My experience with Jim Hines’s work has been limited to his PRINCESS series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. That series works in the “lighter” side of fantasy, but does so with a sharp intelligence and very strong characterization. Hines is now out with a new series, MAGIC EX LIBRIS, and judging by its introductory novel Libriomancer, this is going to be another winner.
If this were a Hollywood pitch, one might call Libriomancer a cross between Cornelia Funke’s INKWORLD trilogy.
August 16th, 2012. Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Jim C. Hines | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
A Dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest
Written in 1977, Christopher Priest’s A Dream of Wessex stands at the midpoint of media questioning reality. Falling on the tail end of Philip Dick and his oeuvre’s continual exploration of metaphysical meaning, A Dream of Wessex is also an (unheralded) fore-runner to science fiction featuring uncertain realities that followed in the 1990’s. Many ideas that are exploited in films such as The Matrix or Inception can find their conception in Priest’s tale of a scientific experiment into alternate realities.
August 16th, 2012. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3.5 | Christopher Priest | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Breaking news: Harry Harrison, author of such well known books as THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT series, passed away this morning. The writing world has lost one of its greats.
On to the regularly scheduled column.
So, there is lots of sparkly nerdy geektastic goodness for you this week. Let’s do this!
1. Patrick Rothfuss, Jim Butcher, Emma Bull, and Diana Rowland discuss urban fantasy for an hour.
August 15th, 2012. Ruth Arnell | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen, published in 1980, is Joan Vinge’s science fiction adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale of the same name. In Vinge’s version, Anderson’s love story takes place on the planet Tiamat which is located near a black hole. Tiamat is a convenient rest stop for interstellar travelers and they often go down to the planet for respite or trade, but Tiamat also has its own special commodity: the Water of Life. This youth-preserving substance is made by killing a marine species found only on Tiamat and is available to rich travelers who are willing to leave their money or their technology behind.
August 15th, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | Joan D. Vinge | Audio, Hugo Award | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
Recently I reviewed D.B. Jackson’s historical urban fantasy Thieftaker and Mr. Jackson was gracious enough to take the time to answer my questions about the novel. Here he offers up some insight into how Thieftaker came about, his research process, and the difficulties in writing Colonial Noir Fantasy. He also lets us in on a few of his plans for the future, including a sequel entitled Thieves’ Quarry. I’m looking forward to it! We’ve got five hardback copies of Thieftaker (with a gorgeous cover by artist Chris McGrath who,
August 14th, 2012. Bill Capossere | D.B. Jackson | Author Interviews, Giveaway! | 16 comments |
The Seven Songs by T.A. Barron
“Pursue the Seven Songs in Turn; the Parts Beget the Whole…”
The second book in T.A. Barron’s MERLIN SAGA (preceded by The Lost Years and followed by The Raging Fires) continues young Merlin’s journey toward the powerful wizard of legend. Having noticed that there was very little literature that dealt with Merlin in his formative years, Barron set about writing a “prequel” of sorts to Arthurian legend that explored what Merlin was like as a child.
August 14th, 2012. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | T.A. Barron | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The novella is the ideal length for a science fiction story. It’s long enough to allow a reader to become immersed in a scene and involved with the characters; and it’s short enough to allow a reader to suspend disbelief as to the more unscientific or strange aspects of a story without questioning them too closely. Kate Wilhelm’s “The Fullness of Time,” which forms the backbone of the July/August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, is a fine illustration of the strengths of the novella form.
August 13th, 2012. Terry Weyna | Charles De_Lint, Jeffrey Ford, Kate Wilhelm, Ken Liu, Lucius Shepard, Matthew Hughes, Michelle Sagara West, Pat Murphy | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Insurgent is the follow-up to Veronica Roth’s Divergent and serves as the middle book in her planned dystopian DIVERGENT trilogy. I gave Divergent a middling review, noting its fast pace but finding some issues with plausibility and depth of character. I wish I could say Insurgent showed some improvement, but I actually found myself less impressed with the sequel. It is possible that the book suffered in my reading it so soon after Divergent and so I was responding to the cumulative flaws between both books rather than simply to Insurgent’s problems.
August 13th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Veronica Roth | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Divergent, by Veronica Roth, is the first novel in a new YA dystopia series. Roth’s is a solid entry into a genre that shows no sign of waning, though the novel doesn’t do much to separate itself from the dystopic pack and falls well short of works such as Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games (its most obvious cousin) or Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies. While it lacks those novels’ vivid characterizations and rich settings,
August 10th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Veronica Roth | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Fey, muted, beautiful. The story of Rush-that-speaks is a bildungsroman that will haunt you long after you have read the last page. Engine Summer follows the charming and inquisitive Rush as he grows up in his enclave of ‘True Speakers,’ one of the few groups of humanity left after an apocalypse has destroyed most of civilization. It then follows him as he ventures out into the world to see what strangeness it may offer, and in the hopes of finding his lost love.
August 10th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 5 | John Crowley | Stand-Alone | 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…