Author: Tim Scheidler

Jana:  This week I’m reading Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth, book two of THE BOOK OF DUST trilogy (and a far sight more enjoyable than La Belle Sauvage, let me tell you) and am relishing the opportunity to spend more time with Lyra and Pan despite and because of the horrible, growing emotional gulf between them.

Kat: As usual, it’s been a couple weeks since you heard from me. Since then I’ve read a couple of long novels.

Marion: I’m reading Marlon James’s Black Leopard, Red Wolf. For about the first 30 pages I thought, “Well, the story isn’t grabbing me but the language is stunning.” Then, somewhere after that the story got really interesting! And the language remains amazing.

Bill: This week I read The Wand that Rocks the Cradle, a fantasy collection that includes our very own Marion Deeds.  I also finished Lies Across America by James W. Loewen and Hunger by Roxane Gay.

Jana: This week I continued reading Sam J. Miller’s YA novel Destroy All Monsters; I’m enjoying the story, but the dueling first-person narrators sound exactly the same, which sometimes makes it tough to sort out what’s happening to whom. I read Theodora Goss’ The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, the third-and-final instalment (as far as I understand things!) in her EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURES OF THE ATHENA CLUB trilogy, and am happy to report significant improvements since book 2. I’ve been exploring some speculative fiction crafty-nerd fun,

Kelly: Still reading One Hundred Years of Solitude; it’s great, but there’s so much of it, and it’s dense! I’m also reading Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord, because I got interested in her new book, Unraveling. The latter is billed as a standalone, but I learned that it is actually related to Redemption in Indigo so I’m reading that earlier book first. Finally, I’m reading Naondel by Maria Turtschaninoff,

Jana: This week I read Lisa Goldstein’s upcoming novel Ivory Apples, a novel about creativity, trauma, inspiration, and obsession that doesn’t quite explore any of those themes to their fullest potential. I started reading Sam J. Miller’s latest novel, a YA stand-alone called Destroy All Monsters and which features teens, trauma, mental illness, and dimension-hopping. (Reviews to come.) On the non-speculative fiction side of my week, I’m reading Patton Oswalt’s Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film,

Bill: This week I read The Gossamer Mage by Julie E. Czerneda (stand-alone fantasy),  The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt (debut fantasy), Gates of Never by Deborah Davitt (speculative poetry), Marley by Jon Clinch (reshaping of A Christmas Carol), Avidly Reads Board Games by Eric Thurm (non-fiction), and Aluminum Leaves, a novella by our very own Marion Deeds. In genre video, I’m halfway through season one of The Terror (and since Marion mentioned it,

Jana: This week I’ve been working my way through Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It’s well-researched and well-written, and I’m learning a lot about all four authors, far surpassing what I already knew about Heinlein and Hubbard. I’m also re-reading Alison Wilgus’ Chronin Vol. 1: The Knife at Your Back in preparation for Chronin Vol. 2: The Sword in Your Hand,

Bill: Been gone for a month-plus on a hiking/camping/college visiting trip so haven’t been posting or actually doing a lot of reading. But over that that time I did read:

Last Light of the Sunand (as a reread) Sailing to Sarantiumand Lord of Emperors, all by Guy Gavriel Kay, which is recommendation enough. In fact, all three of us were often sitting at our campsite engrossed in our respective Kay novel (my wife with A Brightness Long Ago) and my son and I with one of the others)

The Violent Century,

Jana: This week I nursed my pup through a minor eye infection, finished Mercedes Lackey’s Eye Spy (ultimately not as good as its FAMILY SPIES series predecessor, The Hills Have Spies), started JY Yang’s The Ascent to Godhood (the latest TENSORATE novella), assisted with building a workbench for my garage, and observed the continuing browning/desiccation of my yard. I hope to have time next week to work on my to-be-reviewed stack, since I’ve been getting some really neat-looking Autumn 2019 ARCs and want to get to them with a relatively clear conscience.

Jana: This week I finished Mercedes Lackey’s The Hills Have Spies and jumped right into its sequel, Eye Spy; I’m enjoying the FAMILY SPIES series more than I expected, though it has more of a retro-genre feel than I tend to seek out on my own. Adolescent Me would have loved this series, to be sure. I also had the pleasure of reading our own Marion Deeds’ recently-published novella, Aluminum Leaves, and will be reviewing it for Fantasy Literature soon!