Posted by Kelly Lasiter | Feb 19, 2021 | SFF Reviews | 6
Reposting to include Jana’s new review. The Wood Wife by Terri Windling Our heroine, Maggie, is reeling from her divorce and drifting rather aimlessly through life — she considers herself a poet but hasn’t written a poem in years. Then, her mentor dies mysteriously — drowned in a dry creekbed — and inexplicably leaves her […]
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Posted by Kat Hooper | Jul 27, 2018 | SFF Reviews | 1
The Parafaith War by L.E. Modesitt Jr In our far future, a young man named Trystin Desoll is a soldier in the long war that his high-tech civilization has been fighting with the Revs, a society of religious zealots. The Revs, who are outgrowing their own planet, believe that the Eco-Techs are sinful because they […]
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Posted by Brad Hawley | Oct 15, 2016 | SFF Reviews | 0
The House of Secrets written by Steven T. Seagle and illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen The House of Secrets is a twenty-five issue series that started in 1996 and is written by Steven T. Seagle and illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen. It features a lying, unreliable runaway named Rain Harper; a young girl she takes under her wing […]
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Posted by Jason Golomb | Jun 1, 2016 | SFF Reviews | 1
Desperation by Stephen King My only disappointment in Stephen King’s Desperation is that it isn’t longer. This book contains all that makes King so enjoyable to read: strong and believable character development; intuitive and subtle understanding of the childhood psyche; horror as defined by what’s creepy, intense, psychological and sometimes gothic; mythological back-story that superbly […]
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Posted by Tim Scheidler | Apr 2, 2016 | SFF Reviews | 3
Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross To understand Kingdom Come, you have to understand a few things about superhero comics. Now, if you have any sort of interest in the genre at all, I’m sure that sentence opens up nightmarish recollections of previous rabbit-holes down which you’ve ventured to try to understand some seemingly […]
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Posted by Jason Golomb | Nov 10, 2015 | SFF Reviews | 9
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card Scenario: If you knew there was a bomb in a building, would you feel obliged to yell as loudly as possible to warn other people? The bomb explodes and the injuries are high and the death toll unimaginable. But let’s then suppose you have an […]
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Posted by Kat Hooper | Sep 30, 2015 | SFF Reviews | 3
Clockwork: or All Wound Up by Philip Pullman Clockwork: or All Wound Up (1996) is a very short (about 100 pages) children’s fairytale by Philip Pullman. It stars Karl and Fritz, two young Germans who have not finished a job that they were supposed to do and are worried about what will happen when the […]
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Posted by Kat Hooper | Jul 22, 2014 | SFF Reviews | 1
Sacrifice of Fools by Ian McDonald Ian McDonald grew up in Belfast, a city known for the turmoil and unrest it has endured because of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Some of McDonald’s novels allegorically explore the causes and results of a divided city. In Sacrifice of Fools, McDonald presents a vivid and lively […]
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Posted by Brad Hawley | Aug 2, 2013 | SFF Reviews | 0
The Darkness: Origins, Volume 1 by Garth Ennis (writer) and Marc Silvestri (artist) The Darkness: Origins, Volume 1 by Garth Ennis is an excellent series that features and is named after a spinoff character from The Witchblade. The Darkness made his first appearance in issue #10 of Witchblade and got his own title soon after. […]
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Posted by Terry Lago (GUEST) | Mar 27, 2013 | SFF Reviews | 2
Clouds End by Sean Stewart I love Sean Stewart, and I wish he hadn’t given up on writing fantasy. His books are always a treat and pay back tenfold the effort put into them by the reader. Clouds End was Stewart’s “pure fantasy” novel, in contrast to the mixed urban fantasy with science fictional elements […]
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Posted by John Hulet | Mar 5, 2013 | SFF Reviews | 1
Adiamante by L.E. Modesitt Jr Suppose that the world had gone through an apocalypse based on a conflict between two groups of super-technologically-advanced people with fundamentally different beliefs on how technology should be applied. One group wanted the logic of technology to replace human thought, and the other wanted technology to merely enhance human perception. […]
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Posted by Terry Lago (GUEST) | Oct 29, 2012 | SFF Reviews | 0
Schismatrix Plus by Bruce Sterling What a great read this was. I’ve never been much of a fan of cyberpunk and I’m not particularly a fan of the authors generally noted to be founders of the genre (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, etc.), but I really loved Schismatrix Plus and it has put Bruce Sterling near […]
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Posted by Jesse Hudson | Apr 4, 2012 | SFF Reviews | 2
Dark Moon In writing reviews of fantasy, everybody makes mention of those derivative books of sword and sorcery which lack imagination and either borrow exclusively from previous works (think Terry Goodkind) or possess so many archetypes that the whole book becomes cliché (think the DRAGONLANCE series). Everybody knows these cardboard Conans and Gandalfs wielding battleaxes, […]
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Posted by Marion Deeds | Aug 29, 2011 | SFF Reviews | 2
The Pillow Friend by Lisa Tuttle The Pillow Friend, by Lisa Tuttle, straddles two categories of fiction, psychological horror and the more conventional quasi-literary “women’s fiction.” Tuttle’s prose is exquisite. She is able to describe the thoughts and impulses of a girl growing toward womanhood in an immediate, authentic way. Her ability to set mood […]
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Posted by Kelly Lasiter | Jun 19, 2010 | SFF Reviews | 0
Fair Peril by Nancy Springer We don’t have princes here. We don’t even have Kennedys. Both riotously funny and sweetly touching, Nancy Springer‘s Fair Peril is a fun and wonderful fantasy novel. It’s set in modern times, in a sort of “Anytown, USA” — where the shopping mall is a portal into Fairyland, and anything […]
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Posted by Rebecca Fisher | Jun 3, 2010 | SFF Reviews | 0
Zel by Donna Jo Napoli For readers who simply glance over the words and do no reading between the lines, Zel will simply read as a fleshed-out fairytale, in which the characters, settings and storylines are given more background and details. For those who take the time to read more luxuriously and deeply, they will […]
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Posted by Beth Johnson Sonderby (guest) | Feb 27, 2010 | SFF Reviews | 0
Firebird by Mercedes Lackey Since Firebird is one of Mercedes Lackey’s somewhat older works, I thought I’d enjoy it. It certainly sounded promising. And indeed, Firebird starts off with a lot of potential. Though the main character, Ilya, is yet another underappreciated, super-clever youth whose family is mean to him, etc. etc., he’s a bit […]
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Posted by Rebecca Fisher | Jun 17, 2008 | SFF Reviews | 0
The Prestige by Christopher Priest I was drawn to Christopher Priest’s novel after having watched and enjoyed the Nolan brothers’ film adaptation of The Prestige. Going into the reading, I knew that several plot twists would be spotted a mile away, but the film is sufficiently different from its source material that Priest’s work contains […]
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Posted by Rebecca Fisher | Apr 12, 2008 | SFF Reviews | 0
Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip The first time I read Patricia McKillip, I didn’t get very far. The book was the Riddlemaster of Hed, and I was completely unprepared for her complex use of language. But there must have been something in her style that intrigued me, because I tracked down Winter Rose not long […]
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