Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Marion Deeds

Eyes Like Leaves: A gifted writer’s beginnings

Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint

The magic is leaving the Green Isles. The Summerlord Hafarl’s staff has been broken, and the Everwinter is coming to blanket the islands in snow forever. To make matters worse, the Vikings are raiding up and down the shore, laying waste to everything in their way. It’s up to Puretongue, leader of the dhruides, to weld together the last scraps of the Summerlord’s power that can be found in the people to create a defense against Lothan, and bring summer and magic back to the isles.

Shadows West: Three screenplays by the Lansdales

Shadows West by Joe R. and John L. Lansdale

Reading a screenplay is a different experience from a novel or short story. A screenplay strips the story down to dialogue and action, with some visuals. There is no interior monologue or author philosophizing, or at least, not much. It can be refreshing.

Joe R. Lansdale, who has written crime novels, mystery, dark fantasy and horror, provides three screenplays for the interested reader in Shadows West. Two of the trio were written with his brother John Lansdale,

January 30th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Joe R. Lansdale | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Medicine Road: One of de Lint’s most inviting adventures

Medicine Road by Charles de Lint

Some fantasists develop gritty, realistic alternate worlds that draw in the reader. Some swoop us away on flights of gorgeous prose. Some create detailed and intricate magical systems to delight the puzzle-lover and game-player in us. And some, like Charles de Lint, create with character, tone and authorial voice an experience that invites us into the story-telling circle, suggesting we pull up a chair next to the fire, grab a schooner of ale, and settle back to hear the story.

Medicine Road is one of de Lint’s most inviting adventures.

January 27th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Charles De_Lint | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Bride Wore Black Leather: Everything I expect from NIGHTSIDE

The Bride Wore Black Leather by Simon R. Green

The Bride Wore Black Leather starts off with John Taylor walking along Nightside’s streets on the way to his office, a place he rarely goes. At first I thought that Simon R. Green was taking his time because this is the reportedly the final NIGHTSIDE novel. As the chapter progressed, though, I realized that John Taylor the character was saying farewell, as he leaves behind one aspect of his life and moves into unfamiliar ones,

January 25th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Simon R. Green | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Finch: I may never look at a shitake mushroom the same way again

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Finch, by Jeff VanderMeer, is an intricate, immersive fantasy novel with grace notes of detective noir and even espionage thriller. VanderMeer’s setting, the city of Ambergris, is one he is very familiar with and he uses specific detail to paint the city, decaying rapidly under the assault of its fungal overlords, vividly for the reader.

John Finch was not born with that name, nor is he a detective by training. Heretic, the “gray cap” or fungus-based life form to whom Finch reports,

January 21st, 2012. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Jeff VanderMeer | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Star of the Morning: A milder type of romance

Star of the Morning by Lynn Kurland

She is a beautiful mercenary girl with supernatural skill with a sword and a hatred of magic. He is a prince and arch-mage, responsible for the spells that protect his brother’s kingdom. Can these two crazy kids ever make it work?

Apparently not. At least, by the end of Lynn Kurland’s Star of the Morning, not yet. Morgan is recovering from a deadly dose of poison, and Miach is back at his brother Adhemar’s castle, putting duty ahead of his growing feelings for Morgan and trying to solve the mystery of the dark magic seeping into the kingdom.

January 18th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5 | Lynn Kurland | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Shade’s Children: Like a really well-made B movie

Shade’s Children by Garth Nix

Garth Nix published Shade’s Children in 1997. Shade’s Children is a complete book, not part of a series. It reads like a really well-made B movie. It isn’t terribly deep, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, just provides a decent action adventure.

In the near future, a cataclysmic “Change” made everyone over the age of fourteen disappear. The children have been captured and live very short lives in Dorms. On their fourteenth birthdays, the Overlords who now rule earth come and take them away to become part of the Meat Factory;

Let the Right One In: A bleak and chilly horror novel

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let the Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is a bleak and chilly horror novel that evokes classic Stephen King works like Salem’s Lot. Lindqvist is a Swedish writer and the book is set in a planned community in northern Sweden, called Blackeberg, in 1981. The novel follows several different point of view characters as the events that will change the community forever begin to unfold.

From the beginning,

The Glister: A literary horror novel

The Glister by John Burnside

Reading The Glister by John Burnside was like opening a perfectly crafted wooden box and finding inside a set of components, nested into cognac-colored velvet. Some components were made of finely worked gold and brass; some were polished wood; some were ethereal blown glass; some were made of jewels and bone. Usually, components like these fit together to form a whole: a telescope, a kaleidoscope or a theodolite. Try as I would, though, I could not get the components of The Glister to merge into one coherent whole.

IQ84: Rich and very dense

IQ84 by Haruki Murakami

In Tokyo, in 1984, a young woman in a taxi on her way to an important appointment is stuck in gridlock on an elevated highway. After getting some cryptic advice from her cab driver, she walks across several lanes of stopped traffic and makes a perilous climb down a safety access stairway to the surface streets, where she can catch a train to her destination. When she reaches those streets, she is in a different world.

Or is she?

Haruki Murakami’s 900-page IQ84 is the story of a woman,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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