2018 | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

Blood of the Four: Dangerous magic and brutal conspiring

Blood of the Four by Christopher Golden & Tim Lebbon

Magic is an elusive and dangerous thing in the kingdom of Quandis, forbidden to all except a few select priests who spend their lives preparing to handle the ancient magic, and even then inhale only a few smoky tendrils of the powerful magic. Princess Phela thrives on sneaking through hidden passages of the castle, seeking to overhear others’ information and secrets. When Phela hears her mother, the queen, confessing (in a drug-induced haze) to her lover Linos Kallistrate that she, the queen,

The Tangled Lands: Great concept, varied execution across four novellas

The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell

The Tangled Lands is a shared-world collection of four novellas, two each written by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell. The setting is the faded remains of the once-great Jhandpara Empire, whose glory had relied on wondrously powerful magic. The dying remnants of once-glorious empires litter the fantasy canon (think the faded glory of Gondor —or Numenor before Gondor — or the seedy world of Lankhmar), but in The Tangled Lands,

The Sky is Yours: We wrestled with this literary SF novel

The Sky is Yours by Chandler Klang Smith

I wrestled with this review for Chandler Klang Smith’s 2018 novel The Sky is Yours from the first paragraph. I wanted to refer to it as a “zeitgeist novel.” After I wrote that, I glanced at Wikipedia and decided that, as Inigo Montoya says to the Sicilian in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” So, I’ve decided that The Sky is Yours is not a zeitgeist novel.

Our Senses: An Immersive Experience

Our Senses: An Immersive Experience by Rob DeSalle

Our Senses: An Immersive Experience (2018) is, perhaps appropriately given its topic, a dense and at times perhaps overwhelming exploration of how our minds take in information and make sense of it. While I found much of it utterly fascinating, and would recommend it, I have to confess there were times I was tempted to skim and felt the book became either a bit unfocused or, on the flip side, hyperfocused. It didn’t help — and this is clearly no fault of author Rob DeSalle — that the formatting on the Kindle got confused by insets,

March 1st, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Philosopher’s Flight: Quite a thrilling ride

The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller

The Philosopher’s Flight (2018) is an ambitious World-War-I alternate history fantasy with an unconventional social justice agenda, which only partially caves in on itself. On balance, the story is quite a lot of fun. I have to admit I’ll be looking for more from this talented new author.

This is essentially a coming of age story, and the smarts (and fantasy) of this novel hinge heavily on Tom Miller’s very clever world building around the “science” of empirical philosophy — “sigilry” in layman’s terms.

Your One & Only: Entirely too familiar

Your One & Only by Adrianne Finlay

While it’s debatable whether there are any new stories left to be told, I think that discovering fresh ideas or interesting twists within familiar stories is part of what makes reading so enjoyable. Aldous Huxley certainly didn’t create the Dystopian genre with Brave New World, nor did Lois Lowry with The Giver, and neither did Kazuo Ishiguro with Never Let Me Go,

How to Stop Time: It isn’t you; it’s me.

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

How To Stop Time (HTST): So, do you want to, like, go out again next week or …

ME: I’m, I’m sorry, but I don’t think, I don’t think this is going to —

HTST: Was it something I —

ME: No. No. It isn’t you; it’s me.

HTST: Not that old —

ME: No, really. Look, there are lots of nice readers out there for you. Millions.

HTST: Millions?

ME: Millions.

Starlings: A worthwhile journey into a writer’s mind

Starlings by Jo Walton

I’m honestly not quite sure of how to review Jo Walton’s 2018 collection of short stories, Starlings. As a fiction read, it left me greatly wanting, with many of the stories (there are also poems and one play, but more on those later) feeling undeveloped, slight, and too one-note, so that most frequent reaction was “nice idea, but …” with the “but” mostly signifying a response that really wasn’t a response. And so what’s the problem, you might be thinking.

The Only Harmless Great Thing: An imaginative work of social fiction

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

Brooke Bolander’s The Only Harmless Great Thing (2018) is a lyrical, often moving, and sometimes searing novella that sets itself in an alternate reality that entangles two historical events: the public electrocution of Topsy the elephant at Coney Island in 1903 and the “Radium Girls” scandal in the early 1900s. That the two events were not simultaneous as in the novella is only part of the “alternate” part of this alternate reality. More central to the plot is the fact that elephants in this world are sentient.

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2018

Blood of the Four: Dangerous magic and brutal conspiring

The Tangled Lands: Great concept, varied execution across four novellas

The Sky is Yours: We wrestled with this literary SF novel

Our Senses: An Immersive Experience

The Philosopher’s Flight: Quite a thrilling ride

Your One & Only: Entirely too familiar

How to Stop Time: It isn’t you; it’s me.

Starlings: A worthwhile journey into a writer’s mind

The Only Harmless Great Thing: An imaginative work of social fiction

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