Awards:
Stephen Pastis was awarded the Reuben Cartoonist of the Year Award. (Thanks to File 770.)
The World Fantasy Award finalists are announced.
Cons:
Locus has a report on May’s SFWA Nebula weekend.
2021 WorldCon site voting has opened.
Books and Writing:
Reviews of J. Michael Straczynski’s memoir Becoming Superman are plentiful right now. This one is by Cory Doctorow.
July 31st, 2019. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Crescent Moon by Lori Handeland
Crescent Moon (2006) is a werewolf romance, fourth in Lori Handeland’s NIGHTCREATURE series. Diana is a cryptozoologist who is desperate to discover an unknown species, to fulfill a promise she made to her late husband. Her quest brings her to the Big Easy in search of the loup-garou werewolves that are reputed to lurk in the swamps. It also brings her to the attention of the brusque and secretive, yet sexy, Adam Ruelle.
I was interested in Crescent Moon mainly because it was set in New Orleans,
July 31st, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 1 | Lori Handeland | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Silvie’s summer vacation is a nightmare. She, her abusive father, and her browbeaten mother have joined a college professor and his three-person Experimental Archaeology class in the northern woods of England, where they are trying to live like the ancients. For the class, it’s a learning experience and something of a lark, at least at first. For Silvie’s father, it’s deadly serious; he’d love to live like that all the time, as he imagines Iron Age Britain to be the world of his racist and sexist dreams.
July 30th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Sarah Moss | Edge, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
I hate giving up on books I plan to review but, unfortunately, this is the second one in a month that I’ve had to abandon.
Steel Beach (1992) is the second in John Varley’s stand-alone novels set in his EIGHT WORLDS universe in which vastly superior aliens have kicked humans off of planet Earth so they can commune with the dolphins and whales (who are more intelligent, in their eyes, than humans). I liked the first EIGHT WORLDS book,
July 29th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 1 | John Varley | Audio | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
Having recently seen Saving Mr. Banks, a film that purports to examine the strained relationship between author P.L. Travers and film-maker Walt Disney when it came to adapting Mary Poppins for the big screen, it was only natural that I finally got around to my long overdue reading of the classic children’s story Mary Poppins (1934).
Having grown up with the Disney film, it’s quite shocking to realize how little one resembles the other.
July 29th, 2019. Rebecca Fisher and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | P.L. Travers | Children | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Jana: This week I finished Mercedes Lackey’s The Hills Have Spies and jumped right into its sequel, Eye Spy; I’m enjoying the FAMILY SPIES series more than I expected, though it has more of a retro-genre feel than I tend to seek out on my own. Adolescent Me would have loved this series, to be sure. I also had the pleasure of reading our own Marion Deeds’ recently-published novella, Aluminum Leaves, and will be reviewing it for Fantasy Literature soon!
July 28th, 2019. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 4 comments |
Hellboy (vol. 4): The Right Hand of Doom by Mike Mignola (writer and artist) and Dave Stewart (colorist)
Hellboy (vol. 4): The Right Hand of Doomis an excellent collection of stories grouped into three sections. While not all the tales here tie into the larger plotline of Hellboy’s grand storyline, they are all worth reading.
Part one of the book starts with a short two-page story, followed by two other stories from the early years. In “Pancakes,” Hellboy is a young boy and in the two following stories,
July 27th, 2019. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Mike Mignola | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft
Randolph Carter keeps dreaming of a beautiful unknown city which he is aching to visit. After begging the gods to show him the way and receiving no answer, he sets out on a dream-quest to find it. The priests tell him that nobody knows where the city is and that the journey will kill him, but Randolph Carter is not deterred. His quest takes him through fantastic and mostly dangerous places where he meets strange friends and enemies. All the while he can tell that the gods who don’t belong to Earth are trying to stop him from discovering Unknown Kadath.
July 26th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | H.P. Lovecraft | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Nominated this year for a Best Novella within the 1944 Retrospective Hugo Awards category, The Little Prince is a slight, yet powerfully thought-provoking work. Originally published by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1943, who filled each page of his story with charming watercolor illustrations, it tells the story of a pilot who has crash-landed in the Sahara Desert with “only enough drinking water for eight days” and who, upon his very first night, is visited by an extraordinary child who asks for a drawing of a sheep.
July 26th, 2019. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
The 2019 Hugo Awards will be presented at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland, on August 18. The Hugo Award finalists are chosen by readers who are voting members of Worldcon. This week we’ll talk about the finalists for Best Series, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. We discussed other categories in previous columns.
Click the title links below to read our reviews and on the author links to visit our page for the author. We’ve included the cover art for our favorites.
July 25th, 2019. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 10 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.