“Marina once told me that we only remember what never really happened. It would take me a lifetime to understand what those words meant. But I suppose I’d better start at the beginning, which in this case is the end.”
Oscar Drai is an apathetic student at a boarding school in Barcelona in 1980. While he isn’t too excited about his studies, he is enamored with the old quarter of Barcelona where his school resides, and he escapes to explore the city every chance that he gets.
August 6th, 2014. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | Audio, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory
Imagine that, like the hapless characters in movies like The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn, you and a group of friends were captured by cannibals. You were kept alive while choice cuts of you were “harvested”, and you alone survived. Imagine that you were the victim of a sadistic abductor who flayed the flesh of your arms and legs and carved images onto your bones. Imagine that you alone survived the rising of the Elder Gods in your home town.
August 4th, 2014. Marion Deeds and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Daryl Gregory | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Wraith by Joe Hill (writer) and Charles Paul Wilson III (artist)
The Wraith is a horror comic book based on Joe Hill’s novel NOS4A2, and I can’t tell you how much I dislike horror as a general rule. However, this book is absolutely brilliant, and I loved it. I have not read the novel, and probably won’t, so you don’t need to have read it to appreciate this comic book. I went in as a resistant reader, but since I’ve learned over the past few years that I do like some horror comics such as Hellblazer (but never horror movies because of the sound) and since I’ve read enough Locke and Key to have a good opinion of Joe Hill,
August 1st, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Joe Hill | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
A Boy and A Girl by Jamie S. Rich (writer) and Natalie Nourigat (artist)
I was certainly surprised by this story. I’d seen it on Comixology before, but I’d passed it up. However, I decided to give it a chance after reading Natalie Nourigat’s wonderful comic book Between the Gears, a coming-of-age autobiography about her senior year at the University of Oregon. I knew I liked her art, and just for that reason alone, I enjoyed A Boy and A Girl.
August 1st, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The fatal muse. She inspires artists to create sublime masterpieces, but drains away their life force in exchange, driving them to madness or an early grave. This archetype lies at the heart of Inamorata, a new paranormal tale by Megan Chance, who has previously written a number of historical fiction and romance novels.
Inamorata is set in a gorgeously rendered nineteenth-century Venice, a city long past its heyday, now crumbling picturesquely into ruin. The captivating Odilé Leon has taken up residence there in the hopes of finding a new genius to inspire.
August 1st, 2014. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Megan Chance | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Jack in the Green by Charles de Lint
Maria Martinez works as a maid in an upscale gated community. One day while she’s cleaning an upstairs bedroom, she glances out the window and notices a gang burglarizing the house next door. One of the gang members is a girl who used to be her best friend and another is a cute red-headed green-hoodied boy who catches Maria’s eye. Maria doesn’t call the police. Why should she? It’s not her house, they’re not her neighbors, and therefore it’s not her business. Later, when she runs into the burglars at the skating rink,
July 29th, 2014. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2 | Charles De_Lint | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Spectral Link by Thomas Ligotti
Subterranean Press has issued two original stories by Thomas Ligotti in a special edition volume titled The Spectral Link. Ligotti is best known for a brooding, gothic style of psychological horror that avoids slashing, gore and disgusting body fluids for a deep, dark, almost spiritual sense of wrongness. He delivers that creepy sense of wrongness in both these tales.
Ligotti’s prose is masterful, as is his control of tone. Tone is not as easy to manage as people might think;
July 23rd, 2014. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Thomas Ligotti | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Shakespeare in Hell by Amy Sterling Casil
Shakespeare in Hell is an intriguing title. Think of all it can conjure up – allusions to Milton and Dante, who both had more luck finding stories in the darker realms of the afterlife, and with the villains of their pieces, than with an antiseptic realm of winged creatures playing harps, come to mind; one can imagine Shakespeare choosing Hell as a better stage for his plays and poetry. Or perhaps Shakespeare sinned with his Dark Lady, landing him in eternal flame.
July 21st, 2014. Terry Weyna´s rating: 1.5 | Amy Sterling Casil | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
Vampirella: Southern Gothic by Nate Cosby
Vampirella is in the Witchblade tradition of pin-up lead female comic book characters. If you aren’t likely to enjoy comics with this type of art, there’s not even a slight chance that you’ll enjoy this comic book. However, if you are already a fan of Vampirella, you probably already follow her books, and nothing I say here will make you like them any less, though I hope to help you decide whether this new book is worth seeking out.
July 18th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Tales from Oz (Vol. 1) by Joe Brusha
Grimm Fairy Tales presents Tales From Oz (Vol. 1), unfortunately, was a bit of a disappointment. I was interested in reading the four short stories about the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow, and Toto. The general storyline is written by Joe Brusha, but four separate authors took over the task of taking his plot and writing the individual stories. The background of this version of Oz is told to us at the start of the collection: There was an evil sorceress Zamora who once tried to take over Oz.
July 18th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 2 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
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…