The Weight of the World by Tom Toner
Note: This review contains some spoilers for the previous book, The Promise of the Child.
I finished The Promise of the Child, the first book in Tom Toner’s AMARANTHINE SPECTRUM space opera series, rather bewildered but game to continue the series by jumping into The Weight of the World (2017). Toner begins this second book in the series with a two page summary of what actually happened in The Promise of the Child,
July 10th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Tom Toner | SFF Reviews | no comments |
“The Evaluators: To Trade with Aliens, You Must Adapt” by N.K. Jemisin (2016, free on Wired)
About two hundred years in our future, humanity is engaged in exploring other planets and worlds and meeting alien civilizations. Wei Aiuha is part of a team that is engaging in discussions with a newly discovered alien race, the Manka, to see if humans can develop a relationship with the Manka and engage in some profitable trade with them. Back on earth, Thandiwe Solomon is trying to decipher Aiuha’s personal logs from her meetings with the Manka two years earlier.
July 3rd, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Katie Burton | N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In Search of Lost Time by Karen Heuler
Hildy, who’s been experiencing odd gaps in her awareness, is hit with the news that she has cancer of the Tempora, a (made-up) part of the brain where the body experiences time. Her chemotherapy has an odd side effect: Hildy can now see auras around people in the form of colorful mists and vapors. What’s more, she finds that she can pull away bits of aura from other people and inhale it. It gives her the feelings and memories from the person she took the bit of aura from.
July 3rd, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 2.5 | Karen Heuler | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Pebble In The Sky by Isaac Asimov
In a now-famous interview, sci-fi legend Isaac Asimov once revealed how he avoided getting stuck with writer’s block. The hugely prodigious author would often be working at four or five books at the same time, with five typewriters arrayed side by side, and when he would get inextricably bogged down with one book, he’d simply move to the neighboring typewriter, and recommence work on that one! Thus, one can almost understand how it was possible for Asimov — who claimed, in his later years,
June 29th, 2017. Sandy Ferber, Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Isaac Asimov | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Black Dog Short Stories by Rachel Neumeier
This set of four short stories is an interlude in Rachel Neumeier’s BLACK DOG universe, where werewolves ― more properly known in this world as black dogs ― are adjusting to a world where humans are now aware of them, after an interspecies war that wiped out the world’s vampires and decimated many of the black dog packs. To the black dogs’ dismay, destroying the vampires also destroyed a type of mental mist or miasma produced by the vampires that kept humans from recognizing the magical creatures around them.
June 27th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Rachel Neumeier | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Promise of the Child by Tom Toner
The Promise of the Child (2015), an ambitious space opera that spans centuries and multiple planetary systems, begins with a prologue set in in fourteenth century Praha (Prague), where Princess Eliška, married to King John of Bohemia, meets with a man named Aaron to discuss his help with her son’s ill health. The story then jumps to AD 14,647 … but we will meet Aaron (“the Long-Life”) again.
In this distant future, humanity has spread to many worlds and “prismed”
June 23rd, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Tom Toner | SFF Reviews | 3 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 Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny (1963, text and audio free on EscapePod, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). 1964 Hugo nominee (short fiction)
In this classic and much-anthologized tale of life on Mars, Gallinger, a brilliant linguist and poet with an antagonistic personality, is part of an Earth mission to study the humanoid Martian natives.
June 19th, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Soleri (2017), by Michael Johnston, isn’t going to make anyone marvel at its originality, which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a problem. I’ve said many a time that with genre books, often one can get away with employing standard tropes in terms of characters and plots so long as the craft and execution is there. Unfortunately, Johnston doesn’t quite succeed with either, and so despite having some potential, it’s hard to recommend Soleri at this point,
June 13th, 2017. Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 2.5, 3.5 | Michael Johnston | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Fata Morgana by Steven R. Boyett & Ken Mitchroney
It’s 1943, at the height of the air war during World War II. US Air Force Captain Joseph Farley and his crew of nine men fly a B-17 bomber on missions out of England, bombing German factories and other military targets. On their last mission their bomber Voice of America, a never-ending source of problems (“fixing this one’s like taking a gator to the vet. You’re just making it better so it can try to kill you again”) finally bit the dust permanently,
June 12th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Steven R. Boyett | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Journey Across the Hidden Islands by Sarah Beth Durst
Seika and Ji-Lin are the twelve year old princesses of the Hidden Islands, a group of a hundred islands cut off from the rest of the world by a magical barrier created by an ancient volcano dragon. Seika is the heir to the throne, while Ji-Lin is being trained as an imperial guard, dedicated to protecting her sister from any danger. For the past year they’ve been separated while Ji-Lin is in training at a mountain temple, with the winged, talking lion Alejan as her partner and closest friend.
June 8th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Sarah Beth Durst | Children | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.