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]: 2012

The Constantine Affliction: A witty gender-bending romp

The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton

T. Aaron Payton’s The Constantine Affliction (2012) is a witty gender-bending romp through Victorian London as it never was. Most of us will call this “steampunk.” Payton prefers “gonzo-history.” I say, “whatever works.”

Ellie Skyler, who is assumed to be male, makes her living as a journalist using the pen name “E. Skye.” She plans to go in male attire into one of the city’s clockwork brothels, where the prostitutes are nearly perfect simulacra of human women, to write an expose.

August 8th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | T. Aaron Payton | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Star Shard: A winning children’s fantasy

The Star Shard by Frederic S. Durbin

The Star Shard, by Frederic S. Durbin, is a winning children’s fantasy with an intriguing setting, albeit a bit implausible. The main character, Cymbril, is a young orphan girl-slave who lives on the Thunder Rake, a mind-bogglingly massive wagon that claws its way on seven-story wheels through the countryside to trade with the world’s cities, towns, and villages. It is basically a market town on wheels that goes where the customers are. Cymbril’s job is to sing to attract and keep the crowds that will fill the market’s coffers,

Further: Beyond the Threshold

Further: Beyond the Threshold by Chris Roberson

Some premises are so great that authors can’t resist trying them out again. In Further: Beyond the Threshold, Chris Roberson tries his hand at Charlton Heston waking up from cryogenic sleep in the distant future. Well, actually, our hero is Captain Ramachandra Jason Stone, who left earth in the 22nd century to journey to Alpha Centauri B. He wakes up over ten thousand years later, when Further begins.

Roberson is aware of the connections between his work and his predecessors,

Ether Frolics: Nine Tales from the Etheric Explorers Club

Ether Frolics: Nine Tales from the Etheric Explorers Club by Paul Marlowe

The motto of Etheric Explorers Club, translated from the Greek, is “to seek, to discover, to return home.” These explorers dedicate themselves to investigating the ways in which the spirit world touches the physical world. Unfortunately for the explorers, most of these meetings between the spiritual and the physical are dangerous.

Paul Marlowe’s Ether Frolics is a collection of short stories that provide accounts of the explorations of the ether since the end of the Victorian era.

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart: 25 works by an accomplished stylist

Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Caitlín R. Kiernan is a powerful writer, with a prodigious vocabulary, a mastery of prose and the ability to ground a sentence with a perfectly chosen detail. Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, published by Subterranean Press, contains 25 works by this accomplished stylist. Many of the works have graphic sexual imagery and intense sexual violence. In many cases that is the sole intent of the piece.

I have no complaints at all with the line-by-line prose, but the anthology is a mixed bag.

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales: I’d love to see more of Grandma Matchie

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales by Steven Erikson

I’m a huge fan of Steven Erikson’s massive MALAZAN EMPIRE series, which I consider one of the outstanding works of fantasy in the past few decades. I’m also a fan of his trilogy (Bauchelain and Korbal Broach) of novellas set in that same universe following the two eponymous characters and employing a healthy dose of black humor and satire. His new collection of novellas, The Devil Delivered and Other Tales, has no connection to the Malazan world at all,

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu

Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu

[At The Edge of the Universe, we review books that may not be classified SFF but that incorporate elements of speculative fiction. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

It is rare that I find myself blown away by a collection of short stories. Unless it is a “selected” anthology, where an editor can sort through a long career of writing and winnow out the mediocre and simply bad (even then there’ll most likely be at least a few I don’t care for),

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi

This is the part where you run and scream a lot.

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Intrepid, a spaceship that has the reputation of killing off most of its non-essential crew. The captain and senior officers and one or two especially good-looking guys always come back from planetary “away” missions alive (though often mangled up a bit), but always, always, at least one, and often many more,

Albert of Adelaide: Meet this brave and honest platypus

Albert of Adelaide by Howard L. Anderson

“He was beginning to feel that his escape from the zoo and his flight through the desert had been for nothing. Here he was, where Old Australia was supposed to be, a place where he was to have a home, friends, and others of his kind. Now he was finding that the only way he could even get a beer in this country was at gunpoint.”

Albert of Adelaide (2012) is a new entrant into the ranks of talking animal books.

Sharps: It’s written by K.J. Parker

Sharps by K.J. Parker

Sharp swords, dirty books and pickled cabbage. Why has everything on this trip got to be horrible?

The neighboring kingdoms of Permia and Scheria have always been enemies. Some of their citizens like it this way — particularly those of the military aristocracies who are valued (and therefore kept in power) by their countrymen when the two kingdoms are at war. The last war ended, though, when General Carnufex of Scheria managed to divert a few rivers and flood a major Permian city, killing its entire population of thousands of people.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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