Plenty of books this week!
Bill: This week I read several of the Locus short fiction nominees as well as a pair of nominated YA novels: The Gone Away Place by Christopher Barzak and Half-Witch by John Schoffstall. I’m also half-way through The Red-Stained Wings by Elizabeth Bear, book two of her LOTUS KINGDOMS series. Not much genre viewing save for an episode of The Magicians, as I’m binging Deadwood (just as great the second time around) in preparation for the upcoming movie.
May 26th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 5 comments |
SHORTS is our regular short fiction review column (previously SFM or Short Fiction Monday). In today’s column we review several more of the 2019 Locus award nominees in the short fiction categories.
No Flight Without the Shatter by Brooke Bolander (2018, free at Tor.com; 99c Kindle version). 2019 Locus award nominee (novelette).
No Flight Without the Shatter brings together Linnea and her Aunties Ben, Dora, and Martha at the end of the world. Linnea is recognizably human,
May 24th, 2019. Jana Nyman, Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere | Brooke Bolander, Jeffrey Ford, Ken Liu, N.K. Jemisin, Theodora Goss, Ursula K. Le-Guin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Gone Away Place by Christopher Barzak
Because of a stupid fight with her high school boyfriend, Ellie Frame cut school one day to took sorrowful refuge in a nearby faux lighthouse, where she falls asleep. What wakes her is a series of devastating tornadoes that rip through her small rural Ohio town of Newfoundland, killing nearly a hundred people, including Ellie’s boyfriend Noah and several of her best friends. Not all the dead are gone, however; some remain behind, visible to many of the town’s residents and especially their loved ones as they hover “in the grey place” between life and death.
May 24th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Christopher Barzak | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!
June 1 marks our TWELFTH birthday!
Yep, we’ve been hanging out together (well, some of us) since June 2007!
To celebrate, we’re giving away gifts!
FIVE commenters from the US will receive some FanLit BOOKMARKS (quite practical!) and a cozy FANLIT T-SHIRT (as long as we still have your size). Or, if you prefer, you may choose a book from our stacks.
You can leave any sort of comment — a birthday wish,
May 23rd, 2019. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 29 comments |
Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows by Brian Hauser
Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows (2019) is horror writer Brian Hauser’s debut novel. The story follows three women: Tina Mori and A.C. Waite, avant-garde filmmakers in the 1970s, and Billie Jacobs, a teenage zine-publisher, in what is probably the late nineties or early oughts. The book plays with the macabre, the mysterious, The King in Yellow and the blasted shores of the city of lost Carcosa.
Memento Mori’s structure is a series of nested stories presented in the form of various manuscripts.
May 23rd, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Brian Hauser | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Awards:
Congratulations to Mary Robinette Kowal, Bo Bolander and Aliette de Bodard among others for their Nebula wins last weekend. The full list of winners can be found here. Congratulations and thanks to all the finalists for providing us with such wonderful ideas, characters and stories.
Crimefest awards were announced, with Robert Galbraith AKA J.K. Rowling winning for best novel with her doorstop novel Lethal White. (Tastes differ; for me, that book reached criminal levels of boring.) A couple of the works shortlisted for this award slide over into the speculative.
May 22nd, 2019. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Exile’s Honor by Mercedes Lackey
Alberich had been an honorable, loyal, and effective officer in Karse’s army for many years until the day the Karsite sunpriests discovered that part of his success was due to the flashes of foresight he sometimes gets. When they attempted to burn him alive as a witch, Alberich was saved by a white horse that turned out to be one of the blue-eyed mind-speaking Companions of Valdemar, an enemy of Karse. Now Alberich is in Valdemar being trained as a Herald and, since he’s such a good fighter,
May 22nd, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Mercedes Lackey | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
“… all my selves together at once, soldier, daughter, wife, victim, mother, monster.”
The Mere Wife (2018), which is up for a Locus Award this year, is billed as a “modern retelling of Beowulf.” Set in an upscale suburban housing development called Herot Hall, it follows two mothers and their sons. One of these is Willa, the wife of a wealthy plastic surgeon whose family built Herot Hall. Willa spends her days vapidly shopping,
May 21st, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Maria Dahvana Headley | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Cross Fire (2018), which is a finalist for the Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel this year, is the second book in Fonda Lee’s EXO series. You need to read the first book, Exo, before picking up Cross Fire. Please note that this review of Cross Fire may spoil some of the plot for Exo.
May 20th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Fonda Lee | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
We read some fun books this week!
Bill: This week I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Moon, which had some good ideas but overall was disappointing; read a good if not great collection of essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit; and my son and I listened to Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation and Empire on our way to a college visit. We’ll finish with Second Foundation on another visit in two weeks.
May 19th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 2 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.