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]: 2010.03

Hilda and the Bird Parade: Hilda’s adventures continue

Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson

The third book in the HILDA series by Luke Pearson sees our blue-haired adventurer in quite different surroundings. After the events of Hilda and the Midnight Giant, Hilda and her mother have moved to the city, far away from the open spaces of the countryside and the multitude of magical creatures that live there.

Still, Hilda is trying to make the best of it, even if her mother is far more nervous about her roaming the city by herself than she was the country.

April 12th, 2021. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 5 | Children, Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

The Siren Depths: Best book in the series so far

The Siren Depths by Martha Wells

Book three in Martha Wells’ BOOKS OF THE RAKSURA is The Siren Depths (2012). (By the way, the novels’ titles are only vaguely related to the plot, I’ve noticed.) If you’ve loved this series so far, I feel certain that you will love The Siren Depths. In my opinion, it’s better than both of the previous books (The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea).

Tool of War: Augmented YA

Tool of War by Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi’s Tool of War (2017) is the third entry in a series of futuristic novels in which catastrophic climate change projections have come to pass. The American seaboard is flooded, and the United States government has been overtaken by transnational organizations. The most stunning technological breakthroughs are in gene editing, and elite organizations own “augments,” creatures that are part human and part animal, part slave and part soldier. The main character here, Tool, is the greatest of the augments because he can defy his training and act independently.

Edgedancer: Snappy and surefooted

Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson

I’ve always been a sucker for an enfant terrible. The Peter Pans and Pippi Longstockings of the literary world would be hugely annoying if they actually showed up in the real world, of course, but in fiction it’s a fun archetype. Brandon Sanderson‘s Edgedancer (2017) is all about such a character, and so consequently I had a great deal of fun with it. Readers with a lower tolerance for goofball ragamuffins might have a different experience (as per his usual,

June 4th, 2018. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4.5 | Brandon Sanderson | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Head Rush: Short and sweet

Head Rush by Carolyn Crane

Head Rush (2012) is a perfect finale for THE DISILLUSIONISTS TRILOGY. The thing about Head Rush is that readers won’t read it to be surprised. You know how it’s going to end; you just don’t know the details. Carolyn Crane makes those details fun, and keeps Head Rush rather short and sweet, which is perfect for the series as a whole.

In fact, Crane seems to know exactly how long each book should be,

January 18th, 2018. Sarah Chorn´s rating: 4 | Carolyn Crane | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Oathbringer: Ambitious, often compelling, a bit over-long

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson

So I’ve decided there’s so much to cover in Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer (1200+ pages), and there so much I can’t say so as to avoid spoilers, that I’m going to eschew the usual seamless essay structure for this review and just go with relating some brief and, at times, necessarily vague reactions to various aspects.

Structure: As with the other books (The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance),

December 20th, 2017. Bill Capossere and Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Brandon Sanderson | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Blackout: If you think you’re fed up with zombies, make an exception

Blackout by Mira Grant

This review contains spoilers for the first two books in the NEWSFLESH trilogy, Feed and Deadline.

Mira Grant’s Blackout (2012) ends almost exactly where Deadline (2011) ended. Georgia — George — Mason has awakened to find that she has made a miraculous recovery from being shot in the brainstem, and without retinal Kellis-Amberlee (the virus that causes people to become zombies, named for the discoverer of a cure for the common cold and the discoverer of a cure for cancer,

April 19th, 2017. Terry Weyna and Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Mira Grant | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Spellbreaker: An imaginative and challengingly complex fantasy

Spellbreaker by Blake Charlton

If someone is offering to sell you a spell that predicts one hour into the future, one excellent way to test whether the spell really works is to try to murder the man selling it to you. If you succeed in killing him, clearly it wasn’t a valid prophetic spell. In any case, that’s Leandra Weal’s rationale for poisoning the blackrice liqueur she offers to the smuggler selling her the spell. Luckily for both Leandra and the smuggler, the spell warns the smuggler not to drink the puffer fish liver-infused drink.

December 7th, 2016. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Blake Charlton | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Daughter of Blood: The third instalment in an ever-growing fantasy epic

Daughter of Blood by Helen Lowe

Daughter of Blood (2016), is the third book in Helen Lowe‘s four-book WALL OF NIGHT series, preceded by The Heir of Night and The Gathering of the Lost. It’s been a while since I read the last book, so it took a few chapters to untangle the far-reaching web of characters and plotlines, but soon I was back on track and re-immersing myself into the world of Haarth.

September 20th, 2016. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Helen Lowe | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The City of Mirrors: A long fitting conclusion to an excellent trilogy

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

The lengthy journey from Justin Cronin’s vampire apocalypse The Passage comes to a full conclusion (and maybe a bit more) in the third and final book, The City of Mirrors. If The Passage was absolutely great (and it really, really was), and the sequel The Twelve was good but not quite as, mostly due to it feeling much more its length than the first book did, then The City of Mirrors falls somewhere in between,

June 3rd, 2016. Bill Capossere and Jason Golomb´s rating: 4 | Justin Cronin | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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