Archives | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

Day: June 2, 2017

Expanded Universe: An Undead History by Kathryn Troy

Today we welcome Kathryn Troy, an historian turned novelist. She has taught college courses on Horror Cinema and presented her research on the weird, unnatural, and horrific to academic conferences across the country Her nonfiction book, The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender and Ghosts in American Séances, 1848-1890, is forthcoming from SUNY Press. Her historical expertise in the supernatural and the Gothic informs her fiction at every turn. Her genres of choice include dark fantasy, romance, horror, and historical fiction. She lives in New York with her husband and two darling children.

June 2nd, 2017. Kat Hooper | Expanded Universe, Giveaway! | 11 comments |

The Vacation Guide to the Solar System: An excellent introduction

The Vacation Guide to the Solar System by Olivia Koski & Jana Grcevich

The Vacation Guide to the Solar System is an engagingly informative non-fiction tour of our nearest planets in a unique format by Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich, though one better suited (or perhaps, space-suited) for younger readers or those with only a cursory knowledge of the planets and moons.

Koski and Grcevich present their information just as the title implies, as a Fodors/AAA-guide to each of the planets as well as several of their respective moons.

June 2nd, 2017. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues: More dangerous than your average sea cucumber

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues directed by Dan Milner

Although I really do try to keep an objective mind when it comes to my cinematic adventures, I must confess that The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues (1955) already had one strike against it, personally speaking, as I sat down to peruse it recently. I mean, how dare this picture rip off the title of one of my favorite films of all time, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)? The fact that the esteemed Maltin’s Movie Guide gives Phantom its lowest BOMB rating did not bother me overmuch (the editors there are a notoriously grumpy bunch as regards genre fare),

June 2nd, 2017. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 2.5 | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |

A Darker Shade of Magic: We like it

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

I was a big fan of V.E. Schwab’s 2013 novel Vicious, noting in my review how she had overcome the possible burden of overfamiliar concepts (it’s a folks-with-powers-who-have-some-gray-to-them kind of novel) with supremely polished execution. Well, she’s pretty much done the same with her newest novel, A Darker Shade of Magic, which takes many of the usual fantasy tropes and, again, just handles them all so smoothly that you simply don’t care much that you’ve seen them all before.

June 2nd, 2017. Bill Capossere, Ray McKenzie, Tim Scheidler, Marion Deeds and Skye Walker´s rating: 4 | Victoria (V.E.) Schwab | SFF Reviews | 11 comments |