Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Kelly Lasiter

Firethorn: Sarah Micklem’s prose is beautiful

Firethorn by Sarah Micklem

Reading the publisher’s blurb quoted above, you might expect a very different book from this one. It’s not that it’s inaccurate, per se. It’s just that all of the events in the blurb happen at the very beginning of the story. By page 15, Luck has fled the estate and is hiding out in the Kingswood, trying to survive on what she can forage. After what can best be described as a shamanic near-death experience, Luck believes she has been chosen by Ardor, the god of fire, for some unknown purpose,

June 24th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Sarah Micklem | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Naamah’s Kiss: Carey’s prose is as lush and sensual as ever

Naamah’s Kiss by Jacqueline Carey

In Naamah’s Kiss, Jacqueline Carey returns to the world she created in the Kushiel’s Legacy series, and introduces a delightful new heroine.

Moirin mac Fainche is a descendant of Alais de la Courcel and a member of the Maghuin Dhonn tribe of Alba. On her father’s side, she’s D’Angeline, with lines of descent from Naamah and Anael. When a tragedy changes Moirin’s young life, and an initiatory rite reveals that she has a destiny beyond the sea, Moirin travels to Terre d’Ange in search of her father.

June 16th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Jacqueline Carey | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Dead Until Dark: Sookie Stackhouse is a delight!

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Charles de Lint said once that the current urban-fantasy novels are highly focused on character, and that readers like or dislike a series based on whether they connect with the protagonist. (I wish I could find that quote!) Based on this, I’m not surprised that Charlaine Harris has, as I write this review, the top three best-selling fantasy titles on Amazon. Disclaimer: I’ve only read this first book so far, and haven’t seen the TV series. But from what I’ve seen, Sookie Stackhouse is a delight.

June 16th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter and Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5, 4 | Charlaine Harris | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Skin Trade: There’s actually a plot

Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton

Skin Trade is enough of a step in the right direction that I’m sorely tempted to give it a higher rating than it actually deserves. There’s a plot! With murders! And investigating! And I turned out to be right about Marmee Noir’s plans for Anita. And the two explicit sex scenes are better-written and less icky than what I’ve come to expect from Laurell K. Hamilton. And she’s being copy-edited again, so there are only a few typos.

June 14th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2 | Laurell K. Hamilton | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Jasmyn: An excellent grown-up fairy tale

Jasmyn by Alex Bell

“You have never heard a story quite like this one.”

Start a book with a sentence like this, and you’ve given yourself a tall order to fill. However, Alex Bell doesn’t disappoint. Jasmyn is something special indeed, putting me under its spell in a way that only a few books a year ever do.

Our heroine, Jasmyn, is devastated when her beloved husband Liam dies suddenly, just a year after their marriage. Then, at his funeral,

White as Snow: A dark, richly archetypal novel

White as Snow by Tanith Lee

A maiden is kidnapped. Her mother searches for her, disguised as an old beggar woman. A deadly fruit is eaten. The maiden dies, but not necessarily for good…

Depending on how you flesh out the rest of the tale, this could either be the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, or the fairy tale “Snow White.” Tanith Lee weaves the two together in White as Snow until it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

The Three Sisters: Badly written and edited

The Three Sisters by Rebecca Locksley

I’d been meaning to read The Three Sisters for a long time. The cover art intrigued me. I remember seeing it in the bookstore, thinking “But there are only two sisters in the picture!” and then finally noticing the third, ghostly woman in the pool. I wanted to know what these sisters’ story was. Sadly, I don’t think I’ll ever know.

The sisters, Elena, Yanimena, and Marigoth, are members of a race called the Tari. The Tari are magically gifted,

Disappearing Nightly: Some fluffy urban-fantasy fun

Disappearing Nightly by Laura Resnick

Funny fact: This book got lost in the mail on its way to me and took almost a month to arrive. I started wondering if it was a bad idea to order a book with “Disappearing” in the title! It turned up in the end, though, and I’m glad. Disappearing Nightly is a lot of fun. It was just what I needed after reading a couple of really dark novels.

Both the heroine and the plot are highly original in the urban fantasy subgenre.

June 10th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Laura Resnick | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Tender Morsels: Strange and dark retelling of “Snow White and Rose Red”

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

I have a long-time interest in adaptations of fairy tales, and so it surprised me that it took me so long to get through Tender Morsels, a strange and dark retelling of “Snow White and Rose Red.”

The beginning is promising. We meet Liga, mother of the “Snow White” and “Rose Red” characters, as a traumatized teenager. She is sexually abused by her father and later raped by town boys, and Margo Lanagan handles these sensitive topics well. The actual abuse is never described in detail,

All Night Awake: Not as good as Ill Met

All Night Awake by Sarah A. Hoyt

I wasn’t expecting a sequel to Ill Met by Moonlight. That novel was complete and satisfactory in itself, so the appearance of a sequel came as a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like All Night Awake quite as much as Ill Met by Moonlight, for several reasons. First, the metaphysics were more confusing than in the first book. Second, the constant use of Shakespearean quotes gets a little heavy-handed from time to time.

May 31st, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3 | Sarah A. Hoyt | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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