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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Author: Terry Weyna

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Purple and Black: Going to assign this to my political theory class

Purple and Black by K.J. Parker

You have to love a story that starts out with the line, “You are, of course, an unmitigated bastard.”

Purple and Black is a collection of the military dispatches sent back and forth between the new Roman Emperor Nicephorus and his best friend Phormio, who has reluctantly taken charge of the military at Nico’s insistence. Nico is appointing his friends to the important government positions because the empire has gone through seventy-seven emperors in the last one hundred years — all but a handful of them dying painful deaths.


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July 20th, 2009. and ´s rating: | | | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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The Hunger Games: A cautionary tale

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins has already proven her talent for storytelling with her recently completed Gregor the Underlander series. In that series, she showed she was able to create strong characters, move plot along quickly, deftly control the rise and fall in tension, and create moving scenes. While there were some weak sections in the series (sometimes the pace moved too quickly, settings often could have been more detailed, and a few characters could have been more richly drawn), by the end she had crafted one of the best YA series to hit the shelves the past few years — a thoughtful,


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July 9th, 2009. , , , and ´s rating: | | | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

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The Magicians: A bandage of irony for your self-esteem

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians attempts to take the unreal world of fantasy — magic, spellcasting, other worlds, fabulous beasts — and tie it much more tightly to the real world than is usually done. And (I think) the attempt as well is to tell a “realistic” novel which takes as its premise that magic exists and is being used (not quite the same thing as the first). I’d say he only partially succeeds, though he does so often enough that the book makes a worthy,


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July 7th, 2009. , , , and | | | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |

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Lamentation: A rich story, beautifully told

Lamentation by Ken Scholes

Lamentation is a promising start to a new fantasy (or at least semi-fantasy) series, which is a bit ironic as its own start is a bit bumpy. The story begins with a bang — literally. We’re witness to the utter destruction of an entire city — screams, flames, toppling buildings, searing winds, etc. Many novels would end with the scene, but Ken Scholes chooses to make it the starting point of the plot, an original beginning which I liked a lot.

Unfortunately,


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April 7th, 2009. and ´s rating: , | | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

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Black Ships: Cross the wine-dark sea with Gull

Black Ships by Jo Graham

There’s nothing I love so much as sinking into a big fat book that combines the sweep of history with a dash of magic. This book is an adaptation of The Aeneid, from the point of view of the Sybil who, in the poem, guides Aeneas through the underworld.

She’s a lot more fleshed out here. Her name is Gull, later known as Linnea and as Pythia, and jumps off the page from the very beginning of chapter one with a self-introduction that reminded me a bit of Phèdre’s at the beginning of Kushiel’s Dart.


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March 23rd, 2008. , and ´s rating: , | | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

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Elantris: Above average stand-alone

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

At the start, I want to give Brandon Sanderson props just for doing what seems to be the unthinkable nowadays — writing a standalone fantasy, a book that actually comes to a close, a book that is just that, a book and not the “start of a bright new fresh trilogy that out-Tolkien’s Tolkien!” Luckily, Elantris holds up well and even merits beyond being a standalone.

Elantris is the name of the city that until ten years ago was inhabited by near-gods,


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November 7th, 2007. , , and ´s rating: | | , | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

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The Name of the Wind: Doesn’t disappoint

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

You know how sometimes a book, or a movie, or a concert gets so hyped up in the press and you have such high expectations that when you finally get around to reading/seeing it, it disappoints? That’s what I was worried might happen when I decided to read The Name of the Wind. I purposely came to it late, hoping to wait until Patrick Rothfuss was nearly finished with the trilogy before I starting it. But, the book has received so much attention that it became inexcusable for me,


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November 6th, 2007. , , , and ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 18 comments |

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Thunderer: A lot to like

Thunderer by Felix Gilman

It seems lately that a lot of books have come out where setting plays as large a role as character. I’m thinking of Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris, China Miéville’s New Crobuzon, Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge, and Jay Lake’s Mainspring. Books that haven’t simply created a new world, but whose world itself is an integral part of the story, rather than just the physical part the story moves across.

Felix Gilman’s Thunderer certainly falls into that category — more successfully than some and less so than others.


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July 25th, 2007. and ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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