Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: January 2017

The Dragons of Heaven: A rowdy festival of fantasy genres

The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms

The Dragons of Heaven (2015), by Alyc Helms, is a rowdy festival of fantasy genres, expertly managed by the writer. You’ve got an urban fantasy set-up with the caped-heroes angle; you’ve got Chinese folklore, dragons, shadow realms, and conventional magic; and also, for part of the book, a family saga. It’s an exciting, eclectic read.

Here is the visual of this book for me: Helms is juggling many tropes and themes. It’s like she’s got three flaming torches,

January 31st, 2017. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Alyc Helms | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

SHORTS: Vernon, Pinsker, Leigh, Swanwick, Young

our weekly exploration of free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. This week’s (entirely coincidental) theme seems to be the monstrous elements within us.

The Dark Birds by Ursula Vernon (Jan. 2017, free at Apex, $2.99 Kindle magazine issue)

This creepy story is told by one of the ogre’s daughters, who lives in a home where the cannibalistic ogre stays in the basement and is fed by the mother. There are always three daughters, even though the mother has a child every few years.

Department Zero: Nifty mashup of humor and Lovecraft

Department Zero by Paul Crilley

Department Zero by Paul Crilley is a neat mashup of humor and horror, of interdimensional fantasy and Lovecraft. First person narrator Harry Priest has a lively voice and a lot to learn when his life gets turned upside down after one really bad day at work. If you like acerbic British humor and the Old Ones of H.P. Lovecraft, this is a book for you.

Priest is a crime-scene cleaner in Los Angeles. He is separated from his wife and daughter,

A Clash of Kings: No one will escape

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

Renly Baratheon explains, “I have it in me to be a great king, strong yet generous, clever, just, diligent, loyal to my friends and terrible to my enemies, yet capable of forgiveness, patient…” Renly’s only problem, besides arrogance, is that he has no legal claim to the Iron Throne of Westeros — excepting the strength of his army. Luckily for Renly, Westeros’ leaders no longer seem to require any legitimacy beyond the power of their armies and the ruthlessness of their bannermen. Perhaps the laws of the realm were always a whitewash,

January 30th, 2017. Ryan Skardal, Jason Golomb and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 5 | George R.R. Martin | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Dark Ascension: Brennan has me hooked

Dark Ascension by M.L. Brennan

Dark Ascension is the fourth book in the GENERATION V series, which has quickly become my favorite urban fantasy series. It seems like I spend a good few months every year looking forward to the next book in the series. Brennan has me hooked.

Dark Ascension is far different from any other book in this series. It has a much darker tone, and the humor, while there, is muted. It feels a lot heavier,

January 29th, 2017. Sarah Chorn | M.L. Brennan | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Sandman Mystery Theatre Book One by Matt Wagner

The Sandman Mystery Theatre Book One by Matt Wagner

The Sandman Mystery Theatre is a near-perfect noir comic book series written in the 1990s by Matt Wagner, though the stories are set in the late 1930s. In some ways, Wagner is making a return to the older, original Sandman character created in 1939 (who also went by the name of Wesley Dodds), but the Sandman has had various incarnations since then, including Kirby’s in the 1970s. And of course, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman is the most famous of them all,

January 28th, 2017. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Martians Abroad: Fun from the first page to the last

Martians Abroad by Carrie Vaughn

In Martians Abroad (2017), Carrie Vaughn re-envisions aspects of the “juvenile” novel Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein, turning his classic spacefaring story into something refreshing and new while retaining the sense of limitless adventure. Kat has mentioned in her reviews of Heinlein’s juveniles that they were instrumental in forming her love of science fiction, and the same is true for me: books like Have Space Suit — Will Travel and Red Planet captured my imagination and made me dream of embarking upon my own interplanetary journeys.

Miniatures: Like pistachios; you won’t stop with one

Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi by John Scalzi

Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi (2016), is a collection from John Scalzi, published by Subterranean Press. Sub Press cleverly chose only one blurb for the back cover, from Kirkus reviews: “Often verging on the silly, but on the whole, quite amusing.”

That was a stroke of marketing genius on the part of Sub Press because this collection of works does verge on the silly. It jumps the border of silly.

A Face Like Glass: Hardinge has a wonderful way with weird

A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge

Frances Hardinge is rumoured to be made “entirely of velvet”, or so her biography would have us believe. A mysteriously “unphotographable” author who wears a black hat. She seems to covet a certain strangeness, a sense of mystery that shrouds both her writing and herself.

Well if that’s what it takes to write stories as well as she does, then I’m all for it.

Once again on reading Hardinge, I am struck that the age-old question — where do you get your ideas?

Metallic Lover: An unusual sequel to an unusual book

Metallic Love by Tanith Lee

Metallic Love (2005) is technically a sequel to The Silver Metal Lover, but (despite the same premise and a few reappearing characters) is so drastically different in tone and content that it barely counts as a continuation of Tanith Lee‘s earlier unorthodox love story between a young woman and a silver android.

That said, it is preferable if you read The Silver Metal Lover before Metallic Love,

January 26th, 2017. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Tanith Lee | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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