We’re reading some great books this week!
Bill: This week I took advantage of a momentary lull between papers to read the eighth EXPANSE book, Tiamat’s Wrath, by James S.A. Corey (keeps this great series humming along) as well as Philip Reeve’s Station Zero, the strong conclusion to his excellent YA trilogy that began with Railhead. Outside the genre I read (or reread since many were familiar) Seamus Heaney’s 100 Poems.
April 7th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 3 comments |
Ghosted (Vol. 3): Death Wish by Joshua Williamson (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), and Miroslav Mrva (colorist)
In Ghosted (vol. 3): Death Wish, Jackson Winters, our master thief, is in prison yet again (And if you haven’t read volume 1 yet, start there and read my review of Ghosted (vol. 1): Haunted House). When we last saw Jackson, he had just escaped a haunted temple only to be greeted by his old friend King. King was a member of his gang of thieves who,
April 6th, 2019. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
In an alternative history, magical steampunk version of New Orleans, in 1884 the city is still influenced by the aftermath of the Civil War, which ended in a division of the Union and Confederate states. New Orleans is a pocket of neutrality, one of the few territories not aligned with either the North or South. The city is run by a council made up of ex-slaves, mulattoes and white businesspeople; British, French and Haitian airships patrol the skies to keep the peace.
Thirteen-year old-Jacqueline is a bright,
April 5th, 2019. Tadiana Jones, Jana Nyman and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | P. Djèlí Clark | Audio, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead
Jack Skillingstead’s latest novel, The Chaos Function (2019), has a fairly straightforward premise: a young journalist accidentally receives the ability to shift reality from one possible timeline to another, though not without disastrous consequences. The first time she performs this shift, it’s purely by accident, though that doesn’t make the new future any less grave. Each time she shifts to another possible timeline without returning to the original, the consequences become more and more dire, until she is left with a terrible choice: return reality to its intended course or watch the entire world destroy itself.
April 5th, 2019. Jana Nyman´s rating: 3 | Jack Skillingstead | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
That Ain’t Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire
The crossroads have always been a place of power and magic, a place where humans could go to make bargains. In the late 15th century, though, the nature of those bargains changed, becoming cruel and tricky, often with deadly results for the humans. In Seanan McGuire’s That Ain’t Witchcraft (2019), Annie Price and her incryptid friends must confront the crossroads to help an ice sorcerer (and get back Annie’s magic, which the crossroads are holding as collateral),
April 4th, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Seanan McGuire | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In Evil Times by Melinda Snodgrass
In Evil Times (2017) is the second book in Melinda Snodgrass’s IMPERIALS saga. You’ll want to read The High Ground first. (Expect spoilers for that novel in this review.)
At the end of The High Ground we left Tracy (smart low-class scholarship student) in despair when his friend/nearly lover Mercedes (heir to the imperial throne) ditched him for a more suitable (noble) match.
April 4th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Melinda Snodgrass | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
This week’s word for Wednesday is velutinous, an adjective, meaning to have a soft, velvety surface, usually used to describe plants.
Obituary:
Vonda McIntyre, author of the award-winning Dreamsnake and The Moon and the Sun, passed away on April 1. McIntyre had announced eight weeks earlier that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. McIntyre founded Clarion West in 1970 and ran it for three years. McIntyre’s work was an inspiration to imagination, and she personally was a source of great encouragement and support for emerging writers.
Awards:
The Hugo Finalist list is out!
April 3rd, 2019. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |
According to whom you ask, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is either a campy, inexplicably popular teen drama from the 90s, or it’s some of the best television ever made. Not to say that the show can’t be both, because in fact it is. The karate kicks and monster makeup one step up from Halloween masks were corny even for the time, and I for one would never have expected a show with such a — let’s face it — silly premise to acquire a fan following so strong that it has persisted for over twenty years.
April 3rd, 2019. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Kiersten White | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben
Abby Waite, a moderately successful internet celebrity, is diagnosed with a terminal disease. The prognosis, even with treatment, isn’t good, so Abby decides it’s time to break her twin sister Martha, serving a twenty-year sentence for murder, out of prison, and go to the family cabin in Minnesota. It should come as no real surprise that the prison-break is the easiest thing to accomplish in A Hawk in the Woods (2019), by Carrie Laben, a road-trip-family-reunion-horror-story inspired by H.P.
April 3rd, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Carrie Laben | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette de Bodard
Yên, who studied to be a healer, has not lived up to expectations. Both she and her mother have failed to heal the child of one of their country’s leaders. In this land, useless people are eliminated, but Yên’s mother saves her daughter’s life by selling her off to a dragon who can shapeshift into a woman. The dragon has two rambunctious children who need to be educated, so Yen is assigned this duty in the dragon’s bizarre palace. As she lives with the dragon and her kids,
April 2nd, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Aliette De_Bodard | Audio | SFF Reviews | 3 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.