The City & The City (TV Adaptation) The City & The City is one of my favorite China Miéville books. I love the conceit of the nested cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, and I love the voice of our narrator, the smart, world-weary and not-always-so-honest Tyador Borlu. Amazon Prime offers a four-part adaptation of the […]
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Dragonfly by Julia Golding A political marriage has been arranged between 16-year-old Princess Taoshira (Tashi) of the Blue Crescent Islands and 18-year-old Prince Ramil (Ram) of the country of Gerfal. They’re separated by a few hundred miles, a couple of other countries in between theirs, and a world of cultural differences. Both Tashi and Ram […]
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The Surgeon of Souls and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Leslie Bellem In my last two book reviews, I discussed a pair of characters who were amongst the most popular during the era of the pulp magazine: The Spider, who was featured in 118 novels that appeared in The Spider magazine from 1933 – […]
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The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino Along with his brilliant Invisible Cities (1972 in Italian, 1974 in English), one of Italo Calvino’s most enduring creations was his series of whimsical and erudite stories inspired by the origins of the universe and scientific principles, labeled Cosmicomics (1965 in Italian, 1968 in English). They are narrated by […]
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Wolverine: Old Man Logan by Mark Millar (writer) & Steve McNiven (illustrator) Logan, a grizzled west coast farmer whose only joy is his wife and two children, knows that the rent is due. He doesn’t have the dough, and when the cannibalistic Hulk Gang arrives, he will suffer a beating – if he’s lucky. What […]
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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger Two sets of twins, a disillusioned husband, a grieving boyfriend, one ghost. The lives of Her Fearful Symmetry’s characters are as tangled as they sound, in a drama that will play out amongst the tombstones of Highgate Cemetery. A sticker on the front reminds potential readers that Niffenegger is the […]
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Editor’s note: Stuart originally posted a review of this book in December 2015. This is a new version of the review. The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Retrospective of His Finest Fiction by Gene Wolfe I decided to tackle this collection for a third time, this time armed with Marc Aramini’s Between Light and Shadow: […]
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The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough A novella that packs the emotional punch of a full-length novel, Sarah Pinborough’s The Language of Dying (2009) stealthily moves from an innocuous beginning to a stunning conclusion in the spare space of less than 150 pages. This work was nominated for a 2009 Shirley Jackson award and won […]
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The Lucky Strike by Kim Stanley Robinson The Lucky Strike collects a short story and an essay about alternate history by Kim Stanley Robinson. At the end, readers are treated to an interview with the author. It is part of a larger series of publications that highlight “outspoken authors.” “The Lucky Strike,” the short story, […]
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The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi My Body is Not My Own… Having just finished Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, I’m left rather bereft at how to describe, let alone review, The Windup Girl. I am not a big reader of science-fiction or dystopian thrillers, which means that no obvious comparisons come to […]
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Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson I’m a huge fan of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, which is a terrific blend of pseudo science fictional philosophy and religion, and fun and entertaining alternative history. It’s deep and touching and provides a strong sense of activity (if not specifically action and adventure). […]
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Under the Dome by Stephen King Stephen King’s Under the Dome is long. I mean, long. The manuscript weighs in at 8.6 kg and Time magazine quoted King himself saying he’d be “killing a lot of trees” with his next novel. But when you read the book’s premise, and begin to understand what King had […]
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Madame Xanadu (Vol. 2): Exodus Noir by Matt Wagner Exodus Noir, the second volume of Matt Wagner’s Madame Xanadu series, is an impressive follow-up to the first collection, even though there is a new artist on board. However, there’s no loss in artistic quality. If I prefer the first volume to the second, it’s primarily […]
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Act One by Nancy Kress Ever since reading Kress’ wonderful collection Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories I’ve been keeping an eye out for her short fiction. A number of her short works won Nebulas and Hugos, the most recent was a Hugo in 2009 for her novella The Erdmann Nexus, which unfortunately […]
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The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim I just finished reading The Eternal Smile for a second time to see if I would like it as much as I did the first time. The answer is, “Yes.” There’s no doubt in my mind that this work is a truly great […]
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The Unwritten: Tommy Taylor & the Bogus Identity (Vol 1) by Mike Carey (writer) & Peter Gross (artist) The Unwritten by Mike Carey is one of the best current series being published right now. It is one of the few titles put out by Vertigo — DC’s mature line of comics — that has kept […]
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Olympus by Nathan Edmondson (writer) and Christian Ward (artist) I am starting to be very impressed with this writer whose books I’ve just started reading. Nathan Edmondson caught my eye first with Who Is Jake Ellis?, for which I wrote a positive review earlier this year. But today — May 15th, 2013, the day I’m […]
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Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a romp of a first novel by Robin Sloan. It’s a perfect book for booklovers who lean toward the mysterious and fantastic, blurring genre lines throughout to afford readers a marvelous time. The novel begins when Clay Jannon, the first-person narrator, is responding […]
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RASL by Jeff Smith RASL by Jeff Smith — available in four paperback volumes — is a fifteen-issue story that recently took me by complete surprise. However, I should have known how good it would be: Smith’s well-known comic Bone — an epic work of fantasy for all ages — is one of the great […]
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Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson What if America’s Civil War had been, not a war of unification, but a war to end slavery? What if John Brown had succeeded at Harper’s Ferry? In his short utopian novel Fire on the Mountain, Terry Bisson contemplates those questions. Bisson’s story is simple and human, but […]
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Reunion by Rick Hautala As we grow older, we tend to think of childhood as a golden time, when the hours poured through our fingers like water, glistening and plentiful. Summers were especially wonderful, those days when school was out and there was nothing to do but play. But when we call up specific memories, […]
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Dracula: The Undead by Ian Holt & Dacre Stoker Have you ever read a book that is so bad that it loops back around to being good? Well, Dracula the Un-Dead (2009) isn’t one of those books. It’s just plain bad. But it nearly provides one of those “so bad it’s good” reading experiences, creating a sense […]
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Basilisk by Graham Masterton Graham Masterton is relatively unknown in the United States except among the horror cognoscenti. Although he’s written or edited more than 20 books, he is mostly known in his native England. He can write a slick little work of horror like House of Bones and make it haunt you no matter […]
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Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint The magic is leaving the Green Isles. The Summerlord Hafarl’s staff has been broken, and the Everwinter is coming to blanket the islands in snow forever. To make matters worse, the Vikings are raiding up and down the shore, laying waste to everything in their way. It’s up […]
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Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson Robert Charles Wilson’s novel Julian Comstock is set in a vastly changed 22nd-century USA — after the end of the age of oil and atheism has resulted in disaster. Technology is mostly back to pre-20th century levels, and the population has been vastly reduced […]
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