Sunday Status Update: September 6, 2020

Jana: This week, while still working my way through Jonathan Strahan’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020, I also read Marie Brennan’s Driftwood and Kit Rocha’s Deal With the Devil; I enjoyed Brennan’s novella (no surprise there) and thought Rocha’s post-apocalyptic bands of mercenaries traveling around the wilds of northern Georgia and southern Tennessee had some interesting spins on both urban fantasy and romance tropes.

Kat: Just like last week, I’m extremely busy, but things should settle down by this time next week. With my son I am still reading the FARSEER books by Robin Hobb. I also read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo which I found repetitive but enlightening. (And repetition is not a bad thing in this case.)

Kelly: I was feeling in need of a palate cleanser, so I’ve mostly been reading outside the genre this week, but Caitlin Starling’s Yellow Jessamine just came out and I’m starting that this weekend. (I was supposed to have read it earlier, but had technical difficulties with the ARC.) Starling’s The Luminous Dead thoroughly creeped me out, and I’m anticipating the same from this new novella!

Marion: I finished up Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim novel, Ballistic Kiss. Stark is in his usual excellent form in this outing, which features murderous ghosts and a club of adrenaline junkies.

Sandy: Moi? I had hugely enjoyed Jack London’s postapocalyptic sci-fi book The Scarlet Plague (1912), which I reviewed here a little while back, and am currently reading a novel that this great author wrote six years before that one. The book in question is Before Adam, a fantasy that takes place in the Mid-Pleistocene era around 100,000 years ago, and I must say that this one has really sucked me right in. I hope to be able to share some thoughts on this one with you all very shortly….