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

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

I consider the Man Booker Prize to be one of the most reliable guides to finding excellent work, much more so than say the Pulitzer or the National Book Award. And so when the long list comes out I dutifully copy it and think about picking up some of them eventually (usually when they’re out of hardcover).

The Land Across: Not sure if we get it….

The Land Across by Gene Wolfe

Kat and I both read Gene Wolfe’s The Land Across last week. I read the print version produced by Tor and Kat read the audio version produced by Audible and narrated by Jeff Woodman. I wrote most of the following review, but Kat insisted on sticking in her comments so she didn’t have to write her own review. That’s how this review became a conversation.

Bill: Let’s be honest. In an ideal world,

Wild Fell: One of the best books of 2013

Wild Fell by Michael Rowe

Wild Fell begins in the small town of Alvina, Ontario, in 1960, when Sean Schwartz asks his high school sweetheart, Brenda Egan, if she believes in ghosts. Whether he’s trying to scare her into cuddling closer, looking for some excitement to end the summer before school begins again, or is entirely sincere in his question, his question is a prelude to asking Brenda if she’ll cross a mile of Devil’s Lake to Blackmore Island to explore the remains of a mansion called Wild Fell.

Sorrow’s Knot: Exceeds high expectations

Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow

Sorrow’s Knot had some big footsteps in which to follow, since Erin Bow’s debut novel Plain Kate was pretty terrific. But I’m pleased to report that Sorrow’s Knot not only lived up to my expectations but exceeded them. This is a fantastic novel, and better than Plain Kate.

Sorrow’s Knot is set in a world that feels a lot like the Pacific Northwest,

She Walks in Darkness: A period gothic thriller from a master of epic fantasy

She Walks in Darkness by Evangeline Walton

Many of us who have read Evangeline Walton have her, mentally, on our epic fantasy bookshelf with people like J.R.R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake, for her retellings of the Welsh mythic cycle The Mabinogion. For us, She Walks in Darkness is a surprise. This previously unpublished novel, brought out by Tachyon Press, is not epic fantasy at all but a gothic thriller.

Written in the early 1960s, She Walks in Darkness was a casualty of Walton’s dispute with a publisher.

Burning Paradise: Strong stand-alone Sci Fi

Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson

Members of the Correspondence Society have discovered an extra-terrestrial entity, which they refer to as the “Hypercolony,” in the atmosphere. The Hypercolony secretly monitors and subtly alters terrestrial transmissions in order to maintain peace on Earth. A few skirmishes aside, they have been successful, and humanity is once again celebrating the anniversary of the 1914 Armistice Day.

Earth may be a paradise, but it would be a mistake to consider the Hypercolony a benevolent entity. Its algorithms guide it to intervene in a way that will maximize its own chances for survival,

Balfour and Meriwether in the Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs: A short steampunk adventure

Balfour and Meriwether in the Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs by Daniel Abraham

“I can’t say we’d have shied away from the devil, if he’d been able to assure the stability and greatness of England. It’s an ugly truth, and we don’t proclaim it from the rooftops, but in governance, expedience often wins over principle.”

Daniel Abraham is best known for his epic fantasy (THE LONG PRICE QUARTET and THE DAGGER AND THE COIN), the urban fantasy he writes under his penname M.L.N.

November 6th, 2013. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Daniel Abraham | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Shadows: Young Adult fantasy at its best and worst

Shadows by Robin McKinley

Shadows has all the beloved elements of a Robin McKinley novel: the strong female lead, the endearing team of animals and talismans, the never-quite-articulated magic, the laconic romance, and the tendency to give characters one-syllable names. For those familiar pieces alone, Shadows is worth reading. But McKinley’s horizons are smaller than they used to be, and fit more easily into the bounds of young adult fiction.

When we meet Maggie, she’s a sulky,

Shaman: It almost breaks the heart

Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson

I tell you, once upon a time kids had to walk to school barefoot. And not just barefoot, but naked. In snow and rain. Uphill. And they had to not get eaten by wolves. And be chased by Neanderthals. And eat shrooms. Or at least, they did if their school was learning how to be a shaman. And if they lived back about 30, 000 years ago. And their name was Loon, the protagonist of Kim Stanley Robinson’s wonderfully detailed Shaman.

Tell My Sorrows to the Stones: A portrait of the writer through stories

Tell My Sorrows to the Stones by Christopher Golden

Christopher Golden says in his introduction to Tell My Sorrows to the Stones (a quotation from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, perhaps Shakespeare’s cruelest play), “A collection of short stories is like the strange history of a period in a writer’s life[.]” This crystallized my thinking about short story collections, as I become more and more of a reader of short science fiction, fantasy and horror: a collection gives you a picture of a writer,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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