Battle Mage by Peter A. Flannery
2017’s Battle Mage, by Peter A. Flannery, is an epic fantasy adventure, a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of war and some political treachery. It’s filled with magic and dragons. I reeled that off like I didn’t have to think about it at all, but in fact that capsule description emerged after a Twitter conversation with Flannery himself.
Battle Mage was in my AtomaCon swag bag. The title and the cover looked like military fantasy to me,
January 31st, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Peter A. Flannery | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Here are some of the books we can’t wait for in 2020!
Hover over the covers to see what our reviewers said about each book.
Which books are you looking forward to this year? One commenter wins a book from our stacks.
January 30th, 2020. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 25 comments |
An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris
In An Easy Death (2018) the first book of her latest series, GUNNIE ROSE, Charlaine Harris introduces readers to Lizbeth Rose, a nineteen-year-old “gunnie” (gunslinger) living in what was once the United States of America — until Franklin Roosevelt was assassinated before becoming the thirty-second President, and the ensuing chaos fractured the country into different regions, each with their own laws and social codes. Operating with a crew as a gun for hire is lucrative work,
January 30th, 2020. Jana Nyman and Tadiana Jones | Charlaine Harris | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Books and writing:
Imaginary Papers launched its first issue here.
Publishers Weekly gives a capsule review of N.K. Jemisin’s latest, The City We Became.
Cat Rambo hosted Jasmine’s Arch’s post on creating an online haven for writers.
Brandon Sanderson is advertising his new YA series on his blog. It looks like these are coming out this week.
Most new books, especially from Big Five publishers, are released on Tuesdays. (So are magazines and music.) But why Tuesday?
January 29th, 2020. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |
The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman (Ray Jana)
With the release of La Belle Sauvage, readers were finally able to return to the universe of Philip Pullman‘s HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy after a seventeen year wait. The story was a prequel to the original trilogy (though Pullman described the new series not as a sequel, but an ‘equel.’) Being only a baby, it was not Lyra who took centre stage in that novel, but a young boy called Malcolm Polstead,
January 28th, 2020. Ray McKenzie, Jana Nyman and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3, 4 | Philip Pullman | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Batman and Ethics by Mark D. White
Batman and Ethics (2019) by Mark D. White does just what it purports to do, and does so clearly, smoothly, and with a surfeit of supporting examples to bolster his claims. I had a few issues, but honestly, complaints seem a bit churlish with a book that achieves its goal so successfully.
In a brief, broad introduction, White explains why he’s decided to limit discussion to the comics version of Batman, as well as why he further narrows his scope to the time period of the early 1970s through 2011.
January 27th, 2020. Bill Capossere | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Marion: I mostly read work in manuscript this week, but I did finish Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth. I’m shocked at how deeply and thoroughly the book disappointed me.
Bill: This week I read Animal Mineral Radical, a collection of essays by BK Loren; Washington Black, an excellent novel by Esi Edugyan; and Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages by Jack Hartnell.
Terry: I finished Rachel Caine’s GREAT LIBRARY sequence with Sword and Pen,
January 26th, 2020. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu
I was a huge fan of Ken Liu’s first collection of short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, giving it a five out of five and placing on my “best of” list that year. His newest collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (2020), unfortunately didn’t hit the high notes as consistently as the first, though there are still several gems in the group.
Many of the stories are set in a time leading up to or following the singularity,
January 24th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Ken Liu | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Speculative fiction is a gold mine for content providers and streaming services. In the past ten years we’ve seen an explosion of adaptations of written-word works to the small screen in particular, and most particularly in the form of series.
The series almost never follows the book(s) exactly (movies don’t either) but the best of them capture the sensibility of the written story, and the characters.
Game of Thrones is probably the Monster King of this subgenre, but series like The Expanse and Outlander have done pretty well too.
January 23rd, 2020. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 14 comments |
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
After reading about Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter I went in search of it and found it at my university library. Reading it was quite a different experience for me, but people who aren’t prepared for the style of writing like I was might be disappointed, confused or scorning of the slow, dream-like pace, archetype characters and poetical language. This might be especially true of fans of typical fantasy genre books (authors such as David Eddings or Terry Brooks) where a fantasy universe is deemed to be good only if it has a solid backing and an exhaustive array of facts and figures to add realism to the stories.
January 23rd, 2020. Rebecca Fisher and Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Lord Dunsany | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
It's hardly a private conversation, Becky. You're welcome to add your 2 cents anytime!
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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…