Kat: I read two Andre Norton stories this week: The Crossroads of Time and Quest Crosstime. They’ve been released together in a new audio edition by Tantor Audio. Now I’m re-reading (in audio format) some Tolkien with my teenage daughter. While we work on a jigsaw puzzle together, we’ve read The Hobbit and now we’re on to The Fellowship of the Ring.
Marion: I’m reading an ARC of Daryl Gregory’s southern gothic horror novel Revelator.
May 30th, 2021. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
After being betrothed to a man she doesn’t love and watching her secret lover, Beatriz, get hanged for aberrant behavior and possession of unapproved reading materials, Esther decides to run away. So she hides herself in the wagon of the traveling Librarians, the distributors of all approved reading materials, who are passing through her town.
When the stowaway is discovered, Esther attempts to convince the librarians that she always wanted to be one of them but, in reality, she is hoping their good morals and upright behavior will rub off on her so she will no longer feel deviant.
May 28th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Sarah Gailey | Audio, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 10 comments |
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s 56th Annual Nebula conference (June 4-6) will be held online this year (as it was last year) and the 2020 Nebula Awards will be announced on Saturday, June 5, 2021.
Last week we discussed the finalists for Best Short Story and Best Novelette. Today we’ll talk about the novels and novellas, including the Middle Grade and Young Adult novels nominated for the Andre Norton Award.
Here are the finalists in these categories. Click the links to read our reviews and get the links to the stories.
May 27th, 2021. FanLit | Nebula Award | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 18 comments |
The Man From Tomorrow by Stanton A. Coblentz
In Robert Silverberg’s masterful 1968 novel The Masks of Time —just one of three novels that the author released that year, during one of his superhumanly productive periods — the Earth of 1998 is visited by a man name Vornan-19, who has arrived from the year 2999, and whose advent leads to all manner of upheaval and complications. But this, of course, was hardly the first time that an author had written about a visitor from the far future.
May 27th, 2021. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Stanton A. Coblentz | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Sunday May 23 is National Turtle Day every year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) has put together a round-up of facts about this aquatic reptiles.
Oh, yes, the deep hole of research. For LitHub, Rafe Posey writes about the things we look up and where they lead us.
John Steinbeck was not above using the “the dog ate my homework” excuse.
Speaking of Steinbeck, he wrote a werewolf novel! Frankly, I don’t know about this.
May 26th, 2021. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory
It’s 2001, and Luce Delgado, homicide detective for the Las Vegas PD, has come to a casino on the strip to deal with a celebrity murder. Dead, “Dr. M,” manager of the hottest boy-band act on the planet, the WyldBoyZ. Suspects? There are plenty, but her top five are the brilliantly harmonizing human/other-mammalian hybrid band members, the Boyz themselves. The challenge? A locked room on the fifty-sixth floor of the casino hotel.
Almost equally important to Luce is her attempt to keep from breaking the heart of the WyldBoyZ’s number one fan — Luce’s nine-year-old daughter Melanie.
May 25th, 2021. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Daryl Gregory | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby (2020), a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Awards for Best Novella, is a mind-expanding story about growing up Black in America. Kevin, the titular “riot baby,” was born in South Central Los Angeles during the riots of 1992 which were sparked by the acquittal of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King after a traffic stop turned into a high-speed chase.
Before Kevin is born, Onyebuchi sets the scene by introducing Ella,
May 24th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Tochi Onyebuchi | Audio, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Kat: Since you heard from me last my semester ended, so I now have more time for reading. The Fall of Koli was a totally unexpected ending to M.R. Carey’s RAMPART trilogy. This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman is a book I’ve been waiting for for years. It was entertaining but not as good as This Alien Shore. Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi is up for awards this season. Terry and I are working on a review of this memorable story.
May 23rd, 2021. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
The Crossroads at Midnight by Abby Howard (words & art)
In this wonderfully disturbing collection of five short horror stories in a 340-page book, Abby Howard takes us on five very different journeys. The Crossroads at Midnight is a near-perfect collection of tales, with flowing artwork that makes the horrific quite surprising when it makes its appearance. In the first story, “The Girl In the Fields,” we meet a teenager — about fifteen-years-old — who is misunderstood by their parents. They call their daughter by their given name — Francine.
May 22nd, 2021. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics, Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar
16-year-old Sheetal seems like any other normal Indian-American teenager. She’s close to her large family, has a best friend and a boyfriend, and she’s looking forward to going to college. What most people don’t know, though, is that her father, a famous astrophysicist, married a star.
Sheetal’s mother left years ago to ascend to her celestial court, and she told Sheetal never to let anybody suspect that she’s half star. To hide this fact, Sheetal dyes her silver hair black, but lately the hair dye has not been taking.
May 21st, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Shveta Thakrar | Audio, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
It's a tightrope act for sure.
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