Victor LaValle’s Lone Women (2023) is brilliant. It’s about connections, family, secrets, guilt and love. Yes, there is a monster in it. Yes, it is suspenseful, and yes, it is gory, and those are both horror trademarks, but Lone Women is filled with hidden history and restored triumphs. Is it horror? That depends on your definition of “monster.”
In 1915, Adelaide Henry flees her family farm in Lucerne Valley, California. She leaves behind a burning farmhouse and her two dead parents;
May 27th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Victor Lavalle | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Bird Box, published in 2014, was Josh Malerman’s first novel. Malerman came out of the music scene, breaking into fiction with this moody story of psychological horror. A woman and two four-year-olds take a journey down river, blindfolded, in a world where what you see can literally kill you.
In the opening sentences, Malorie decides that today’s the day. The big house is dark, every window and door covered. Even a trip out to the well,
May 23rd, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Josh Malerman | Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
If you’re a WorldCon member, you know the Hugo Voting Packets are available.
Fiction magazine Small Wonders has initiated a Kickstarter to fund its second year.
ReactorMag reports that Sandman has now cast the rest of the Endless (the siblings of Dream) including Destruction.
They also review the latest Doctor Who episode.
Here’s a fun article about Season 2 of House of the Dragon.
Atlas Obscura shares an interesting article about the Maya and their use of mirrors.
May 22nd, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |
Reposting to include Bill’s new review.
Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone
Save the world, or fix the world? Can we do either? These questions underlie the second book in Max Gladstone’s CRAFT WARS series, Wicked Problems. Other things are happening in this 2024 installment, too, and the ending, while anticipated, is a gamechanger for everyone involved.
In Book One, Dead Country, Craftswoman Tara Abernathy took on a student, the orphaned and traumatized Dawn.
May 21st, 2024. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Max Gladstone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
4,8,15,16,23,42
Lost opens in the immediate aftermath of an airliner crash on a deserted jungle island. The first character we see is a wounded Jack Shepherd, a spinal surgeon with a Messiah complex, but very soon the canvas of the Survivors of Oceanic flight 815 will be spread out before us, and what a broad canvas it is.
Filmed entirely, or nearly so, in the state of Hawaii, mostly on Oahu, Lost was beautiful, but it required some conscious suspension of disbelief to accept Honolulu as every other single city represented in the show.
May 15th, 2024. Marion Deeds | Film / TV | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 7 comments |
Ghost Station, by S.A. Barnes (2024), is a mix of haunted-house and The-killer-is-among- us horror, with a generous ladling of body horror to round it out. The standout of this space-horror novel is the setting, a deserted habitat on a dead and snowy planet, where psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray is supposed to be observing the Reclamation and Exploration Team who had a team member die mysteriously on an earlier assignment. Bray’s specialty is Eckhart-Reisner Syndrome (ERS),
May 14th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | S.A. Barnes | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
(Giveaway: One commenter will get the hardcover edition of Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes.)
Like the show itself, this is a very long column. Unlike the show, it’s only about one thing.
Lost aired on ABC from 2004-2010, six enigmatic seasons that left a vocal and devoted fanbase, and a larger audience whose reaction seemed to be more like, “Huh? What?” when they watched the final season—especially the final episode.
Lost can be purchased via Youtube or Amazon Prime. I stopped watching the show early in its original run,
May 8th, 2024. Marion Deeds | Film / TV | Giveaway!, World Wide Wednesday | 16 comments |
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
This review of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands contains spoilers for Book One, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Heather Fawcett’s second book, published in 2024, advances the adventures of scholars Emily Wilde and Wendell Bamblely as they prepare to embark on a perilous quest. It also introduces some new characters to the mix, and I’ll be interested to see if they appear again in the third book of the series.
May 7th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Heather Fawcett | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Alan Brown reviews the collected short stories of Vernor Vinge.
Coincidence time: I’d never heard of From, but I’m currently re-watching an old ABC show called Lost which featured Harold Perrineau, and so does From, which includes staff talent from Lost… which means it could go any number of ways.
Since I have been watching Lost, I wondered where Matthew Fox got to, and here’s the answer.
I didn’t know The Lazarus Project was still on,
May 1st, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 2 comments |
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
The first book in the EMILY WILDE series is a lively, lovely romp through an alternate Europe, with faeries, magic, lost kingdoms, irascible scholars and their irritating colleagues. Though completely different in tone and subject matter, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023), by Heather Fawcett, reminded me a bit of Marie Brennan’s LADY TRENT series. Both series feature a woman scientist and a story transmitted via reports or journal entries. There the similarities end,
April 25th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Heather Fawcett | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.