The Queen is Dead by Kate Locke
The Queen is Dead is the second installment of Kate Locke’s THE IMMORTAL EMPIRE series. As such, you kind of know what to expect and it does, therefore, lose some of its surprise. In God Save the Queen, our protagonist Xandra was established to be a tough-as-nails heroine who couldn’t seem to sit still for so much as a minute without finding some sort of chaos to get involved in. She’s always running from one disaster into another,
April 24th, 2013. Sarah Chorn´s rating: 3 | Kate Locke | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hallie Michaels is back in civilian life for good, but she’s not sure yet what she wants to do with that life, and she’s loath to be tied down to any one option. An old Army friend offers her a job that would take her away from her small South Dakota hometown again. She’s tempted to take it, but when she checks on her elderly neighbor Pabby Pabahar at her father’s request, Hallie discovers a mystery that may keep her in town for a while.
Pabby’s property is surrounded by black dogs that no one but Pabby and Hallie can see.
March 14th, 2013. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Deborah Coates | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Wrong Goodbye by Chris F. Holm
The Wrong Goodbye is Chris F. Holm’s second COLLECTOR adventure. Sam Thornton is a damned soul. In life he struck a deal with a demon to save his wife, who was dying of tuberculosis. It wasn’t enough that he traded his soul for her life; the demon corrupted him while he was still alive. Now Sam is pressed into service collecting and delivering other damned souls to Hell.
Things have gotten precarious since Sam’s last outing.
February 26th, 2013. Marion Deeds and Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Chris F. Holm | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Blight of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler
The Blight of Muirwood is the second book in Jeff Wheeler’s LEGENDS OF MUIRWOOD trilogy which was originally self-published and then picked up by Amazon’s 47North imprint. I thought the first book, The Wretched of Muirwood, lacked inventiveness but was generally a pleasant fantasy with agreeable characters who would most likely appeal to young adults.
In The Blight of Muirwood, Lia has been promoted out of the kitchens to serve as the abbey’s Hunter.
February 6th, 2013. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Jeff Wheeler | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Merchant of Dreams by Anne Lyle
Anne Lyle continues her Elizabethan sword-and-cipher fantasy series NIGHT’S MASQUE with Book Two, The Merchant of Dreams. This book picks up almost a year after the end of The Alchemist of Souls, and follows Mal Catlyn and his friends on their adventures, which take place mostly on the ocean or in the city of Venice.
In Lyle’s universe, the New World is populated by skraylings, a non-human race who reincarnate and who use magic.
January 16th, 2013. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Anne Lyle | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Quantum Coin is E.C. Myers’s second book, following the adventures of Ephraim Scott and his friends as they hop from universe to universe by means of a magical coin, er, I mean, a coheron drive disguised as a quarter. In this outing, the very multiverse is collapsing and universes are merging, with unpredictable results. It appears that only Ephraim, Jena Kim, Zoe (an “analog” of Jena from a dystopian universe) and Nathan can stop it — but is that even the right thing to do?
December 10th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | E.C. Myers | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Dave Freer’s YA novel The Steam Mole is a rollicking good time. This book picks up almost immediately after Cuttlefish. Tim Barnabas and Clara Calland are now in Westralia, a free nation on the Australian continent. Clara and her scientist mother Mary have sought asylum from the dreaded coal-driven British Empire, alive and well in 1953 in this world, but Tim and the rest of the submarine’s crew are stranded while the Cuttlefish is being repaired.
December 4th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Dave Freer | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Exile, the second book in Rowena Cory Daniells’s OUTCAST CHRONICLES, simultaneously raises the stakes and deepens the narrative that began in the first installment, Besieged. It’s a good bit of work, and readers will be pleased to find Daniells addressing some of the issues that were problematic in Beseiged while at the same time keeping to the familiar sense of suspense and breakneck speed that made the first novel so gripping.
November 26th, 2012. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Rowena Cory Daniells | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Insurgent is the follow-up to Veronica Roth’s Divergent and serves as the middle book in her planned dystopian DIVERGENT trilogy. I gave Divergent a middling review, noting its fast pace but finding some issues with plausibility and depth of character. I wish I could say Insurgent showed some improvement, but I actually found myself less impressed with the sequel. It is possible that the book suffered in my reading it so soon after Divergent and so I was responding to the cumulative flaws between both books rather than simply to Insurgent’s problems.
August 13th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Veronica Roth | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Chris F. Holm’s first novel, Dead Harvest, is supernatural noir at its best. Sam Thornton, who is as surely named for Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade as he is for the Hebrew judge of the Bible, is the best sort of hero to serve as the basis for a series (THE COLLECTOR): despite being damned, he still has a strong sense of right and wrong, and refuses to do wrong whenever he has the option.
April 24th, 2012. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Chris F. Holm | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…