A Veil of Spears by Bradley P. Beaulieu
Bradley P. Beaulieu returns to his desert setting in A Veil of Spears (2018), the third novel of THE SONG OF THE SHATTERED LANDS series. Book one for me remains the strongest, but both the sequel and now A Veil of Spears are worthy follow ups that both deepen and broaden the story and the characters. I’m going to assume you’ve read the first two novels (you really need to have done so),
March 20th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Bradley P. Beaulieu | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Dayfall (2018) is set in a near-future after a short nuclear war between India and Pakistan created a partial nuclear winter, casting part of the world, including New York City, into perpetual darkness. Crime has risen and Jon Phillips, a PA cop who takes own a serial killer early in the book is sent to deal with another one in the city known as the Dayfall Killer. Complicating things is the immanent return of the sun (the titular “dayfall”) and predictions of chaos and panic (think Asimov and Silverberg’s Nightfall,
March 16th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 0.1 | Michael David Ares | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Last year, for our Thoughtful Thursday St. Patrick’s Day Version I noted how the day always sees me browsing through one of my favorite Irish exports: the poetry of William Butler Yeats.
For this year’s post, I’m turning to another beloved aspect of Irish culture: the pub (which you might think couldn’t be exported, but you’d be wrong it turns out).
My best memories of Ireland are nights spent in pubs filled with and fueled by fiddle, flute and Guinness; banjo, bodhran and Guinness; pipe, tin whistle and Guinness; reels and jigs and songs and Guinness.
March 15th, 2018. Bill Capossere | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 18 comments |
The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell
The Tangled Lands is a shared-world collection of four novellas, two each written by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell. The setting is the faded remains of the once-great Jhandpara Empire, whose glory had relied on wondrously powerful magic. The dying remnants of once-glorious empires litter the fantasy canon (think the faded glory of Gondor —or Numenor before Gondor — or the seedy world of Lankhmar), but in The Tangled Lands,
March 13th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Paolo Bacigalupi, Tobias Buckell | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. This week we begin focusing on the 2017 Nebula award nominees in the short fiction categories.
Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker (2017, originally published in Asimov’s, Sept-Oct 2017 issue; free PDF available at the author’s website). 2017 Nebula nominee (novelette)
Rosie, the 55 year old narrator, is a history teacher on board a generation ship that has been voyaging through space for the better part of a hundred years,
March 12th, 2018. Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere | Sarah Pinsker | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Sky is Yours by Chandler Klang Smith
I wrestled with this review for Chandler Klang Smith’s 2018 novel The Sky is Yours from the first paragraph. I wanted to refer to it as a “zeitgeist novel.” After I wrote that, I glanced at Wikipedia and decided that, as Inigo Montoya says to the Sicilian in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” So, I’ve decided that The Sky is Yours is not a zeitgeist novel.
March 2nd, 2018. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5, 4 | Chandler Klang Smith | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Our Senses: An Immersive Experience by Rob DeSalle
Our Senses: An Immersive Experience (2018) is, perhaps appropriately given its topic, a dense and at times perhaps overwhelming exploration of how our minds take in information and make sense of it. While I found much of it utterly fascinating, and would recommend it, I have to confess there were times I was tempted to skim and felt the book became either a bit unfocused or, on the flip side, hyperfocused. It didn’t help — and this is clearly no fault of author Rob DeSalle — that the formatting on the Kindle got confused by insets,
March 1st, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Our weekly 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.
“A World to Die For” by Tobias Buckell (Jan. 2018, free at Clarkesworld, Issue 136, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue)
Be warned: “A World to Die For” can be read as a message story, because the premise involves multiple realities with greater and lesser degrees of global warming. This does not get in the way of action and adventure,
February 26th, 2018. Marion Deeds, Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere | John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman
This is the third book I’ve read by Rachel Hartman set in her fictional word. I absolutely loved the first, Seraphina, and was greatly disappointed by the second, Shadow Scale. Unfortunately, Tess of the Road (2018) falls more toward the latter than the former, making for another disappointing foray into this setting.
While set in the same world and in roughly the same timeline as the first books (it covers a lot of ground thanks to flashbacks,
February 26th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Rachel Hartman | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Dark Intercept by Julia Keller
The Dark Intercept (2017) by Julia Keller is another teen dystopia, and while it has at its core an intriguing concept, bolstered by a few well written passages, overall it feels only partially thought through, with the reader skating too far out on the thin ice of weak characterization, flimsy world-building, and poor plotting, until finally falling through.
Sixteen-year-old Violet Crowley lives (say this in Trailer Guy voice, please) in a world that has been divided into the haves of New Earth,
February 15th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Julia Keller | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
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The website youtubemusicpremium.com offers a modified version of YouTube Music Premium with features like ad-free playback and offline listening for…
The website youtubemusicpremium.com offers a modified version of YouTube Music Premium with features like ad-free playback and offline listening for…