I was so excited by the premise of Stephanie Garber’s Caraval (2017) that I listed it as one of my most anticipated books of 2017. Word has it that there are already plans to make Caraval into a film and I expect it is going to get a fair amount of hype. I can understand why and yet I find I cannot give it more than three stars. I will attempt to justify the reasons why.
Scarlett spent her childhood dreaming of the magical show called Caraval and its mysterious proprietor,
April 12th, 2017. Katie Burton and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Stephanie Garber | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch
DCI Peter Grant returns in both literal and proverbial car crash style in The Hanging Tree, the latest addition to Ben Aaronovitch’s RIVERS OF LONDON series. We left Peter and the gang still reeling from their adventures in Herefordshire in Foxglove Summer (adventures that included a magical rampaging unicorn), but we see a return to the concrete jungle that is London for Peter’s latest escapades.
April 7th, 2017. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Ben Aaronovitch | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
[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.]
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is about clones, but don’t get your hopes up. This is an unconventional clone story.
That’s right. There aren’t any mad scientists, nor are there any daring escapes.
March 14th, 2017. Ryan Skardal and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 2 | Kazuo Ishiguro | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Once upon a time fairytale retellings were a rare thing, but nowadays, everyone seems to be doing it. S. Jae-Jones‘ debut, Wintersong (2017), promises a tale of the Goblin King fused with Germanic folklore. So how does Jae-Jones‘ contribution to this over-saturated genre fare?
Wintersong centres around Elisabeth — or Liesl, as she’s known — the unremarkable and “unlovely” eldest daughter of a musician. Like her father, music is the true love of her life,
March 10th, 2017. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | S. Jae-Jones | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
On first look, it might seem that Laini Taylor was a little too ambitious with her latest offering, Strange the Dreamer (2017), kind of like an overenthusiastic cook that goes a bit overboard with their cake ingredients. The blurb doesn’t help matters, citing a war between gods and men, a mysterious city, a mythical hero, a librarian, alchemy, nightmares and monsters as some of the components of the story — which will no doubt have raised an eyebrow or two.
March 7th, 2017. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Laini Taylor | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Tea starts her story by accidentally raising her brother from the dead. This is surely a traumatic enough experience for a young girl, but it marks her with the dark magic of the bone witch, unlike her sisters who possess ‘normal’ magic. So on top of having to deal with her corpse brother, Tea is now spurned by the village she’s grown up in. The Bone Witch (2017) explores Tea’s journey of coming to terms with the darkness within her and finding her place in a world that fears her.
March 6th, 2017. Ray McKenzie and Skye Walker´s rating: 4.5 | Rin Chupeco | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
It’s not often a book manages to maintain the balancing act between reality and fantasy, but Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! (2011) treads the line perfectly. The story opens with Hilola Bigtree, matriarch of the Bigtree family who own Swamplandia!, an alligator-wrestling theme park in the Ten Thousand Islands of the coast of Florida. She performs her nightly stunt of jumping into a lake full of alligators, but it is not this which kills her; she falls victim to the more mundane and arguably tragic battle with cancer.
February 10th, 2017. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Karen Russell | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Nine of Stars (2016), Laura Bickle‘s dark and fantastical tale of an alchemist’s daughter in Wyoming, is attempting to cast a wide net as far as its readership goes. It is billed as both the third instalment of the DARK ALCHEMY trilogy, as well as the first book in the WILDLANDS series, which readers can jump straight into. What’s more, it’s a fantasy-cum-crime-cum-romance, so it should in theory be ticking a lot of boxes for a lot of readers.
January 24th, 2017. Jana Nyman and Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Laura Bickle | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Two sets of twins, a disillusioned husband, a grieving boyfriend, one ghost. The lives of Her Fearful Symmetry’s characters are as tangled as they sound, in a drama that will play out amongst the tombstones of Highgate Cemetery. A sticker on the front reminds potential readers that Niffenegger is the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife. Yet let that be the first and last time Niffenegger’s debut novel is mentioned. Her Fearful Symmetry is described as a ‘delicious and deadly ghost story,’ and should be judged in and of itself.
January 17th, 2017. Ray McKenzie and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 2.5 | Audrey Niffenegger | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Humankind has a weird fascination with its own demise. It’s the reason apocalyptic fiction has been a staple for decades. You’ve read zombie apocalypse, imminent meteor, killer virus stories a million times, so the real challenge now is finding an interesting way to explore said demise. Gary Gibson‘s take on the genre is surprisingly refreshing in the second instalment of his APOCALYPSE DUOLOGY series, The Survival Game.
We first meet Katya Orlova as she is jumping off a train.
January 13th, 2017. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3.5 | Gary Gibson | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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