The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
Thanks to his two most recent novels, Central Station and Unholy Land, Lavie Tidhar has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary novelists, and so when I was given the opportunity to read a re-release of his earlier book, The Violent Century (2013), I leapt right on it. Clearly, the last two books were not evidence of some sudden leap upward in achievement,
August 6th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Lavie Tidhar | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Glass Bead Game (or Das Glasperlenspiel or Magister Ludi) by Hermann Hesse
The Glass Bead Game (1943), written by Hermann Hesse, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946, is a finalist for a Retro Hugo Award this year. I picked up the audio edition produced by Blackstone Audio and pleasantly read by David Colacci. It’s more than 21 hours long.
The first section of the novel, which lasts 1.25 hours in the audiobook version,
August 6th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Hermann Hesse | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard’s UNIVERSE OF XUYA series of novellas and short stories has been nominated for Best Series in the 2019 Hugo awards, for very good reason. The detailed worldbuilding and thoughtful writing pull the reader into a world with an alternative history, where Chinese ships were the first to discover the Americas, drastically changing our history and leading to a space age future where Chinese and Vietnamese galactic empires hold great power and intelligent mindships interact with humans outside of the ship through projected avatars.
August 5th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Aliette De_Bodard | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
I’d been meaning to read Yarrow (1986) for years. I loved Charles de Lint’s Memory and Dream, in which he tells the story of a painter touched by the Otherworld. And I’m a writer (or at least a wannabe one), not a visual artist, so I figured, “if I liked his artist book so much, how much more am I going to love his writer book?” Unfortunately, the answer is “not as much.” Yarrow is very early de Lint,
August 5th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Charles De_Lint | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Awakened by James S. Murray & Darren Wearmouth
Grady McGowan has been logging lots of overtime, running a tunnel-boring machine beneath the Hudson River for the massive Z Train subway line extension that will link New York City to New Jersey with an underground express train. They’re even building a state-of-the-art underwater Visitors’ Pavilion in the middle of the Upper Bay. It’s hard work for Grady, but everything is going well … until a huge hole opens up underneath Grady and his machine.
Three years later, the mayor of NYC,
August 2nd, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | James S. Murray | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Sunny Nwazue, an albino who needs to stay out of the sun, has always been different from the other kids in her school. When her family returned to Nigeria after living in the United States for most of Sunny’s childhood, she never quite found her place. Her strangeness becomes even more obvious when she sees a vision showing what appears to be scenes from the end of the world.
When Sunny finally makes a few friends, she begins to realize there’s a reason for her strangeness,
August 2nd, 2019. Kat Hooper and Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Nnedi Okorafor | Children | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
It’s the first Thursday of the month. You know what that means, ’cause we do this on the first Thursday of every month! Time to report!
What is the best book you read in July 2019 and why did you love it? It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF. We just want to share some great reading material. Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.
August 1st, 2019. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 30 comments |
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
I’ve commented before that I give very few five-star reviews. Usually, I expect a book to somehow change my thinking, or how I see the world, in order to rate it a five-star book. As I sat down to write this review I was going to say something like, “While that didn’t happen with Shadowshaper, by Daniel José Older, I still…” and then I thought more about it, and decided that Shadowshaper (2015) has changed how I think about the world,
August 1st, 2019. Marion Deeds and Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Daniel José Older | Young Adult | 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.