Kid vs. Squid by Greg van Eekhout
Kid vs. Squid, by Greg van Eekhout, is definitely a children’s fantasy. It comes in at a slim sub-200 pages (with pretty good-sized print) and doesn’t take much time with detailed description, rich character development, or intricate plotting. That isn’t a complaint; it’s just to say that Kid vs. Squid knows who its audience is, and while it won’t dumb things down or talk down to its readers, it also won’t stretch them.
June 7th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Greg Van_Eekhout | Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS by Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan’s five-book series takes the world of Greek mythology, complete with gods, monsters, titans, Mt. Olympus, heroes, etc. and weaves it into the modern world under the premise that as the gods are manifestations of Western culture and move as the culture moves. And so when Athens was the pinnacle, Mt. Olympus was in Greece, but now that the seat of Western power has moved to America, Mr. Olympus is on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building. We all move through a sea of mythical creatures but we don’t see any of them thanks to the cloak of the Mist,
June 6th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Rick Riordan | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Slaves of the Mastery by William Nicholson
Slaves of the Mastery picks up several years after the events of The Wind Singer and in plot and structure is similar to its predecessor, though not as original in thought or imagery. Once again, the book examines a dystopic setting. In this case it is The Mastery, a city-state of slaves and masters, one of whose leaders has raided the Manth city and taken its inhabitants, including the main characters from book one, into slavery. The book once again focuses on the Hath family (including this time Pinto,
June 5th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | William Nicholson | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Leviathan Wept: And Other Stories by Daniel Abraham
Leviathan Wept is a collection of short fiction by Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price Quartet, one of my favorite fantasy epics of the past several years. I’ll admit up front that I’m not usually gung ho about story collections. I find they tend to be uneven just as part of their nature (i.e., it’s hard to get a collection of all excellent stories) and I just have a personal preference for the depth and richness of the novelistic form versus the short form.
June 4th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Daniel Abraham | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman
If Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God were a movie, its audience would have lots of reasons to walk out well before the credits. It’s a big mess of a book with major flaws in nearly all aspects: plot, character, world building, and pace, to name a few. Yet somehow, and I have yet to figure out how, it kept me marching through it, and damn if I wasn’t a bit curious about what would happen in the sequel.
June 2nd, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Paul Hoffman | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill
The Cry of the Icemark has some excellent imaginative material to work with, but it’s almost as if once the author struck gold with the idea, he decided to leave it lying in the ground. The Cry of the Icemark therefore ends up disappointing more than rewarding.
It follows 14-yr-old Thirrin, princess and heir to the throne of Icemark, a small northern kingdom threatened by an aggressive massive southern empire and its never-lost-a-battle general.
May 28th, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Stuart Hill | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Passage, by Justin Cronin, is one of “those” novels. What kind? Well, it’s one of those literary page-turners: a sleek, fast-paced, shoot-em-up, chase-em-down bestseller, destined for huge film success, that “sophisticated” readers don’t have to turn their nose up at. It’s one of those mainstream bestseller books that make use of a multitude of plot points and genre tropes lovingly claimed by fans of said genre, who will surely sniff “I was reading about army-spawned vampire-like genetic mutations wiping out the human race ages ago,” akin to those guys who only like a band when their fan base can fit into a camper van but who mock the new fans who flock to concert sites in the tens of thousands.
May 27th, 2010. Bill Capossere and Jason Golomb´s rating: 5 | Justin Cronin | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Forget everything you thought you knew about werewolves.
Forget the full moon and silver bullets. Maggie Stiefvater’s werewolves are different from any you’ve seen before. After being bitten, a werewolf changes erratically for a while, then settles into a seasonal cycle. Cold weather brings on a change to wolf form; warm weather returns the werewolf to human form. However, this cycle doesn’t last forever. As the years pass, it takes more and more heat to trigger the change back to human, until one year the werewolf remains a wolf forever.
May 26th, 2010. Kelly Lasiter and Bill Capossere | Maggie Stiefvater | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Cup of the World by John Dickinson
John Dickinson’s The Cup of the World centers on Phaedra, daughter and only child of the Warden of Trant, an all-important land/fortress in a land with a long history of internal warfare. Her combination of looks, inheritance, and intelligence makes her the prime bridal catch, even one of the two princes is her suitor, but she rejects them all for two basic reasons: fear (of losing her independence and her life as her mother did, dying in childbirth) and love (of a strange man who comes to her in her dreams).
May 22nd, 2010. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | John Dickinson | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was extremely gripping and exciting, with a great deal of plot progression.
Here, Harry is dealing with the aftermath of the return of Lord Voldemort, and coping with the fact that he is kept very much in the dark about what is happening. While at the Dursleys’ over the summer, he has been relying on the Muggle news to see whether Voldemort has started the expected killing spree and reign of terror.
May 22nd, 2010. Amanda Rutter (guest), Bill Capossere, Kat Hooper and Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | J.K. Rowling | Children | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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