Recent Posts

Tegan and Sara: Junior High by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin (An Oxford College Student Review!)

Tegan and Sara: Junior High by Tegan Quin and Sara Quin (writers) and Tillie Walden (artist)

Sophia Waite is a second-year student at Oxford College and she is considering majoring in English and Creative writing and Psychology. Her home is Dartmouth, MA, where she lives on a small family farm about five minutes away from the beach. Sophie’s favorite writers include Jay Kristoff, Amie Kaufman, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and Rick Riordan, and her favorite book is Nevernight. Her other interests include horseback riding, skiing, and writing.

You may or may not know the names of authors Tegan and Sara,

January 25th, 2025. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Elfhome: Tinker gets more confident

Elfhome by Wen Spencer

Elfhome (2012) is the third book in Wen Spencer’s ELFHOME series, and it’s definitely not where you want to start if you’re new to the series. You’ll need to have read Tinker and Wolf Who Rules first to fully grasp what’s going on and why the stakes are so high.

The story kicks off with Tinker recovering from a broken arm and being cornered by a persistent reporter who,

Undersea Quest: A very fine intro to a fun trilogy

Undersea Quest by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

In 1947, Robert A. Heinlein, after almost a decade of producing high-quality science fictional short stories and novellas for adults, came out with his first novel, Rocket Ship Galileo. The book was geared to younger readers, and would prove to be just the beginning of a landmark series of 12 “Heinlein juveniles,” all published by the U.S. firm Scribner’s. Heinlein – who, in 1974, would be proclaimed the first Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America – would come out with at least one such book for younger readers every year until 1958.

January 23rd, 2025. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Frederik Pohl, Jack Williamson | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

WWWednesday: January 22, 2025

Reactormag shares a couple of forthcoming 2025 releases, among them the latest by Charlie Jane Anders and a dragon book by Cherie Radke.

They also shared an excerpt from T.J Klune’s latest, The Bones Beneath my Skin.

Best Of Lists, Recommended Reading lists, nomination suggestions… it’s that time of year. Nerds of a Feather starts with their recommended list of fiction and visual work categories.

John Scalzi announced completion of The Shattering Peace,

January 22nd, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |

Ordinary Monsters: A dense, complicated, visual feast of a book

Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro

…And the way a child looked at him in the harbor at Alexandria as he climbed down the gangway and into the haze. All this, all this and more, would vanish from the world with his ceasing, all this ineradicable beauty that now lived only inside him would be lost, moments as fragile as coins of light on water, and this more than any other part of it made him feel alone and sorrowful and frail…

2022’s Ordinary Monsters, Book One of THE TALENTS,

January 21st, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | J.M. Miro | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Voyage Home: Powerful, in a quieter fashion

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

Amongst the flood of Greek myth retellings over the past number few years, three authors have stood out to me. Two are Madeline Miller and Claire North, the first for her fantastic Circe (not to mention the brilliant The Song of Achilles from a decade earlier) and the second for her excellent and just-concluded SONGS OF PENELOPE trilogy. The third is Pat Barker and her WOMEN OF TROY series,

Mother of Rome: An uneven book

Mother of Rome by Lauren J.A. Bear

Lauren J.A. Bear’s first novel, Medusa’s Sisters, was a sharp feminist retelling of the well-known Greek tale. For her second book, Bear has left the Greeks behind and moved on to the Romans, giving us in Mother of Rome a sort of prequel to the Romulus and Remus Found Rome story. Though I found Mother of Rome to be more uneven than Medusa’s Sisters,

Dark Feasts: Where’s the fun?

Dark Feasts by Ramsey Campbell

The last two books that I finished in 2024 had this in common: They were both collections that were chosen for inclusion in Jones & Newman’s excellent overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books (1988). I just loved Karl Edward Wagner’s In a Lonely Place (1983), as it turned out, and much enjoyed Lisa Tuttle’s A Nest of Nightmares (1986), although some of the stories in that latter volume had proven disappointing for me by dint of their ambiguity.

WWWednesday: January 15, 2025

The New York Times profiles Nnedi Okorafor and her forthcoming autobiographical novel. (This article may be behind a paywall.)

Thanks, File770, for introducing me to yet another “—punk” category: Incensepunk. Also, you can click on their submission guidelines if this is a market where your short fiction would fit.

At Reactor, Molly Templeton takes a thoughtful look at the nature of “escapism” in fiction.

Speaking of thing I wish I could escape… because I do cover stories of genre interest, I’m including a link to this week’s Variety article about the allegations about Neil Gaiman.

January 15th, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |

The Spite House: First class cursed-house horror

The Spite House by Johnny Compton

Spite houses are real and I went down a shallow rabbit hole preparing for this review. With his 2023 novel, The Spite House, Johnny Compton takes on the concept of a house built solely to irritate and harass nearby landowners, and morphs it into something original and scary.

