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WWWednesday: November 29, 2023

Another single topic column. This one Marion’s Own Idiosyncratic, Book-themed Gift Guide for the 2023 year-end holidays. These aren’t new releases or 2023 books—these contain some new books, some old favorites, and a few in between.

For the historian, feminist reader on your gift list:

Library of America: The Joanna Russ Compilation. This collection of three of Russ’s novels, including her best known, The Female Man, as well as the Alyx stories and three other award-winning and finalist stories, restores this intellectual, feminist writer to her place in history,

November 29th, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

The Truth Against the World: Dystopian, intriguing and deeply moving

The Truth Against the World by David Corbett

If you like Irish folklore and enjoyed Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and/or The Road by Cormac McCarthy, then you owe it to yourself to read David Corbett’s 2023 novel The Truth Against the World.

Corbett comes out of the crime novel tradition, and The Truth Against the World brings elements of that, and, as always, an interesting pairing of protagonists. In this case,

WWWednesday: November 22, 2023

This week’s column will be single-topic, and I’m including a giveaway. One commenter will get a hardcover edition of Richard Kadrey’s The Pale House Devil.

In October, 2023, the Library of America released a compilation of the works of Joanna Russ. Russ, a contemporary of Ursula LeGuin, Suzy McKee Charnas, Samuel Delaney, Marta Randall, Kate Wilhelm, Damon Knight and other New Wave writers, was a vocal feminist who brought literary values to her work—even her sword and sorcery stories (a genre she loved).

November 22nd, 2023. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |

Fenris and Mott: A middle-grade book about Ragnarok and keeping your word

Fenris and Mott by Greg Van Eekhout

Fenris and Mott is Greg Van Eekhout’s charming middle grade fantasy-adventure, published in 2022. Mott—short for Martha—is a Pennsylvanian recently uprooted and transplanted to southern California, and Fenris is… well, Fenris is the wolf from Norse mythology, destined to eat the moon and usher in endless winter, endless darkness, and the age of the sword.

Mott is no stranger to broken promises, and when the book opens, she has come off a long string of them. Her absentee father is famous for making promises he doesn’t keep.

Mind MGMT: A work of genius, a masterpiece

Mind MGMT Omnibus Editions Parts 1-3 by Matt Kindt (story and art)

Mind MGMT by Matt Kindt is simply one of the best comic book series ever created in my opinion. It takes some commitment to read since it is thirty-six issues long, collected in three omnibus editions with twelve issues making up each part. However, the time spent is worth it. Originally published monthly from 2012 to 2015, Mind MGMT is in the crime fiction genre, specifically the spy subgenre,

November 18th, 2023. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Hand of Kornelius Voyt: Unclassifiable but most impressive

The Hand of Kornelius Voyt by Oliver Onions

It was English author Mike Ashley, writing in Newman & Jones’ excellent overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books, who first introduced me to the remarkable collection Widdershins, from 1911. While enthusing about the eight splendidly spooky stories therein, and in particular “The Beckoning Fair One,” one of the greatest ghost stories in the English language, Ashley told his audience that in them “we find a portrayal of madness that leaves the reader uncomfortably unsure about the state of reality and sanity.” Indeed,

WWWednesday: November 16, 2023

Moms for Liberty did not prevail in most of their plans to take over school boards. Most of their 130 candidates across the nation were soundly rejected by local voters, but 50 did win. The group, founded originally to protest Covid-19 responses in schools, has now broadened their platform to an anti-history and pro-discrimination stance.

A pod of orcas sank a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar earlier this week. (I didn’t know that over the last three years they have sunk two others, making this their third. I’m also not sure if this is one pod or several.)

I try to cover awards here,

November 15th, 2023. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |

The Pale House Devil: A must for Kadrey completists

The Pale House Devil by Richard Kadrey

The demon who inhabits Pale House in Richard Kadrey’s 2023 novella The Pale House Devil is the star of the show for me. Part of this short, fairly fast-paced story is centered in its point of view, and it is one fascinating, confounding creature. It also has a habit of eating people, so… that’s bad.

In this short outing, Kadrey introduces us to Ford and Neuland, paranormal mercenaries. Ford seems to be a more or less regular human with skills in magic,

Heaven’s River: An entertaining Bobiverse story

Heaven’s River by Dennis E. Taylor

Heaven’s River (2021) is the fourth book in Dennis E. Taylor’s amusing and intelligent BOBIVERSE series. You’ll first want to read the previous three books, We Are Legion (We Are Bob), For We Are Many, and All These Worlds, or you’ll be lost. This review will contain mild spoilers for the previous books.

By this point in the Bobiverse timeline,

Widdershins: An outstanding collection of spooky stories

Widdershins by Oliver Onions

I originally picked up this hard-to-find book after reading of it in Newman & Jones’ excellent overview volume, Horror: The 100 Best Books. Widdershins is a collection of Oliver Onions‘ short stories, and was first published in 1911. Onions was supposedly a meticulous writer, writing and rewriting and rerewriting, changing words repeatedly until he felt that things were just right. And his attention to detail does indeed show. All the stories in this volume are impeccably written,

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,

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.

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

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,

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.

November 7th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Nghi Vo | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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,

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.

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

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.

November 2nd, 2023. FanLit | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 12 comments |

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.

November 2nd, 2023. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | J.K. Rowling | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

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,

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

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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It sounds like you've given it a BIT of thought! :)
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