s world and after reading his novella Brayan’s Gold,

The Persistence of Vision: Fascinating

The Persistence of Vision by John Varley

In a post-apocalyptic near-future, a middle-aged drifter roams from commune to commune in the Southwest United States. Each of these groups has its own culture and he stays a while at each, doing whatever he needs (e.g., going nude, praying, chanting “Hare Krishna”) to fit in while he’s there. This works well for him — he stays fed and sheltered and moves on when he’s ready for a change of scenery.

But when he comes across a walled-in settlement in the middle of Native American land,

AMULET: The Stonekeeper & The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

The Stonekeeper & The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

Kazu Kibuishi is the author of the AMULET series, a set of young adult graphic novels published by Scholastic. Book One, The Stonekeeper, and Book Two, The Stonekeeper’s Curse, are fast, accessible stories with likeable characters who face difficult challenges.

In The Stonekeeper, Emily and Navin’s impoverished mother moves them away from everything they know after their father is killed in a car accident on an icy road.

The Hammer and the Blade: Promising new sword & sorcery series

The Hammer and the Blade by Paul S. Kemp

Meet Egil and Nix, the latest sword & sorcery duo to attempt to soften my jaded heart. Can they do it? Well, they’ll never take the place of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, that’s for sure, but they’ve still got my attention and I’m willing to give them at least a second try.

Egil is a warrior priest — the only worshiper of the obscure god who manifests himself as a tattooed eye on the top of Egil’s bald head.

The Algebraist: Unabashed space opera

The Algebraist by Iain Banks

Over the top villain. Check. Strange and funny alien races. Check. Quest for singular object that leads through space. Check. Multitudes of battlecruisers, space wings, and dreadnaughts converging at a single point. Check. Boxes ticked, Iain M. Banks makes no bones about it: The Algebraist is unabashed space opera, for better and worse.

The Algebraist, the 20th novel and 8th sci-fi offering in Bank’s oeuvre, tells the story of Fassin Taak, a scholar who spends his time in the atmosphere of a gas giant interacting with the native species called Dwellers.

July 27th, 2012. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3 | Iain M. Banks | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Author accessibility

We are well into the digital age of publishing. Almost every book is available from an online source and nearly every author has an internet presence. Contacting your favorite author is as easy as posting a comment or firing off a quick e-mail. More often than not, your favorite author will send you a reply in a reasonable amount of time.

This was not always possible. Back in the olden days (15 years ago) fans had to write letters and lick stamps, and if even if you got a form letter in response it was something to be treasured.

July 26th, 2012. Justin Blazier | Thoughtful Thursday | 10 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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