Author: Mike Reeves-McMillan

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol 2: More disturbing than Vol 1

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 edited by Gordon Van Gelder

I read the first volume (The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology, published 2009) before I tackled this one, published in 2014. It’s only been five years, but I detected a darkening of the tone. Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe it’s just me, but it seemed to me that the earlier volume contained stories that set out to go to strange places and, as a consequence, were sometimes disturbing,

April 5th, 2015. Mike Reeves-McMillan | George Alec Effinger, Harlan Ellison, James Patrick Kelly, Jane Yolen, Ken Liu, Lucius Shepard, M. John Harrison, Maureen McHugh, Paolo Bacigalupi, R.A. Lafferty, Stephen King | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Fantasy Super Pack #1: Something for everyone

Fantastic Stories Presents: Fantasy Super Pack #1 edited by Warren Lapine

Fantasy Super Pack #1 , which is available for 99c in Kindle format, is an enormous collection of 34 stories presumably showcasing the taste of the editor of Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, an online magazine. As I’m interested in submitting to the magazine, I picked it up, and thoroughly enjoyed most of the stories, none of which I remembered reading before though I’d heard of several of them.

I like stories that have a narrative arc,

Annabel Scheme: A short, clever high-tech thriller

Annabel Scheme by Robin Sloan

Set in an alternate world in which Google’s place is filled by a company called Grail (a brilliant name for a search engine, by the way), and Wikipedia’s by “Open Britannica,” Robin Sloan’s Annabel Scheme is difficult to categorize. Is it a detective novel? An urban fantasy? A technothriller with a touch of cyberpunk? It’s all of those at once. It reminds me a little of Charles Stross‘s LAUNDRY FILES novels with the mix of high technology and demons.

Crucible of Gold: Dragons in an alternate Napoleonic-era history

Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik

As soon as I discovered the Temeraire series by Namoi Novik, I read all the books that were then available, so I was delighted to see a new volume after a gap of several years. The seventh book, Crucible of Gold, suffers from the problem of many long-running series that there is now a lot of backstory, and with the gap aforementioned, I spent the first three chapters trying to remember who all these people were and why they were arguing.

March 1st, 2015. Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 4 | Naomi Novik | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Random: Far beyond the ordinary YA fantasy

Random by Alma Alexander

There’s a group of Young Adult authors — I’m thinking of Robin McKinley, Juliet Marillier, Justine Larbalestier, and a few others — who write the kind of books that snooty adults who look down on YA in Internet articles have clearly never read. These are books that don’t get made into popular movies, because most of what happens is internal to the characters.

This kind of YA has depth and resonance and significance. It shines a light on the path for young people (young women,

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction: Packed full of excellent SF stories

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction is packed full of excellent science fiction stories. I’ve been reading anthologies lately, partly to improve my own short story writing, and this is the best I’ve found so far. It contains stories by authors such as Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Catherynne M. Valente, John Scalzi, Jo Walton, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Mary Robinette Kowal,

October 10th, 2014. Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 5 | Brenda Cooper, Catherynne M. Valente, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Daryl Gregory, David D. Levine, Elizabeth Bear, Genevieve Valentine, James L. Cambias, Jo Walton, John Scalzi, Kage Baker, Karl Schroeder, Liz Williams, Madeline Ashby, Mary Robinette Kowal, Paolo Bacigalupi, Rachel Swirsky, Tobias Buckell, Yoon Ha Lee | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Wood Beyond the World: Disappointing

The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris

I read The Wood Beyond the World largely because I enjoyed the author’s The Well at the World’s End so much. I was disappointed in it, though. It doesn’t have the depth of the slightly later book (they were published two years apart), and the story itself is not as satisfying, nor is the main character as strong.

Golden Walter is what I call a spoiled protagonist. He ends up with benefits that he doesn’t earn.

The Secret History of Fantasy: Stories that redefine the genre

The Secret History of Fantasy edited by Peter S. Beagle

The basic premise of the SECRET HISTORY anthologies (there’s also a science fiction one, The Secret History of Science Fiction, which I haven’t read) is that there’s a type of writing that got missed or buried because other things were more popular, more commercial, or dodged the spec-fic labeling. Certainly that’s the thrust of Peter S. Beagle‘s introduction, and the two other non-fiction pieces by Ursula K. Le Guin and editor David G.

September 16th, 2014. Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 4 | Francesca Lia Block, Gregory Maguire, Jeffrey Ford, Jonathan Lethem, Kij Johnson, Maureen McHugh, Michael Swanwick, Neil Gaiman, Patricia McKillip, Peter S. Beagle, Robert Holdstock, Stephen King, Susanna Clarke, Terry Bisson, Ursula K. Le-Guin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Engraved on the Eye: Ahmed writes what he knows

Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed

The first story in Saladin Ahmed’s Engraved on the Eye is about the meeting of the two main characters in his novel Throne of the Crescent Moon, and I liked it enough that it inspired me to look for the novel. I can see what the critical fuss is about: Ahmed writes smoothly and well, has interesting protagonists, and makes their choices matter.

Early on in the collection, it looked as if all the protagonists were going to be young Muslims struggling with faith and ethical choices as well as with life,

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014: An enjoyable collection

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 edited by Rich Horton

I’ve been reading a lot of anthologies lately, including another of the several “Year’s Best” collections (the Jonathan Strahan one). I was pleased to find that, unlike some of the others, this one matched my tastes fairly well for the most part.

I enjoy stories in which capable, likeable or sympathetic characters, confronted by challenges, confront them right back and bring the situation to some sort of meaningful conclusion. I was worried when I read the editor’s introduction and saw him praising Lightspeed and Clarkesworld magazines,

September 2nd, 2014. Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 4 | Angélica Gorodischer, Carrie Vaughn, Christopher Barzak, Harry Turtledove, Ian R. MacLeod, James Patrick Kelly, K.J. Parker, Karin Tidbeck, Ken Liu, Lavie Tidhar, Linda Nagata, Madeline Ashby, Maria Dahvana Headley, Maureen McHugh, Peter Watts, Theodora Goss, Yoon Ha Lee | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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