Aurora’s End by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Aurora’s End, the final book in the AURORA CYCLE YA science fiction trilogy by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, begins and finishes with a bang — literally, lots of them — and sandwiches all kinds of wild events in between. (Note: this review includes some spoilers for the prior books in this series.)
When we left Squad 312, a group of young adult space academy grads trying to save the galaxy,
November 30th, 2021. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Moon of Three Rings by Andre Norton
Krip Vorlund, an assistant cargo master on a trade ship, is visiting a beast show with some of his crewmates on a frontier planet called Yiktor. There he meets a woman named Maelen who takes care of the little furry creatures that perform in the show. It’s obvious that she controls them, yet they seem more like children than slaves. In fact, when a messenger arrives and tells her that a man is abusing a creature somewhere in the town, she gets angry and goes to intervene.
November 29th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Andre Norton | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Kat: Due to a very busy week, plus Thanksgiving, I have not progressed much since last week. I continue to listen to Marissa Meyer’s LUNAR CHRONICLES with my daughter. We will probably finish the fourth book, Winter, today. I’m also still reading Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years. As I mentioned last week, it’s long!
Marion: I finished up Riley Sager’s 2020 haunted house story, Home Before Dark.
November 28th, 2021. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
Understanding Genes by Kostas Kampourakis
Understanding Genes (2021), by Kostas Kampourakis, sits in a sometimes-awkward position betwixt and between a popular science book and a textbook. As such, lay readers looking for simple, smooth, easy-to-follow explanations may want to look elsewhere or be prepared to struggle and/or skim. Those with some background in biology (beyond their high school/early college courses) will fare better.
The intent of the book is a caution against genetic essentialism or fatalism and against the over-simplification,
November 26th, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
This Guardian UK story follows the process of restoring an ancient book of psalms.
Articles about the Dragon Awards always draw me in, because the Dragon Award is fairly new and it’s a chance to watch an award evolve in the wild. That said, the title of this one baffled me for several paragraphs, but rest assured, Goodreads does make an appearance!
The Huntington Museum is offering an exhibition of graphics demonstrating how authors have “mapped” their fictional works. (Thanks to File 770.)
Marjorie Kellogg shares “six books” with Nerds of a Feather.
November 24th, 2021. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
The Girl and the Mountain by Mark Lawrence
The Girl and the Mountain (2021) is the second installment in Mark Lawrence’s BOOK OF THE ICE series. It follows The Girl and the Stars, which you need to read first. There will be a few spoilers for that book in this review.
The Girl and the Stars introduced an icy world inhabited by tribes that follow a spiritual leader who, every few years,
November 24th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Mark Lawrence | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Alyson Hagy’s slim 2018 literary novella Scribe mines Appalachian folktales for a bleak, harrowing and poetic story about loss, guilt, love and honor. By deliberately setting the story in a world outside of our time and space, Hagy forces attention onto the characters, which at times gives the book the feel of a stage-play more than a story or a poem.
In spite of an otherworldly setting, this novel isn’t speculative fiction. Hagy isn’t raising questions about how people live in a world like this one.
November 23rd, 2021. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Alyson Hagy | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Green Man by Harold M. Sherman
A short while back, I had some words to say about Festus Pragnell’s 1935 novel The Green Man of Graypec, which had originally appeared in the pages of Wonder Stories magazine and had given us the tale of a green-furred caveman living in a subatomic world. Now I am here to report on another green man, but one of a wholly different nature; one who hails not from the infinitesimally small microverse, but rather from a planet over a trillion miles away.
November 22nd, 2021. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Harold M. Sherman | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Kat: I continue to listen to Marissa Meyer’s LUNAR CHRONICLES with my daughter. We finished the third book, Cress, last night. We’ll be starting the fourth one, Winter, today. I’m also reading Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years. It’s long, so it will probably take me a while.
Bill: We’re into the first stage of final papers now, so not a lot of reading this week or coming up beyond those.
November 21st, 2021. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 3 comments |
A Gift for a Ghost by Borja Gonzalez (writing and art)
A Gift for a Ghost is a comic book of two intertwined stories, one from 1856 and the other from 2016. In 1856, a young woman, Teresa, talks with a skeleton, asking him why he is crying. After a short conversation, they go look at the stars. This scene is typical of the visions that Teresa has throughout the book. In 2016, another young woman, Gloria, gets dressed in her room, which is covered in music posters.
November 20th, 2021. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
This book made no sense to me at all. I was hoping for some explanations at the end but it…
Oh, Marion, you say "but dark" as if it were a bad thing! 😂
Hammer Studios is... reborn? I only ever read the "Kane" stories, which I found good but dark. It's a little…
Oh...and the men used the name "The Great Northern Expedition" to throw people off as to their actual destination, even…
Oh, it IS, Marion! It is!