Sex (Vol. 1): Summer of Hard by Joe Casey (writing) and Piotr Kowalski (art)
or, Considering Ethics and Literature:
I have been hesitant to read Joe Casey’s Sex because it seems like such a blatant attempt to gain the type of readership of which I did not want to be a part. However, I recently decided I should not judge so harshly before reading it. I must admit, now, that I am impressed with the first eight issues: Sex is a fantastic story with an actual point to it,
April 1st, 2017. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
Blood of Innocents & A Shattered Empire by Mitchell Hogan
Since I read the last two books, Blood of Innocents and A Shattered Empire, in Mitchell Hogan’s SORCERY ASCENDANT series one upon the other, I’m just going to review them together. There may be minor spoilers for book two (you’ll know which characters survive for instance), but I’ll avoid major spoilers. The takeaway is that the series disappoints in its conclusion, making it one I can’t recommend starting,
January 4th, 2017. Bill Capossere´s rating: 1.5 | Mitchell Hogan | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
A Crucible of Souls by Mitchell Hogan
A Crucible of Souls by Mitchell Hogan is the first book of a trilogy that runs over pretty familiar ground in the coming-of-age fantasy genre and rarely rises above average in its telling, but has a likable enough main character and an intriguing enough plot to keep the reader satisfied.
Caldan is a young orphan raised by monks in a relatively secluded monastery that typically educates the wealthy children of the empire. When an incident occurs between one of those wealthy entitled youth and Caldan,
January 2nd, 2017. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Mitchell Hogan | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Note: Find “Warm Up,” a short-story introduction to Vicious, for free at Tor.com. You can also purchase it for 99c on Kindle.
Vicious, by V.E. Schwab, is another offering in the ever-more popular folks-with-powers genre, and fits as well in the equally popular sub-genre where those folks-with-powers don’t’ fall neatly into the quaint “superhero” mode but have a bit more edge, a bit more (OK, a lot more in this case) grey to them.
August 5th, 2016. Bill Capossere, Ray McKenzie and Tadiana Jones | Victoria (V.E.) Schwab | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Dina Demille, a young woman, runs a quiet bed-and-breakfast in a small Texas town. Her inn is a quirky old Victorian home that looks like “a medieval castle and a Southern-belle, antebellum mansion had a baby and it had been delivered into the world by a gothic wedding cake decorator.” Dina’s only companion is a small black and white Shih Tzu named Beast, aside from her single permanent guest in the inn, but Dina is hoping her inn will become more popular ― with space aliens.
The Gertrude Hunt Bed-and-Breakfast is,
July 11th, 2016. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Ilona Andrews | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Injustice: Gods Among Us (Year One, Volume One) by Tom Taylor
DC often puts out comic books that are connected to their video games, and I generally ignore them because 1. I don’t play video games because they give me migraines and 2. Most video game-related comics are just not that good. However, I started hearing a lot of good things about Tom Taylor’s Injustice: Gods Among Us, so I gave it a chance. It turns out, all that was said about Injustice is true,
May 21st, 2016. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Diamond Thief by Sharon Gosling
The Diamond Thief is the first book in the trilogy of the same name by Sharon Gosling; it’s a YA steampunk series set in Victorian England featuring Rémy Brunel, a circus acrobat by day and a jewel thief by night. Rémy seems to have some sort of metaphysical or psychic connection with jewels, and can determine just by holding a gem whether it is valuable or a piece of fancy glass.
Thaddeus Rec is an orphaned teenaged detective who is determined to rise through the ranks of Scotland Yard and prove,
April 22nd, 2016. Jana Nyman´s rating: 3 | Sharon Gosling | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Robison Wells’ Blackout is, at first glance, just another typical dystopian YA novel. The chapters are short, the sentences shorter, and the vocabulary wouldn’t be a stretch for most junior high students. Good teenagers are in conflict with bad teenagers and seemingly every adult in existence; adults can’t be trusted as authority figures because they aren’t special and they exploit the people who are. I would guess that a potential blurb for the book might read as, “Who can you trust when your own body might betray you?”
February 25th, 2016. Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Robison Wells | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Breq used to be a spaceship, or at least a fragment of the spaceship known as Justice of Toren. The ship controlled innumerable human bodies, known variously as “ancillaries” to the people of the interstellar Radchaai Empire and as “corpse soldiers” to the cultures and planets the Empire has conquered. Those soldiers used to be regular, innocent human beings who, if sufficiently healthy, were slaved to one of the Radchaai ships, their personalities more or less overwritten to become part of one of the Empire’s many-bodied artificial intelligences.
February 17th, 2016. Stefan Raets, Marion Deeds and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 4.5 | Ann Leckie | BSFA Award, Hugo Award, Nebula Award | SFF Reviews | 17 comments |
An alien apocalypse is Rick Yancey’s take on a new challenge for the plucky heroine prototype that has emerged in the wake of Katniss Everdeen. Whilst The 5th Wave is not quite a dystopia, there is something startlingly familiar about the feisty female lead who attempts to single-handedly take down the alien race that’s oppressing humankind in a post-apocalyptic world. With the film adaptation just released in the US, could this be the next YA mega-franchise?
January 29th, 2016. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 2.5 | Rick Yancey | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
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…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…