Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: February 2017

David Rowe chats PROVERBS OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Win an autographed copy!

David Rowe is the Director of Contemporary Music, Social Media and Communications at St. John’s Parish in Johns Island, South Carolina. From Sheffield, England David has a degree in Biblical Studies and cultivates his passion for the works of J.R.R. Tolkien on his popular Twitter feed: @TolkienProverbs. The Proverbs of Middle-earth is his first book.

One random U.S. commenter will receive an autographed copy of The Proverbs of Middle-earth. See below for details.

Jason Golomb: In addition to your job at St.

Miranda and Caliban: A beautiful melancholy tale

Miranda and Caliban by Jacqueline Carey

Miranda and Caliban is a twist on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, ringing one major change on the play: what if Miranda and Caliban were in love?

Our tale begins years before the events of the play; we first meet Miranda as a child, assisting her father Prospero in the ceremonial magic that will bind the “wild boy,” Caliban, and the spirit Ariel to his will. From there, Jacqueline Carey alternates between Miranda’s point of view and Caliban’s,

SHORTS: Lee, Jones, Pratt, Skillingstead & Courtier

Our weekly sampling of free short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories that caught our attention this week.

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee (2009, free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

A female pirate captain sails the Unwritten Sea on her ship, the Improbable Dragon. Her crew includes her daughter, who is still unnamed despite growing into a young woman, for the Unwritten Sea has its laws and traditions, and a pirate must have the soul of a poet, and write a poem to the sea with enough power in it to move a ship.

The Proverbs of Middle-Earth: The wise speak only of what they know

The Proverbs of Middle-Earth by David Rowe

The Proverbs of Middle-Earth is a smart, readable literary analysis of J.R.R. Tolkien’s use of proverbs in his worlds of Middle-Earth, including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and (less so) The Silmarillion. If you’re a passionate fan of Tolkien, you’ll absolutely adore this book. Period. If you love the Peter Jackson films,

The Brotherhood of the Wheel: Full of atmosphere and heart

The Brotherhood of the Wheel by R.S. Belcher

The Brotherhood of the Wheel (2016) was one of those books I never really thought I’d read. However, I picked it up and it took exactly one paragraph for me to be hooked. The reason for that is simple. Belcher has one hell of an addicting style of writing. Lyrical, flowing, full of imagery and atmosphere, this book instantly sucked me in.

And then he hit me with all the mythology and urban legends and I was in heaven.

Wondering Sight: The price of vindication

Wondering Sight by Melissa McShane

In Wondering Sight (2017), the second book in Melissa McShane’s THE EXTRAORDINARIES series, we return to a fantasy-touched version of Regency-era England where some people have magical talents ― throwing and extinguishing fire, shaping one’s appearance, flying, teleporting, and more. Sophia is an Extraordinary, one of the very few people who have particularly strong magical abilities. As a Seer, she can cast herself into Dreams, which show her future events as a series of doors in her Dreams that she can open and explore,

February 13th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Melissa McShane | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Infinite Wait and Other Stories by Julia Wertz

The Infinite Wait and Other Stories by Julia Wertz

The Infinite Wait and Other Stories by Julia Wertz is one of my favorite “slice of life” comics, and it is one I’ve taught several times in my course on comics. A memoir in three parts, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories is memorable for the reader because of Wertz’s strong voice as presented in two ways: through the drawn character we see — the “Julia” we watch living through the events recounted — and through the voice of the narrator,

February 11th, 2017. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics, Non-fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Fisherman: Five-star horror

The Fisherman by John Langan

The Fisherman (2016), by John Langan, gets my first five-star review of 2017. The Fisherman is a story about bereavement. It is a story about dead wives and children. And it’s a story about fishing and the things we pull up from beneath the surface. It is horror; it will disturb you while you’re reading it, and sneak up on you for days afterward.

Langan structures The Fisherman as a series of nested stories.

Swamplandia!: Wonderfully surreal

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

It’s not often a book manages to maintain the balancing act between reality and fantasy, but Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! (2011) treads the line perfectly. The story opens with Hilola Bigtree, matriarch of the Bigtree family who own Swamplandia!, an alligator-wrestling theme park in the Ten Thousand Islands of the coast of Florida. She performs her nightly stunt of jumping into a lake full of alligators, but it is not this which kills her; she falls victim to the more mundane and arguably tragic battle with cancer.

SFF Tinder profiles

As Valentine’s Day approaches, and thoughts turn to romance, we thought it’d be fun to imagine how some of our favorite science fiction & fantasy characters might promote themselves on Tinder.

We’ve started you off with a couple of our own (click image to embiggen). Now it’s your turn. Write a “Facts About Me” paragraph for any SFF character’s Tinder profile. Add as many as you like and we’ll choose our favorite to win a book from our stacks. We look forward to seeing how your characters put themselves out there…

February 9th, 2017. Bill Capossere | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 7 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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