Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse
Fevered Star (2022) is the follow-up to Rebecca Roanhorse’s enjoyably original Black Sun, set in a fantastical Mesoamerica (with a few other cultures mixed in as well). As the second book, it does suffer somewhat from that dreaded middle book curse, but Roanhorse offers enough original worldbuilding here to compensate for the book’s weaker aspects, leaving the reader eager to see the trilogy’s conclusion.
As with Black Sun,
August 16th, 2022. Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4, 4.5 | Rebecca Roanhorse | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Marion: I read and greatly enjoyed Amongst our Weapons, the latest RIVERS OF LONDON book by Ben Aaronivitch, and now I’ve started Locklands, final book in Robert Jackson Bennett’s FOUNDERS trilogy. I spent some time reading the rough draft of my current WIP with an eye to revision, and continue that process today.
Terry: I continue with my reread of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, noting a lot more detail than I did the first time through,
August 14th, 2022. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
The Liminal War by Ayize Jama-Everett
The third book in Ayize Jama-Everett’s LIMINAL PEOPLE series, 2015’s The Liminal War returns us to the near future and the world of Liminal healer Taggert, his daughter Tamara and the daughter of his heart, Prentis. Prentis is the orphaned Liminal young woman who communicates with animals. We met her in the Book One; as Book Three opens, Tamara, a powerful telepath and telekinetic, starts a firestorm of fear and anger with her realization that Prentis has been kidnapped and is nowhere on their earth.
August 12th, 2022. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Ayize Jama-Everett | SFF Reviews | no comments |
[Reposted from Deedsandwords.com with permission.]
I paid #3.99 to watch Morbius. The price was about right. I don’t know the character from the comic books, but I’d seen a few articles and reviews so I knew that a doctor turned into a super-vampire.
Michael Morbius has a rare genetic condition that leaves him weak and likely to die young. He vows to find a cure. In the Greek hospital/hospice where he lives (he’s about 12) he befriends a younger boy with the same disease. the kid’s name is Lucien, but Morbius dubs him “Milo.” “You’re just the next Milo,” he says.
August 10th, 2022. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us by Steve Brusatte
2022 has been a banner year for me in terms of non-fiction reading, and that trend continues with The Rise and Reign of the Mammals: A New History, from the Shadow of the Dinosaurs to Us, by Steve Brusatte, an epic and vividly told survey of how evolution bit by bit equipped our ancestors with the tools necessary to at first survive and then thrive. As with Brusatte’s earlier work,
August 10th, 2022. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
FORMAT/INFO: Leviathan Wakes is 592 pages long divided over a Prologue, 55 chapters and an Epilogue. Extras include an interview with the author and an extract from Caliban’s War, the second book in The Expanse series. Narration is in the third person, alternating between Executive Officer James Holden and Detective Miller, except for the Prologue (Julie) and Epilogue (Fred). Leviathan Wakes is mostly self-contained, coming to a satisfying stopping point,
August 9th, 2022. Robert Thompson, Bill Capossere and Justin Blazier´s rating: 4.5, 5 | James S.A. Corey | Audio | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
The Green Rust by Edgar Wallace
In Ian Fleming’s 10th James Bond novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963), 007 foils a plot by the Germanic supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld to use biological agents to destroy a goodly part of the world’s farm crops. But as it turns out, this was not the first time that an English author had given his readers a story featuring a Prussian madman employing bacterial warfare to cut off part of the globe’s food supply! A full 44 years earlier, we find Edgar Wallace,
August 8th, 2022. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Edgar Wallace | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Marion: Most of this week was spent reaching and completing the final chapter in my draft WIP, which is now… a complete draft. Yay me. I read around in The Lives of Fungi by Britt A Bunyard (research), and finished Book Three in the LIMINAL series by Ayize Jama-Everett. The Liminal War relies on music, family and time travel. To my pleasant surprise, Terry’s review of the first book is blurbed on the back!
Bill: Since our last update I read:
August 7th, 2022. Tim Scheidler | Status Update | no comments |
My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies: A Criminal Novella by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), and Jacob Phillips (colorist).
My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies: A Criminal Novella is another Ed Brubaker-Sean Phillips work of perfection. It’s another tale of danger and the criminal world. The story and the art are each five-star outings, the storytelling melding well with the visuals. Simply put, this noir story has matching noir-ish artwork, but if you’re familiar with Phillips’s work in previous Criminal titles, you’ll be surprised by the light pinks and purples and light blues used this time,
August 6th, 2022. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Entropy of Bones by Ayize Jama-Everett
When we meet Chabi, the protagonist of 2015’s The Entropy of Bones, she is running the sixty miles from Sausalito, CA, to Napa, CA. She plans to grab a meal and run back. This is our first clue that Chabi isn’t average… and it’s not our last. Chabi doesn’t speak, although she certainly has a voice. Her physical abilities are astounding. Her martial arts teacher is a strange, dangerous man, Narayana, who lives on a ship near Chabi’s mother’s houseboat.
August 5th, 2022. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Ayize Jama-Everett | SFF Reviews | no comments |
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!
Black Scorpion was one of the movie I watched with my son Kaidan as I introduced him to a AT-Home-Film-Festival…