Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: August 2023


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The Mountain in the Sea: Science, ethics and meaning in a meticulously developed future world

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Against a global backdrop that seethes with cyberpunk-style action, Ray Nayler’s 2022 Locus Award winning debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, gives us a philosophical and deeply thoughtful story about science, specifically first contact.

Sometime in the 22nd century, global corporations run huge AI-managed fishing boats that are scraping the last bits of protein from the planet’s oceans. At the same time, the world is exploring in-system planetary colonization, and the advancement of android tech. Governments have changed and much of the world answers to the UN Directorate Governance.


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Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon: A fresh addition to the fantasy heist genre

Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi 

Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi is a new addition to the fantasy heist genre, one that brings a sense of freshness due to its backdrop of Yoruba folktale/myth and a sense of depth thanks to its focus on character, as well as a moving close.

The narrative is set in a world of gods and spirits who have organized themselves into companies and regions and who are,


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Sunday Status Update: August 6, 2023

Marion: I finished Garth Nix’s latest, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath; it was fun spending time with the characters we met in the Left-Handed Booksellers of London. I just started Alaya Dawn Johnson’s lyrical, complex new book The Library of Broken Worlds. I’m loving every description, every secret, every mystery.

Bill:  Since our last status I’ve read

  • Blade of Dream by Daniel Abraham: book two in another excellent series by him
  • Nightborn: Coldfire Rising by C.S.

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The Promise of Air: “Hey, Joe…”

The Promise of Air by Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood’s novels The Human Chord (1910) and The Centaur (1911) constituted two of my finest reading experiences of 2022, so it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to my next experience courtesy of the author popularly known as “The Ghost Man.” But that nickname, it seems to me, has done Blackwood something of a disservice, because scares and shudders were far from being the writer’s only concern.


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Thoughtful Thursday: What’s the best book you read last month?

It’s the first Thursday of the month. Time to report!

What’s the best book you read in July 2023 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 5-Star SFF page.


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WWWednesday: August 2, 2023

Atlas Obscura went on a serious quest for the elusive peanut butter fruit. Here were the results.

This got me interested in the Fruit and Spice Park, so I went looking for an article about it.

The LA Times introduces an outdoor bookshop in Ojai, CA.

In Florida, a man seeks to ban one of the children’s books in the Arthur series, Arthur’s Birthday, because a line referring to “spin the bottle” may damage children’s souls.


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Medusa’s Sisters: A bitingly insightful feminist viewpoint

Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear

Every now and then my reads fall into a pattern, the most recent being a trio of reimaginings of Greek tales. Medusa’s Sisters, by Lauren J.A. Bear falls in between the other two in terms of the reading experience, with engaging characters, good narrative voices, a moving close, and a nice refocusing of the ancient story of Medusa and Perseus (rather than of Perseus and Medusa).

Bear begins, well, at the beginning (after an excellent opening that gives us right away the classic Perseus-Kills-Medusa moment,


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The Falls: A DIVING police procedural

The Falls by Kristine Kathryn Rusch science fiction book reviews

The Falls (2016) is the eighth novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series but, since it takes place in the past and features a completely different cast of characters, you can read it as a stand-alone at any point in the series. The author recommends reading it after The Runabout (which was published later) because it gives us the backstory of a character,


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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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