A Feast of Sorrows by Angela Slatter
Angela Slatter was one of those authors I’d always been meaning to read. I have one of her earlier collections, The Girl with No Hands, on my Kindle and hadn’t gotten around to it yet. And then this year, her collection A Feast of Sorrows hit the US shelves. I was intrigued by Alyx Dellamonica’s review at Tor.com, not to mention seduced by the cover, and the rest was history.
A Feast of Sorrows is a collection of dark fairy tales.
December 23rd, 2016. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 5 | Angela Slatter | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel
Dava Sobel has long done great work in giving major events and people in science a compelling and engaging narrative, whether it be Nicolaus Copernicus in A More Perfect Heaven, Galileo and his daughter Suor Maria Celeste in Galileo’s Daughter, or John Harrison in Longitude. In her newest work, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars,
December 15th, 2016. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
I admired Nisi Shawl’s alternate history fantasy Everfair (2016) more than I loved it, and I admired it a lot. Shawl creates an African country at the turn of the 20th century, a country that could have existed, and gives it challenges, troubles, and magic.
Everfair starts in 1889. In Europe, the Fabians negotiate with the king of Belgium, Leopold II, to purchase land in Africa adjacent to Leopold’s personal colony, the so-called Congo Free State.
December 14th, 2016. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Nisi Shawl | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection by Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson’s Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (2016) is a collection of stories that, save for one, have all been published elsewhere, and are here rebundled in one easy-to-find collection. Adding value beyond convenience, the collection adds illustrations and mini-prologues (written by a familiar character) offering up details for each of the planetary system settings in Sanderson’s fictional universe, and each story is followed by a short essay by Sanderson explaining the story’s provenance. Usually with collections,
December 12th, 2016. Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Brandon Sanderson | Hugo Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Do Elephants Have Knees and Other Stories of Darwinian Origins by Charles R. Ault, Jr
In Do Elephants Have Knees and Other Stories of Darwinian Origins (2016), Charles R. Ault, Jr. takes a unique path to explaining the complexities of evolution, using children’s books such as Morris the Moose, Treasure Island, Diary of a Worm and others as springboards to discussing Charles Darwin’s path to discovery, from his time as an insatiably curious child to his adventure-filled twenties to the twilight years he spent focused on the lowly (though not to him) earthworm.
December 8th, 2016. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson
Jesse Cullum works security at the City of Futurity – in fact, he just saved President Ulysses S. Grant from an assassination attempt, though he lost his Oakleys in the process.
The science fiction premise of Robert Charles Wilson’s Last Year (2016), is outlined in its opening scene. Oakleys are sunglasses that come from our time, but Ulysses S. Grant was one of the most important generals in the American Civil War. How can both exist in the same place?
December 6th, 2016. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 4 | Robert Charles Wilson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Witch of Lime Street by David Jaher
Harry Houdini is still famous as a magician and an escape artist. The last few years of his life, though, he devoted large chunks of time to exposing and debunking fake “spiritualist mediums.” In The Witch of Lime Street, David Jaher takes a look at Houdini’s most famous spiritualist case: his two-year battle with the “Boston Back Bay Medium” who used the alias Margery.
Most people date the spiritualist movement in the USA from the 1840s,
November 30th, 2016. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
With The Family Plot, Cherie Priest takes a break from steampunk and Lovecraftiana to tackle a tried-and-true convention, the haunted-house story. The book, filled with atmospherics, family feuds and long-buried secrets, is a spooky read that will leave you side-eyeing bathrooms and showers for days after you’ve finished.
The Dutton family business is salvage, and Music City Salvage has just purchased a bonanza of a job — a full Southern estate, built in the 1800s,
November 30th, 2016. Marion Deeds and Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Cherie Priest | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer
Stephenie Meyer changes it up fairly dramatically in The Chemist (2016), her second adult novel, where there is nary a vampire, werewolf or space alien to be found. It’s a rather pulpy but absorbing thriller in the vein of a Jason Bourne novel (to whom she’s dedicated this novel, among others). There’s no real speculative element here, other than perhaps some new developments in chemical-based torture and some startlingly smart dogs.
The narrator, a bright, rather repressed molecular biologist,
November 28th, 2016. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Stephenie Meyer | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) by David Bercovici
The Origins of Everything in 100 Pages (More or Less) by David Bercovici, in his own words, “covers the Universe’s greatest hits, recounting when and most importantly how its various pieces emerged.” That’s a tall order for any book, let alone one that is so short, but Bercovici tempers the readers’ expectations early on, letting us know that:
“There are other excellent books, far more comprehensive than this one,
November 22nd, 2016. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.