Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2009

Pastworld: Great ideas, shallow characters

Pastworld by Ian Beck

Pastworld is a theme park that is run by the Buckland Corporation. It is a complete authentic reproduction of 17th century London. Everything is authentic: the dress, the lack of electricity, even the 17th century laws. Everyone who visits Pastworld has to be authentic as well, right down to the luggage they carry and the toiletries they use.

But despite the fact that Pastworld has a few electronic security measures, crime runs rampant within the park. Underground “unofficials” beg and steal from the “gawkers” or visitors to the park,

Mythangelus: Strange, haunting stories that will draw you in

Mythangelus by Storm Constantine

Storm Constantine has frequently taken inspiration from the legends of the angels. Mythangelus is a collection of her angel-themed short fiction. The stories deal with issues of religion, gender, and sexuality; and are filled with lush prose:

At first light, a flock of birds known as the guardabarrancas, the guardians of the ravine, wake Silva with their tinkling song. It sounds as if a thousand wind chimes are being subtly excited by a tantalising breeze. The light, when Silva opens her eyes,

Lips Touch Three Times: I want to squeal like a crazed fangirl

Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor

I’m having a hard time reviewing Lips Touch: Three Times. Intelligent language seems to be failing me. I don’t want to write a review so much as I want to jump up and down and squeal like a crazed fangirl. Lips Touch is chocolate in book form. It’s dark, it’s rich, it’s delicious, and it’s precisely to my taste.

Lips Touch is a collection of three stories; the common theme,

The Magician’s Elephant: A novella to read to your children

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo’s new work, The Magician’s Elephant, takes a little bit of warming up to early on, but the simple and sometimes poetic prose combined with the fairy tale/fable-like atmosphere and style starts to win the reader over, first charming them, then moving them. By the end, which comes quickly since it’s more novella than novel, both the prose and emotional impact have deepened and intensified, making this a novella well worth reading oneself and to one’s children.

Lord of Silence: Decent sword-and-sorcery mystery

Lord of Silence by Mark Chadbourn

For millennia, the great city of Idriss, City of Lights, has stood almost completely isolated from the world. Bordered by a seemingly endless forest from which few return, the city has relied for protection on its walls and the bravery of its soldiers, such as the elite Crimson Hunt. But when the beloved warrior Mellias, the leader of the Hunt, is found brutally murdered — the first victim of a strange and elusive killer — the city’s fate falls into the hands of the Huntsman Vidar.

September 2nd, 2009. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 3 | Mark Chadbourn | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Red Tree: What a strange book!

The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan

What a strange book! Then again, I know never to expect the expected when reading Caitlín R. Kiernan.

The story centers on Sarah Crowe, a writer who moves to an isolated house in Rhode Island after her lover’s death. Beset by writer’s block, she finds herself unable to write the novel her contract demands, and instead becomes obsessed with an old manuscript she finds in the basement. This manuscript was written by a previous tenant of the house who died before he could complete it,

Siege Warriors: A Fantasy Anthology

Siege Warriors: A Fantasy Anthology by Brian G. Murray

In his anthology Siege Warriors, Brian G. Murray brings a medieval siege to life through the eyes of a variety of characters. Most of the stories portray cities under siege, surrounded and attacked by an opposing army. The situations described in these stories are similar, but Murray creates diversity by showing the conflict from different points of view.

Other stories take the theme in a different direction. One takes place in a building held by bandits,

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.

The Calling: A supernatural thriller

The Calling by David Mack

Urban fantasy is replete with different, sometimes catchy, permutations of a standard bunch of mythological/fantastic beings who happen to turn up in our world. In The Calling, David Mack tries something pretty original by bringing us (instead of vampires and werewolves) guardian angels and their evil counterparts.

Tom Nash is your everyman who happens to have a mystical gift: he hears people’s prayers. And through the prayers of a little girl, he is Called to New York City to help the angels of Heaven fight the demons of Hell.

Wild Thyme, Green Magic: Cagey heroes & exotic locales

Wild Thyme, Green Magic by Jack Vance

I’m a big fan of Jack Vance’s wild imagination and his “high-end” writing style (his description, as I learned in this book). So, I was happy to get a copy of Wild Thyme, Green Magic, an assortment of his fantasy and science fiction tales which have previously been published in several SFF magazines and have now been compiled and edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan and published by Subterranean Press.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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