If your sequestered cat is in need of some video, let me recommend the Bird Library livestream.
Books and Writing:
The Hugo finalist list is out.
James Davis Nicholl laments books that are not easily acquired in the USA.
Bertelsmann completed its purchase of Penguin Random House and now owns the whole thing.
I looked in on this controversy via Twitter while it was happening. The Internet Archive announced they’d created a free “online library” to give homebound folks access to books.
April 8th, 2020. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |
Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas
The DC ICONS COLLECTION has a very simple premise: take a famous DC superhero, give them to a popular YA author, and have them craft a story about each character’s adolescence, well before they put on their capes and tights and started crime-fighting. It allows the authors to delve into a part of each character’s life that’s not often explored (well, except for Clark Kent on Smallville) and give us stories about superheroes that aren’t comic books or filmic adaptations.
April 8th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Sarah J. Maas | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
How Dark the World Becomes by Frank Chadwick
Sasha Naradnyo is a mid-level gangster in “Crack City,” a city literally inside a large canyon on the surface of a planet called Peezgtaan that’s mostly inhabited by the Varoki, a sentient lizard-like species. The smaller population of humans, second-class citizens on Peezgtaan, have been ghettoized to Crack City, the only place on the planet where they can breathe the air. They came to Peezgtaan to work for a pharmaceutical company that later went bust, and now they’re stuck on the hostile planet.
Sasha’s got a good heart,
April 7th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Frank Chadwick | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu
Superheroes permeate nearly every facet of pop-culture these days, and someone at Penguin Books found a way to capitalize on that popularity: round up some successful YA authors and have them write original stories about the most famous DC superheroes while still in their adolescence (the heroes, not the authors).
Therefore the DC ICONS COLLECTION gives us new stories about Wonder Woman, Batman, Catwoman and Superman before they adopt their later personas, most of them no more than seventeen or eighteen years old at the time these tales are set.
April 7th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3 | Marie Lu | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo
The DC ICONS COLLECTION is a series of four YA novels that take a famous DC superhero and explores their background before they became the stuff of legends. This means having a look at their adolescence, whether it’s Clark tending the farm in Smallvillle, Bruce doing voluntary work in Arkham Asylum, or Selena Kyle struggling to survive the streets of Gotham City.
In the case of Princess Diana, she’s a young Amazonian warrior on the island of Themyscira, just beginning to understand her incredible power,
April 6th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Leigh Bardugo | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Reposting to include Tadiana’s review.
Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley
Spindle’s End (2000) is Robin McKinley’s delightful and very loose retelling of the Sleeping Beauty (Little Briar Rose) fairy tale.
On the princess’s naming day, a bad fairy declares a curse, stating that, on her 21st birthday, the princess will prick her finger on a spindle and die. In an attempt to thwart the curse, a good fairy named Katriona takes the princess to live with her aunt in a swampy region called Foggy Bottom.
April 6th, 2020. Kat Hooper and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Robin McKinley | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Jana: This week has been…well, you get the news, you know what it’s been like. Distracting, to say the least. I’m reading through Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s latest WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home; it’s delightful and dark and very, very tense, so I’ve been taking my time with this one rather than just devouring it all at once.
Kat: Like Jana said, the news is distracting. Plus, I’m working from home and my teenage daughter is also home from school,
April 5th, 2020. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
Hellboy in Mexico by Mike Mignola (writer) & various artists
Hellboy in Mexico is a collection of short stories. It starts out with the same story that is in Hellboy (Vol. 11): The Bride of Hell and Others:
“Hellboy in Mexico, or A Drunken Blur” is a funny story about Hellboy’s lost five months in Mexico drinking and wrestling. The story starts in 1982 with Hellboy and Abe Sapien in Mexico together. Abe Sapien finds an old wrestling poster showing Hellboy with three other wrestlers.
April 4th, 2020. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Mike Mignola | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Two Thousand Miles Below by Charles W. Diffin
In November 1951, the first feature film based on a DC Comics superhero was released. That film, Superman and the Mole Men, is fondly remembered today, especially since it was later transformed into the two-part episode that aired near the end of the first season of TV’s Adventures of Superman, and shown on television under the title “The Unknown People.” In this film, Clark Kent and Lois Lane travel to the small town of Silsby, TX, to cover a story about the world’s deepest oil rig … a story that becomes even more interesting when denizens from deep below the Earth emerge from that borehole and cause panic among the populace.
April 3rd, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Charles W. Diffin | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer
Dexter Palmer has been one of my must-read authors since I read Version Control. It was my favorite book of 2016 and I’ve been eagerly awaiting his next novel.
Here it is. It’s called Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen (2019) and it’s based on the real Mary Toft, an early 18th century English woman who claimed to keep giving birth to rabbits. Flummoxed, her small town’s doctor,
April 3rd, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Dexter Palmer | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…
It's hardly a private conversation, Becky. You're welcome to add your 2 cents anytime!
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…