The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes
The Children of Jocasta (2018), by Natalie Haynes, does a nice job of shifting our view of some of the characters in the classic Oedipus tale, but was by the end a solid but somewhat disappointing read that felt its length and also felt too hemmed in by the tale as we all know it.
Haynes makes two good decisions early on. One is the structural choice to weave back and forth between two time periods.
July 28th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Natalie Haynes | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies: A Criminal Novella by Ed Brubaker (writer), Sean Phillips (artist), and Jacob Phillips (colorist).
My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies: A Criminal Novella is another Ed Brubaker-Sean Phillips work of perfection. It’s another tale of danger and the criminal world. The story and the art are each five-star outings, the storytelling melding well with the visuals. Simply put, this noir story has matching noir-ish artwork, but if you’re familiar with Phillips’s work in previous Criminal titles, you’ll be surprised by the light pinks and purples and light blues used this time,
August 6th, 2022. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
We all know Frankenstein: the evil genius, the monster, the frozen wasteland etc. But in The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein (2018), Kiersten White offers a new spin on the classic, through an origins story that traces Victor Frankenstein right back to his childhood, through the eyes of an unlikely heroine, Elizabeth Frankenstein.
We meet Elizabeth when her surname is still Lavenza. She is starved and bruised and about to be thrown out onto the streets,
February 25th, 2022. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 2.5 | Kiersten White | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Abbott by Saladin Ahmed & Sami Kivela
BOOM! Studios has released the trade edition of the first series of the period dark fantasy Abbott (2018), words by Saladin Ahmed and art by Sami Kivela. Set in 1972, the story follows Elena Abbott, a reporter for the Detroit Daily. Abbott may not be the paper’s only woman reporter, but she is probably its only Black reporter and definitely the only Black woman reporter. Currently, she is in trouble with the paper’s owners for her accurate expose of the police murder of a Black teenager.
December 22nd, 2021. Marion Deeds and Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Saladin Ahmed | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Alyson Hagy’s slim 2018 literary novella Scribe mines Appalachian folktales for a bleak, harrowing and poetic story about loss, guilt, love and honor. By deliberately setting the story in a world outside of our time and space, Hagy forces attention onto the characters, which at times gives the book the feel of a stage-play more than a story or a poem.
In spite of an otherworldly setting, this novel isn’t speculative fiction. Hagy isn’t raising questions about how people live in a world like this one.
November 23rd, 2021. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Alyson Hagy | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The People’s Republic of Everything by Nick Mamatas
I don’t know if I simply wasn’t in the right mood for Nick Mamatas’ short-story collection The People’s Republic of Everything (2018), or if I’m not the right audience for his preferred themes and overall style, but this book and I just could not mesh.
There was one story, “Tom Silex, Spirit-Smasher,” which gripped my attention and had everything I look for in short fiction. The story focuses on Rosa Martinez, whose elderly grandmother might — through quirks of legality regarding her first marriage and the question of ownership of her first husband’s pulp publications — own the rights to a series of stories revolving around psychopomp Tom Silex.
March 2nd, 2021. Jana Nyman, Marion Deeds and Skye Walker´s rating: 3 | Nick Mamatas | Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Debut author Stuart Turton’s The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (2018), originally published earlier this year in Great Britain as The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, is an intricately plotted murder mystery, set in an isolated early 20th century English mansion, with a highly imaginative speculative element that is only gradually revealed, as our main character tries to figure out who he really is, and how to solve the mystery of Evelyn Hardcastle’s pending death … or has her death already occurred?
February 3rd, 2021. Tadiana Jones and Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Stuart Turton | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 10 comments |
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen
One year after Tachyon Publications published The Emerald Circus, a collection of Jane Yolen‘s fantastical short stories based on various fairy tales and legendary people (both fictional and real), it has followed up with a similar collection, How to Fracture a Fairy Tale (2018). Like The Emerald Circus, this is a compilation of Yolen’s older, previously published stories, spiffed up with new author’s notes in which Yolen briefly discuss each story and how she “fractured” it with significant departures from its original source material.
December 4th, 2020. Tadiana Jones and Skye Walker´s rating: 0.1, 3 | Jane Yolen | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Way Past Winter by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The first thing about this book that caught my eye was just how beautiful it was: the green binding, the interior pattern, the embossed cover-art — I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it really is a lovely object to behold.
The story itself rides the current popular wave of Scandinavian-based fairy tales, and reads a little like Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”. Winter has lasted for five years in Eldbjørn Forest, and siblings Oskar,
April 29th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Kiran Millwood Hargrave | Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas
The DC ICONS COLLECTION has a very simple premise: take a famous DC superhero, give them to a popular YA author, and have them craft a story about each character’s adolescence, well before they put on their capes and tights and started crime-fighting. It allows the authors to delve into a part of each character’s life that’s not often explored (well, except for Clark Kent on Smallville) and give us stories about superheroes that aren’t comic books or filmic adaptations.
April 8th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Sarah J. Maas | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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.