Three by Kieron Gillen & Ryan Kelly
Gillen is one of my favorite comic book writers for Marvel, so I was extremely eager to pick up Three, a new series written by him for Image. Otherwise, I wouldn’t normally find myself picking up a book on Ancient Sparta. I suppose I’ve always been partial to Athens. So, I had mixed feelings going into the book . . . and I have mixed feeling coming out of it as well.
Being the academic that I am,
April 14th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The King’s Dragon by Scott Chantler
Though The King’s Dragon is the fourth book Scott Chantler’s THREE THIEVES series, and I have not read the first three, I had no problem picking up the story already in progress. In fact, if I hadn’t been given that information, I would have guessed it was the first volume of a great new series of comic book adventure stories for young readers.
The basic story in this book focuses on Captain Drake, a member of The King’s Dragons.
April 13th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hinterkind: The Waking World by Ian Edginton (writer) and Francesco Trifogli (artist)
I’m not a big fan of post-apocalyptic stories, but Hinterkind pulled in this reluctant reader — twice. Initially, I bought the first two monthly issues because of the artwork and because it was a Vertigo title (DC’s mature line of comics), but I dropped the title because the plot didn’t grab me, and frankly, there was an abundance of monthly comics coming out — too much for this fan’s budget!
April 11th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hugh Howey has a gift for creating elaborate dystopian worlds that readers love to visit despite the fact that they’d never want to actually live there. In Sand, his unfortunate characters abide in a desert world that is gradually being buried by sand which constantly blows in from the east. Over the years its relentless intrusion has overcome so many towns that new generations keep building on top of the ruins of their predecessors. Nobody knows where the sand comes from or why.
April 4th, 2014. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Hugh Howey | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton
In 2008, Jo Walton began a regular column over at Tor.com on the books she was reading. Actually, mostly re-reading. She was invited to blog on the site because, as Patrick Nielsen Hayden told her, she was “always saying smart things about books nobody else had thought about for ages.” In What Makes This Book So Great, she’s collected about a fifth of those posts and presented them in brief essays, being careful to point out she is doing so as neither a reviewer (who mostly cover new works) nor a critic.
March 26th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Jo Walton | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
I’m starting to feel like a broken record (Google it kids) here the past month or so, having had the same general reaction to a long run of books now — “good premise, flawed execution.” The latest perpetrator is Lockstep, a new YA space opera by Karl Schroeder, who has come up with a wonderfully engaging premise and setting, but has failed to create that same sense of engagement with regard to the characters and plot.
Way back in time in the Lockstep universe,
March 25th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Karl Schroeder | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
The Compleat Crow by Brian Lumley
Subterranean Press has gathered a collection of Brian Lumley’s stories in The Compleat Crow. As you’d expect, nearly all these tales feature Lumley’s occult detective, Titus Crow.
Crow is the main character of a couple of novels by Lumley. He is a “white wizard,” a force for good who struggles mostly against those in league with the Cthulhu-cycle elder gods. Lumley’s style skates between Lovecraft-lite and an almost Holmesian tone. These eleven short stories were published mostly in the UK and range from 1969 to the early 1980s.
March 21st, 2014. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Brian Lumley | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee
[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 had high hopes for Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea. A literary author turning his hand to a post-apocalyptic tale that would focus less it seems on zombies and cannibals etc.,
March 7th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | Chang-rae Lee | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Waking Engine by David Edison
The Waking Engine, by David Edison, continues my unfortunately long-running streak of books that fell short of their potential. As with many of them this past month or so, The Waking Engine has a great premise — people (defined very broadly) do not die just once; instead they do so multiple times, each time waking in a new body to a new life on another world, but with all their memories intact.
February 27th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | David Edison | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Jeffrey Thomas’s new novella, Red Cells, is set in his PUNKTOWN universe full of mutants, odd species, and humans, and the good, bad and ugly of each. Red Cells deals more with the ugly: Edwin Fetch has earned himself a six month term in the penitentiary for possession with intent to sell purple vortex. Specifically, he’s to be shipped to the Trans-Paxton Penitentiary, known to its inmates as the Wormhole, a transdimensional prison carved out of the planes between existence.
February 24th, 2014. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Jeffrey Thomas | Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
I love your review, and I'm so glad Mark Twain finally came around to seeing it our way.
Yes, Kat, I did that a long time ago and left it that way. After the notifications stopped coming following…
Noneofyourbusiness, I think the way it works is that you need to sign up (if you haven't) at https://follow.it/fantasy-literature, then…
Thanks. I mentioned it on the last few Thoughtful Thursday giveaways, too. My family and I missed out on the…
None of your Business, if you live in the USA, you win a copy of GHOST STATION! Please contact me…