2013.03 | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

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]: 2013.03

Heaven’s Queen: Victim, lab rat, weapon, or savior?

Heaven’s Queen by Rachel Bach

Heaven’s Queen (2014) is the final book in Rachel Bach’s PARADOX trilogy. I read the first two novels, Fortune’s Pawn and Honor’s Knight nine years ago in audio format, but this final installment, though published in print in 2014, wasn’t available in audio format until November 2022 (I didn’t look into the reason for this). Not surprisingly, I had to go back and read the first two novels again to refresh my memory because I didn’t remember the story very well.

The Tea Master and the Detective: A Holmesian mystery in an Asian space habitat

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

The Tea Master and the Detective (2018), a novella nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards, is a delightful revisiting of the legendary Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson … if both were Asian women, and Watson was a genetically modified human that is the brains and heart of a transport warship. It’s set in Aliette de Bodard’s UNIVERSE OF XUYA ― also nominated for a Hugo for Best Series ― a “timeline where Asia became dominant,

Ghosted (Vol. 3): Death Wish: Another Great Tale of the Occult

Ghosted (Vol. 3): Death Wish by Joshua Williamson (writer), Goran Sudzuka (artist), and Miroslav Mrva (colorist)

In Ghosted (vol. 3): Death Wish, Jackson Winters, our master thief, is in prison yet again (And if you haven’t read volume 1 yet, start there and read my review of Ghosted (vol. 1): Haunted House). When we last saw Jackson, he had just escaped a haunted temple only to be greeted by his old friend King. King was a member of his gang of thieves who,

April 6th, 2019. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Fearless: John Charming joins a fight club

Fearless by Elliott James

Fearless is the third novel in Elliott James’ PAX ARCANA saga (following Charming and Daring). John and Sig are back together working to protect Kevin Kichida, a young man with some magical blood in his heritage who’s being hunted by a greedy ancestor.

The investigation leads John and his supernatural friends to a fight club where they go undercover (as fighters) to get close to their suspect.

The Queen of Swords: A disappointing step backwards in the series

The Queen of Swords by R.S. Belcher

R.S. Belcher’s first two Weird West books set in Golgotha, Nevada (The Six-Gun Tarot and The Shotgun Arcana) were hot mess cacophonies of fantasy tropes, characters, source elements, and the like — huge Sunday brunch all-you-can-eat buffets where lifting a lid off of one of those big metal serving bins might reveal zombies, bat-people, cannibals, a primal evil, primal evil’s minions, Mormon artifacts, mythos from just about anywhere or anywhen,

August 7th, 2017. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | R.S. (Rod) Belcher | SFF Reviews | no comments |

A Second Chance: Are there no rules?

A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor

I was disappointed in A Symphony of Echoes, the second book in Jodi Taylor’s CHRONICLES OF ST. MARY’S, but I had already purchased most of the rest of the series at Audible, so I read the third book, A Second Chance (2014). Unfortunately, it has all of the problems of the previous book and I don’t see things getting any better in the future.

In this volume we again get a series of loosely connected time-travel adventures: Max witnesses the fall of Troy,

Voyage of the Basilisk: Science and curiosity

Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan

Warning: Some inevitable spoilers for the previous novels, A Natural History of Dragons and The Tropic of Serpents, will follow.

Voyage of the Basilisk: A Memoir by Lady Trent (2015) is the third in Marie Brennan’s series A NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS, and I found it falling somewhere between books one and two in terms of the reading experiences (better than the first,

April 21st, 2017. Bill Capossere, Marion Deeds and Jana Nyman´s rating: 3.5 | Marie Brennan | SFF Reviews | 10 comments |

One Fell Sweep: The Inn under siege

One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews

Note: This review contains some spoilers for the two earlier books in the INNKEEPER CHRONICLES series.

As One Fell Sweep (2016) begins, Dina DeMille, the Innkeeper of the Gertrude Hunt Inn, a secret way-stop on Earth for galactic visitors, is recuperating from the life-and-death peace summit that her inn hosted in Sweep in Peace. She’s also just beginning to pick up her relationship with Sean, the werewolf warrior, when a reptilian visitor brings her a message: Dina’s widowed sister Maud is stuck on the planet Karhari and needs rescuing.

December 22nd, 2016. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Ilona Andrews | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Vision in Silver: Keeps readers guessing

Editor’s note: We thank Sarah Chorn of Bookworm Blues for contributing this review to our site. Kat did not like the first two books, Written in Red and Murder of Crows, but the series is extremely popular, so we are pleased to have Sarah’s opinion of the third book, Vision in Silver.

Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop

Each installment of Anne Bishop’s THE OTHERS series seems to only make me a bigger fan.

June 23rd, 2016. Sarah Chorn | Anne Bishop | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Sapphire Cutlass: A dangerous cult hides in the Indian jungle

The Sapphire Cutlass by Sharon Gosling

The Sapphire Cutlass is exactly the kind of fun YA romp I was hoping for when I started the DIAMOND THIEF series. The characters seem comfortable in their roles, the adventure is exotic, and the stakes are surprisingly high. Sharon Gosling seems to have hit her stride here, rewarding readers with equal measures of romance and action in a well-balanced novel.

Rémy Brunel, Thaddeus Rec, J, and orphaned moppet Dita have flown in their ruby-powered airship all the way from France to India.

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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]: 2013.03

Heaven’s Queen: Victim, lab rat, weapon, or savior?

The Tea Master and the Detective: A Holmesian mystery in an Asian space habitat

Ghosted (Vol. 3): Death Wish: Another Great Tale of the Occult

Fearless: John Charming joins a fight club

The Queen of Swords: A disappointing step backwards in the series

A Second Chance: Are there no rules?

Voyage of the Basilisk: Science and curiosity

One Fell Sweep: The Inn under siege

Vision in Silver: Keeps readers guessing

The Sapphire Cutlass: A dangerous cult hides in the Indian jungle

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