Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
I was a huge fan of V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (and much of her other work as well) and so was excited to see her new book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, was seemingly a bit similar. Unfortunately, while the writing on a sentence level remains strong, and there’s a lot of strong elements, I ended up somewhat disappointed with the tale.
July 3rd, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Victoria (V.E.) Schwab | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older
Sometimes you just have to give in to the fact that a particular book, series, or author just isn’t for you. Sadly, I think I’ve reached that point after reading The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, the third book in Malka Older’s THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MOSSA AND PLEITI.
Though I’ve never really fallen hard for any of the first three works, I say “sadly” because I love the premise behind them.
June 26th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Malka Older | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko
Adam Kotsko’s, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era — no surprise given the title — explores the “strange new worlds” of the Trek universe from Enterprise onward, managing to get about as fully up to date as one can with publication schedules, missing only the very recent Section 31 film (apparently to Kotsko’s great benefit). Aimed at the layperson despite its close readings of the shows and cultural criticism,
June 20th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Film / TV, Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser
Emily Hauser is the author of THE GOLDEN APPLES TRILOGY, a retelling of several Greek myths. But in Penelope’s Bones, she puts her Classics/Ancient History scholarship to work in the service of non-fiction, using her own knowledge and a veritable mountain of cross-discipline evidence to re-examine the role of women in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey,
June 13th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed
The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed is a cli-lit book that follows two distinct storylines, one set in the not-too-distant future wracked by climate disaster and a “hyper-pandemic” and the other set 10,000 years later in a vibrant recovered world, one that may or may not have us humans around anymore. The two-track structure is appropriate, as I had two differing reactions to the book, finding the far-future section (mostly) quite strong while having a less favorable reaction to the near-future setting,
June 5th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Tim Weed | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Luminous (2025) is the debut novel for Silvia Park, and as such evinces some of the issues that sometimes crop up in first books in areas such as structure and pace. Those issues, however, are more than eclipsed by the book’s shimmering prose, frequently moving moments, and thoughtful exploration of a number of themes, all circling around the question of what it means to be “human.”
Park sets her novel in a unified Korea, roughly twenty years after the war that ended their separation.
June 3rd, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Silvia Park | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Ashfire King by Chelsea Abdullah
The Ashfire King is Chelsea Abdullah’s follow-up to the highly enjoyable The Stardust Thief, picking up pretty immediately after the events of that book, which ended on a pretty sizable cliffhanger. While the new novel doesn’t attain the heights of its predecessor, which I called “one of the most enjoyable and captivating books” I’d read that year, despite some issues it moves the story along, deepens several of the characters,
May 23rd, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Chelsea Abdullah | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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 [some spoilers to follow in this review;
May 20th, 2025. Bill Capossere and Rob Rhodes´s rating: 5 | Guy Gavriel Kay | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
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,
April 25th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Karen Russell | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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,
April 22nd, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Mark Lawrence | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.