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]: 2013


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The Mad Scientist’s Daughter: Beautifully written but disturbing

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

“Cat, this is Finn. He’s going to be your tutor.”

The Mad Scientist’s Daughter
by Cassandra Rose Clarke is a beautifully written story. Clarke evokes a beautiful contrast between the wild gardens and streams Cat inhabits as a child under the watchful eye of her tutor, and the cold, sterile, unfeeling world she inhabits as an adult in contact with other humans. At its core, this is a romance between a human and a cyborg. Though an interesting examination of what it means to be human,


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American Elsewhere: Classical mythology meets American paranoia

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

I confess I had my doubts about American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett. I’ve read all three of his previous novels and he hasn’t let me down yet, but the mix of elements in his latest one left me feeling skeptical. It just seemed like too much: rural horror; a Stepford-like village; quantum weirdness; tentacled inter-dimensional creatures; a secret government lab; people who aren’t what they seem; Elder gods; classical mythology; muscle cars, hidden files and video footage; a pink moon.

I’m pleased to report that Bennett pulls it off once again.


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Six-Gun Snow White: A beautifully told feminist fairy tale

Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente

C.S. Lewis once wrote his goddaughter, “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” It seems an odd statement at first, that one is ever not the right age to read fairy tales, but I think there is something truthful about that assessment. We read fairy tales to our youngsters, to teach them the way of the world, to be wary of strangers, that dragons can be defeated if you are brave enough, to keep your word and to guard your tongue.


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Salvage and Demolition: A lot of weirdness to pack into 160 pages

Salvage and Demolition by Tim Powers

Richard Blanzac is a 40-year-old rare books dealer in San Francisco. While examining the contents of a few old boxes someone brought in, he discovers a manuscript with some poetry written by a little known San Francisco Beat poet named Sophie Greenwald who died in 1969. Shortly after, he is summoned to the bedside of an old lady in a nursing home. She’s the executor of the poet’s estate and insists that Richard burn the manuscript. After he leaves the nursing home, Richard discovers that there are others who want that manuscript,


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The Kassa Gambit: A run-of-the-mill space-action book

The Kassa Gambit by M.C. Planck 

The Kassa Gambit, by M.C. Planck, is a pretty run-of-the-mill space-action book, a debut book that feels like a debut book in many ways. Those issues mostly made the book fall flat for me, though the main character was intriguing enough that I might pick up a second book involving her, were one to come along.

The universe of The Kassa Gambit is one in which humans have long ago left Earth behind (it’s merely a legend now) and spread throughout the galaxies via “nodes,” gates in space that allow for big jumps in short time periods.


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The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse: Quirky unusual YA

The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse by Fredrik Brouneus

This is Turning Into the Magic Mushroom Version of the Da Vinci Code…

The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse (2013) is a quirky, funny, thought-provoking story by New Zealand/Swedish author Fredrik Brouneus, told in very colloquial first-person narration by George Larson, an eighteen year old high school student whose life is about to get very strange. Content with his dreams of becoming a soul singer and hooking up with the beautiful exchange student Kaisa,


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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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