Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: November 2016

Third Annual Speculative Fiction Haiku Contest

Time for our third annual SPECULATIVE FICTION HAIKU CONTEST! Anyone can do this!

As a reminder, here are the rules:

For haiku, the typical subject matter is nature, but if you decide to be traditional, you must give it a fantasy, science fiction, or horror twist. We expect to be told that the peaceful wind you describe is blowing across a landscape of an unfamiliar, distant planet. And if your poem is about a flower, we hope that elegant little touch of beauty is about to be trampled by an Orc. We welcome the sublime as well as the humorous,

November 17th, 2016. Brad Hawley | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 39 comments |

The Tower of Swallows: Sapkowski always subverts expectations

The Tower of Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski

Warning: This review of the sixth book in the WITCHER series will necessarily have some spoilers for the plots of the previous books.

The Tower of Swallows, published in Polish in 1997 and translated into English in 2016, is the sixth and penultimate book in Andrzej Sapkowski’s WITCHER series. I’ve enjoyed all of these books. If you look at the covers and read the publishers’ promotional materials, you get the feeling that WITCHER is just another one of those medieval-style epic fantasies full of elves who are tall and beautiful but arrogant,

Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories: Exquisite, gruesome

Haunted Castles by Ray Russell

Thanks to the ongoing Penguin Classics series, this reader was finally able to purchase and enjoy Chicago-born author Ray Russell’s classic novel of modern-day exorcism, The Case Against Satan (1962), which the publisher rereleased in late 2015. Now, Penguin Classics has followed up by giving the world a beautiful new edition of the 1985 Russell anthology entitled Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories, which consists of three novellas and four shorter pieces …

WWWednesday: November 16, 2016

Today’s word for Wednesday is misosophy, a noun, meaning the hatred of wisdom or intelligence. It appears in writing first in the mid-19th century by poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Books and Writing:

Intellectual Properties, ownership of content and copyright gets more complex daily, and this shake-up at the US Federal Copyright Office is one more example. It was a shock to me that Copyright resides with the Library of Congress not the Department of Commerce.

“I love the m-dash!” says Sarah Kuhn. Take a look at her longer response to the question of which punctuation is under-rated,

November 16th, 2016. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 5 comments |

Chapel of Ease: A romantic ghost story

Chapel of Ease by Alex Bledsoe

I love that each of the novels in Alex Bledsoe’s TUFA series can stand alone. They are all set (at least partly) in the same area of Appalachia and have overlapping characters, but they each tell a self-contained story. They can be read in any order, though it would probably be ideal to read them in publication order: The Hum and the Shiver, Wisp of a Thing,

The Weaver: An enchantingly dream-like novel

The Weaver by Emmi Itäranta

The Weaver (2016), Emmi Itäranta’s second novel, is a powerful story that occupies a space between the fantastical and the allegorical. Filled with its own symbols and mythology, and set in a world with eerie similarities to our own, Itäranta’s tale of an isolated island community’s struggle to maintain order is worth several re-reads — not just for the pleasure of her prose or for the compelling plot and characters, but for the secondary text woven like a bright thread within the primary body of the novel.

The Purloined Poodle: Oberon solves a mystery

The Purloined Poodle by Kevin Hearne

If you haven’t been reading Kevin Hearne’s IRON DRUID CHRONICLES series, you are really missing out. These are fun fantasy adventures featuring a cool modern-day druid named Atticus and his canine familiar, an Irish Wolfhound named Oberon, possibly the most awesome sidekick in all of fantasy literature.

Everyone loves Oberon, so it’s not surprising that Hearne would spawn a series (called OBERON’S MEATY MYSTERIES) that gives Oberon center stage. As the name of the series implies,

SHORTS: Yu, Murray, Robson, Ronald, Navarro

There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few recent stories that caught our attention.

“The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight” by E. Lily Yu (Sept. 2016, free at Uncanny, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue)

In this fairy tale with a bit of a modern twist to it, the old witch of Orion Waste decides it is time for her to go off to new adventures, so she offers her job and hut to the chandler’s clerk,

Congress of Secrets: Fast-paced fantasy romance swirling with political intrigue

Congress of Secrets by Stephanie Burgis

In 1814, the four countries that defeated Napoleon Bonaparte held a congress in Vienna, determined to establish a new balance of power among the European nations. It was a contentious congress filled with intrigue and realpolitik, but at least those real-life diplomats and leaders weren’t contending with shadowy magic, the way Stephanie Burgis’ characters are in her alternate history fantasy Congress of Secrets (2016).

Lady Caroline Wyndham, a wealthy British widow, has come to Vienna,

Ice Like Fire: Winter’s been saved — but not for long

Ice Like Fire by Sara Raasch

When I reviewed Snow Like Ashes, the first book in the SNOW LIKE ASHES series (back when I was a FanLit newcomer), I complained of a lack of depth to the world that Sara Raasch created. In some ways, its sequel Ice Like Fire (2015) gave me what I desired; I was pleased that the world of Primoria is explored and developed in this book. But where one issue was partly solved,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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