Awards:
The 2019 Hugo nomination window is now open. Members of the 2018 WorldCon or the 2019 Dublin WorldCon may nominate. Thanks to Locus.
Books and Writing:
Sherilyn Kenyon has accused her ex-husband Lawrence Kenyon and a woman named Kerrie Plumb of poisoning her over several years. This story would be fascinating if it weren’t so frightening. In other social media, Kenyon has announced the end of her 28-year marriage along with the rescheduling of some publication dates.
January 16th, 2019. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 15 comments |
Trifles and Folly: A Deadly Curiosities Collection by Gail Z. Martin
I haven’t read any of Gail Z. Martin’s DEADLY CURIOSITIES novels, but Tantor Audio sent me Trifles and Folly: A Deadly Curiosities Collection (2016) and I thought it’d be a good introduction to the series.
The premise reminds me of Juliet Blackwell’s WITCHCRAFT MYSTERIES, which stars a young woman, Lily Ivory, who gets vibes from used garments. She has a vintage clothing store in San Francisco and,
January 16th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Gail Z. Martin | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Cold Between by Elizabeth Bonesteel
The Cold Between is the first novel in Elizabeth Bonesteel’s CENTRAL CORPS trilogy. This military space opera focuses more on personal and romantic relationships than most in this genre do. I’m tempted to call it romantic military space opera. The publisher compares Elizabeth Bonesteel’s work to that of Elizabeth Moon and Lois McMaster Bujold. I have read both of those authors’ space operas and I can say that this comparison is inaccurate. Bonesteel is writing for the same audience,
January 15th, 2019. Kat Hooper and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Elizabeth Bonesteel | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Kingdom of Exiles by S.B. Nova
Here we have the tale of Serena Smith, blacksmith’s daughter exiled from her puritan-like settlement and then kidnapped by fairies and sold in the Kingdom of Aldar, which has much worse political problems than the oppressive community from which she’s taken. The difference is, she finds a way of making a difference — a thing she could not do in her human home.
I feel like this kind of fairy story is a bit at war with itself. Kingdom of Exiles (2017) bills as a feminist tale and means to make Serena fierce and self-actualizing,
January 14th, 2019. Taya Okerlund´s rating: 2 | S.B. Nova | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
We’re reading lots of cool new books this week! Take a look!
Bill: This week I read Winter of the Witch, the excellent concluding volume of Katherine Arden’s quite good WINTERNIGHT TRILOGY and Robert Jackson Bennett’s sharply satirical Vigilance, which I had some issues with, as apparently did Marion. Stay tuned as we’ll hash those out in an upcoming dual review. I don’t’ usually highlight my children’s book reading here, but I’m making an exception for When the Whales Walked and other incredible evolutionary journeys,
January 13th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 2 comments |
Dispatches from Planet 3 by Marcia Bartusiak
Dispatches from Planet 3: Thirty-Two (Brief) Tales on the Solar System, the Milky Way, and Beyond (2018), by Marcia Bartusiak, is a highly readable collection of wonderfully concise explorations of various topics in astronomy/astrophysics. Each essay is only a few pages long, making the science easily digestible while still informative. Topics include black holes, dark matter and dark energy, the Big Bang, inflation, relativity, and the multi-verse, to name just a few.
For an audience that doesn’t regularly read in this area,
January 11th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Paper Girls (Vol 5) by Brian K Vaughan (writer) & Cliff Chiang (artist)
This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really starting to take shape. The early volumes were quite elliptical and disorienting, so it’s great to be able to understand the various storylines and the larger world-building that is revealed, and get to know and like the four main protagonists even more as they are thrown into a series of tense adventures across time.
January 11th, 2019. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 5 | Brian K. Vaughan | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Awards:
Nnedi Okorafor was named 2018’s Person of the Year by the Society for Africans in Diaspora. Thanks to File 770.
Books and Writing:
The anthology Unfettered III directs the proceeds to writers needing health care. File 770’s article talks about the history of great stories for a good cause.
On The Mary Sue, Princess Weekes talks about Riri Williams, whose superhero name is Ironheart. She was a new one for me.
January 9th, 2019. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |
The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi
In The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi introduced us to an interstellar empire called The Interdependency, a collection of far-flung human habitats connected by a quantum event called the Flow. The Interdependency is ruled by an Emperox, and a new Emperox, one who never considered herself in the line of succession and never wanted the role, had just been crowned. At this time, Grayland II, as she named herself, discovered that the Flow was starting to collapse.
January 9th, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | John Scalzi | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Sapphire Goddess: The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis by Nictzin Dyalhis
Unless you have perused the pages of the dozen or so Weird Tales anthologies that have been released over the past 50-plus years, odds are that you have not come across the name “Nictzin Dyalhis.” But during the 15-year period 1925 – 1940, Dyalhis was extraordinarily popular with the readers of that legendary pulp magazine, despite the fact that he only had eight stories published therein during that decade and a half. And of those eight,
January 9th, 2019. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Nictzin Dyalhis | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 7 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…