Another Valentine’s Day is here!
Tonight many couples will celebrate with a nice evening of fine dining. So we were wondering…
…what restaurant would you take your significant other to if you could choose from all the fantasy/sci-fi worlds out there? (Or, if not a restaurant, what SFF setting would you choose for a romantic picnic?)
And let’s just take the Restaurant at the End of the Universe off the (dining room) table, shall we?
One random commenter wins a book from our stacks.
February 14th, 2019. Bill Capossere | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 15 comments |
Cassie Blake is distraught when her mother decides to uproot to the small town of New Salem in order to take care of a grandmother who Cassie had never even met before. But that is only the start of her problems. Starting a new school, trying to make new friends — and discovering that some of the people she would most like to befriend are all part of some secret Club that Cassie is not permitted to join. Then a girl dies and Cassie is finally initiated into the Secret Circle,
February 14th, 2019. Amanda Rutter (guest) and Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | L.J. Smith | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
This week’s word for Wednesday is a noun. A prebuttal is an argument constructed anticipating a counter-argument. (“Some out there might say, isn’t speculative fiction just mindless escapism? Let me explain why it isn’t.”) I didn’t know this word existed but I should have because it is a perfectly logical construction.
Books and Writing:
Lit Hub strolls through one-star Amazon reviews of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury; a little sad, a little entertaining.
Lisa Lucas, Director of the National Book Foundation,
February 13th, 2019. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 9 comments |
Damsel by Elana K. Arnold
Damsel (2018) has an absolutely gorgeous cover, one of the loveliest I’ve seen, with a glowing title wound about with vines, bleeding hearts and other flowers. But on closer examination there’s something just a little bit off about the cover image. An anatomically correct heart. A golden spur with a myriad of sharp points. A dragon’s pointed tail. It’s a bit disturbing. And it’s an apt metaphor for the contents of Elana K. Arnold’s book, where the fairy-tale details initially mask an allegorical story that is far,
February 13th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 2.5 | Elana K. Arnold | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Archenemies (2018) is the second installment in the popular YA trilogy RENEGADES, by Marissa Meyer. The story revolves around a team of superheroes who police Gatlon City against crime. In Gatlon, superhuman powers abound and their possessors have polarized int two antagonistic groups — The Renegades and The Anarchists. With names like that, you may have a difficult time knowing which are the good guys and which are the bad — and that’s kind of the point.
February 13th, 2019. Taya Okerlund´s rating: 0.1 | Marissa Meyer | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Watch Hollow by Gregory Funaro
Gregory Funaro’s just-published Watch Hollow (2019) is a charmingly spooky (or perhaps spookily charming) contemporary fantasy featuring an 11-year-old girl, Lucy Tinker, her 13-year-old brother Oliver, and their clockmaker father … and also a fearsome giant, a boy who mysteriously appears and disappears, and a full dozen magical talking animals sure to warm the hearts of middle grade readers.
After a brief prologue with a heart-stopping chase involving the giant, a traitorous crow, and a rat named Fennish Seven,
February 12th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Gregory Funaro | Children | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Jasper Fforde offers up his trademark sardonic wit in his new novel Early Riser (2019), though it’s more chuckle-worthy than laugh out loud and has several issues that relegate it to the category of a lesser Fforde. I was, to be honest, a bit disappointed, at least partly because I so love much of his earlier work, but despite that disappointment, the book still manages to (just) tip on the side of being a worthy read.
Early Riser is set in a world (limited to Wales for the novel’s plot) where the human race hibernates through each brutal winter,
February 12th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Jasper Fforde | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
“Double or Nothing” by Alter S. Reiss (free at Daily Science Fiction, March 27, 2018)
A man has an android made that is an exact copy of himself, so the android can do all his work and tedious chores while the man enjoys his newfound free time. He’s actually not surprised when the android gets deeply annoyed with the system,
February 11th, 2019. Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones | Martha Wells, Terry Bisson | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Breach of Containment by Elizabeth Bonesteel
This third novel in Elizabeth Bonesteel’s CENTRAL CORPS series needs to be read after you’ve finished the previous novels, The Cold Between and Remnants of Trust.
When publishers make promises such as “a page-turning hybrid combining the gritty, high-octane thrills of James S. A. Corey and the sociopolitical drama of Ann Leckie” I just can’t help but point out when the book doesn’t deliver. I have enjoyed Elizabeth Bonesteel’s CENTRAL CORPS novels enough to continue the series when I already have the audiobooks loaded onto my phone,
February 11th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Elizabeth Bonesteel | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Plenty of fun new books on the docket this week!
Bill: This week I read two solid middle-of-the-road fantasies: Gates of Stone by Angus Macallan and Early Riser by Jasper Fforde. On audio I finally finished Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Our Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky, which I’m putting on my best of 2018 list retroactively — so good I bought the Kindle version in addition to the Audible version so I can reread it and take/save notes.
February 10th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 4 comments |
If the state of the arts puzzles you, and you wonder why so many novels are "retellings" and formulaic rework,…
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.