Murderbot, the Show, premiered on Apple+ last week. Here is Reactor’s reaction to it.
Looking for a news editing job? Reactor is hiring.
Also from Reactor, five books with imposters or con artists.
The 2025 Eisner Award candidates are announced. (Thanks to File770.)
The Guardian has some thoughts on the candidates for the International Booker Prize.
Nerds of a Feather reviews an epic fantasy novel, Birth of a Dynasty,
Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay
In Written on the Dark (2025), Guy Gavriel Kay returns to his “quarter-turn from our own” world, here shifting time and place to a late-medieval “France” (Ferrieres in Kay’s universe) ruled by a “mad king.” When the king’s brother is killed by the powerful Duke of Barratin and left on the streets of Orane (think Paris), tavern poet Thierry Villar finds himself embroiled in the politics and intrigue of a world he’d never imagined himself part of, as Ferrieres tries to avoid civil war while also attempting to fend off an exterior invasion by the king of the island nation across the channel.
Talk To My Back by Muraski Yamada
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 Ritisha Lingampally:
Ritisha Lingampally is a first-year student at Oxford College and is considering majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming‘s 11th James Bond book, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was written, as was the author’s wont, while on vacation at his Goldeneye retreat on the north shore of Jamaica, at Oracabessa, in the winter of 1962 … coincidentally, not far from where filming for the original 007 movie, Dr. No, was taking place at that same time. OHMSS, which was initially released in April 1963,
The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski
I finally found a cozy, small-stakes fantasy that simply and completely entertained me. 2024’s The Crescent Moon Tearoom, by Stacy Sivinski, resonates as much with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as it does with the CW’s seminal 1990s TV show Charmed (except no one wastes away from consumption). Three witchy sisters deal with a thriving business, the Witch Council and its demands, and their own growing powers.
To be fair, the cozy subgenre isn’t my cup of tea.
I know what you’re thinking: a review of a James Bond book for a website that supposedly only deals with sci-fi, fantasy and horror? How did THIS thing get in here? Well, the fact of the matter is, several of the 007 novels written by Ian Fleming do indeed contain elements that border on the science fictional, and surely on the borderland of the fantastic. And those elements were never more pronounced than in the books featuring Bond’s archnemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld; a series of books today known as THE BLOFELD TRILOGY.
Marvel unveils their Pride Variant covers.
This is a well-written article, as the UK Guardian questions Marvel’s logic in adding a mentally unstable god to the Thunderbolts* Team.
Reactor shares an excerpt of Tochi Onyebuchi’s new hard-boiled detective novel, Harmattan Season.
Molly Templeton contemplates SF books that play with narrative form.
“Magicians guard an empty safe:” A delightful interview with a stage magician.
Looking for the box office for Sinners, I found this article about Thunderbolts*,
Aunt Tigress by Emily Yu-Xuan Qin
2025’s Aunt Tigress brings the reader a rich mix of cultures and folkloric traditions in a story rooted in the Scottish fairy tale of Tam Lin and Janet. Don’t expect a traditional telling of the story here. Emily Yu-Xuan Qin’s story takes place in modern-day Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Tam is Canadian-Chinese, struggling to put some shameful acts behind her and finish college, but her new girlfriend, Janet, and Tam’s powerful, disturbing Aunt Tigress have other plans—especially once Tam is told that her aunt has been murdered,
Quest for the White Witch (aka Hunting the White Witch) by Tanith Lee
It would be hard to imagine any reader experiencing the first two novels in Tanith Lee’s BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY – namely The Birthgrave and Vazkor, Son of Vazkor – who didn’t feel the overmastering desire to press on to Book #3 immediately after. In that first volume, which was initially released in June 1975, the reader had been introduced to a petite,
Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian
Rose of Jericho (2025) is a sequel to Alex Grecian’s wild and vivid Americana fantasy Red Rabbit. Several characters from that book appear here, as the action shifts from the 1880s Midwest to Ascension, Massachusetts, where people who die aren’t staying dead.
This review contains spoilers for Red Rabbit.
