Stuart Starosta | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

Author: Stuart Starosta

Sin City (Vol. 3): The Big Fat Kill by Frank Miller

Sin City (Vol. 3): The Big Fat Kill by Frank Miller

The Big Fat Kill is the third volume in Frank Miller’s SIN CITY series, featuring Dwight McCarthy, Marv, and the ladies of Old Town delivering justice with extreme prejudice to some very deserving goons. It’s another celebration of violent revenge against some pretty reprehensible people, so it goes down fairly easily. It’s also the most creative storyline of the first three volumes, and is featured as the middle segment of the first Sin City movie.

Imago: Finally, we see the Ooloi perspective

Imago by Octavia Butler

Imago (1989) is the third book in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS trilogy. It concludes the story begun with the human woman Lilith in Dawn (1987) and continued with her Oankali-human ‘construct’ son Akin in Adulthood Rites (1988). Imago takes the bold but logical next step by shifting the perspective to Jodahs, an Ooloi-human construct. The Ooloi are the third, gender-less sex of the Oankali, the alien race of ‘gene traders’ that saved the remnants of humanity on the condition that humanity share its DNA with them and be forever transformed in the process.

Sin City (Vol. 2): A Dame To Kill For by Frank Miller

Sin City (Vol. 2): A Dame To Kill For by Frank Miller

Frank Miller’s SIN CITY series is famous for its hard-boiled crime noir stories, characters and black-and-white artwork. In the second volume, A Dame To Kill For, Miller gleefully tackles that most classic of noir tropes, the seductive and deadly femme fatale. Ava is her name, and when she beckons, men cannot resist. Our lead this time is Dwight McCarthy, a photographer who is trying to live a clean,

Adulthood Rites: Butler gives us plenty to think about

Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler

Adulthood Rites (1988) is the second book in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS trilogy. It continues the story of Lilith in Dawn (1987), a human woman revived by the alien Oankali centuries after humanity has mostly destroyed itself with nuclear weapons. The Oankali offered humanity a second chance, but at a price — to merge its genes with the Oankali, who are ‘gene traders’ driven to continuously seek new species in the galaxy to combine their DNA with,

Dawn: Impressive and disturbing

Dawn by Octavia Butler

Dawn (1987) is the first book in Octavia Butler’s XENOGENESIS trilogy, written after her PATTERNIST series. By this point she had been writing challenging science fiction novels for a decade, and her writing craft and ideas had reached a high level.

Dawn is a very impressive book. Imagine that mankind has largely destroyed itself and the planet — it’s a fairly common doomsday scenario. But instead of the survivors scrabbling for survival,

Sin City (Volume One): The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller

Sin City (Volume One): The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller

Frank Miller’s SIN CITY hit the comic scene back in the early 1990s like multiple shots to the head and body. Readers were blown away with this hard-boiled story and its stark, iconic black-and-white artwork. In fact, Miller does all the writing, artwork and lettering for SIN CITY, which is pretty damn impressive. The stories tapped into that rich vein of crime noir pioneered by writers like Dashiell Hamett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain,

Patternmaster: Patternists and Clayarks battle for dominance

Patternmaster by Octavia Butler

Patternmaster (1976) was written first in Octavia Butler’s PATTERNIST quartet, but comes last in chronology. It takes place several hundred years after Clay’s Ark (1984), back in the Forsythe, CA territory where the Patternists settled down earlier. Society remains scattered and non-industrial, and power is divided between the Patternists, a network of linked human telepaths who can kill at a distance, and the Clayarks, now completely transformed into intelligent, sphinx-like animals with extreme strength,

Clay’s Ark: An alien disease transforms a portion of humanity

Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler

Clay’s Ark (1984) was written last in Octavia Butler’s 4-book PATTERNIST series, but comes third in chronology. It takes place after Wild Seed (1980) and Mind of My Mind (1977), in the post-apocalyptic California desert. Society has collapsed into armed enclaves, marauding ‘car families’, organ hunters, and isolated towns. It’s along the lines of Mad Max, with fuel sources depleted and social infrastructure nonexistent,

The Forever War: An SF treatment of Vietnam

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

William Mandella, a genius studying physics, has been drafted into the elite division of the United Nations Exploratory Force, which is fighting a seemingly never-ending war with the Taurans. After strenuous training with other elites on the Earth and in space, William and his colleagues are sent on various missions throughout the universe, traveling through black holes to get to each warfront. During each mission some of William’s friends die, but that’s expected. What’s surprising is that when he returns home, very little time has passed for him,

Mind of My Mind: The rise of the first Patternmaster

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler

Mind of My Mind (1977) was written second in Octavia Butler’s 4-book PATTERNIST series, and comes second in chronology. However, I think it is less-polished than Wild Seed (1980), which comes earlier in chronology but was written later, after she had more fully developed her ideas about psionic powers, power/control, and telepaths vs. mutes. It’s tough to decide whether readers should approach this series in the order it was written,

Bill Capossere on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
We’re in total agreement David!
David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.
Sandy Ferber on The Druid Stone: Ugony and the EcstasyJune 30, 2025
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
Paul Connelly on The Druid Stone: Ugony and the EcstasyJune 30, 2025
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…

Author: Stuart Starosta

Sin City (Vol. 3): The Big Fat Kill by Frank Miller

Imago: Finally, we see the Ooloi perspective

Sin City (Vol. 2): A Dame To Kill For by Frank Miller

Adulthood Rites: Butler gives us plenty to think about

Dawn: Impressive and disturbing

Sin City (Volume One): The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller

Patternmaster: Patternists and Clayarks battle for dominance

Clay’s Ark: An alien disease transforms a portion of humanity

The Forever War: An SF treatment of Vietnam

Mind of My Mind: The rise of the first Patternmaster

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