Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: November 2012

Cold Days: Urban fantasy doesn’t get much better

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

If the Harry Dresden stories have ever had a problem (reflecting, I think, an issue with urban fantasy in general), it’s that they can tend to feel a little repetitive. A monster of the week shows up, and Harry goes through hell both emotionally and physically to stop him. Along the way we get the requisite number of quips, film references, attractive non-humans, old-fashioned courtesies, and cackling villains with vaguely British syntax. At the end of it all, Harry goes back to his Batcave apartment and gets to be the snarky private eye pastiche for a little bit before the credits roll.

November 30th, 2012. Tim Scheidler and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4, 4.5 | Jim Butcher | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

Kenny & the Dragon: A great read-aloud book

Kenny & the Dragon by Tony DiTerlizzi

Kenny & the Dragon by Tony DiTerlizzi is a charming tribute to Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic The Reluctant Dragon, which most people are familiar with through the Disney short film adaptation. In this beautifully illustrated volume, DiTerlizzi tells the story of a small, bookish rabbit named Kenny who learns that a dragon has been spotted on his family farm. Armed with a bestiary, he goes to investigate, and instead of a fearsome fire-spouting dragon,

The Inexplicables: A journey through a poisoned city and an addict’s mind

The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest

The Inexplicables is the fifth book in Cherie Priest’s CLOCKWORK CENTURY series. This one returns to its roots, the walled, Blight-ridden city of Seattle. It’s 1881, and the American Civil War is still going on. Eighteen years earlier, a powerful mining device tapped into a vein of gas deep into the earth, and the gas spilled out into Seattle, killing most people and turning them into “rotters” or zombies. The source of the outbreak (downtown Seattle) was walled off and abandoned,

November 29th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Cherie Priest | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Red Country: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with swords

Red Country by Joe Abercrombie

As a fan of Joe Abercrombie’s other books, such as The Heroes, Red Country was a must-read for me. Even though I had no idea what Red Country was about, or how it might be related to his previous stories, it didn’t really matter because I was certain that Joe Abercrombie would entertain me.

Red Country feels almost like a Western in the way that the towns are laid out — there’s a quasi general store and a the local saloon,

November 29th, 2012. John Hulet and Justin Blazier´s rating: 4 | Joe Abercrombie | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

WWWednesday: November 28, 2012

Locus Online is hosting a poll to determine the best novels and short fiction of the 20th and 21st century. You have until the 30th to nominate your choices.

SF Signal hosts a great video from N.K. Jemisin talking about the significance of Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn, the first book in the Xenogenesis trilogy.

Sword and Laser’s Author’s Guide and Interview with Patrick Rothfuss.

Book recommendations to help you get over the pain of losing a favorite cancelled sci-fi TV show.

November 28th, 2012. Ruth Arnell | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |

The Ghost Light: Several of Leiber’s award-winning stories

The Ghost Light by Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber’s The Ghost Light, recently produced in audio format by Audible Frontiers, is a collection of nine short stories and novelettes and an autobiographical essay by Fritz Leiber. Only the first novelette, “The Ghost Light,” and the essay, “Not so Much Disorder and Not so Early Sex: an Autobiographical Essay,” are original to this collection. Most of the previously printed stories were nominated for, or won, major SFF awards. Here’s what you’ll find in The Ghost Light:

“The Ghost Light” — Young Tommy and his parents are visiting Cassius,

Maske: Thaery: Fun and quick

Maske: Thaery byJack Vance

Jack Vance was a fairly prolific author during his writing career, publishing over sixty novels and various short stories in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. During the 1960’s and 70’s many of his science fiction stories were set in a far future milieu which he termed the Gaean Reach. In these stories interstellar travel is common place, as is colonization of a multitude of solar systems throughout the galaxy. While some of the colonized planets contain alien life forms with which the human colonies have to co-exist,

Exile: The OUTCAST CHRONICLES mature and deepen

Exile by Rowena Cory Daniells

Exile, the second book in Rowena Cory Daniells’s OUTCAST CHRONICLES, simultaneously raises the stakes and deepens the narrative that began in the first installment, Besieged. It’s a good bit of work, and readers will be pleased to find Daniells addressing some of the issues that were problematic in Beseiged while at the same time keeping to the familiar sense of suspense and breakneck speed that made the first novel so gripping.

November 26th, 2012. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Rowena Cory Daniells | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Renegade: Will scratch your Hunger Games itch

Renegade by J.A. Souders

Tolstoy wrote “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I find that with dystopian literature, every unhappy society is alike. There is a good argument to be made that modern literature has two main strands of dystopian literature, what we could refer to as the Orwellian strand and the Huxley strand, and YA dyslit follows that same trend. Renegade falls into the Orwellian/HUNGER GAMES camp with an authoritarian central government that controls every aspect of the citizens’ lives.

The Silence of Our Friends

The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, Nate Powell

One of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s most famous admonishments to all of us who lived in the Civil Rights era was that “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies… but the silence of our friends.” Mark Long’s graphic memoir, The Silence of Our Friends, reminds readers from that period, and surely opens eyes of those who were born long after the fiery 1960’s, that the loudest noise heard amidst the roaring flames of burning American cities,

November 23rd, 2012. Guest´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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