The Overneath by Peter S. Beagle
It must be hard to be a literary icon, late in your career. You’ve ascended the literary heights and amassed an adoring following who still expect you never to repeat, and even improve upon your previous genius with each new work. But I’m not sorry for Peter S. Beagle, nor his latest short story collection The Overneath, which came out in November of 2017.
Most striking, to me, is that Beagle manages each new tale with a distinct,
June 8th, 2018. Taya Okerlund and Jana Nyman´s rating: 3.5 | Peter S. Beagle | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Eterna Files by Leanna Renee Hieber
Just after President Lincoln’s assassination, his wife Mary sets a governmental task force to find a cure for death, thus setting in motion the plot of The Eterna Files (2015) by Leanna Renee Hieber. Seventeen years later, the science team working on the Eterna Compound is mysteriously murdered, as is a parallel team in England, where Queen Victoria wants Britain, not America, to be the first to discover an answer to mortality. Both countries seek to find out what happened to their teams,
June 8th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Leanna Renee Hieber | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Luna: Wolf Moon by Ian McDonald
Luna: Wolf Moon (2017) continues the saga Ian McDonald began in Luna: New Moon, which explored the power struggles between the Five Dragons, five powerful families controlling certain areas of influence on Earth’s moon. Each family, in turn, adheres to a national identity which dictates how they do business, what sort of business they do, and who they’re most likely to (figuratively and literally) stab in the back at the nearest opportunity while simultaneously marrying their offspring to one another in attempts to gain influence or construct gossamer-thin alliances.
June 7th, 2018. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Ian McDonald | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Marion and Terry discuss Head On. Marion’s words are in black and Terry’s are in blue.
Head On by John Scalzi
Marion: John Scalzi’s 2018 novel Head On brings back FBI team Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, this time investigating a murder that should be impossible. Hilketa is a violent game where the objective is to tear off the head of a specific opposing player and throw it through the goal posts, while defensive players whale on each other with swords and chainsaws.
June 7th, 2018. Marion Deeds, Terry Weyna and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | John Scalzi | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
I love the premise of Winter Tide. It’s about a sister and brother (Aphra and Caleb Marsh) who were living in Innsmouth when it was invaded by the U.S. government in 1928 (a fictional town and event created by H.P. Lovecraft). The Marshes and their neighbors were descendants, and worshipers, of the Great Old Ones…. you know, like Dagon and Cthulhu. Paranoid, the government sent them to detention camps, keeping them there until the Japanese-Americans were released from the camps in 1946.
June 7th, 2018. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Ruthanna Emrys | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Awards:
The Audio Publishers Association announced the 2018 Audie winners on Friday. Provenance by Ann Leckie took an Audie for best SF novel and The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss won for best Fantasy. Because of what they are, the Audies include the voice performer in the award announcement and I think they get an award as well (as they should).
Brian Fies, a cartoonist who has an Eisner, now has won a region Emmy award for his work,
June 6th, 2018. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 7 comments |
Tricks for Free by Seanan McGuire
Tricks for Free, (2018) Seanan McGuire’s latest in the INCRYPTID series, left me the least satisfied of the series books to date. I’ll get into what disappointed me later in the review. As is always the case with the series, there are plenty of things to enjoy and I’d like to talk about those first.
Tricks for Free is the second book featuring the “baby” of the Price family,
June 6th, 2018. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Seanan McGuire | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Jay Kristoff’s YA post-apocalyptic novel LIFEL1K3 (2018) stars seventeen-year-old Eve as its tough, fauxhawk-sporting protagonist. Eve is a gifted mechanic who lives with her grandfather, her only relative, in a post-apocalyptic island version of “Kalifornya” called the Dregs. She has a cybernetic eye and a memory drive (“Memdrive”) implanted in the side of her head, with silicon chips behind her ear that give her fragmentary memories of her childhood and supply her with other useful life skills. Eve’s secret pastime ― at least it’s secret from Grandpa ― is engaging in robot deathmatches to fund Grandpa’s anticancer meds.
June 5th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Jay Kristoff | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross
The Delirium Brief, which is a finalist for the 2018 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, is the eighth novel in Charles Stross’ LAUNDRY FILES. Don’t even bother with it if you haven’t read most of the previous novels — you’ll be totally lost. (And, of course, my review of this installment will contain some spoilers for the previous books.)
For decades the Laundry, a heretofore unknown British government agency, has been protecting its citizens (and others around the world) from the eldritch horrors that exist outside our universe.
June 5th, 2018. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Charles Stross | Audio | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Tool of War by Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi’s Tool of War (2017) is the third entry in a series of futuristic novels in which catastrophic climate change projections have come to pass. The American seaboard is flooded, and the United States government has been overtaken by transnational organizations. The most stunning technological breakthroughs are in gene editing, and elite organizations own “augments,” creatures that are part human and part animal, part slave and part soldier. The main character here, Tool, is the greatest of the augments because he can defy his training and act independently.
June 5th, 2018. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 2 | Paolo Bacigalupi | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Gentlemen, I concur! (Forgive me for jumping into your convo)
The cover is amazing. I love how the graphic novel (and the review!) hewed close to the theme of "good…
I've thought about picking that one up. The artwork looks perfect.
I like the way you think, Bill. I found the second one particularly objectionable; the one with Khan. It was…
I find if I take every Trek reference out of them (the title, the character names, the ship names, etc.),…