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 |
The Phoenix Unchained by Mercedes Lackey
I picked up The Phoenix Unchained, the first novel in The Enduring Flame trilogy by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory because I haven’t read Lackey before (and I wanted to) and this book was available for download in audio format (and I needed something for my commute). The Phoenix Unchained is a sequel to The Obsidian Trilogy which, unfortunately, is not available (yet) on audio, and which I haven’t read.
August 10th, 2009. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | Mercedes Lackey | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The wood sucks at the mind, it sucks out the dreams.
Many times I don’t like sequels because there’s nothing new to learn. Authors tend to give us all of their world-building in the first novel, so I’m often bored by a sequel. But Lavondyss blew my mind. It is, I have no doubt, one of the best fantasy novels ever written.
In Mythago Wood, Harry Keeton entered the forest with Steven and he’s been there for years.
July 23rd, 2009. Kat Hooper and Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Robert Holdstock | BSFA Award | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
The Price of Spring by Daniel Abraham
I’ve been a big fan of Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet and The Price of Spring, its concluding volume, confirms my view that it is one of the more original and best-written fantasy epics in recent years.
If you haven’t read the third volume, An Autumn War, stop reading here as you’ll run into spoilers for that book.
As has been the pattern in the series, the story picks up years after the events of An Autumn War.
July 21st, 2009. Bill Capossere and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Daniel Abraham | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins has already proven her talent for storytelling with her recently completed Gregor the Underlander series. In that series, she showed she was able to create strong characters, move plot along quickly, deftly control the rise and fall in tension, and create moving scenes. While there were some weak sections in the series (sometimes the pace moved too quickly, settings often could have been more detailed, and a few characters could have been more richly drawn), by the end she had crafted one of the best YA series to hit the shelves the past few years — a thoughtful,
July 9th, 2009. Bill Capossere, Kelly Lasiter, John Hulet, Terry Weyna and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Suzanne Collins | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
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