Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about, including some nominees for the 2016 Nebula award.
“A Militant Peace” by Tobias Buckell (2014, $2.62 at Audible)
“No nation has ever seen an invasion force like this.”Tobias Buckell’s short story “A Militant Peace” was published in Mitigated Futures, a collection of tales dealing with “the future of war,
May 22nd, 2017. Kat Hooper, Tadiana Jones and Katie Burton | Frank Herbert, Sam J. Miller, Tobias Buckell | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
In Mark Lawrence‘s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, ten SFF review blogs joined forces to read 300 self-published fantasy novels. Each blog read ten books and chose one to advance to the top ten. The book that we advanced was Kaitlyn Davis‘s The Shadow Soul (here’s our review) and we gave it a score of 5 out of 10 on Lawrence’s scale. We reviewed four of the finalists back in March and this post contains our last batch of reviews. Thanks for joining us on this quest,
May 5th, 2017. Kevin Wei, Katie Burton and Skye Walker | SPFBO | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The Girl of Ink and Stars (2016; published in the U.S. as The Cartographer’s Daughter) is Kiran Millwood Hargrave‘s debut novel. It tells the story of Isabella, a girl of 13, who lives with her father (Da) and her chicken (Miss La) on the island of Joya. Though Da was once a cartographer who travelled the globe making maps, Joya is now under the control of the despotic Governor Adori and all travel is forbidden.
May 5th, 2017. Katie Burton´s rating: 3 | Kiran Millwood Hargrave | Children | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
“In the Shade of the Pixie Tree” by Rodello Santos (March 2017, free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 99c Kindle magazine issue)
On a sunny springtime day, 14 year old Bekka, the apprentice of a wicker witch, has been sent to the pixie-orchard to pick some new pixies for the witch (the “unripe ones still on the trees,
May 1st, 2017. Tadiana Jones, Katie Burton and Marion Deeds | Amal El-Mohtar | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders, is a likeable book. The writing is fluent, filled with grace notes, witty observations and jokes that poke fun, but gently, at certain subcultures and stereotypes — mostly, the ones we all enjoy mocking from time to time.
Furthermore, in her Afterword, Anders says that if you don’t understand the story, she will come to your house and “act the whole thing out for you.
April 26th, 2017. Marion Deeds and Katie Burton´s rating: 3 | Charlie Jane Anders | Nebula Award, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
I was so excited by the premise of Stephanie Garber’s Caraval (2017) that I listed it as one of my most anticipated books of 2017. Word has it that there are already plans to make Caraval into a film and I expect it is going to get a fair amount of hype. I can understand why and yet I find I cannot give it more than three stars. I will attempt to justify the reasons why.
Scarlett spent her childhood dreaming of the magical show called Caraval and its mysterious proprietor,
April 12th, 2017. Katie Burton and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Stephanie Garber | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Bestselling author Kazuo Ishiguro isn’t known for writing fantasy, so when his novel The Buried Giant featured, among other surprising things, ogres, it caused quite a stir. Ishiguro commented on the reaction:
“I was slightly shocked by the level of prejudice, sheer prejudice, against ogres … I couldn’t understand it. It’s just another imaginary thing, like any other imaginary thing.”
Well Mr Ishiguro, I share your perplexity. Among my friends I am the only one who openly admits to a preference for fantasy fiction.
March 30th, 2017. Katie Burton | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 41 comments |
“Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang (1998, originally anthologized in Starlight 2, reprinted in Stories of Your Life and Others). 2000 Nebula award winner (novella) and 1999 Sturgeon award winner.
Being more of a fantasy lover than a sci-fi fan, I still hadn’t read the short-story superstar Ted Chiang.
March 6th, 2017. Katie Burton, Tadiana Jones, Kat Hooper and Bill Capossere | Brandon Sanderson, Ken Liu, Ted Chiang | Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small part of a Midwest state. There wasn’t so much wilderness around you couldn’t see the town. But on the other hand there wasn’t so much town you couldn’t see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness.
So reads the charming first sentence of Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree. A perfectly gothic yarn that seeks,
March 1st, 2017. Katie Burton and Jason Golomb´s rating: 4, 5 | Ray Bradbury | Children | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Our weekly sampling of free short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories that caught our attention this week.
“Masked” by Rich Larson (July 2016, free at Apex, $2.99 Kindle magazine issue. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction)
It’s been a whole month since anyone’s seen Vera, and the circumstances of us finally seeing her this weekend are going to be ultra grody-odd, so I deliberate forever doing my Face. In the end I decide to go subtle: an airbrushed conglom of three of my most flattering private snaps,
February 27th, 2017. Katie Burton, Jana Nyman, Tadiana Jones, Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere | David D. Levine, Yoon Ha Lee | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…