The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons
Jenn Lyons’ The Ruin of Kings (2019) is the first of a five-book series, A CHORUS OF DRAGONS, that didn’t fully win me over but did do just enough to keep me reading through its 500-plus pages and end up sufficiently intrigued to move on to the sequel when it eventually arrives. I just wish I could have written “excited to move on to” rather than “sufficiently intrigued.”
The novel’s structure is a bit complicated.
February 5th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Jenn Lyons | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Our exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
“Slow Victory” by Juanjo Bazan (free at Daily Science Fiction, May 24, 2018)
A time traveler heads back for a meeting in the woods with a young woman “hiding from the army of uninformed and ignorant men.” Bazan offers up a different take on time travel here, a more intimate, more quiet sort of tale than is often told in this sub-genre.
February 4th, 2019. Bill Capossere, Marion Deeds and Tadiana Jones | Karin Tidbeck | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfield offers up a great premise and a heaping sense of atmosphere in her newest novel, Once Upon a River (2018), but while the book offers up plenty of satisfying moments, I felt it fell short of its potential and was also somewhat marred by Setterfield’s lack of trust in her readers, though both of those complaints are admittedly more subjective than my typical criticism, so more than usual, one’s mileage may vary here.
As for that wholly engrossing premise,
February 4th, 2019. Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Diane Setterfield | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
You’ve seen it in the theaters, watching a film where they kill eight or nine or a dozen people through variously inventive means, but it’s always the dog that evokes the strongest reaction. “Oh, not the dog” someone always whispers (it might even be me) and then the gun barrel is leveled or the truck bears down — and we all know we can tell if this movie will end happily by if the dog lives or dies.
They almost never die, though. Not even in Independence Day or Armageddon, despite the destruction of many of the world’s major cities.
January 31st, 2019. Bill Capossere | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 38 comments |
Turned On: Science, Sex, and Robots by Kate Devlin
I confess that when I opened up Turned On: Science, Sex, and Robots (2018) by Kate Devlin, I wasn’t expecting a tour of classical literature: stories about Laodamia, who had “commissioned a bronze likeness of her [dead] husband — an artificial lover that she took to her bed.” Or the Spartan king Nabis, who had a “lifelike robot designed and dressed up to look like his dead wife, Apega.” But as Devlin cautions us, “This is not a book that’s just about sex.
January 31st, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett
Robert Jackson Bennett’s newest work, 2019’s Vigilance, is a slim (under 200 pages) but densely satirical take-down of modern American society. Set in 2030, Bennett details an America well into its decline:
There’d been a mass migration of the younger generations and immigrants out of America throughout the 2020s, leaving the nation saddled with an older generation that couldn’t work but was entitled to steadily advancing medical technology that kept them all alive for far longer than any economist had ever predicted.
January 25th, 2019. Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds | Robert Jackson Bennett | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty
I thoroughly enjoyed S. A. Chakraborty’s first book The City of Brass, which was at its core just a good story. I’m happy to report that the follow-up, The Kingdom of Copper (2019), is even better, continuing the captivating narrative but also deepening its exploration of the more serious themes that were apparent in book one but not fully mined. Fair warning: some unavoidable spoilers for the first book to follow.
January 24th, 2019. Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | S.A. Chakraborty | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
I didn’t have a great experience with the first WAYWARD CHILDREN book I read by Seanan McGuire — Every Heart a Doorway — which put me off the next few books in the series. But I decided to give the well-reviewed series another shot with In an Absent Dream (2019), and I’m glad I did as it certainly struck a far more responsive chord and has encouraged me to take a look at the others I’ve missed.
January 22nd, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Seanan McGuire | Short Fiction, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Our exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read recently that we wanted you to know about.
“Birch Daughter” by Sara Norja (2018, free at Fireside Magazine)
“Birch Daughter” is about Aino, a young woman whose mother was turned into a birch tree by an evil spell. After hearing from the forest-folk in her dreams, Aino sets out to save her mother from her fate.
There’s a certain delicacy to “Birch Daughter.” From the first few lines it made me acutely aware of every choice every character made,
January 21st, 2019. Skye Walker, Tadiana Jones, Jana Nyman and Bill Capossere | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Dispatches from Planet 3 by Marcia Bartusiak
Dispatches from Planet 3: Thirty-Two (Brief) Tales on the Solar System, the Milky Way, and Beyond (2018), by Marcia Bartusiak, is a highly readable collection of wonderfully concise explorations of various topics in astronomy/astrophysics. Each essay is only a few pages long, making the science easily digestible while still informative. Topics include black holes, dark matter and dark energy, the Big Bang, inflation, relativity, and the multi-verse, to name just a few.
For an audience that doesn’t regularly read in this area,
January 11th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one