Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Marion Deeds

Great Bookstores: Treehorn Books in Santa Rosa, California

One of my favorite bookstores is small but mighty. Treehorn Books, specializing in used, out of print, and antiquarian volumes, occupies a simple storefront at 625 4th Street, Santa Rosa, California, between a pizzeria and a taqueria.

Keith Hotaling and Michael Stephens opened Treehorn in Santa Rosa in 1979. Originally they were a few blocks farther west in an area called Railroad Square. In the 70s and 80s, the square was what you might call, tactfully, “un-gentrified.” In the late 80s they moved up to 4th Street. Keith doesn’t remember exactly when they moved, but he knows they were there on October 17,

August 30th, 2011. Marion Deeds | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

The Pillow Friend: Too much for one book

The Pillow Friend by Lisa Tuttle

The Pillow Friend, by Lisa Tuttle, straddles two categories of fiction, psychological horror and the more conventional quasi-literary “women’s fiction.” Tuttle’s prose is exquisite. She is able to describe the thoughts and impulses of a girl growing toward womanhood in an immediate, authentic way. Her ability to set mood and place cannot be doubted. The book is dark and disturbing, but at the end, it felt less like a horror story and more like a report on a woman’s descent into insanity.

The Dragon Waiting: Stands up through nearly three decades

The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford

Here is a fantasy novel that stands up through nearly three decades and still delivers. John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting won the World Fantasy Award in 1984, and 27 years later it still offers readers an intricate and compelling story with complex, believable characters.

Ford sets his alternate universe fantasy in what would have been our fifteenth-century Europe. Since Christianity never emerged as a world religion and the Byzantine Empire rules most of Europe and Asia,

The Whisperers: A solid entry in the Charlie Parker series

The Whisperers by John Connolly

The Whisperers is Irish writer John Connolly’s eleventh CHARLIE PARKER thriller. The books are set for the most part in the USA, mostly in Maine, where Parker, the ex-cop turned private-eye turned something-more makes his home.

Underlying the plot of The Whisperers is a current theme, the question of how wounded soldiers returning home are treated by the government that put them in harm’s way. In this book, a group of Iraq war veterans is smuggling looted antiquities across the Canadian border.

The Magician King: Postmodernism meets Narnia

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

In Lev Grossman’s novel The Magicians, Quentin Coldwater — a geeky fantasy-loving high school senior — has his life turned upside down when he is invited to take an entrance exam for Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. After spending years learning the craft, and some time outside of school in a Bret Easton Ellis novel kind of existence, life is turned around again when he and several of his newfound magician friends discover that Fillory — the magical setting of a series of beloved children’s books (think Narnia and you’ve got it) — is real.

August 11th, 2011. Bill Capossere, Stefan Raets, Ryan Skardal and Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Lev Grossman | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

The Spirit Lens: Berg gives us a hero who is a true courtier

The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg

Courtiers are figures of contempt and fun in most fiction. They are craven lickspittles and influence peddlers, usually without honor. In The Spirit Lens, Carol Berg gives us a hero who is a true courtier. He is diplomatic, disciplined, strategic and loyal to his king at all costs — and the costs are great.

The Spirit Lens is the first book in the Collegia Magica series. Portier de Savin-Duplais is the librarian at the Camarilla Magica.

August 5th, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Carol Berg | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

The Wind From a Burning Woman: Dated

The Wind From a Burning Woman by Greg Bear

I don’t think early Greg Bear and I are a good match. I did not finish The Wind From a Burning Woman, a collection of short stories from the late 1970s and early 1980s. That may be part of the problem. Maybe these stories are just dated.

Bear seems to be a “writer of ideas,” and several of these tales feature fascinating “what-ifs” or technological wonders, like an asteroid shaped into a deep-space vessel, a surrealistic cathedral in a world where God has definitively Died,

The Astounding, The Amazing, and the Unknown: On the Edge

The Astounding, the Amazing and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

It’s 1943 and World War II is going strong. There are rumors that the Nazis and the Japanese may be about to unleash a deadly secret weapon against America and people are afraid. But America may be able to create some secret weapons of its own,

The Infinity Concerto: Fails to deliver

The Infinity Concerto by Greg Bear

I give myself credit for finishing The Infinity Concerto, the first book of Songs of Earth and Power, written by Greg Bear in 1986. The Infinity Concerto has a compelling opening chapter but fails to deliver on that chapter’s promise.

Michael Perrin, the book’s main character, is a sixteen-year-old boy living in southern California, an only child who wants to be a poet. At a family party his father introduces him to the composer Arno Waltiri.

July 18th, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 2 | Greg Bear | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Last Werewolf: Powerful prose and viewpoint character

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

In our Edge of the Universe column we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Glen Duncan is the author of seven previous novels including I, Lucifer, which was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was chosen by both Arena and The Times Literary Supplement as one of Britain’s best young novelists.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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