The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
I’ll confess up front I’ve struggled mightily with Seth Dickinson’s series that started with The Traitor Baru Cormorant and continued with The Monster Baru Cormorant. I’ve found lots to admire in the first two books, especially intellectually, but I can’t say I actually much enjoyed them. So it was with some trepidation that I picked up book three, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (2020).
August 10th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Seth Dickinson | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Necromancers and their sword-fighting cavaliers star in Gideon the Ninth (2019), Tamsyn Muir’s radically original debut novel, which has been nominated for the 2019 Nebula Award. This science fantasy novel, steeped in an atmosphere of decay and decrepitude, is a mix of space opera and a gruesome treasure hunt that takes place in a spooky, crumbling castle. At the same time, it’s set in an interstellar empire consisting of nine planets, each one ruled by a different House of necromancers.
August 10th, 2020. Tadiana Jones, Jana Nyman, Terry Weyna, Kelly Lasiter, Marion Deeds, Bill Capossere and Tim Scheidler´s rating: 5 | Tamsyn Muir | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Jana: This week was chockablock with non-FanLit responsibilities, so I had much less time for getting reviews wrapped up than I wanted (harrumph). I was able to squeeze in a few reading hours for Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth, though, and it was incredibly difficult to pull myself away each time.
Kelly: So, Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth came out this week, and it sort of ate me alive, distracting me from everything else I intended to read.
August 9th, 2020. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 5 comments |
B.P.R.D. (Vol. 8): Killing Ground by Mike Mignola (writer), John Arcudi (writer), Guy Davis (artist), Dave Stewart (colors), & Clem Robins (letters)
B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground introduces us to a transformed Johann, eager to try everything he can now that he has escaped his containment suit. And Liz continues to be haunted by her dreams, though she finds comfort in befriending the ancient mummy, Panya, who has joined them at B.P.R.D. headquarters. Abe has recommitted to the team now that he feels he has put his past to rest,
August 8th, 2020. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Mike Mignola | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
How to Survive in Ancient Greece by Robert Garland
How to Survive in Ancient Greece (2020), by Robert Garland, is a lightly casual tour of the day to day existence in Classical Athens, specifically in the year 420 B.C. in the midst of what most consider the Golden Age of Classical Greece, a time when Athens and Sparta are at relative peace, Sophocles and Euripides are competing for the dramatic competitions, and Socrates is stirring up trouble. Were it not for the threat of plague, cholera, typhus; the constant odor of human waste,
August 7th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
It’s the first Thursday of the month. Time to report!
What is the best book you read in July 2020 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.
And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our Fanlit Faves page and our 5-Star SFF page.
August 6th, 2020. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 21 comments |
The Radio Planet by Ralph Milne Farley
THE RADIO MAN trilogy, by Massachusetts-born author Ralph Milne Farley, was a series that I discovered quite by accident. I had heard of neither the three novels nor their author before finding the first book, The Radio Man (1924), in a highly collectible 1950 Avon paperback edition, at the Greenwich Village Antiquarian Book Fair a few years back. This first novel introduced readers to radio engineer Myles Cabot, who had accidentally transported himself to the planet Venus and helped the winged and antenna-sporting Cupian humanoids there to overthrow their antlike Formian oppressors.
August 6th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Ralph Milne Farley | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Awards:
Arkady Martine took the Hugo for best novel with A Memory Called Empire; Amar El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone won best novella with This is How You Lose the Time War; N.K. Jemisin took the award for best novelette with “Emergency Skin;” the best short story was awarded to S.L. Huang for “As the Last I May Know.” See all the winners.
File 770 printed a correction for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award winners.
August 5th, 2020. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
I recently learned the term Dark Academia, and while I’m probably too old to be a part of the subculture, I wish I’d had a name for it earlier. Schools and colleges with dark secrets have long been one of my favorite forms of literary catnip. It was probably inevitable that I’d be interested in Elisabeth Thomas’s Catherine House (2020), the story of a rudderless young woman attending a most unusual college.
The titular Catherine House is “not just a school,
August 5th, 2020. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Elisabeth Thomas | Edge, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
It’s 1872 and Celine Rousseau, who’s seventeen years old, has just arrived in New Orleans with several other girls who will work in a convent until they can make matches with respectable young men in the city. Celine is from Paris, where she made gowns for the upper class. She had to flee Paris, and her father, after a tragic event that she won’t talk about.
The work at the convent is boring, but Celine has found a new best friend — Pippa from England — and she’s fascinated by the sultry city of New Orleans,
August 4th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Renee Ahdieh | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.