The small colony of humans on the planet Pax, who left Earth a couple of hundred years earlier, have established a cooperative relationship with at least some of the sentient plant life on Pax, as well as a group of nomadic aliens called the Glassmakers, as related in Semiosis. Their technology now is more Stone Age than Information Age (Pax is deficient in metals). So it’s out of the question to return to or even communicate with Earth, which is 55 light years away.
May 15th, 2020. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Sue Burke | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Stars Beyond (2020) is the sequel to sisterly writing duo S.K. Dunstall’s novel Stars Uncharted which Tadiana and I reviewed last year. We agreed that it was a Firefly-type story that was accessible and pleasant, but lacked originality. The good news, though, is that book two, Stars Beyond, is better.
Stars Beyond picks up where Stars Uncharted left off.
April 20th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | S.K. Dunstall | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Hanged Man by K.D. Edwards
The Hanged Man, published in 2019, is the second book in K.D. Edwards’s fantasy series THE TAROT SEQUENCE. In the first book, The Last Sun, we men Rune Sun, last of the Sun Court, in New Atlantis. New Atlantis is the former island of Nantucket and exists because of a truce between humans and the Atlanteans, at the end of a devastating war. The New Atlanteans value power only,
April 14th, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | K.D. Edwards | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions by Henry Lien
A surprise for me last year was how much I enjoyed Henry Lien’s Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword. I would never have picked up that book if it hadn’t been nominated for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. It’s about a girl named Peasprout Chen who, along with her little brother Cricket, is sent from her rural province to her country’s capital city to attend an elite school for students who practice the art of wu liu,
April 1st, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Henry Lien | Audio, Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
2020’s Stormsong, in THE KINGSTON CYCLE is the long-awaited sequel to C.L. Polk’s wonderful Witchmark. This review may contain spoilers for Witchmark.
Witchmark followed Miles, a doctor and former prisoner of war, and a member of his world’s faerie race, the Amaranthine, as they solved a murder, uncovered a plot to assassinate Aeland’s queen, and revealed the murderous corruption that lay at the root of Aeland’s magical progress.
March 19th, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | C.L. Polk | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A Longer Fall by Charlaine Harris
Charlaine Harris’s GUNNIE ROSE series has already merged Old West, Russian magicians (called “grigori” in a nod to Rasputin), and alternative history; the setting is mid-twentieth century North America, in which the United States has fractured into multiple nations, including the “Holy Russian Empire,” with Tsar Alexei at its head, taking over what used to be California and Oregon. In A Longer Fall (2020), the second book in the series, the pre-civil rights era deep South gets pulled into the mix.
February 7th, 2020. Tadiana Jones and Jana Nyman´s rating: 3 | Charlaine Harris | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Shatter City by Scott Westerfeld
Shatter City (2019) is the sequel to Scott Westerfeld’s Impostors, a set of four novels extending his UGLIES series by picking up roughly a decade after that earlier quartet ended. As I noted in my review of Impostors, this series doesn’t quite match the high quality of those earlier books, and seems aimed at a somewhat younger audience, but still retains enough of Westerfeld’s plotting strengths to make for an often exhilarating read.
January 15th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Scott Westerfeld | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Quantum Garden by Derek Künsken
The Quantum Garden (2019) is the second installment of Derek Künsken’s QUANTUM EVOLUTION series, following the adventures of conman Belisarius Arjona, one of a few thousands of “Homo quantus” — a bio-engineered species able to deal with floods of data, strange math, and quantum effects. The first book in the series, The Quantum Magician, saw Belisarius gather a crew of misfits in order to help an oppressed “client culture” smuggle a fleet of uniquely advanced spaceships through a wormhole so as to gain their independence from the powerful Congregate.
December 31st, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Derek Kunsken | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Starsight by Brandon Sanderson
“A hero doesn’t choose her trials.”
Spensa can’t help but hear her Gran-Gran’s voice saying these words to her every time Spensa balks at a new trouble in her life. And Spensa — a magnet for trouble — has plenty of occasions to remember these words.
In Starsight (2019), the sequel to Brandon Sanderson’s young adult science fiction novel Skyward, the few humans who remain have been trapped on the barren planet of Detritus for several decades,
December 2nd, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Brandon Sanderson | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Bid My Soul Farewell by Beth Revis
Bid My Soul Farewell (2019) is the sequel to Beth Revis’ novel Give the Dark My Love. You need to read Give the Dark My Love first. There will be some spoilers for that novel here.
When we left Nedra and Grey in Give the Dark My Love, they had uncovered the treachery in their government and exterminated the culprit.
October 11th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2 | Beth Revis | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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…