This week, we read a lot of great books!
Bill: This week I read in order of preference (mostly)
August 12th, 2018. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 2 comments |
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
Bill: Robert Jackson Bennett hit the trifecta, as far as I was concerned, with his DIVINE CITIES trilogy. I placed each book pretty much immediately on my respective best-of-the-year lists as I finished them, and then, once the trilogy was completed, put the whole thing on my best-of-the-decade list. So it would be more than a little unfair to expect his newest novel, Foundryside (2018), to match that experience. But like a younger sibling following after a genius older sister or brother,
August 10th, 2018. Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Robert Jackson Bennett | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Angel Station by Walter Jon Williams
Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria are a couple of young adults who were genetically engineered by their “father,” a spaceship pilot and explorer who recently committed suicide on his ship, leaving his two “kids” to fend for themselves. The money is gone, and so are their prospects, so Ubu and Maria set out to try to make enough money to avoid foreclosure on their ship.
Luckily, they both have a couple of special skills engineered into their DNA. When they happen upon an unknown alien civilization,
August 10th, 2018. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Walter Jon Williams | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Book of Peril by Melissa McShane
Abernathy’s Bookstore is a powerful oracle, used by the community of mages to answer important questions and foretell the future. Its proprietor, Helena Davies, is a critical part of the bookstore’s oracular function: she takes augury slips of paper with questions on them from customers, wanders among the bookshelves until she finds a book that glows to her eyes, and sells the book to the customer as the answer to their question. The price for the augury is conveniently and magically printed inside the book on the title page,
August 10th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Melissa McShane | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Lots of our favorites are included among the finalists for this year’s Hugos for Best Novel and Best Novella. Will the “sure things” win? Will Ann Leckie or Yoon Ha Lee pull off an upset?
Not surprisingly, the novella category has the tried-and-true, like Nnedi Okorafor and Seanan McGuire, along with relative newcomers like Sarah Gailey. And the Tor.com novella imprint is well represented in that category!
Click the title links below to read our reviews and on the author links to visit our page for the author. We’ve displayed the covers of our favorites.
August 9th, 2018. Marion Deeds | Hugo Award | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 18 comments |
Idoru (1996) is billed as the middle novel in William Gibson’s BRIDGE trilogy (bookended by Virtual Light and All Tomorrow’s Parties) but, though it shares some history and characters with its companions, it can easily stand alone.
Idoru follows the stories of two people who live in Gibson’s post-industrial world. One is Colin Laney (of All Tomorrow’s Parties) who grew up in a Florida orphanage where he was given experimental drugs that changed his brain in such a way that he can now see patterns in huge amounts of data.
August 9th, 2018. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | William Gibson | Audio | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn
Carrie Vaughn continues the fascinating post-apocalyptic BANNERLESS SAGA in The Wild Dead (2018), the first sequel to her Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel Bannerless. Murders are, thankfully, few and far between along the Coast Road, so it’s been about a year since Enid of Haven has needed to put on her metaphorical deerstalker cap. This time, she and her painfully inexperienced new partner, Teeg, are in the remote southern settlement of Desolata to mediate a dispute over a pre-Fall house: the house’s “owner” refuses to admit that his family’s cherished home is dangerously dilapidated,
August 9th, 2018. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4.5 | Carrie Vaughn | SFF Reviews | no comments |
King of Assassins by R.J. Barker
Note: THE WOUNDED KINGDOM is intended to be read in sequence, and as such, some spoilers for Age of Assassins and Blood of Assassins will be inevitable as I discuss King of Assassins (2018).
Girton Club-Foot’s star has risen dramatically since we first met him — no longer a gawky and insecure fledgling assassin, he’s matured over the past two decades to become the Heartblade of King Rufra,
August 8th, 2018. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | R.J. Barker | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Mystic Dragon (2018) is the second book in the MYSTIC series by Jason Denzel, and I confess I did not read book one, Mystic. The good news is that while I assume having done so will help reader pick up on a few references to past events, I never felt that my stepping in at book two was any serious detriment to the reading experience. The bad news is that while Mystic Dragon is a solid enough entry in the fantasy field,
August 8th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Jason Denzel | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
Note: Available on August 9, 2018 in the UK.
Available in the US in February 2019.
Any author who ventures forth into times unknown, or those gone by, must accept more than the usual scrutiny of their work. It was a brave move then, by new British author Kate Mascarenhas to not only write a debut novel about time travel but also to delve into the psychological implications on those who practice it.
August 7th, 2018. Katie Burton´s rating: 3 | Kate Mascarenhas | 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.),…