Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi
Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi is a collection of sixteen science fiction stories by the author of Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (one of my most pleasurable reads lately). As with any story collection, Convergence Problems varies in impact of each individual piece, but if I wasn’t blown away by any of the tales save one, the collection as a whole is nicely consistent along the 3-4 scale,
February 15th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Wole Talabi | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle
Our Moon (2024), by Rebecca Boyle, is an engrossing tour of our relationship with our closest celestial neighbor, full of the usual (and less familiar) facts, while delving into science, history, and culture as Boyle, as she says, explains “How the moon was made, how the Moon made us, and how we made the Moon in our image.”
Boyle starts off not on the Moon but on Earth three-quarters of a century ago with a 39-year-old marine waiting to begin the Allies’ attack on Tarawa Atoll,
February 9th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Allure of the Multiverse: Extra Dimensions, Other Worlds, and Parallel Universes by Paul Halpern
The Allure of the Multiverse by Paul Halpern delves into the scientific history of the theory that seems to have taken over pop culture. Admittedly difficult at time thanks to the relatively esoteric nature of some of the theories such as string theory or M-brane theory, and also perhaps a bit mistitled, it remains a mostly clear exploration of 20th and 21st century physics.
The book opens with what might come as a surprise to some readers who have steeped in the multiverse concept via film,
February 2nd, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Robots and the People Who Love Them by Eve Herold
Robots and the People Who Love Them, by Eve Herold, is a solid look at the potential impact of social robots on our lives, though more timely research and a more focused structure would have improved the book.
Herold’s focus here is not on “robots”, but on social robots, those that we will interact with regularly and often closely. Think robots in the fields of elder care, education, child care, and companion robots (both the platonic sort and the sexbot sort).
January 26th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Crucible of Chaos by Sebastien de Castell
Estevar hauled up on his mule as Castle Aramor came into view through the dampening fog. The mule turned back with a baleful look.
“I know, I know. Do you think I’m enjoying this foul weather any more than you are?”
The mule dipped its head and turned it slightly aslant, looking upward at Estevar, as if to note that while they both shared the same weather, only one of them had the other’s weight as additional burden. A substantial weight at that Estevar had to acknowledge.
January 23rd, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Sebastien De-Castell | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Treacle Walker (2022), by Alan Garner, is a little book, a strange book, a layered book, a mystifying book, a linguistic romp of a book, a stimulating book, a delightful book. It may also be, to employ two of the many Google-necessitating words from its pages, a hurlothrumbo or lomperhomack, a macaroni or taradiddle of a book, though I’ll leave it to your own investigations as to whether any of those fit (if those few examples of Garner’s dialect didn’t scare you off,
January 15th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Alan Garner | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Reinvented Detective edited by Cat Rambo & Jennifer Brozek
As is typically the case for story anthologies in my experience, The Reinvented Detective, part of an anthology series edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek, was a mixed bag, with stories ranging from excellent to good to flat at best.
All of the stories are set in the future, though the time spectrum runs from the relatively near-future to a few decades to a far-flung future of interstellar travel. Settings move from the “real world” to the virtual one (sometimes within the same story),
January 9th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Cat Rambo, Charles Coleman (C.C.) Finlay, Harry Turtledove, Peter Clines | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen by Bradley P. Beaulieu
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen is an enjoyable start to a new fantasy trilogy by Bradley P. Beaulieu. Though the novel has a few issues, Beaulieu offers up an interesting world, a complex political set-up, and a nicely original use of that old fantasy standby, the dragon.
Ancris is the chief city of a long-standing, aggressively imperialistic empire, with the “vassal state” of the Holt having held them off enough to carve out a small amount of self-rule (within the empire) under their political leader known as the Imperator.
January 3rd, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Bradley P. Beaulieu | SFF Reviews | no comments |
2023’s Memory Reborn is the third book in David Walton’s LIVING MEMORY series, which started with Living Memory and introduced us to individuals from an advanced society living during the Cretaceous Period, and who happened to be dinosaurs (maniraptors to be precise). Reading Memory Reborn, we were both eager to see how Walton resolved the many, increasingly complex problems the modern-day characters, both human and dinosaur, faced. Neither of us expected the love story to be the plot line that grabbed us the hardest.
December 22nd, 2023. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | David Walton | SFF Reviews | no comments |
We Are the Crisis by Cadwell Turnbull
As I was thinking how to start this review of Cadwell Turnbull’s We Are the Crisis, planning on noting how it slots into the category of “one of those books I admired but didn’t fully fall into,” I thought I’d refresh my memory of my thoughts on its predecessor, No Gods, No Monsters. And darn if I didn’t open that review with “the book had me admiring it more than enjoying it.” So I guess we’re both pretty consistent,
December 19th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Cadwell Turnbull | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
I really enjoyed this book. The lack of melodrama (as "plot") was a feature, not a bug, I think. Parts…
good points Mariion-. I actually had meant to talk about the ham radio but the review was getting long (I…
You got your review up before I could even write one. I loved this book--one of my favorite reads of…
Hey, any book with a ghost, a goat girl AND a vampire can't be all bad, right?
Whoa! Cool.