The God Engines by John Scalzi
AUTHOR INFORMATION: John Scalzi’s debut novel, Old Man’s War, was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. His other science fiction novels include Agent to the Stars, The Android’s Dream, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale. He has also written several non-fiction books, The Sagan Diary novella,
November 12th, 2009. Robert Thompson, Kat Hooper, Terry Weyna and Jason Golomb | John Scalzi | Audio | SFF Reviews | 11 comments |
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
That the twelfth book in a series is entitled The “Gathering” Storm probably points to a fundamental problem with the series. I mean, we’re eleven books (long, long books by the way) down and the storm is only just “gathering”? And anyone who has stuck with The Wheel of Time thus far (which I’m assuming is pretty much everyone reading this because otherwise why the heck are you reading this?), knows that pacing has been a big problem in Robert Jordan’s work,
October 27th, 2009. Bill Capossere and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan | Audio | SFF Reviews | 12 comments |
Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green
Agents of Light and Darkness, the second book in Simon R. Green‘s Nightside, once again follows the almost always abstruse John Taylor, the private detective who is really good at finding things. In Something From the Nightside we learned that John is a former Nightside badass who developed a conscious during his time away from the Nightside and returned to help someone in need. Agents of Light and Darkness follows a similar premise,
October 20th, 2009. Justin Blazier and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Simon R. Green | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Imagine what would happen if P.G. Wodehouse and Jane Austen got together and wrote an urban fantasy novel. Gail Carriger did (that’s how she describes this novel) and the result is a delightfully amusing paranormal romance. Soulless is the story of Alexia Tarabotti, who has the social misfortune of being a spinster with a dead Italian father; not having a soul is just an additional burden to bear. Then she gets attacked by an ill-mannered vampire. That’s when Lord Maccon gets involved.
October 9th, 2009. Ruth Arnell and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Gail Carriger | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Something From the Nightside by Simon R. Green
I picked up Something From the Nightside on Jim Butcher‘s recommendation and I enjoyed it for what it was: not high literature, but a fast fun read.
John Taylor is a private detective with a gift for finding things. He takes a case about a missing girl that forces him to confront his past and enter the Nightside. John Taylor has a serious reputation in the Nightside and he thought he had left that world behind years ago.
October 2nd, 2009. Justin Blazier and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Simon R. Green | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A.J. Hartley is best known as a writer of best-selling mystery-thriller novels, as a distinguished professor of Shakespeare in the English Department at University of North Carolina, and as editor of the Shakespeare Bulletin published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Dr. Hartley’s theater expertise is readily apparent in Act of Will, the first book of his first fantasy series.
It’s Will Hawthorne’s 18th birthday and he is finally a man. Today he hopes to be promoted to playing male parts and penning plays for his acting company.
October 2nd, 2009. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | A.J. Hartley | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Phoenix Endangered by Mercedes Lackey
I got through about three quarters of The Phoenix Endangered on audio. This was a sluggish and clunky second installment in The Enduring Flame trilogy. The writing was dull and not much happened to advance the plot. By the time a battle finally started, I couldn’t muster up enough interest to participate.
Even more than the last book, this one was full of two teenage boys brooding, bickering, whining, and being noble. Half of what they say is said “sulkily,”
September 28th, 2009. Kat Hooper´s rating: 1.5 | Mercedes Lackey | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
CLASSIFICATION: Set in an alternate history Seattle, sometime around the year 1880, Boneshaker is a steampunk-flavored adventure that incorporates elements of zombie horror, pulp fiction and post-apocalyptic retrofuturism. Think The Wild Wild West meets Fallout (a videogame series) meets George Romero…
FORMAT/INFO: Page count is 416 pages divided over 28 numbered chapters, an Epilogue, and an excerpt from Unlikely Episodes in Western History which serves as the prologue. The book also includes a map and an Author’s Note regarding the historical and geographical liberties taken in the novel.
September 25th, 2009. Robert Thompson, Bill Capossere and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Cherie Priest | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo
Kate DiCamillo’s new work, The Magician’s Elephant, takes a little bit of warming up to early on, but the simple and sometimes poetic prose combined with the fairy tale/fable-like atmosphere and style starts to win the reader over, first charming them, then moving them. By the end, which comes quickly since it’s more novella than novel, both the prose and emotional impact have deepened and intensified, making this a novella well worth reading oneself and to one’s children.
September 12th, 2009. Bill Capossere, Terry Weyna and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Kate DiCamillo | Audio, Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber
Brilliance Audio and Audible Frontiers have recently produced audio versions of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, so it seemed like a great time for me to finally read them. Within two minutes of putting Swords and Deviltry on my MP3 player and pressing play, I was completely enthralled. The first part of the novel (which is really a compilation of short stories) tells the tale of Fafhrd’s liberation from the taboos, close-mindedness, and “icy morality” of his mother and clan (and the girl he got pregnant) in the northern wastes.
September 3rd, 2009. Kat Hooper, Rob Rhodes, John Hulet and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 4.5 | Fritz Leiber | Audio, Hugo Award, Nebula Award | SFF Reviews | no comments |
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