Before Chelle left Earth to fight in the war against the alien Os, she contracted (entered into a civil marriage) with Skip. If she returned, more than twenty years would have passed for Skip but only a few years for her: Skip would be a successful, rich lawyer, and she’d be his beautiful, young contracta. Fast forward to the start of Home Fires, the latest novel by all-round genius Gene Wolfe: Skip is indeed a rich, successful partner in his law firm,
February 17th, 2011. Stefan Raets and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Gene Wolfe | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The White City by Elizabeth Bear
The vampire-detective Don Sebastien de Ulloa and his small ‘court’ visit the White City of Moscow on two occasions, in 1897 and 1903, both before and after his sojourn in an alternative America. On both occasions, someone closely linked to a politically-active young artist, Irina Stephanova, is murdered. As the mysteries in both 1897 and 1903 unfold, Sebastien confronts a much older entity inhabiting Moscow and, ultimately, the mystery of his own forgotten past.
The White City is the third book by Elizabeth Bear featuring Sebastien,
February 10th, 2011. Rob Rhodes and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Elizabeth Bear | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The fourth book in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series, Vanished, is the best in the series so far. Harper Blaine, Richardson’s private investigator protagonist, gets a telephone call from an old boyfriend — not necessarily an unusual event, except that, in this case, the boyfriend happens to be long dead. He hints that there is much that Harper does not know that she needs to find out, quickly, and encourages her to come to Los Angeles to look into her past.
January 29th, 2011. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Kat Richardson | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Underground is the third in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series, which features Harper Blaine as a Seattle private investigator who can see the “Grey” — the borderland between reality and magic, life and death, past and present. Harper gained this ability when she died for two minutes in an attack by the subject of an investigation.
Underground starts so slowly that I feared Kat Richardson had lost her way. It’s difficult to imagine that a hard-working private investigator with plenty of work would dive into a case with no client,
January 27th, 2011. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Kat Richardson | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
I was pretty excited to read Bloodshot. I first encountered Cherie Priest by way of her Southern Gothic novel Four and Twenty Blackbirds several years ago. Since then, her name keeps popping back up in my consciousness, both as a writer of several acclaimed steampunk novels I haven’t had the chance to read yet, and as a Person Who Says Interesting Things on the Internet. So when I heard she was dipping her authorial toes into one of my favorite subgenres,
January 24th, 2011. Kelly Lasiter and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3, 5 | Cherie Priest | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
CLASSIFICATION: Combining alternate history with the supernatural, The Fallen Blade is kind of like Jasper Kent’s Twelve and Thirteen Years Later crossed with Anne Rice’s vampires and Underworld’s lycans, written in the style of Glen Cook.
FORMAT/INFO: The Fallen Blade is 464 pages long divided over two Parts, sixty-three numbered chapters,
January 20th, 2011. Robert Thompson, Stefan Raets and Marion Deeds | Jon Courtenay (Jonathan) Grimwood | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht
FORMAT/INFO: Of Blood and Honey is 300 pages long divided over 27 numbered chapters and an Epilogue. Narration is in the third person via Liam Kelly, his mother Kathleen, and Father Murray. Of Blood and Honey can be read as a stand-alone novel, but offers many opportunities for future sequels. February 2011 marks the North American trade paperback publication of Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey via Night Shade Books.
January 17th, 2011. Robert Thompson and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Stina Leicht | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Behemoth is Scott Westerfeld’s follow-up to Leviathan, the first book in a new steampunk series set in an alternative Europe on the edge of WWI with the Austro-Hungarians and Germans (“Clankers”) using steam-driven machines and the British and their allies (“Darwinists”) using genetic engineering. Leviathan was one of my best reads of 2009, and Behemoth would have been on my list for 2010 had I gotten around to reading it by the time I compiled my list.
January 17th, 2011. Bill Capossere, Rebecca Fisher and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4, 4.5, 5 | Scott Westerfeld | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Fathom is an entertaining horror novel once it gets going. Cherie Priest spends the first 100 pages of Fathom setting a scene, complete with pages upon pages of infodumps. One character will tell another character a story about a third character, for instance, or a character will have a prolonged recollection of a scene from his past. In addition, the time in which the novel is set does not become apparent until the last few chapters of the novel.
January 8th, 2011. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Cherie Priest | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente
[Note: I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of The Habitation of the Blessed read by Ralph Lister. It took me a while to adjust since I have recently listened to Lister read three installments of THE GOREAN SAGA and I at first had a hard time hearing the priest Prester John instead of the sadistic misogynist Tarl Cabot. But I got over this soon enough and thought that Mr. Lister did a great job with this one.]
In The Habitation of the Blessed,
December 28th, 2010. Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Catherynne M. Valente | Audio | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Oh, Marion, you say "but dark" as if it were a bad thing! 😂
Hammer Studios is... reborn? I only ever read the "Kane" stories, which I found good but dark. It's a little…
Oh...and the men used the name "The Great Northern Expedition" to throw people off as to their actual destination, even…
Oh, it IS, Marion! It is!
Sorry if I mislead you in this detail, Paul...the voyage by ship was only the first leg of the quintet's…