I’m honestly not quite sure of how to review Jo Walton’s 2018 collection of short stories, Starlings. As a fiction read, it left me greatly wanting, with many of the stories (there are also poems and one play, but more on those later) feeling undeveloped, slight, and too one-note, so that most frequent reaction was “nice idea, but …” with the “but” mostly signifying a response that really wasn’t a response. And so what’s the problem, you might be thinking.
January 30th, 2018. Bill Capossere and Skye Walker´s rating: 4 | Jo Walton | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
Brooke Bolander’s The Only Harmless Great Thing (2018) is a lyrical, often moving, and sometimes searing novella that sets itself in an alternate reality that entangles two historical events: the public electrocution of Topsy the elephant at Coney Island in 1903 and the “Radium Girls” scandal in the early 1900s. That the two events were not simultaneous as in the novella is only part of the “alternate” part of this alternate reality. More central to the plot is the fact that elephants in this world are sentient.
January 23rd, 2018. Bill Capossere and Skye Walker´s rating: 4 | Brooke Bolander | Locus Award, Nebula Award, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
Central Station is a thoughtful, poignant, human take on a possible future. For the most part Central Station occurs at the titular port on planet earth. This space resides in what we know today as Tel Aviv, but in the distant future it has gone through many names and many people. Everything seems to begin in earnest when Boris Chong arrives in Central Station after spending a great deal of time away — some of which on Mars. Central Station,
January 2nd, 2018. Skye Walker, Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Lavie Tidhar | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
“The Mouth of the Oyster” by Adam-Troy Castro & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Nov. 2017, free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 99c Kindle magazine issue)
In the aftermath of a deadly plague that struck their area in ancient China, the narrator and his wife, Li-Fan, are among the survivors. But the plague has left its mark on them: the narrator has lost his sight but is otherwise still a healthy man;
November 27th, 2017. Tadiana Jones, Bill Capossere and Skye Walker | Ashok K. Banker, Kelly Robson, Marie Brennan | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror edited by Ellen Datlow
This anthology comes after a similarly titled anthology, also edited by Ellen Datlow, called Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror which came out in March 2010. Datlow also edits an annual anthology of horror fiction (collaborating with other editors on those). It seems then that Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror (which came out in October 2016) is informed by a great deal of knowledge in the field of speculative horror literature.
November 9th, 2017. Skye Walker´s rating: 3.5 | Caitlín R. Kiernan, Ellen Datlow, Garth Nix, Gemma Files, Gene Wolfe, John Langan, Kaaron Warren, Laird Barron, Lisa Tuttle, Margo Lanagan, Richard Kadrey | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
“Crispin’s Model” by Max Gladstone (Oct. 2017, free at Tor.com, 99c Kindle version)
A young woman, Delilah Dane, moves from Savannah to New York City to pursue her theatrical dreams; the cost of living in NYC being what it is, she supplements her waitressing income by posing for artists. (Nothing more than posing — she has very strict rules about conduct and respect.) After an extremely weird interview and some ground rules which are eccentric even by artists’ standards,
October 23rd, 2017. Jana Nyman, Tadiana Jones and Skye Walker | Max Gladstone, Nancy Kress | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
White Cat (2010), the first book in Holly Black‘s The Curse Workers series, focuses on Cassel, a teenage boy born into a family of workers. Working magic is illegal, which means anyone born with the gift — his entire family — either works for the mob or as a con artist. Except Cassel, that is, because Cassel doesn’t have a gift. What he does have is strange dreams that make him sleepwalk, and end up in the strangest places,
October 12th, 2017. Ruth Arnell, Skye Walker and Marion Deeds´s rating: 2.5, 4 | Holly Black | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
“The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer (Sept. 2017, free at Clarkesworld). 2018 Hugo award winner (novelette).
Fans of WALL-E will particularly appreciate this whimsically poignant tale about an outdated robot with a can-do attitude. Robot #9 is reactivated by its spaceship after a lengthy time in storage, and is assigned the task of ridding the Ship of a particularly destructive “biological infestation” (the bots begin to call it the “ratbug,” though Bot 9 privately questions the accuracy of that moniker) that is chewing apart bots and other parts of the Ship.
October 2nd, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Skye Walker | Sarah Gailey, Suzanne Palmer | Hugo Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
“Biting Tongues” by Amal El-Mohtar (2011, free at Uncanny, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue. First printed in The WisCon Chronicles (Vol 5): Writing and Racial Identity)
“Biting Tongues” is a speculative poem which slowly reveals the tenaciousness of the character or characters involved, through a progression from social expectations of their voice and bodies to their true form.
August 7th, 2017. Skye Walker, Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere | Amal El-Mohtar, Jennifer Fallon, T. Kingfisher | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In the first installment of Mishell Baker’s THE ARCADIA PROJECT series we are introduced to Millie, whose borderline personality disorder at least partly explains the title of the book. Borderline (2016) follows Millie as she is pulled into The Arcadia Project, an organization that monitors and secures the comings and goings between the world of humans and the world of mythological, fairy tale creatures. Millie’s first assignment with The Arcadia Project has her tracking down an A-list movie star who is actually a denizen of that other world,
August 1st, 2017. Skye Walker´s rating: 4 | Mishell Baker | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…