In Denmark, helmets have always been a good idea.
Many people I know deeply love the original Jurassic Park film. So does The Mary Sue, which celebrates the film’s birthday, calling it the perfect movie.
At Tor.com, L.T. Lukens reminds us of five books that sail the oceans to reap adventure.
Also from Tor.com, Jo Walton’s Reading List column does double-duty because she missed a month. Even before you get to the books, this column is wonderful!
June 16th, 2021. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley
A couple of years ago I read Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife (2018) which was a finalist for the Locus Award in 2019. Set in a wealthy suburb, the story was a promoted as a “modern retelling of Beowulf” and told from the perspectives of the mothers. I admired this novel and was therefore eager to read Headley’s new translation of Beowulf which also happens to be a Locus Award finalist in the Horror category this year.
June 16th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Maria Dahvana Headley | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
Deathless Divide (2020) is the sequel to Justina Ireland’s 2018 novel Dread Nation, the fresh take on zombies I reviewed previously. Much like its predecessor, Deathless Divide maintains a break-neck pace and an engaging cast of characters from beginning to end.
I enjoyed Deathless Divide just as much as I did Dread Nation.
June 16th, 2021. Skye Walker´s rating: 4 | Justina Ireland | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Nizhoni Begay wants to be a star, or at least popular. She’s hoping to make the game-winning score at her middle school basketball game but, instead, she’s humiliated when she gets distracted and gets hit in the face by the ball. The reason she was distracted was that she saw a man in the stands watching her. She could tell he was a monster. When that same man shows up at her house for dinner because he’s her dad’s new boss, Nizhoni tries to warn her father that he’s a monster but her father doesn’t believe her and seems very eager to please the monster.
June 15th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Rebecca Roanhorse | Audio, Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Patricia Campbell and her neighbors are housewives in Charleston, South Carolina. Looking for friendship and something to talk about other than their husbands, children, housekeeping, and other neighbors, they form a book club. True Crime is their genre of choice.
After the ladies read Helter Skelter, Patricia laments that nothing exciting ever happens in their neighborhood:
“But don’t you wish that something exciting would happen around here?” Patricia asked. “Just once?”
Grace raised her eyebrows at Patricia.
June 14th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Grady Hendrix | Audio, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Kat: I’m reading some of the Locus finalists including Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn, Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, and Rebecca Roanhorse’s Race to the Sun. I’ve also read a few of the short stories. Other than the Locus finalists, I’ve read two books by Andre Norton that were recently published in audio format: The Crossroads of Time and Quest Crosstime.
June 13th, 2021. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
This week’s SHORTS column features some of the 2021 Locus and Hugo award finalists in the novelette and short story categories.
“Wait for Night” by Stephen Graham Jones (2020, free at Tor.com)
Chessup is a day laborer working as part of a crew outside of Boulder, Colorado, helping to clean up a creek that was filled with trash in the aftermath of a flood. At the end of the day, looking to borrow a battery from the crew’s bulldozer to jumpstart his old car, Chessup finds something very old tangled up in the roots of a tree that the bulldozer had pulled down.
June 10th, 2021. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Ken Liu, Naomi Kritzer, Stephen Graham Jones, Yoon Ha Lee | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry
After I read Christina Henry’s 2020 horror novel The Ghost Tree, I did a bit of research on the writer. It seems like she is well-known for retelling fairy tales, usually with a dark (or darker) twist than the original. The Ghost Tree is not a fairy tale, as far as I can tell, although it has some fairy-tale elements. It’s a 1980s-style slasher horror novel. By the way, that’s what I thought I was getting when I bought it,
June 10th, 2021. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Christina Henry | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
I have been out of town most of this week, so the column is short today.
The Nebula Awards were announced on Friday. Here is the list of winners. Network Effect by Martha Wells took Best Novel and Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark took Best Novella.
Chris Salisbury muses on the power of night, and what we’ve lost be fearing the darkness.
This is a nice profile of S.B. Divya.
Secondhand booksellers in the UK are piloting a scheme to pay limited royalties to the writers (as you know,
June 9th, 2021. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Yadriel’s Latinx community in East Los Angeles practices brujería. The men are brujos who escort ghosts to their final resting place and the women are brujas who have healing powers. But Yadriel’s large close family has not supported his desire to be a brujo because he is transgender. Their community has strict gender roles, they don’t see him as a boy, and they don’t think the brujo magic will work for him (though the women’s bruja magic definitely doesn’t work for Yadriel).
Yadriel is determined to prove not only that he is a boy,
June 9th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Aiden Thomas | Audio, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 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!