Breach (2018) is an interesting Cold War fantasy premise (think John le Carré with magic) that doesn’t quite fulfill its promise, though it’s a solid enough start to what is apparently going to be a series, COLD WAR MAGIC.
W.L Goodwater sets his novel in an alternate history where WWII was fought and won as in our own world (though with the Nazis apparently gaining more ground before eventually losing) with the exception that magic was wielded as a horrific weapon throughout,
December 31st, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | W.L Goodwater | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Reposting to include Marion’s review of the new SYFY channel adaptation of Nightflyers. You can find it below our reviews of the novella.
Nightflyers by George R.R. Martin
Nightflyers was first published in 1980, won the Locus Award for best novella, and was nominated for a Hugo Award. It was made into an unsuccessful film in 1987. It’s recently been on people’s radars due to the upcoming SYFY series based on the novella. You can purchase it in several new (2018) formats including an illustrated edition,
December 31st, 2018. Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | George R.R. Martin | Audio, Film / TV, Horror, Locus Award, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Happy New Year’s from FanLit!
Bill: This week, amongst enjoying a horde of family and a warehouse of food, I read and fully enjoyed S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass and its sequel The Kingdom of Copper. I also read J.Y. Yang’s The Black Tides of Heavenwhich I thought fine enough even if it left me a bit confused on the effusive praise, though I’ll continue on with The Red Threads of Fortune. I’m currently reading my Christmas present of The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón though that may take some time as its 800+ pages and I’m also frantically trying to finish a portal story,
December 30th, 2018. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
Criminal (Vol. 4): Bad Night Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Jacob Kurtz is the focus of Bad Night, the fourth volume of Ed Brubaker’s wonderfully disturbing noir series Criminal. His job is writing the newspaper comic strip that shows up in Criminal (vol. 1): Coward. The comic, based on Dick Tracy, is entitled Frank Kafka, Private Eye, and it’s as puzzling as the stories written by Franz Kafka, after whom he’s named. Frank is put on cases that go nowhere with leads that could never result in understandable clues.
December 29th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Here are our favorite books published in 2018. Hover over the cover to see who recommends each book. Click on the cover to read our review.
Please keep in mind that we did not read every SFF book published this year, so we know we’ve missed some good ones! Please add your comments — we’d love to hear your opinions about our list and to know which were YOUR favorite books of 2018. What did we miss? One commenter chooses a book from our stacks.
ADULT SFF
MIDDLE GRADE / YOUNG ADULT SFF
NON-FICTION
December 27th, 2018. FanLit | Best of the Year, Thoughtful Thursday | 35 comments |
This will be the final column of 2018. A safe and happy New Year’s Day to everyone who observes it.
Books and Writing:
Academy Award winner Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions is accepting screenplay submissions.
In the solving-the-problem-we-didn’t-know-we-had category, Tor.com offers an essay on how to make beer on a generation ship.
Sarah Gailey writes about seven books that helped her make it through a hard year. What I liked about this essay is that she tells us when and where she read each book.
December 26th, 2018. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |
Christmas is just about here, but that’s no reason to stop reading!
Marion: Reading published works hasn’t made it much to the top of my list this week, but I did finally get to start re-reading Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed. I was worried that maybe it hadn’t aged well since the 1980s but the power dynamic is still believable… and Butler dragged me into the story from the first paragraph.
Sandy: Moi? I am just about finished with The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis and hope to get a review written for you all very shortly.
December 23rd, 2018. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss
With so much to recommend about The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, from Theodora Goss’ fresh takes on nineteenth-century novels and characters to the inventive way she brought all of them together, I had extremely high hopes for its first sequel, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018). And while it was great to have the Athena Club back together again, the overall tone and pace of this novel were so different from its predecessor,
December 21st, 2018. Jana Nyman and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Theodora Goss | SFF Reviews | no comments |
THE CORPORATION WARS by Ken MacLeod
My preference is to review the books in a series Individually, but I find myself so busy at the moment that I don’t have much time for writing reviews. And in the case of THE CORPORATION WARS by Ken MacLeod, I don’t feel that there’s much distinction between the individual novels and it makes sense to review the series as a whole.
THE CORPORATION WARS is a trilogy that consists of the books Dissidence,
December 20th, 2018. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Ken MacLeod | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Echo Room by Parker Peevyhouse
In The Echo Room (2018), which is sort of a Groundhog Day meets The Maze Runner, Parker Peevyhouse takes on one of the most difficult narratives for an author — the time loop story. Unfortunately, while Peevyhouse has her moments, the time loop comes out victorious.
The story opens up intriguingly enough, when Rett Ward wakes up in a strange and seemingly abandoned building with no memory of how he got there,
December 19th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Parker Peevyhouse | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
I picked my copy up last week and I can't wait to finish my current book and get started! I…
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…