Mistress of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist & Janny Wurts
Mistress of the Empire (1989) is the final book in Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts’ EMPIRE TRILOGY. It’s an exciting, emotional, dramatic, and ultimately satisfying end to the story. Please don’t read it before you read Daughter of the Empire and Servant of the Empire. (And please note that this review will contain spoilers for those two previous novels.)
At the end of the second book in the trilogy,
December 21st, 2017. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Janny Wurts, Raymond E. Feist | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
The Maze Runner (2009) is a young adult read that zips along, mostly keeping the reader’s interest. James Dashner’s new novel is relatively suspenseful, but never as gripping as it could be due to weaknesses in detail and character.
The Maze Runner starts off strongly. Thomas is riding upward in a creaky old elevator, seemingly forever. Details have been wiped from Tomas’ memory, so he has no idea of where he’s coming from or where he’s heading.
December 21st, 2017. Bill Capossere, Tadiana Jones and Tim Scheidler´s rating: 2.5 | James Dashner | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
This week’s word for Wednesday, (thanks again to Haggard Hawks) is the noun yuleshard, a person who still have gift buying or errands to run on Christmas Eve. You know who you are.
Any thoughts on how this is pronounced? I didn’t have much luck finding a pronunciation guide on the internet. At first I assumed it was “yule-shard,” as in a chip off Yule… but I can make an argument for “Yules-hard” too.
Conventions:
2018’s SmofCon, a convention for people who want to learn how to put on conventions,
December 20th, 2017. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |
Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
So I’ve decided there’s so much to cover in Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer (1200+ pages), and there so much I can’t say so as to avoid spoilers, that I’m going to eschew the usual seamless essay structure for this review and just go with relating some brief and, at times, necessarily vague reactions to various aspects.
Structure: As with the other books (The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance),
December 20th, 2017. Bill Capossere and Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Brandon Sanderson | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard
Pablo Picasso had his “blue period,” Max Ernst his “American years,” and Georgia O’Keeffe her later “door-in-adobe” phase. For J.G. Ballard, the early part of his career could be called his “psychological catastrophe years.” Using environmental disaster as a doorway to viewing minds under duress, novels like The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Crystal World unpacked the underlying subject matter.
December 19th, 2017. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 5 | J.G. Ballard | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Between Two Worlds directed by Edward A. Blatt
Featuring a raft of experienced Warner Brothers lead and character actors as well as one up-and-coming future starlet, 1944’s Between Two Worlds reveals itself to be a pleasing supernatural fantasy, indeed, and one that should hold up very well for modern audiences, now almost 75 years since its release. The film was based on the 1923 play Outward Bound by British playwright Sutton Vane, which had been adapted to film once before, as an early-sound vehicle for Leslie Howard, under that original title,
December 19th, 2017. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Bird’s Child by Sandra Leigh Price
There’s something to be said for seeking out authors from more unfamiliar places, especially when experiencing a dry phase in which nothing read quite hits the mark. The experience can be illuminating and so it was with The Bird’s Child, a 2015 debut novel by Australian author Sandra Leigh Price.
The Bird’s Child tells the story of three people living in Sydney in 1929, all with pasts they’d rather forget. There’s Ari,
December 18th, 2017. Katie Burton´s rating: 4 | Sandra Leigh Price | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Spoonbenders (2017) by Daryl Gregory, is multi-generational family saga. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a psychic adventure story and a weird conspiracy tale for lovers of shadowy CIA projects like MKULTRA. It’s a gangster story. There’s a heist. There is a long con, and a madcap comedy along the lines of classic Marx Brothers routines. There are a couple of romances, a direct-distribution scheme, a medallion, a cow and a puppy. If we’re talking genre, I don’t know what Spoonbenders is.
December 18th, 2017. Marion Deeds, Kat Hooper and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Daryl Gregory | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Today we welcome Livia Blackburne whose young adult novel Rosemarked has recently been released (here’s my review). Livia is a neuroscientist and, since we have two neuroscientists on our team here at FanLit, we asked her how her background influences her writing. Livia says that she views neuroscience and fiction as two sides of the same coin.
One random commenter with a U.S. address will win a copy of Rosemarked.
NEUROSCIENCE AND FICTION: Two Sides of the Same Coin
People are often surprised when I tell them that I earned a PhD in neuroscience before I became a young adult author,
December 15th, 2017. Taya Okerlund | Livia Blackburne | Expanded Universe, Giveaway! | 7 comments |
Servant of the Empire by Raymond E. Feist & Janny Wurts
Note: May contain spoilers for the previous book, Daughter of the Empire.
Servant of the Empire (1989) is the second novel of the EMPIRE TRILOGY which is set in Raymond E. Feist’s RIFTWAR world and co-authored by Janny Wurts. This story takes place in the Tsurani empire which is an enemy to the Midkemian heroes of the RIFTWAR SAGA (e.g.,
December 15th, 2017. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Janny Wurts, Raymond E. Feist | Audio | 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.