I Don’t Want to Kill You by Dan Wells
I Don’t Want to Kill You is the final book in Dan Wells’s JOHN CLEAVER trilogy. It’s a powerful conclusion, sad, brutal, humorous and loving all at the same time. Wells has done a fine job of writing three books that can stand each stand on their own, but which together make a powerful coming-of-age story.
John Cleaver is 16 or 17, and in some ways a typical teenager; he eats huge bowls of cereal,
April 29th, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Dan Wells | Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Napier’s Bones by Derryl Murphy
Imagine being able to manipulate numbers to do magic, just as so many fictional wizards manipulate words, as spells, to accomplish their ends. Imagine seeing everything as a number, with formulae streaming into the air from every physical thing, allowing you to bend and change them — using your abilities to smear a license plate into a new number, say, or blurring the serial numbers on dollar bills. It gives new meaning to the word “numerate.”
Derryl Murphy’s protagonist in Napier’s Bones is a numerate.
April 25th, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3 | Derryl Murphy | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The spring issue of Subterranean is exceptionally strong, even for a publication known for its excellent fiction. The six long pieces in this issue seem to be somewhat thematically linked, most of them having taken some form of art as their theme.
In “Painted Birds and Shivered Bones” by Kat Howard, an artist named Maeve has gone for a walk, seeking both fresh air and perspective, when she sees a naked man crouched beside a cathedral. She reaches into her purse for her phone, but when she looks up again,
April 22nd, 2013. Terry Weyna | Brian Francis Slattery, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Jay Lake, Kat Howard, Tobias Buckell | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Uninvited opens with a scene of intense horror, as a young child slaughters her grandmother with a nail-gun to the neck. “No reason, no warning.” Everyone’s immediate reaction is that there has been a terrible accident, especially as the girl is found staring at the wall, as if in shock; but then she comes to herself, grabs the nail gun, and puts it to her father’s face and fires again. “One murder, one blinding. Two minutes. No accident.” The girl had just turned seven.
April 22nd, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Liz Jensen | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
I Travel By Night by Robert McCammon
Trevor Lawson is a vampire, made by a scavenger on a Civil War battlefield. Now, more than 20 years since he was turned, he continues to fight his nature as hard as he can. It is becoming progressively more difficult for him to look at a crucifix or suffer even the indirect rays of the sun. But he nonetheless battles other vampires, even as the silver of his bullets burns his fingers as he loads his gun.
Those other vampires — the Dark Society — want him dead.
April 15th, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Robert McCammon | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The latest issue of Nightmare Magazine opens with Angela Slatter’s chilling tale, “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter.” Hepsibah Ballantyne is the titled daughter, the inheritor of her father’s business and haunted by his ghost. In this world, great care must be taken that the dead do not come back as ghosts; corpses must be tightly wrapped and mirrors covered. Coffins must be sturdy, with locks. Hepsibah is therefore an important part of the community, even if she is not well liked. But Lucette D’Aguilar will flirt with her, even indulge with her in a kiss or two,
April 8th, 2013. Terry Weyna | Elizabeth Hand | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Galaxy’s Edge Magazine is a new bimonthly publication appearing in both paper and electronic forms. The March 2013 issue is the first, and I purchased a copy of the electronic version as soon as it came to my attention. However, compared to Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and F&SF, among others, it is a mediocre collection of mostly reprints.
Galaxy’s Edge appears to be aimed toward those who miss the old pulps or want more hard SF that reads like the present Analog.
April 1st, 2013. Terry Weyna | James Patrick Kelly, Kij Johnson, Mike Resnick, Robert A. Heinlein, Robert J. Sawyer, Walter M. Miller | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The April/May 2013 issue of Asimov’s leads off with a difficult but exciting novella by Neal Asher entitled “The Other Gun.” It portrays a complicated universe in which humanity has found itself at war with a race called the prador, which is ruthless, merciless and completely uninterested in compromise. It has already exterminated several species when it runs into humans, and a survivor of one of those wars, a member of a hive species, has allied itself with humans. The narrator of this tale is a parasitologist and bio-synthesist who was working on a biological weapon to be used against the prador when he was reassigned to work for the Client,
March 25th, 2013. Terry Weyna | James Patrick Kelly, Ken Liu, Linda Nagata, Naomi Kritzer, Robert Silverberg | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin
It is difficult to write a mash-up between dark fantasy and a police procedural. There must always be a temptation to bring in a deus-ex-machina to solve difficult plot points, as well as to keep the mystery fair, so that a reader can make a good, educated guess as to how the mystery will be resolved. Irwin accomplishes the blending of the genres to excellent effect in The Broken Ones by Stephen M.
March 25th, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4 | Stephen M. Irwin | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa
[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]
We get precious little science fiction, fantasy and horror in translation, which means most of our reading is Eurocentric and a lot of it, though enjoyable, is anything but challenging. That’s why, when I saw Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales,
March 22nd, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Yoko Ogawa | Edge, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 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.