Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Marion Deeds

The Lives of Tao: Ian Fleming with lattes instead of martinis

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

Before the first animals showed up on Earth, immortal incorporeal aliens crash-landed on our planet. They’ve been trying to get back to their own planet ever since. Their strategy has been to promote the intellectual and technological development of the most promising animal species they could find — humans. They do this by inhabiting certain promising humans and guiding their thoughts and actions. They knew it would take thousands of years, but someday they will direct humans to create the spaceships they need to get home.

Writing the Other

Terry Weyna and I attended the 2013 Nebula Awards Weekend in San Jose, California last week. The event focused mostly on the Saturday awards banquet, and programming was rather light, but I did attend a panel called “Writing the Other,” subtitled, “How do we write about what we cannot know?”

“Writing the Other” looked like the staff of a think-tank. Saladin Ahmed (Throne of the Crescent Moon), Kim Stanley Robinson, (2312, which won the Nebula), Ken Liu (“Paper Menagerie”) and Aliette de Bodard (who would win for the novelette “Immersion”) made up the panel.

May 23rd, 2013. Marion Deeds | Aliette De_Bodard, Ken Liu, Kim Stanley Robinson, Saladin Ahmed | Thoughtful Thursday | 15 comments |

The Human Division: A pleasing roller coaster ride of a book

The Human Division by John Scalzi

The Human Division is a fast-paced roller coaster of a book. At the Nebula Awards this weekend in San Jose, California, John Scalzi politely informed me that this was the fifth book in a series, which starts with Old Man’s War. I haven’t read the other four (which I will be correcting soon) but I understood pretty well what was going on in this universe, although I may have missed some nuance.

The Colonial Union left earth to colonize space about two hundred years ago.

The Red Plague Affair: Steampunk with a mythological twist

The Red Plague Affair by Lilith Saintcrow

It is never easy to start a series with a sequel, and The Red Plague Affair is the sequel to the first book in Lilith Saintcrow’s BANNON AND CLARE series, The Iron Wyrm Affair, which introduced these characters. (The Damnation Affair is a related novel set in the same world with different characters.) I haven’t read The Iron Wyrm Affair, but The Red Plague Affair was still pretty accessible.

May 17th, 2013. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Lilith Saintcrow | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Triton: The Trouble with Triton; its main character, for starters

Triton by Samuel R. Delany

Samuel R. Delaney wrote Triton in 1974, but it was published in 1976, after his best-seller Dhalgren. Delany’s subtitle for this book was “An Amorphous Heterotopia,” and he stated at the time that the book was inspired by (or a response to) Ursula LeGuin’s “ambiguous utopia” The Dispossessed. Oh, how I wish that I had re-read that book instead of picking up this one.

Delany is a brilliant observer of humanity.

Raven Girl: Haunting artwork enhances this “new” fairy tale

Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger’s Raven Girl is a slim book that straddles categories. I thought it would be a graphic novel. It isn’t, quite. At 75 pages, I’d call it an illustrated novella. Niffenegger, in her Acknowledgments, calls it a new fairy tale. It certainly has fairy tale aspects, especially a “happy ending” that arrives almost out of nowhere, but it goes beyond traditional fairy tales. The book, Niffenegger tells us, was based on a story she created for the Royal Ballet in London, for a new ballet.

May 13th, 2013. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Audrey Niffenegger | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Reaper’s Legacy: Suspenseful and strange young adult adventure

Reaper’s Legacy by Tim Lebbon

Reaper’s Legacy is the second book in Tim Lebbon’s young-adult paranormal adventure series TOXIC CITY. In London Eye, someone released a strange serum or toxin called Evolve into London, two years earlier, a day now called Doomsday. Millions died. The world has been told that the entire city is a poisoned wasteland, cut off from the rest of England, but within the city, the survivors are changing, mutating, developing paranormal abilities.

The Exiled Blade: A satisfying finish to an imaginative series

The Exiled Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

But the real battle was with himself. All the battles that really mattered were with yourself.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood ends The Exiled Blade, book three in his Acts of the Assassini series, with a spectacular three-act battle, and a wedding. This is a pleasing, sad, and haunting ending to his alternate history fifteenth century Venetian tale, where political intrigue and martial prowess function side by side with shape-shifters, demons and magic.

At the end of the second book,

May 6th, 2013. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Jon Courtenay (Jonathan) Grimwood | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Warlord of the Air: Political message doesn’t overwhelm the adventure

The Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock

In 1971, Michael Moorcock published a trilogy called Nomad of the Timestreams. Titan Books is reissuing this series. The first book, The Warlord of the Air, introduces us to Oswald Bastable, a captain of the 53rd Lancers in 1902, who, through a bizarre occurrence is hurled into 1973 — a 1973 that is very little like the one our history books, or Wikipedia, tell us about.

Moorcock is an excellent writer, and in The Warlord of the Air he set out to create a late Victorian/Edwardian pastiche.

April 19th, 2013. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Michael Moorcock | SFF Reviews | no comments |

SFF vacation brochures

It’s that time of year when humans are planning their summer vacations. Your task this week is to create a vacation brochure for any destination found in speculative fiction. You can’t upload images here, but if you want to use images, you could create your brochure elsewhere (e.g. Google docs) and submit a link. Here’s my vacation brochure for Arrakis, which I think would be a great place to take a Honeymoon:

Visit Arrakis!

Looking for a change of pace from frantic tropical vacations, with all that hang-gliding, drink-sipping, body-surfing, massage-getting madness?

April 11th, 2013. Marion Deeds | Giveaway!, Thoughtful Thursday | 6 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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