Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Marion Deeds

The Constantine Affliction: A witty gender-bending romp

The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton

T. Aaron Payton’s The Constantine Affliction (2012) is a witty gender-bending romp through Victorian London as it never was. Most of us will call this “steampunk.” Payton prefers “gonzo-history.” I say, “whatever works.”

Ellie Skyler, who is assumed to be male, makes her living as a journalist using the pen name “E. Skye.” She plans to go in male attire into one of the city’s clockwork brothels, where the prostitutes are nearly perfect simulacra of human women, to write an expose.

August 8th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | T. Aaron Payton | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart: 25 works by an accomplished stylist

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Caitlín R. Kiernan is a powerful writer, with a prodigious vocabulary, a mastery of prose and the ability to ground a sentence with a perfectly chosen detail. Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, published by Subterranean Press, contains 25 works by this accomplished stylist. Many of the works have graphic sexual imagery and intense sexual violence. In many cases that is the sole intent of the piece.

I have no complaints at all with the line-by-line prose, but the anthology is a mixed bag.

AMULET: The Stonekeeper & The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

The Stonekeeper & The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

Kazu Kibuishi is the author of the AMULET series, a set of young adult graphic novels published by Scholastic. Book One, The Stonekeeper, and Book Two, The Stonekeeper’s Curse, are fast, accessible stories with likeable characters who face difficult challenges.

In The Stonekeeper, Emily and Navin’s impoverished mother moves them away from everything they know after their father is killed in a car accident on an icy road.

Tin Swift: All three of me loved it

Tin Swift by Devon Monk

Tin Swift is the second book in Devon Monk’s AGE OF STEAM series. The first, Dead Iron, introduced the characters we follow in this book: Cedar Hunt, honorable bounty hunter and werewolf; Wil Hunt, Cedar’s wolf brother; Mae Lindson, a widowed witch; Rose Small, a young orphaned woman with a magical ability to work metal; and the enigmatic Madder brothers. The three brothers have pressed Hunt into service on their quest to find and bind a magical artifact from another realm,

July 19th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Devon Monk | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

This is the part where you run and scream a lot.

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Intrepid, a spaceship that has the reputation of killing off most of its non-essential crew. The captain and senior officers and one or two especially good-looking guys always come back from planetary “away” missions alive (though often mangled up a bit), but always, always, at least one, and often many more,

Albert of Adelaide: Meet this brave and honest platypus

Albert of Adelaide by Howard L. Anderson

“He was beginning to feel that his escape from the zoo and his flight through the desert had been for nothing. Here he was, where Old Australia was supposed to be, a place where he was to have a home, friends, and others of his kind. Now he was finding that the only way he could even get a beer in this country was at gunpoint.”

Albert of Adelaide (2012) is a new entrant into the ranks of talking animal books.

Noctuary: A horror collection

Noctuary by Thomas Ligotti

“For we are the specters of a madness that surpasses ourselves and hides in mystery. And though we search for sense throughout endless rooms, all we may find is a voice whispering from a mirror in a house that belongs to no one.”

Thomas Ligotti is a master of madness. He writes short stories in the horror vein. Subterranean Press has collected eight of them, along with twenty vignettes or “flash fiction,” not more than 750 words, in the anthology Noctuary (originally published in 1994).

Blood on the Bayou: Forget the romance, babe

Blood on the Bayou by Stacey Jay

Blood on the Bayou, by Stacey Jay, starts with a nightmare and ends with a wedding. In between, Annabelle Lee learns more about her growing magical powers, the nature of the toxic fairies who menace humanity, and the secrets of her own heart.

Annabelle Lee… sounds all dreamy and ethereal, doesn’t it? Well, forget the romance, babe. Lee is a hard-drinkin’, hard-lovin’, kick-ass redhead doing a dangerous job in the war zone of Louisiana, where venomous sparrow-sized fairies have driven humans to live behind iron fences and travel in head-to-toe exposure suits.

July 12th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Stacey Jay | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Minority Council: Swift and Griffin at their best

The Minority Council by Kate Griffin

The thing that gives Matthew Swift, London’s last urban sorcerer and Midnight Mayor, his extraordinary power is that he loves London. He loves the gritty streets, the posh apartment buildings, glowing graffiti, the blowing trash, the murky river, the pigeons, rats and urban foxes. He loves the underground, the trains, buses and cars. He loves the hole-in-the-wall diners and take-outs, the stink of diesel and petrol fumes, curry and incense. It is this love that gives him his power, and this love that makes Kate Griffin’s The Minority Council the best MATTHEW SWIFT book since A Madness of Angels.

July 4th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Kate Griffin | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Horns: Frightening, sad and ultimately hopeful

Horns by Joe Hill

CLASSIFICATION: Horns is a murder mystery/love story/revenge thriller with a dark supernatural twist in the vein of Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub.

FORMAT/INFO: Horns is 384 pages long divided over 4 titled Parts and 50 numbered chapters. Narration is in the third-person, mainly via the protagonist Ignatius “Ig” Perrish, but also includes narratives by the villain and Ig’s older brother Terry. Horns is self-contained.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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