The Black Tides of Heaven & The Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang
J.Y. Yang’s short works of fiction have been published online and anthologized, and one particular element has always stood out to me: their ability to convincingly craft fictional circumstances and characters within a graceful economy of prose. Within the TENSORATE series of novellas, beginning with The Black Tides of Heaven (2017) and its twin The Red Threads of Fortune (2017),
November 28th, 2017. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | JY Yang | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Middle-Earth: From Script to Screen by Daniel Falconer
Getting a glimpse behind the scenes of a favorite film is always exciting — it’s rather like pulling the curtain back and, rather than seeing a humdrum old snake oil salesman, actually discovering a great and powerful wizard. David Falconer’s Middle-Earth: From Script to Screen gives credit to the several hundred wizards hard at work re-creating and re-inventing J.R.R. Tolkien’s LORD OF THE RINGS novels and The Hobbit into two sets of visual feasts.
November 23rd, 2017. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4.5 | J.R.R. Tolkien | Non-fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Whether you’ve read Ann Leckie’s IMPERIAL RADCH trilogy or not (though I highly recommend you do, as it’s excellent), there’s plenty to enjoy about Provenance (2017), a new and stand-alone novel set within the reaches of Radchaai space. The Empire-shifting events of Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy have an effect on the political schemes in progress within Provenance,
November 21st, 2017. Jana Nyman, Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Ann Leckie | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Stranger Things 2 created by the Duffer Brothers
After its unexpected success last year, Stranger Things became an instant classic and fans have been clamouring for the release of the second series ever since. With its perfect combination of nostalgia, comedy and suspense, the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, gave themselves a hell of a first series to follow up. So, did they manage to live up to the hype?
Sequels always present a conundrum: you want to give the fans more of what they want (and know), whilst simultaneously trying to create something new.
November 16th, 2017. Ray McKenzie and Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Film / TV | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Stranger Things created by the Duffer Brothers
Like The Hunger Games and Star Wars before it, Stranger Things is that rare breed of entertainment which becomes a franchise almost instantly upon release. What’s more, it firmly established Netflix’s media strategy: The Binge. With the days of having to wait a week between episodes firmly over — and at a modest eight episodes long — some people managed to finish the first series in a day. So what winning formula managed to establish such a die-hard legion of fans?
November 15th, 2017. Ray McKenzie and Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Film / TV | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Faerie Handbook by Carolyn Turgeon & the editors of Faerie Magazine
The editors of Faerie Magazine have compiled The Faerie Handbook: An Enchanting Compendium of Literature, Lore, Art, Recipes, and Projects (2017), and its eye-catching lavender-and-silver binding and satin ribbon bookmark certainly seem appealing, but do the contents match the cover?
Faerie appreciation is nothing new — there was a big craze in the middle of England’s Victorian era, justified thusly:
Real life was stark and challenging for most Victorians,
November 14th, 2017. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction, Stand-Alone | 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 Recipe for Magic” by Kat Howard and Fran Wilde (2017, free at Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog, free to download for Nook)
“A Recipe for Magic,” co-written by Kat Howard and Fran Wilde, features a curious kind of shop: at the Night and Day Bakery, magic spells are baked directly into pastries and confections,
November 13th, 2017. Jana Nyman, Tadiana Jones and Marion Deeds | Fran Wilde, Kat Howard, Neil Gaiman, Philip K. Dick | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Black Goat Blues by Levi Black
Levi Black’s Black Goat Blues (2017) is the follow-up to his fantastically twisted horror novel Red Right Hand, and while it wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, Black Goat Blues is still a compulsive page-turner that I couldn’t put down until I’d reached the end. Warning: it is essential that you read these books in order. Seriously.
Charlie Tristan Moore is now in possession of a sentient angel-skin coat and eldritch magicks of her own,
November 8th, 2017. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Levi Black | Horror | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Emma Newman’s After Atlas (2016) is the pseudo-sequel to her first sci-fi offering, Planetfall (2015). As Kat explained in her review, Planetfall is about a colony of humans who left Earth to follow Suh, an alleged prophet who received a supernatural message giving her the coordinates of an unknown distant planet where she was supposed to travel to receive instructions about God’s plans for humanity. After Atlas takes place on Earth,
November 2nd, 2017. Jason Golomb and Jana Nyman´s rating: 3, 4.5 | Emma Newman | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden
The Prey of Gods (2017), by Nicky Drayden, takes a well-worn concept — what if gods walked among regular humans? — and breathes new life into it through her innovative uses of location, technology, mythology, and complex characters in this blend of real-world problems and fantastical situations.
Life is pretty great in futuristic Port Elizabeth, South Africa (so long as you’ve got money); people have access to genetically-engineered pets, personal robots with varying degrees of intelligence and capability,
November 1st, 2017. Jana Nyman, Kevin Wei and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Nicky Drayden | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Looking forward to reading the review.
Always my pleasure, Marion! I'm almost finished with Book #3 now, and hope to be reporting on it very shortly....
After reading your review, I'm quite sure I never read this one, or Book Three for that matter. I loved…
What a fantastic review! I loved how you highlighted the blend of action and character development in "Foundryside." The intricate…
On her blog, "Aunt Beast" says she is in the early stages of working on another Tinfoil Dossier novella, so…