Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Terry Weyna

Magazine Monday: Subterranean Online Summer 2011

Subterranean Online’s summer issue is devoted to young adult fiction, but the authors seem to have taken that directive as license to be subversive. It’s been true for a while now that the only thing “young adult” about most “young adult” science fiction, fantasy and horror is that the protagonist is not an adult. The stories just as entertaining for 50-year-olds as for 15-year-olds, and the themes are by no means limited to the worries of teens. This issue makes it clear why so many genre readers pay no attention to the labels slapped on books these days,

Tower Hill: Feels like a formula

Tower Hill by Sarah Pinborough

Religion is ripe soil for horror writers. If you squint a bit when you read the Bible, it’s a vast catalog of horror itself: Adam and Eve’s eviction from paradise, the invention of death, Cain’s killing of Abel, the torture of Job — and we haven’t even gotten past Genesis! But the Bible is the source of salvation as well, as God provides his people with manna in the wilderness, preserves the human race despite a flood that covers all the earth, and rescues Moses from the bulrushes.

Mozart’s Blood: A new spin on vampirism

Mozart’s Blood by Louise Marley

Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say, and in the case of Mozart’s Blood by Louise Marley, that is very good advice indeed. One would expect a torrid romance novel from the painting of a woman with disproportionate breasts and a look of impending orgasm on her face. But one would be wrong. This vampire novel contains its fair share of passion, but it is more a character study than a romance. And while the structure of the novel is flawed,

Birdbrain: A depressing account of a disastrous vacation

Birdbrain by Johanna Sinisalo

A man and a woman go on an extended hiking tour of Australia and New Zealand, and especially Tasmania, Australia’s island state, in Birdbrain by the Finnish writer Johanna Sinisalo. Neither is a particularly likable person, or has a particularly interesting voice.

Jyrki makes his living as a roving bartender, spending a few months here, a few weeks there. He is a snob about hiking and camping, expressing nothing but disdain for any campsite that offers bunk beds in a bare bones cabin instead of a place to pitch your tent.

City of Bones: Doesn’t let go

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

I’m a huge fan of books that don’t let me go until I’ve reached the last page. Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, the first in her Mortal Instruments series, is that kind of book. Ostensibly written for young adults, this is a novel that adults will enjoy just as much as teenagers, for all that the protagonist and her friends are high-school aged.

Clary and her friend Simon — not boyfriend, much as he’d like to claim that title — visit the Pandemonium Club in Manhattan,

Magazine Monday: Theodore Sturgeon Award Nominees

The Theodore Sturgeon Award will be given to one lucky author at next weekend’s Campbell Conference Awards Banquet in Lawrence, Kansas. The banquet caps both the Writers Workshop in Science Fiction and the Novel Writers Workshop in Science fiction, and is the kick-off event for the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction. Writers mingle with academics, which must make gathering that a studious reader would find pretty lively. I wish I were going to be there myself.

Instead, I’m doing the next best thing and reviewing all of the nominees for the Sturgeon Award.

The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs: A pastiche still needs to entertain

The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock

Langdon St. Ives returns in The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs, James P. Blaylock’s latest Langdon St. Ives Adventure.

St. Ives is described as “the greatest, if largely unheralded, explorer and scientist in the Western World … piecing together a magnetic engine for a voyage to the moon.” Unfortunately, the premise of The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs is less ambitious than its protagonist. Although our heroes are explorers and scientists,

June 21st, 2011. Ryan Skardal and Terry Weyna´s rating: 1 | James P. Blaylock | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Green: Mixed reviews

Green by Jay Lake

Green is barely a toddler when her father sells her to Federo, a man who travels around looking for young female children on behalf of a faraway Duke. Taken halfway across the world, not even able to speak the local language, Green is imprisoned in the Pomegranate Court, where she endures a ruthless training program designed to mold her from an innocent, illiterate child into a sophisticated courtesan or concubine for the Duke’s court. Various Mistresses teach her the skills a lady needs and punish her cruelly at the slightest misstep or shortcoming.

June 15th, 2011. Stefan Raets, Rob Rhodes, Bill Capossere and Terry Weyna | Jay Lake | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Magazine Monday: Weird Tales Is Weird

I am happy to report that Weird Tales has grown weirder since Ann VanderMeer has taken the helm as Editor-in-Chief. This is to be expected of the co-anthologist (with her husband, Jeff VanderMeer) of The New Weird, an collection of tales essential to the library of everyone who loves the truly strange; and the co-anthologist of an enormous anthology due out sometime soon from Atlantic called The Weird. While we all wait for this last book (I with bated breath),

Magazine Monday: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May/June 2011

The May/June issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is bookended with stories about music by two stalwarts of the field, Chet Williamson and Kate Wilhelm. Both demonstrate that they still wield a strong pen; both tales are excellent.

Chet Williamson’s “The Final Verse” is about two men who set out to find the final verses to a folk song called “Mother Come Quickly.” It’s supposed to be one of the best-known songs in popular music, performed by just about everyone of note,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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