In the village of Ascension, Clarissa Sinclair is dying of cancer. Her self-centered, uncaring husband sent her to their summer home,
Sir Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, the first “Watch” book in his DISCWORLD series, is now being published as a Penguin Modern Classic.
Roseanna shares her struggles with the critical work Colourfields; Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, over at Nerds of a Feather.
Conquest of Space was meant to be the most realistic “outer space” film ever made. Did the 70+ year old classic fall short? (Thanks to File770.)
From last month,
One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed
Yes, we are cruel. Yes, the world does not use that word as a compliment as we do.
Premee Mohamed is one of my favorite writers in the field. With 2025’s themed story collection One Message Remains she reminds me once again of why I like her work so much.
These four stories all take place either within the decadent, aggressive nation of Treotan, or in one of the nations it has invaded. Treotan, dying from within, still relies on its military and continues its invasions.
Karen Russell’s newest, The Antidote (2025), is at times a great book, is at times a befuddling book, and is, in a few instances, a flawed book. The strengths of the book are many: wonderful character creation; the exploration of gravely important themes such as historical erasure, the treatment of Indigenous people, the shaming of women; a healthy dose of magical realism via a magical camera, a sentient scarecrow, and memory-vault “witches”; and wonderfully rich, vivid description. The issues crop up with regard to character presentation,
2023’s Red Rabbit, by Alex Grecian, is a solid entry in a category of speculative fiction I call fantastical Americana. Set in the American Midwest a few years after the Civil War, the book starts when some men in a town in Burden County, Kansas, put a bounty on the head of the local witch. This brings all kinds of killers into the county. Meanwhile, farther south, two former union soldiers partner up with Old Tom, self-proclaimed witch-master, and the mute child,
Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. The ABA has provided a map and a guide to bookstores with events, by state. A bookstore crawl might be fun to organize.
From 2023, Bookbub provides a list of books with magic houses. A few recent releases aren’t included, and at least one of these, The Little Stranger, is not a magic house but a haunted one. (I won’t die on that hill, but I’m at least willing to take some damage on it.) The list is still worth checking out.
The Book That Held Her Heart by Mark Lawrence
Mark Lawrence’s first title in his LIBRARY TRILOGY, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, made my Top Ten Books list the year it came out (2023), and while its sequel, The Book That Broke the World, wasn’t as strong, I still quite enjoyed it. Now Lawrence is out with The Book That Held Her Heart,
Savage Epics: The Seminal Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Edgar Rice Burroughs
I haven’t had this much pure fun reading a book since I was thirteen, which was the same age that I started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ TARZAN series.
Those TARZAN books that were a turning point for me. I collected, read, and still have the Ballantine series with the Neal Adams and Boris covers. TARZAN led me to the Ace CONAN series that was edited by DeCamp and Carter.
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (aka Shadowfire) by Tanith Lee
In Tanith Lee’s first novel written for adults, The Birthgrave (1975), Book #1 in her BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY, the reader had been introduced to a very unusual young woman. Petite, albino, in command of a range of superhuman abilities, and with no memory of her past or even her own name, she had awoken in the heart of a dormant volcano and ventured forth on an epic journey of self-discovery.
The National Space Society is awarding its inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award to Joe Haldeman.
The link takes you to the list of books pulled by the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy in response to the administration’s policies. Titles include: What Are We Fighting For? By Joanna Russ(nonfiction); Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (fiction); A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers (fiction); The Last White Man, Mohsin Hamid (fiction); Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomona (fiction),
Spirit’s End (2012) is the final book in Rachel Aaron‘s THE LEGEND OF ELI MONPRESS. You’ll want to read the first three books, The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, The Spirit Eater, and The Spirit War before picking up this one. This review will have some spoilers for the previous installments.
Ever since Tor.com became Reactor they seem to have been focusing increasingly less on books and more on visual media…
I absolutely loved how the post highlighted the intricate world-building in Foundryside. The blend of action and character depth really…
Picked up on the subtle clues, eh? :)
thanks Sandy!
Can't wait to read this!!