Netflix adapted Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon into a series which has now run for two seasons. This review of Season One, which I watched via Amazon Prime, might contain spoilers for the show. In this column, my goal is to review the show without comparing it to the book.
One commenter chosen at random will win a hardcover copy of Harrow the Ninth by Tamsin Muir.
Altered Carbon, Season One is a hyper-violent, hyper-male noirish adventure set in a moody Blade-Runneresque world.
September 30th, 2020. Marion Deeds | Giveaway! | 9 comments |
The Power of the Dark Crystal: Volume One by Simon Spurrier
With the recent release of Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to the original 1982 film, I’ve been treating myself to all the supplementary material that’s been released in the show’s wake. Given that Thra is one of my favourite fantasy worlds (along with Middle Earth and Narnia), it’s been a dream come true to have so much new content.
According to the afterword, The Power of the Dark Crystal was originally written as a script by screenwriters David Odell,
September 29th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Jana: This week I read Juliet Marillier’s The Harp of Kings, a mostly-engaging fantasy set at some vague distant point in Ireland’s druid-filled past. I also finished Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe’s anthology The Mythic Dream, and I would say 95% of the stories were absolutely amazing, while the other 5% were extremely good. Not a bad ratio, all things considered! This week I’ll be reading Naomi Novik’s latest novel, A Deadly Education, and Daniel Pinkwater’s novella Adventures of a Dwergish Girl,
September 27th, 2020. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 4 comments |
Today, more than a century after Jack London’s passing in 1916, most people probably remember the San Francisco-born author for his books of rugged adventure, such as his third novel, The Call of the Wild (1903), his fifth, The Sea-Wolf (1904), and his seventh, White Fang (1906). Fewer will recall that amongst London’s 23 novels, 21 short story collections, three memoirs, three plays, 22 books of nonfiction and 45 poems – all written during a life span of only 40 years – this most superhumanly prolific of authors also produced four books that must be classified as either fantasy or sci-fi.
September 25th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Jack London | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Note: This review contains spoilers for Six of Crows, the first book in this duology.
Crooked Kingdom (2016) picks up the story begun in Six of Crows and takes off like ― well, there are no freight trains in this world, so ― a runaway Grisha on jurda parem. In Six of Crows, teenage crime lord Kaz Brekker and his handpicked group of five pulled off a near-impossible heist,
September 25th, 2020. Tadiana Jones, Rebecca Fisher and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Leigh Bardugo | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
In Season 4 of Syfy’s space opera Killjoys, Da’vin Jacobis gives his thirteen-year-old son Jak, who was born six days ago (it’s a long story) a picture. He is sending Jak to hide out with his former-evil-overlord mother (again, long story). He doesn’t want Jak to forget him, so he gives him the only photo of himself he has — his old military ID.
It’s a touching moment, and a sweet gift.
Quest stories often include the giving, or exchange, of gifts. Some gifting follows, more or less, the steps of the Hero’s Journey,
September 24th, 2020. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 21 comments |
A Sick Gray Laugh by Nicole Cushing
A Sick Gray Laugh, Nicole Cushing’s 2019 horror novel, is disturbing, at times disgusting. It’s surreal, it’s metafictional and it’s often hilarious. And, really, that’s about all I have to say about it. If you like any of those things, or all of them, you should read it.
Oh, what? I should tell you about the plot? Okay. Noelle Cashman, our first-person narrator, is an award-winning horror novelist. Recently, though, she has started medication for her struggles with anxiety and depression and now,
September 24th, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Nicole Cushing | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Housekeeping:
Next week’s column will be single-item, probably a review of a series, and there might be a giveaway attached.
Pictures:
I was able to spend a couple of days at the seaside village of Mendocino, California, and the images used in the column are from that trip.
Books and Writing:
This is two years old but still interesting, as Crime Reads interviews Joe R. Lansale about Hap and Leonard.
Publishers Weekly has an article about bookseller unions.
September 23rd, 2020. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Leigh Bardugo, best known for her GRISHA young adult magical fantasy trilogy, explores a different corner of the Grisha world in her new young adult novel, Six of Crows. In the city of Ketterdam, an analog for Amsterdam, criminal gangs control the waterfront, and the surrounding area is a den of iniquity where everything can be bought and sold, including people. One of the gangs, appropriately called the Dregs, is led by 17 year old Kaz Brekker,
September 23rd, 2020. Tadiana Jones, Rebecca Fisher and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4, 4.5 | Leigh Bardugo | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Fans of Kevin Hearne’s popular IRON DRUID CHRONICLES will be thrilled to learn that Hearne has a new spin-off series: INK & SIGIL. The first novel, Ink & Sigil (2020), introduces Al MacBharrais, an older widowed gentleman who has a unique talent. He uses special inks to create sigils that hack the brain through the ocular nerve. For example, the Sigil of Porous Mind makes the target open to suggestion, the Sigil of Certain Authority makes the caster appear to have the authority to do whatever they’re doing,
September 22nd, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Kevin Hearne | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Kind of you to say. I certainly like to think so!
BTW, Steve Sterner will be performing at seven films during this upcoming fest: https://filmforum.org/series/clara-bow
As far as I know, Bill, Steve Sterner is the only person who does the live accompaniment to silent movies…
And I'm positive that Kaidan will fondly remember watching these movies with his old man for the rest of his…
You bet, Marion!