Eric Ross and his two daughters, Dessa and Stacy, are making their way through Texas, trying to keep under the radar. They have the normal concerns a black family in Texas would have,

An Instruction in Shadow: Goes down smoothly

An Instruction in Shadow by Benedict Jacka

An Instruction in Shadow is Benedict Jacka’s follow up to An Inheritance of Magic, his tale of modern-day magic and family intrigue set in London. The main character remains likably engaging, the magic intriguing, the family history labyrinthine, and if the story doesn’t perhaps progress quite as much as one would prefer, it all results in a smoothly enjoyable read.

Stephen Oakwood is continuing to hone his “drucraft” while working at locating magical wells for a big drucraft company,

January 10th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Benedict Jacka | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Wolf Who Rules: Pittsburgh gets weirder

Wolf Who Rules by Wen Spencer

Wen Spencer’s Wolf Who Rules (2006) is the second book in her ELFHOME series, blending urban fantasy and science fiction in an alternate Pittsburgh. In my review of the first book, Tinker, I explained that while I loved the premise and setting, I didn’t think Spencer fully capitalized on its potential. I wanted more weird Pittsburgh—the cultural oddities of a city stuck in an elven dimension were intriguing but underexplored. I found Tinker‘s plot overburdened with infodumps and the protagonist’s characterization leaning heavily into Mary Sue territory,

WWWednesday: January 8, 2025

John Scalzi announced some changes at Whatever, his venerable blog site.

Rosalind Franklin provided remarkable and invaluable data in the discovery of DNA, but Watson and Crick didn’t exactly steal her work—they were just clueless sexists. From 2015.

While reading The Spite House, I got interested and found a couple of interesting articles about the residences. Here’s one.

The BAFTA longlist for 2025 is out, with Emelia Perez and Conclave at the top. Wicked and Dune II also drew nods.

January 8th, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

The Militia House: A cursed house reveals the horror of war

The Militia House by John Milas

2023’s The Militia House is the debut novel of John Milas. Set in Afghanistan in 2010, it follows a team assigned to a Landing Zone as they are drawn into an abandoned Russian-invasion-era “militia” house close to their base. The sense of dread grows as the story continues, veering into a surreal world, but as in real life, the greatest horror may simply be war.

Our first-person narrator is Corporal Loyette, and his team consists of Johnson, Blount and Vargas.

WWWednesday: January 1, 2025

The Unkillable Princess is the second book in a series, but it sounds fun and Nerds of a Feather’s review did it justice.

Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth discuss E. Catherine Tobler’s moody story, “To Drive the Cold Winter Away,” over at Reactor.

File770 had this link to a Doc Savage; Man of Bronze action figure. A belated Christmas present for Sandy?

This is an idiosyncratic list but had some names that were new to me—and a preview of a new Heather Fawcett I didn’t know was coming!

January 1st, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |

Dorohedoro (Volume 1) by Q Hayashida (An Oxford College Student Review!)

In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today, I am proud to present a review by Mandy Sun:

Mandy Sun is a second-year student at Oxford College and is majoring in Computer Science.

December 28th, 2024. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

A Nest of Nightmares: A very fine collection of horrifying ambiguities

A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle

And so, I have just come to the end of another lot of nine volumes from the remarkable publisher known as Valancourt Books. And what an ennead they were! In chronological order: Ernest G. Henham’s The Feast of Bacchus (1907), in which a pair of comedy and tragedy masks influences whoever comes into their orbit; L. P. Hartley’s Facial Justice (1960),

WWwednesday: December 25, 2024

Happy Christmas and Happy Hanukkah if you celebrate. Happy Wednesday if you do not.

The Prometheus Society narrowed the finalists for its 2024 award to four diverse works (and creators) who excellently modeled libertarianism. The short list includes Rudyard Kipling, Poul Anderson, Charles Stross and the musical group Rush.

The Christmas tree is an integral part of the Christmas season for many folks. It has its roots in the Yule celebration, from the Nordic lands.

This article in Reform Judaism discusses the origin of the holy day Hanukkah,

December 25th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

In a Lonely Place: Tennessee Dread

In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner

In any number of my book reviews here on FanLit, I have had cause to refer to editor Karl Edward Wagner’s famous Wagner 39 List. This three-part list, which originally appeared in the June and August 1983 issues of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, enumerated the editor’s choices for the 13 Best Supernatural Horror Novels of all time, the 13 Best Nonsupernatural Horror Novels of all time, and the 13 Best Sci-Fi Horror Novels of all time;

The Great White Space: Black mountain side

The Great White Space by Basil Copper

For those of you who have read everything written by the great H. P. Lovecraft but are still hankering for another solid dose of cosmic horror and tentacled monstrosities, hoo boy, have I got a doozy for you! Although written four decades after the so-called “Sage of Providence” dominated the field of weird fiction in the 1930s, this book – Basil Copper’s The Great White Space – is such a convincing pastiche that all fans of the genre should be left happily grinning nevertheless.

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