The Girl In The Red Coat by Kate Hamer
Any mother’s worst nightmare is losing her child. We’ve all heard it before. It’s a phrase used often, almost casually, yet it doesn’t even begin to cover what it must actually feel like to lose a child. This is precisely what happens in Kate Hamer’s dazzling debut. Told from the perspectives of a bereft mother and her abducted daughter, The Girl in the Red Coat has two of the most hauntingly distinctive voices in fiction so far this year.
February 25th, 2015. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Kate Hamer | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
Once upon a time, in a town called Fairfold, Holly Black set her story for her stand-alone novel The Darkest Part of the Forest. The dark faerie-tale fuses the fantastical with the mundane, as humans and Fae folk exist alongside one another, the faeries even being a huge source of tourism for the little town. That is an original and intriguing premise if there ever was one, with promises of dark twists and turns. But somewhere along the lines the plot failed in its execution,
February 19th, 2015. Ray McKenzie, Kate Lechler and Jana Nyman | Holly Black | Audio, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 10 comments |
There are disadvantages to finding a trilogy you really love, and they usually surface somewhere between the second and final book. I discovered this whilst waiting for The Magician’s Land to be released, after devouring the first two novels of Grossman’s Magicians series. It was at this point I turned my attention to the rest of Grossman’s literary corpus and discovered a stand-alone novel published five years previously to The Magicians: Codex.
January 13th, 2015. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Lev Grossman | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn
With a complicated web of back-story set up and a return to familiar characters that we’ve seen develop, it goes without saying that Brilliance of the Moon should be the gripping climax of a trilogy that has thus far moved from strength to strength. The third and final instalment of the TALES OF THE OTORI series, the book has many loose ends to tie up, not to mention a certain prophecy that needs fulfilling.
January 10th, 2015. Ray McKenzie and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Lian Hearn | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Grass for His Pillow by Lian Hearn
We saw myth, legend, folklore and tradition of feudal Japan seamlessly woven in Across the Nightingale Floor, and Grass for His Pillow offers equal richness and storytelling depth. In what marks the second book in the trilogy, Lian Hearn returns to the stories of Takeo and Kaede as they choose their alliances amidst increasing unrest between the clans.
Grass for His Pillow opens with Shirakawa Kaede lying in the temple;
January 6th, 2015. Ray McKenzie and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3, 4 | Lian Hearn | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
The tagline stamped across the cover of Lian Hearn’s Across the Nightingale Floor is ‘One boy. One journey. One hidden destiny.’ Not only is this toe-curlingly clichéd, but it’s also pretty deceptive. It’s too reductive, too suggestive of the bog standard hero’s journey every fantasy fan has seen a million times. The book’s plot is complicated and surprising; its backdrop of a political feudal system riveting; the delicate Japanese-style landscape and customs are intricate. Across the Nightingale Floor,
January 2nd, 2015. Ray McKenzie, Bill Capossere, Tim Scheidler, Rebecca Fisher and Kat Hooper | Lian Hearn | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
More Than This by Patrick Ness
Patrick Ness casts his line with five words, and we are hooked: “Here is the boy, drowning.” Seth is sixteen years old when we meet him, and about to die. He is out at sea with the icy tide dragging him out further and further in a terrifying opening for Ness’s Young Adult novel, More Than This. And then his shoulder blade “snaps in two so loudly he can hear the crack.” Seth drowns.
But impossibly,
December 30th, 2014. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Patrick Ness | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Stephen King’s Under the Dome is long. I mean, long. The manuscript weighs in at 8.6 kg and Time magazine quoted King himself saying he’d be “killing a lot of trees” with his next novel. But when you read the book’s premise, and begin to understand what King had set out to do, it begins to make sense…
Under the Dome opens in Chester’s Mill, a small Maine town which is suddenly and inexplicably cut off from the rest of the world by a dome.
December 29th, 2014. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3.5 | Stephen King | Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
I was looking for nothing in particular when I found The Bone Season on the Science Fiction shelf of my local library. This was the saving grace of my reading experience of Samantha Shannon’s debut novel. It was not until after finishing the novel that I discovered the hype surrounding the first in Shannon’s planned seven-part series (of which Bloomsbury has already signed her up for three novels).
The novel centres around Paige Mahoney, a clairvoyant who can move in and out of the minds of other people.
December 11th, 2014. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Samantha Shannon | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Ransom Riggs went to film school, made some award-winning short films, and did travel writing and photography before he published Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, his first novel. This young adult fantasy novel uses a number of strange old photographs Riggs either found or borrowed from several collections, and the photos are interspersed with the text. It’s an interesting presentation that adds a lot to the reading experience.
The book has already been optioned by Twentieth Century Fox,
October 31st, 2014. Marion Deeds, Tim Scheidler, Tadiana Jones and Ray McKenzie | Ransom Riggs | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.