Red Queen reads a little like a YA lucky dip. You get the feeling that Victoria Aveyard just chucked a list of YA clichés into a bag and picked them out blindfolded. Katniss, sorry, Mare Barrow is a “Red”, which makes her a lower class of citizen compared to the “Silvers” who govern the world. But… isn’t that exactly the concept behind the “Reds” in Red Rising? And wasn’t the protagonist of that YA mega-franchise called Darrow?
May 25th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 2 | Victoria Aveyard | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Lalla has never had a real apple before. She’s eaten tinned apple and dried apple and apple preserve, but never a real apple. This is because sixteen-year-old Lalla is born at the end of the world, in a London where Big Ben is underwater and Regents Park is nothing but a tent city of homeless people and the British Museum is shelter to the starving masses of a dying civilisation. But Lalla’s father has a solution to the destitution her family face. The prospect of The Ship has taken on a mythical quality in Lalla’s life,
May 24th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Antonia Honeywell | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
Women, as demonstrated by their smaller skull size, are less intelligent than men. This is the bitter lesson Faith, our plucky protagonist in Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree, must learn. In Victorian England, girls must be seen and not heard, as too much intelligence would spoil the female mind “like a rock in a soufflé.” But Faith has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a secret desire of one day becoming a scientist. This dark and twisting tale sees how far she’ll pursue that knowledge and the lies she’ll tell to obtain it.
May 19th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | Frances Hardinge | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Though they are a far cry from the HARRY POTTER series, J. K. Rowling’s CORMORAN STRIKE novels still possess the same storytelling magic. Rowling’s ability to capture an audience, to evoke a character so vivid they become real, triumphs in her crime series.
Sending a leg to the office of Coromoran Strike is surely the most conspicuous way to get the detective’s attention. Strike is famously an amputee himself, and when he realises the leg is accompanied by a note bearing the lyrics tattooed on his mother’s body,
April 28th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4.5 | J.K. Rowling | Edge | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
The second novel in Robert Galbraith’s crime series is, in large part, a musing on the nature of writing itself. This is all the more poignant when you consider the Galbraith is none other than the (far less obscure) J.K. Rowling herself. The eponymous silkworm was said to be boiled alive to extract its precious silk threads in tact; a metaphor for the writer, it seems, who has to “go through the agonies to get at the good stuff.” Sound gruesome?
April 26th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 3 | J.K. Rowling | Edge | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Passenger by Alexandra Bracken
Whilst the concept of time travel itself is nothing groundbreaking, a time-travelling violin virtuoso and a swashbuckling sailor from different centuries is. Alexandra Bracken’s Passenger opens in present-day New York where our protagonist, young violinist Etta Spencer, is on the verge of making her solo debut. But mid-performance she is dragged through a ‘passage’ and finds herself in the midst of a battle between two ships in the Atlantic… in 1776.
Enter Nicholas Carter, an 18th century privateer born as the result of a white man’s rape of an African slave,
April 25th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Alexandra Bracken | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Illusionists by Rosie Thomas
There is something rather bold about naming your Victorian protagonist Devil, and that sets the tone for the premise of Rosie Thomas’s novel, The Illusionists. Add to the mix a bad-tempered dwarf called Carlo Bonomi, a Swiss inventor named Heinrich who becomes obsessed with his creations of automata — mechanical women with rubber skin — and you’ve got yourself the beginnings of quite a tale. But The Illusionists falls short of the magic it promises and readers may struggle to sit through Devil’s performance.
April 19th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 2 | Rosie Thomas | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton
You’ll find no meek or modest brides, no princesses in distress in this Arabian tale. Amani Al’Hiza is our gun-toting, liquor-swigging heroine in this debut from Alwyn Hamilton, who needs to escape from her deadbeat hometown of Dustwalk, or end up wed or dead.
We first meet our sixteen-year-old heroine Amani dressed as a boy, entering a shoot-out to try and win the prize money that’ll get her out of Dustwalk. She is an ace shot, maybe the best in her town,
April 15th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Alwyn Hamilton | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
I’m not sure what’s been in the air lately, but it seems I’ve been reading a lot of books this past year dealing with reincarnation/being reborn. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is yet another of those, and while it isn’t my favorite of the ones I’ve read with similar ideas (that would be either Life After Life by Kate Atkinson or The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell),
February 22nd, 2016. Bill Capossere, Tadiana Jones, Ray McKenzie and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Claire North | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Once upon a time, a cyborg in New Beijing was trying to reattach her mechanical foot. It’s not quite the way the conventional fairytale begins, but that’s the best thing about Marissa Meyer’s Cinder: it’s a completely new take on the Cinderella theme and a breath of fresh air in the YA genre.
Cinder is a mechanic working in New Beijing, though she is not just any old mechanic. She is the best in the city. One morning she is trying to attach a new foot with the help of her android Iko,
February 9th, 2016. Ray McKenzie and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Marissa Meyer | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
ReacTor asked 18 well-known (or well-publicized, at least) authors two questions: what's the best development in SFF recently, and what…
Thanks for all your reviews. I differ with you on Emphyrio, however. To me it is top shelf Vance. Superb.
Bravo ,if you live in the USA, you win a Fan Lit T-shirt (please specify 1st and 2nd preferred sizes)…
Thank you for having me!
Yes, welcome aboard, Serena! And you can call me Ferblin!