2023’s Red Rabbit, by Alex Grecian, is a solid entry in a category of speculative fiction I call fantastical Americana. Set in the American Midwest a few years after the Civil War, the book starts when some men in a town in Burden County, Kansas, put a bounty on the head of the local witch. This brings all kinds of killers into the county. Meanwhile, farther south, two former union soldiers partner up with Old Tom, self-proclaimed witch-master, and the mute child,
April 24th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Alex Grecian | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. The ABA has provided a map and a guide to bookstores with events, by state. A bookstore crawl might be fun to organize.
From 2023, Bookbub provides a list of books with magic houses. A few recent releases aren’t included, and at least one of these, The Little Stranger, is not a magic house but a haunted one. (I won’t die on that hill, but I’m at least willing to take some damage on it.) The list is still worth checking out.
April 23rd, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
The National Space Society is awarding its inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award to Joe Haldeman.
The link takes you to the list of books pulled by the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy in response to the administration’s policies. Titles include: What Are We Fighting For? By Joanna Russ(nonfiction); Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (fiction); A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers (fiction); The Last White Man, Mohsin Hamid (fiction); Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomona (fiction),
April 9th, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
The Story Hour has migrated from Facebook, which is owned by Meta, to YouTube. The live-story-reading site is hosted by writers Laura Blackwell and Daniel Marcus. You can read their statement about what led to this decision here.
Here is a review category I don’t see every day: Bulgarian fiction. I want to read the first one!
More in the saga of scraping and data-mining; Society of Authors published an article about the findings of their survey about proposed changes in copyright that privilege tech companies over the authors and creators.
April 2nd, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 3 comments |
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle had The Devil in Silver published in 2012. The book is set earlier than that; around 2010/2011. Starting with a Greek myth of Theseus in the labyrinth, LaValle layers horror after horror, and maze after maze, onto this scary, dread-inducing story that looks hard at the nature of powerlessness and the systems designed to keep people that way.
Pepper is a big man—that’s how he’s described in the early sentences of the book. He lives in Queens.
April 1st, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Victor Lavalle | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Echobird Press is accepting submissions for an anthology of hopeful science fiction stories. The window closes May 31, 2025. This is an opportunity for writers, and it’s very important for us to have hope, so I will include this link more than once before the deadline.
One of the fantasy’s genre most innovative and most “American” series is Alex Bledsoe’s TUFA series, and Nerds of a Feather talks about it here.
John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal participated at an event in Columbus, Ohio; she for her newest LADY ASTRONAUT book,
March 26th, 2025. Marion Deeds | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Salt-Black Tree By Lilith Saintcrow
The Salt-Black Tree came out in 2023, three months after Book One of THE DEAD GOD’S HEART duology. Three things are obvious. One: This was written as one longer book. Two: it would have worked better if it had been published that way. Three: Magical cars are cool.
Book Two opens with a repeat of the final chapter of Spring’s Arcana. After finding another part of her arcana as the emerging goddess of spring,
March 25th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Lilith Saintcrow | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Spring’s Arcana by Lilith Saintcrow
2023’s Spring’s Arcana by Lilith Saintcrow has atmospheric language and lovely descriptions. This is Book One of a duology, THE DEAD GOD’S HEART. The book is a road trip, taking us through exquisitely described scenes of fantasy, magic and mundanity. The language is gorgeous, but the story feels derivative, and the protagonist faces very little direct danger. The book ends abruptly midway through the main character’s quest, with the words “To be Continued.” Read it for the beautiful language,
March 20th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Lilith Saintcrow | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Here is a nice website with statistics and facts you might find useful.
Judith Tarr considers a “river monster” from West Africa.
After the Army removed articles about the 442nd Regiment, World War II’s most decorated regiment, they reacted to public outcry and restored the articles. The 442nd was comprised mostly of Japanese American soldiers, many of whom had family members left behind in camps.
I read several paragraphs into this article, drawn in by the sprightly tone, before I realized it was a “Five Books…” list.
March 19th, 2025. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Amazing Adventures (Marvel Super Stories Book #2)
Last November, Abrams Fanfare published their second volume of middle-grade comics stories, based on some slightly less-exposed Marvel heroes. Some, like Spider Man, are immediately recognizable, and some have had their own series recently and we know them from that. Each story is no longer than six pages, and various award-winning comic book artists and writers were invited to the anthology. The result, Amazing Adventures (Marvel Super Stories Book #2), is a pleasant sampler, and maybe an introduction to some new and interesting cape-and-mask heroes.
March 13th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Children, Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
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…
this sounds like a fun one
These weird westerns are always interesting and have been popping up more in recent times (it seemed like there was…
Looking forward to reading the review.