The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany
Geek that I am, I actually read The Book of Wonder to prepare for the Tolkien Professor’s Faerie & Fantasy podcast seminar that covers the book. I am rather conflicted about Lord Dunsany in general and this book in particular. After finishing the first half I found that The Book of Wonder more or less confirmed my initial impressions of Dunsany gathered when I first read The Hashish Man and Other Stories many years ago;
July 11th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 3 | Lord Dunsany | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
I read Bayou Vol. 1 while it was still available online via Zuda comics and was blown away.
This is the story of Lee Wagstaff, a little African-American girl living in the South in the 30’s. This alternate reality South is populated not only by the real people and tensions of our world, but by the gods and monsters bred by them. After Lee’s friend, Lily, a little white girl, goes missing and Lee’s father is wrongly beaten and imprisoned for it,
May 25th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Lightbringers and Rainmakers by Felix Gilman
Lightbringers and Rainmakers is a good novelette with some neat hooks tying it to the larger tale of The Half-Made World. We follow, as his business cards state, “Professor” Harry Ransom, Lightbringer &c, &c (who made a small walk-on cameo in The Half-Made World), one part charlatan and two parts idealistic scientist, as he is pulled into the midst of the inescapable war between the Line and the Gun. Not only has his “apparatus” once again been destroyed leaving him on the edge of poverty,
May 17th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 3 | Felix Gilman | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Golden Age by John C. Wright
John C. Wright’s The Golden Age is a worthy read. Taking place in the far future, 10,000 years from now, it is a world where the transhuman ‘singularity’ has occurred long before and the population of the solar system is made up of humans of massive (and varied) intellects and powers as well as the “Sophotechs,” huge supercomputers of intellectual capacity to dwarf even their superhuman creators who make sure that the society of humanity does not lack for anything except perhaps risk and adventure,
April 16th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 4 | John C. Wright | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Wizards and the Warriors by Hugh Cook
With a title like The Wizards and the Warriors, I would normally have steered clear of this book for the foreseeable future. I don’t think I’m overly snobbish, but it just brings to mind so many B-movies of the fantasy genre from the late 70’s and early 80’s starring has-beens or never-will-bes that I wouldn’t have expected much of it, and would certainly not have desired to plow through 500+ pages of what I would have at most expected to be mildly entertaining,
March 29th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 4 | Hugh Cook | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
The Worm Ouroboros is a love-it-or-hate-it book. Mannered in its language, weird in so many ways, and chock-full of larger than life characters acting in ways that most people just don’t get. If you have a problem with something written in an archaic style, then you probably won’t get much out of The Worm Ouroboros, but if you like that kind of thing I think the book repays reading and is definitely worth it.
First off a caveat: it took me two reads of The Worm Ouroboros to appreciate it and a third to decide that I thought it was genius.
March 23rd, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 4 | E.R. Eddison | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Nevernessis a really enjoyable “big idea” science fiction novel that takes place millennia in our future on the planet Icefall, also called Neverness. It’s kind of Frank Herbert’s Dune meets Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur with high-level mathematics, posthumanism, and trippy metaphysics thrown in.
The story follows the life of Mallory Ringess, a trainee enrolled at “the Academy,” which was founded by a pseudo-monastic order of truth-seekers called “the Order of Mystic Mathematicians and Other Seekers of the Ineffable Flame,” hoping to become a pilot.
March 12th, 2012. Terry Lago´s rating: 4 | David Zindell | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
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…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…
this sounds like a fun one