Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Marion Deeds

The Midnight Mayor: Merely enjoyable

The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin

I loved Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels.

I merely enjoyed the sequel, The Midnight Mayor.

This is not an uncommon experience to have with a sequel. I think part of the problem comes from the amount of time devoted to the first novel, when the writer had years to re-imagine, revise, reread and rethink; time to burnish that pivotal paragraph or really dig deep to capture that motivation, contrasted with the length of time allowed with Book Two of a multi-book contract.

April 3rd, 2011. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Kate Griffin | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Clockwork Angel: Mortal Instruments fans will be pleased

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, it beslimes tessellated pavements, bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody.
~Ursula K. Le Guin, From Elfland to Poughkeepsie

Cassandra Clare stumbles straight out of the gate in Clockwork Angel. In the opening sentence… “ichor,” one of Ursula K. Le Guin’s perfect tests for bad fantasy.

Among Thieves: A promising debut

Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick

CLASSIFICATION: Among Thieves is like a cross between Scott Lynch’s The Gentleman Bastard series and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire, told in a first-person narrative reminiscent of Alex Bledsoe’s Eddie LaCrosse novels but without the hard-boiled cynicism. Apart from the occasional expletive and some graphic violence, Among Thieves mainly keeps to a PG-13 rating. Recommended for readers who like their fantasy “dark and gritty”,

March 25th, 2011. Robert Thompson, Marion Deeds, Greg Hersom and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Douglas Hulick | SFF Reviews | 18 comments |

A Madness of Angels: The magical soul of London

A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin

I think maybe I love Kate Griffin’s A Madness of Angels. It’s a mature love, too, not just a crush, because I can see the faults in the thing and I love it anyway. It’s a hard book to write about without spoiling the fun for everyone, so instead of discussing the plot I will focus on what I loved.

I love Griffin’s view of magic. Reviewers compare A Madness of Angels to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere,

March 23rd, 2011. Marion Deeds, Rebecca Fisher and Ruth Arnell´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Kate Griffin | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Home Fires: Even a minor Gene Wolfe is still a major event

Home Fires by Gene Wolfe

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,

The White City: It’s all very civilized and decadent

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 |

Vanished: Best Greywalker novel so far

Vanished by Kat Richardson

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: Incredible sense of place

Underground by Kat Richardson

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 |

Bloodshot: Familiar territory with a few refreshing twists

Bloodshot by Cherie Priest

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: A wild, improbable adventure in Renaissance Europe

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 |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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