Month: June 2014

People of the Morning Star: Historical novel blends myth and intrigue

People of the Morning Star by W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O’Neal Gear

People of the Morning Star, by the archaeologist couple Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, is pretty interesting once it gets going. It is set in the Native American (Mississippian) settlement of Cahokia, a city located near modern-day St. Louis, whose population in the 1200s would have made it one of the largest cities in the world. In this book, Cahokia is ruled by the Four Winds clan, led by the Morning Star,

June 25th, 2014. Kate Lechler´s rating: 3 | W. Michael & Kathleen Gear | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Passage to Dawn: An uptick for the series

Passage to Dawn by R.A. Salvatore

Passage to Dawn, fourth and final book in author R.A. Salvatore’s LEGACY OF THE DROW quartet (and the tenth in his broader LEGEND OF DRIZZT series), is pretty good, by Drizzt standards. Hurrah! Cue the Triumph through Rome! Bring on the cheering throngs and falling rose petals! All right, so it may sound like I’m damning with faint praise here, but given the overall shakiness of the quartet it seems expected to tie together,

June 25th, 2014. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 3 | R.A. Salvatore | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Long War: Searching the High Meggers for a plot

The Long War by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter

The Long War, the second installment in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s five-book LONG EARTH series, is more tedious than the first one, probably because I have already seen the inside of their bag of tricks and I am no longer impressed.

This sequel happens about 12 years after the events of The Long Earth. Joshua, now married and with a son, has been summoned by his old friend, Lobsang (the AI reincarnation of a Tibetan motorcycle repairman) to go on another journey through the Long Earth,

June 24th, 2014. Kate Lechler and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 1 | Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Broken Land: Surreal visions of the horrors of civil war

The Broken Land by Ian McDonald

Ian McDonald’s The Broken Land (Hearts, Hands and Voices in the UK) is a book I admired more than I loved. It’s an allegorical look at the horrors of civil war caused by religious zeal and division. The story is set in a fictional country that feels like it could be in a future Africa where biotechnology has led to the development of mechanical infrastructure that is part organic and part artificial intelligence. The citizens are divided by their religious affiliation — some are Proclaimers and some are Confessors.

The Face in the Abyss: Another fine fantasy from Abraham Merritt

The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt

Abraham Merritt’s The Face in the Abyss first appeared as a short story in a 1923 issue of Argosy magazine. It would be another seven years before its sequel, “The Snake Mother,” appeared in Argosy, and yet another year before the book-length version combined these two tales, in 1931. It is easy to detect the book’s provenance as two shorter stories, as the first third of the novel is pretty straightforward treasure-hunting fare, while the remainder of the book takes a sharp turn into lost-world fantasy,

June 24th, 2014. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Abraham Merritt | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Magazine Monday: Jamais Vu, Issue One

New magazines fascinate me. These days they seem to be popping up on the internet like mushrooms after a summer rain. Jamais Vu: The Journal of Strange Among the Familiar is the latest of these ventures to cross my desk. The first issue, dated Winter 2014, opens with a message from the Editor-in-Chief, Paul Anderson (the one who makes the content decisions, as opposed to the Executive Editor, Eric S. Beebe, who bills himself as a figurehead who pays the bills). Anderson explains that Jamais Vu is an experiment arising from Post Mortem’s start as a publisher of anthologies.

The Shadow of the Soul: A complicated, suspenseful tale

The Shadow of the Soul by Sarah Pinborough

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first book in the FORGOTTEN GODS trilogy, A Matter of Blood (reviewed here).

As The Shadow of the Soul by Sarah Pinborough opens, Cass Jones has been through six months of interviews, arrests, statements and the backlash from his discovery of rampant corruption among his fellow police officers (as set forth in the first book of the FORGOTTEN GODS trilogy,

The Lost: Durst’s first foray into adult fiction

The Lost by Sarah Beth Durst

You never know what Sarah Beth Durst is going to do next. Fairy tales mixed with science? Vampires and unicorns? Gods taking over human bodies? Creepy carnivals? She’s done all of that and more, and with The Lost, Durst begins another story that, just like her previous novels, is completely different from what has gone before.

Lauren Chase took to the open road to get away, just for a little while, from the prospect of bad news about her mother’s health.

June 23rd, 2014. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Sarah Beth Durst | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Travels: A journey abroad, within, and on the astral plane

Travels by Michael Crichton

When Travels begins, Crichton is a student at Harvard Medical School, sawing into cadavers with his peers. He nearly faints at the sight of blood, but he is a talented and diligent student. Crichton shares the objections and concerns that would ultimately drive him from medicine, a decision perhaps made easier by the fact that he had already begun to experience success as a writer of spy novels. However, more than anything, it seems that Crichton began to doubt that doctors are capable of helping people.

ZITA THE SPACEGIRL by Ben Hatke

ZITA THE SPACEGIRL by Ben Hatke

If I were forced to choose one word to sum up Ben Hatke’s ZITA THE SPACEGIRL trilogy, it would be “delightful.” I could toss a lot more words into the mix — imaginative, whimsical, heartwarming, and so on, but really, all one need know is the entire series is a delight. And now I just wondered if our comic/graphic expert Brad had reviewed it and of course he has, and it turns out at the end he says Zita is “a delight.” So there you go.

June 20th, 2014. Bill Capossere and Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Children, Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

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