Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: January 2019

Thoughtful Thursday: Our Favorite Animal Companions

You’ve seen it in the theaters, watching a film where they kill eight or nine or a dozen people through variously inventive means, but it’s always the dog that evokes the strongest reaction. “Oh, not the dog” someone always whispers (it might even be me) and then the gun barrel is leveled or the truck bears down — and we all know we can tell if this movie will end happily by if the dog lives or dies.

They almost never die, though. Not even in Independence Day or Armageddon, despite the destruction of many of the world’s major cities.

January 31st, 2019. Bill Capossere | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 38 comments |

Turned On: Science, Sex, and Robots: A thoughtful and, cough cough, stimulating read

Turned On: Science, Sex, and Robots by Kate Devlin

I confess that when I opened up Turned On: Science, Sex, and Robots (2018) by Kate Devlin, I wasn’t expecting a tour of classical literature: stories about Laodamia, who had “commissioned a bronze likeness of her [dead] husband — an artificial lover that she took to her bed.” Or the Spartan king Nabis, who had a “lifelike robot designed and dressed up to look like his dead wife, Apega.” But as Devlin cautions us, “This is not a book that’s just about sex.

January 31st, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

City of Broken Magic: Enjoyable

City of Broken Magic by Mirah Bolender

Mirah Bolender’s debut novel, City of Broken Magic (2018), is an enjoyable book, with an interesting magical system and a main character, Laura, who matures as the story progresses. Physical descriptions of the city of Amicae, where Laura lives, and the various settings for action sequences, are nicely done. I’d recommend this book for a long, rainy afternoon, or a snow day — it’s an entertaining way to spend a few hours.

Laura Kramer is an apprentice Sweeper.

January 31st, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Mirah Bolender | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

A Different Flesh: Thoughtful stories about humanity

A Different Flesh by Harry Turtledove

A Different Flesh (1988), by Harry Turtledove, is a thoughtful collection of linked stories set in an alternate America which was inhabited by a hairy upright-walking sub-human species (homo erectus) when European settlers arrived. The settlers call them “sims.” The earliest story is set in 1610 and the last one in 1988 and, as the stories progress through time, we see the sims become more and more advanced, but it is clear that they will never reach the level of cognition that homo sapiens has achieved.

The Gutter Prayer: Alchemical fire, living saints, and knucklebones

The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Hanrahan

The first instalment in Gareth Hanrahan’s THE BLACK IRON LEGACY is a bit like an avalanche: The Gutter Prayer (2019) starts out slowly and a tad scattershot, taking about 150 – 200 pages to build momentum, but when everything falls into place, it becomes an onslaught, picking up speed over the next 300 or so pages before crashing to a breathless finish.

Within the ancient coastal city of Guerdon, citizens maintain an air of normalcy,

January 30th, 2019. Jana Nyman´s rating: 3.5 | Gareth Hanrahan | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Year of the Griffin: A sweet boarding school fantasy

Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones

Year of the Griffin (2000) is a sequel (of sorts) to Diana Wynne Jones’ Dark Lord of Derkholm, a satirical fantasy aimed at children and young adults, but just as enjoyable for grown-ups. Year of the Griffin is different — it’s not a satire and, for that reason, probably isn’t as appealing to adults, but I still enjoyed it. It’s what I like to call a boarding school fantasy,

Triplanetary: The opening salvo of one of the greatest space operas

Triplanetary by E.E. “Doc” Smith

In its article on the subject of “Space Opera,” my beloved Science Fiction Encyclopedia describes the genre thus: “…loosely applicable to any space adventure story, but particularly to those in which the scale of the action is extravagant…” It is as good a working definition as any, but had the authors of this scholarly tome wished to do so, they might just as easily have explained the term by showing pictures of the six book covers of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s famed LENSMAN series.

January 29th, 2019. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | E.E. "Doc" Smith | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

THE FADED SUN: An epic tale of clashing civilizations

THE FADED SUN by C.J. Cherryh

C.J. Cherryh’s FADED SUN trilogy (1978) consists of three books: Kesrith, Shon’jir, and Kutath. They’ve been bundled into an omnibus edition and Tantor Media sent me a review copy of their recently released audiobook version.

The three novels make up a continuous story of clashing civilizations that takes place in the far future with a few alien species on several distant planets. One of these species is the Mri,

Realm of Ruins: Definitely not for me

Realm of Ruins by Hannah West

Though billed simultaneously as a stand-alone companion novel and a sequel to Hannah West’s Kingdom of Ash and Briars, I would strongly recommend reading Realm of Ruins (2018) after that novel, as many of the events and characters from the first novel are mentioned in the second, and not having any references for those details tended to distract me whenever they cropped up in the text.

European fairy-tale references abound throughout THE NISSERA CHRONICLES,

Sunday Status Update: January 27, 2019

More good books this week!

Bill: This week I read Guy Gavriel Kay’s newest, A Brightness Long Ago, which was a typical Kay novel — graceful writing, moving moments, thoughtful elegies on memory and history. Man’s a master craftsperson. That arrival put on hold for a night my reading of the Binti omnibus by Nnedi Okorafor, which I’m just about done with. Which was fine with me as I’m mostly befuddled by the acclaim; clearly I’m the outlier on this one.

January 27th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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