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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: November 2023

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Thornhedge: You will sink into this story

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Thornhedge (2023), by T. Kingfisher, is a bittersweet fairy tale that starts off on familiar ground and shifts, making us consider who defines the monsters and the heroes. This brief novella reads as smooth as cream, and the story seems simple, but it is not.

Toadling is a fairy, left to maintain a hedge of thorns around a tower, where an enchanted maiden sleeps. From this, you might think you know the story. Toadling is dutiful, strengthening the thorn hedge to discourage the eager knights and princes who come at first,


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November 9th, 2023. ´s rating: | | , | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

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WWWednesday; November 8, 2023

SFWA joined several other organizations in correspondence to the U.S. Copyright Office, sending this letter expressing the concerns they have with the potential uses of AI.

The British Library was the victim of a cyberattack. (This article may be behind a paywall.)

For Jim Butcher fans Tor.com offers an excerpt of his latest, The Olympian Affair.

In the Old and Lost Things department, it’s possible a long-missing model of the Enterprise from Star Trak has been located.


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November 8th, 2023. | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

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Unwind: A gripping story if you can get past the premise

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

In the near future, after a long bloody war between pro-life and pro-choice armies, the United States amended the constitution to ban abortion but allow parents to “retroactively abort” a child between 13 and 18 years old as long as the child was “unwound” in a process that allows the child’s parts to be given to others, like organ donations. In this way, the child isn’t actually killed, but lives on, a technicality that appeases both sides.

You’d think that few parents would opt to unwind their child,


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November 8th, 2023. ´s rating: | | , | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

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Mammoths at the Gates: A tender fable of grief, forgiveness and transformation

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo 

Mammoths at the Gates (2023) is the fourth of Nghi Vo’s novellas set in the world of the Singing Hills Abbey. Chih, a cleric tasked with gathering oral histories of the world, has returned home after three years, to find old friends, great sorrow, and disruption. The source of the disruption is a pair of war mammoths and their warrior handlers, two sisters, who wait outside the abbey’s gates.

Once inside, Chih learns that most of the clerics have been sent to a distant project.


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November 7th, 2023. ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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Jewel Box: Delightful startling points and beautifully honed sentences

Jewel Box by E. Lily Yu

The pleasure for me in reading E. Lily Yu’s collection of short stories, Jewel Box, was sourced in two of the book’s elements: its what-if premises and its, well, jewel-like language, which glittered precise and edged as any gemstone in a Tiffany’s case. The plots and characters, meanwhile, were more hit and miss for me, which is why I’m not giving it a five.

As is typical for collections, the individual stories varied in their impact,


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November 6th, 2023. ´s rating: | | | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

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Rai: The rise and fall of a futuristic New Japan

Rai: Deluxe Edition, Volume 1 (issues 1-12) by Matt Kindt (writer), Clayton Crain (art), and Dave Lanphear (letters)

Matt Kindt is one of my favorite writers, and Valiant is an exciting publishing company with great stories that are quick-moving, with story arcs told in four-issue increments. So, this twelve-issue collection contains three story arcs telling a larger story about Rai, the protector of New Japan, an enormous, floating structure containing countless cities and neighborhoods. New Japan is in the control of Father, an “omnipotent, omniscient, and unseen ruler” who is not really alive.


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November 4th, 2023. ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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Thoughtful Thursday: What’s the best book you read last month? (GIVEAWAY!)

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

What’s the best book you read in October 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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November 2nd, 2023. | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 12 comments |

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The Running Grave: An addictive return to the detective series

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

An insidious cult, a spiritual leader who converses with the dead and a ghost that manifests at will – the dynamic detective duo have well and truly returned in what might be their most riveting mystery yet.

When a desperate father approaches the agency asking the detectives to help remove his son from the grip of a pernicious cult posturing as a benign church, Strike is hesitant to let Robin go in under cover: there have been stories of torture, sexual assault and starvation.


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November 2nd, 2023. ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

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WWWednesday: November 1, 2023

The World Fantasy Award were announced Sunday, October 29. Best Novel went to Saint Death’s Daughter, by C.S.E. Cooney. Priya Sharma took the Best Novella Award for Pomegranates, and Tananarive Due took Best Short Fiction for “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge.”

File770 provided a link to a report on WorldCon, written by someone who was a coordinator for  a Chinese fan group as well as a vendor. It sounds like China’s first WorldCon was rocky, which isn’t surprising. The volunteer group who put it on had never done it before,


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November 1st, 2023. | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

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Starling House: A dark fantasy set in a vividly depicted realist world

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Starling House is the central mystery of Eden, Kentucky. Eden is a company town, and that company is Gravely Power, who provides energy to a wide swathe of the southeast. They also poison the air, soil and water of Eden. Periodically the government imposes fines, and the Gravelys pay them and move on. Starling House is an isolated mansion in the woods, close to an abandoned mine shaft that goes deep into the earth. There is less “history” about Starling House than there are rumors, and Opal,


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November 1st, 2023. ´s rating: | | | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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