Kat: I’ve been sick with COVID, so I’ve spent the last few days doing almost nothing but listening to audiobooks. Since you heard from me last a few weeks ago, I’ve read all of these relatively short novels: Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord, Patternmaster by Octavia Butler, Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham,
May 8th, 2022. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | 4 comments |
It’s the first Thursday of the month. Time to report!
What is the best book you read in April 2022 and why did you love it? It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. 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.
May 5th, 2022. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 13 comments |
Marshal Zeringue has several blogs, and one of them is the “Page 69 Test.” The premise is this; would a reader, opening a book at random and reading page 69, have an understanding of what the book’s about? Interesting test! Here’s a recent column.
File 770 offers an excerpt from Tear Down the Throne by Jennifer Estep.
J.D. Evans’s Reign and Ruin is the winner of the Seventh Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off , in what I’d describe as a photo finish (just one-tenth of a point ahead of the runner-up).
May 4th, 2022. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |
The Light in the Sky by Herbert Clock & Eric Boetzel
In H. Rider Haggard’s 16th novel, the epic blockbuster Montezuma’s Daughter (1893), the reader is introduced to a young man named Thomas Wingfield, a European (half English, half Spanish) who is captured by the ancient Aztecs in the New World of the 16th century. Wingfield eventually becomes something of a living god among them, marries the titular Otomie, and witnesses the arrival and eventual conquest of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes. It is a truly wonderful piece of historical fiction,
May 3rd, 2022. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Herbert Clock | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah
The Stardust Thief (2022), by Chelsea Abdullah, is one of the more impressive debut novels I’ve read lately, offering up a bevy of strong narrative elements with barely a weakness to be found and using a well-known tale (1001 Nights) not as a basis for a retelling but as the germ of something that is its own lushly original story. It wasn’t until I neared the end that I had the happy realization this wasn’t a stand-alone novel but would give me two more chances to spend time in this world.
May 2nd, 2022. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Chelsea Abdullah | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Marion: After A Novel Way to Die by Ali Brandon, a light “bookstore murder mystery” with a cat that solves crimes and leaves its human clues by pulling books off the bookstore shelves (the titles contain clues); I DNF’d a domestic thriller I won’t name. I’m only half-joking when I say that I couldn’t relate to the “woman in danger” MC, who goes into basically a fugue state when she’s writing (she’s on her 5th best-seller when the book opens), and so has turned all her finances over to her attentive, failed-writer husband.
May 1st, 2022. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
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!
Sorry if I mislead you in this detail, Paul...the voyage by ship was only the first leg of the quintet's…