It Devours! by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
Considering the massive, continuing success of their Welcome to Night Vale podcast and the first Night Vale tie-in novel, Welcome to Night Vale, it’s no surprise that Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor wanted to keep the ball rolling and co-write a second Night Vale novel. Skeptical or worried readers could be forgiven for justifiable fears about the quality of It Devours! (2017): what if the core concept began to wear thin,
October 31st, 2017. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Joseph Fink | Horror | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
During the entire month of October, in the late 1800s, in a year when the full moon falls on Halloween, strange forces gather in a village outside of London. Various iconic characters ― who will be familiar to fans of Victorian literature and classic horror movies ― create shifting alliances, gather herbs, instruments of power and the odd eyeball and femur, and prepare for a mystery-shrouded event that will take place on Halloween night.
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993) is narrated by the aptly-named Snuff,
October 31st, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Roger Zelazny | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
The Omen trilogy directed by Richard Donner, Don Taylor, Graham Baker
This viewer was a tad late in coming to the whole Omen phenomenon … a good 30 years late, actually. But I have since eagerly made up for lost time and taken in the entire trilogy of films dealing with filmdom’s favorite little Antichrist, and here, in these three short reviews, offer up some comments as to how they struck me. Consider this your one-stop shopping resource for all things Damien! And HAPPY HALLOWEEN to one and all!
The Omen: By the time I finally got around to watching it,
October 31st, 2017. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe (1846, free at Project Gutenberg)
Our narrator Montresor, an Italian nobleman, explains ― in a suspiciously vague way ― how his friend Fortunato has mortally offended and insulted him. Montresor sets himself on a course of implacable revenge … but he wants to do so in a way that Fortunato understands that Montresor is the source of revenge,
October 30th, 2017. Tadiana Jones, Bill Capossere, Kat Hooper and Nathan Okerlund | Dennis Danvers, Edgar Allan Poe, M.R. James, Nick Mamatas, Ray Bradbury | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Devil’s Possessed directed by Leon Klimovsky
The real-life historical figure Gilles de Rais apparently inspired Paul Naschy — the so-called “Boris Karloff of Spain” — to create two of his greatest characters. de Rais, a 15th century French knight who fought alongside Joan of Arc and later became an aspiring alchemist, Satanist and serial child killer, first prompted Naschy to come up with the necromancer/Satanist character Alaric de Marnac for his 1973 classic Horror Rises From the Tomb. Though beheaded in 1454, de Marnac (played by Naschy himself) returned to cause major-league mishegas 520 years later in the film,
October 30th, 2017. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today, I am proud to present a review by Arden Godfrey:
Arden Godfrey is a freshman at Oxford College of Emory University and is pursuing a double major in Psychology and German Studies with the intent to go to medical school for the Genetic Counseling program.
October 28th, 2017. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Magician’s End by Raymond E. Feist
When I was in my late teens I went through a spell when I hardly read any books at all. Literature classes at the time seemed to be aimed at forcing the most boring reading material on you, or else books that were way over the head of your average teenager, making reading seriously unappealing. I’ve always wondered how many people never got back to reading again after going through those classes. I returned to reading in 1996 when I entered college, mostly to take my mind off the more technical stuff I had to read as part of my education.
October 28th, 2017. Rob Weber´s rating: 3 | Raymond E. Feist | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Tremontaine Season One by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Patty Bryant, Racheline Maltese & Paul Witcover
Serial Box is another way to consume entertainment, pairing the pleasure of episodic television with the joy of a well-written book. Serial Box provides original works of written fiction in the form of a “season,” 10-16 chapters or episodes, released weekly. Like television, they use the metaphor of a “writers room,” and each work is produced by a team of writers, rather than an individual writer. It’s an interesting concept.
October 27th, 2017. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Ellen Kushner, Malinda Lo | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Planet of Exile by Ursula K. Le Guin
Planet of Exile is a novel in Ursula Le Guin’s HAINISH CYCLE and one of the author’s first published books. In this story, a colony of humans has been stranded for many years on the planet Werel, which has such a long orbit around its sun that one year is like 60 Earth years. These humans, gently led by Jakob Agat, live in a city surrounded by a stone wall. Because of the conditions on Werel, especially the effect of its sun’s radiation on human genes,
October 27th, 2017. Kat Hooper and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Ursula K. Le-Guin | Audio | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Satan’s Wife directed by Pier Carpi
Those viewers who believe Patty McCormack’s Rhoda Penmark character, in the 1956 classic The Bad Seed, to be the nastiest, most diabolical little girl ever shown on film might change their mind after seeing the 1979 Italian offering Satan’s Wife. This latter picture was originally released under the title Un’ombra nell’ombra, or Ring of Darkness, but for once, I prefer the American appellation, as it is both more memorable and more suitably descriptive. An engrossing though hardly essential example of Eurohorror,
October 27th, 2017. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one
These weird westerns are always interesting and have been popping up more in recent times (it seemed like there was…
Looking forward to reading the review.