Guardian of the Crown by Melissa McShane
Guardian of the Crown (2017), the second book in Melissa McShane’s SAGA OF WILLOW NORTH fantasy trilogy, picks up where the first book, Pretender to the Crown, left off. (It’s necessary to read that book first, and this review will contain some unavoidable spoilers for Pretender.) Willow North has left her homeland of Tremontane in company with her ex-fiancé, Kerish, and the rightful king of Tremontane,
March 27th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Melissa McShane | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
“Flow” Marissa Lingen (March 2018, free at Fireside Fiction)
In Marissa Lingen’s “Flow,” teenaged Gigi, who loves her father and proudly shares his mannerisms, accidentally discovers — or is discovered by — naiads in the nearby woods. The naiads knew her father, and are pleased to meet Gigi, who spends time over the coming years performing small tasks for the naiads and coming to know more about their environment.
March 26th, 2018. Jana Nyman and Tadiana Jones | Fran Wilde | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Blood of the Four by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon
Magic is an elusive and dangerous thing in the kingdom of Quandis, forbidden to all except a few select priests who spend their lives preparing to handle the ancient magic, and even then inhale only a few smoky tendrils of the powerful magic. Princess Phela thrives on sneaking through hidden passages of the castle, seeking to overhear others’ information and secrets. When Phela hears her mother, the queen, confessing (in a drug-induced haze) to her lover Linos Kallistrate that she, the queen,
March 19th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 0.1 | Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum
Behind the scenes of our lives, pulling the strings for the benefit of humanity, are the people assigned as “coincidence makers,” arranging the events that need to happen in people’s lives, both on a personal and larger scale. It may be making a particular love connection by arranging that two people meet at the right time, or taking steps to help an accountant find his true work in being a poet, or ensuring that an assassin is pointed in the right path to later do society a larger good.
March 16th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Yoav Blum | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. This week we begin focusing on the 2017 Nebula award nominees in the short fiction categories.
Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker (2017, originally published in Asimov’s, Sept-Oct 2017 issue; free PDF available at the author’s website). 2017 Nebula nominee (novelette)
Rosie, the 55 year old narrator, is a history teacher on board a generation ship that has been voyaging through space for the better part of a hundred years,
March 12th, 2018. Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere | Sarah Pinsker | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See (2014) opens in the basement of a hotel in the port city of Saint-Malo in occupied France, 1944. The city is being bombed. Eighteen-year-old Nazi soldier Werner Pfennig is trapped below tonnes of rubble, his chances of survival increasingly slim, whilst across town, a blind French girl Marie-Laure is hiding in her attic. The pair is bound by a curiosity in natural science, years of surreptitious radio broadcasts, and a diamond that may bestow immortality upon its holder.
March 12th, 2018. Ray McKenzie and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Anthony Doerr | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs
Burn Bright (2018) is the fifth and latest novel in Patricia Briggs’ ALPHA AND OMEGA urban fantasy series … actually, it’s more mountainous wilderness fantasy, but it does involve werewolves and witches living amongst humans. Burn Bright, though it has different main characters, also intertwines nicely with the main MERCY THOMPSON series.
Bran, the grand-Alpha or Marrok of most of the werewolf packs in North America, is still out of town due to the events in the last MERCY THOMPSON book,
March 7th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Patricia Briggs | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Roadmarks (1979) is a fragmented, experimental type of novel, tied together by a Road (with a capital R) that leads to all times and places and alternative timestreams in our world’s history, for those who know how to navigate it (a certain German named Adolph briefly pops up in an early chapter, eternally searching for the timeline where he won). The other constant is the character of Red Dorakeen, who has been traveling the Road for years, trying to find something, or somewhen. Sometimes he’s in company with Leila,
February 28th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Roger Zelazny | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 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.
“A World to Die For” by Tobias Buckell (Jan. 2018, free at Clarkesworld, Issue 136, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue)
Be warned: “A World to Die For” can be read as a message story, because the premise involves multiple realities with greater and lesser degrees of global warming. This does not get in the way of action and adventure,
February 26th, 2018. Marion Deeds, Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere | John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
“To believe in one’s dreams is to spend all of one’s life asleep.” – Chinese proverb
“Every city is a ghost.” – Opening line of Lair of Dreams
Dreams become traps and deadly nightmares in Lair of Dreams, the second installation in Libba Bray’s DIVINERS fantasy horror series. In 1927, a crew of men is opening up an old walled-off tunnel underneath the streets of New York City in order to build a new subway tunnel.
February 15th, 2018. Tadiana Jones and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Libba Bray | Horror | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
What a dunderhead, not like the Horseclans series? I just like stories that are pure entertainment like these or Stirling's…
No, Paul, sorry, I don't believe I've read any books by Aickman; perhaps the odd story. I'm generally not a…
I like the ambiguities when the story leading up to them has inserted various dreadful possibilities in the back of…
COMMENT Marion, I expect that my half-hearted praise here (at best) will not exactly endear me to all of Ramsey…
Ramsay Campbell was all the rage in my circle of horror-reading/writing friends in the 1980s, and they extolled the ambiguity.…