At the first sentence of this review I’m having trouble because: “Christopher Moore’s 2018 novel Noir is a hard-boiled detective story set on San Francisco’s mean streets…” only it’s not quite, okay, so, “Noir is a darkly funny comedy set in 1947 San Francisco, following cops and wise guys and…” only it’s not quite, or not only, so maybe: “Noir is a dark comedy set in 1947 with corrupt cops,
July 6th, 2018. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Christopher Moore | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
This is the kind of review I always dread writing — so many people loved Space Opera (2018), either becoming brand-new Catherynne M. Valente fans or cementing their appreciation of her talent. I can see why they would like it, I really can. The novel bears all the hallmarks of a Valente project: an overabundance of whimsy and wonder, intricately wordy sentences that sometimes become whole paragraphs, an aggressively manic-cute species, and much more. And there’s the acknowledged,
July 5th, 2018. Jana Nyman and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 2.5 | Catherynne M. Valente | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Language of Spells by Garret Weyr
The Language of Spells (2018), by Garret Weyr, has a certain whimsical charm to it at times, and the warm relationship at its core is a definite plus, but it has a good number of issues that mar the reading experience, though probably less so for a younger audience.
The dragon Grisha is born in the Black Forest in a world where magic is on the wane. After a few decades of maturation (though still young in dragon terms),
June 26th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Garret Weyr | Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hannu Rajaniemi’s Summerland (2018) is what you might get if you took the setting/premise of Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead and gave it to John le Carré to turn into a novel, though I’d argue it’s lacking a bit in the character depth and emotional touch of those two authors.
Summerland is basically an espionage/counter-espionage novel set in late 1930s Britain, who is involved in a proxy-war with Russia (led by a sort of over-soul known as “The Presence”) via the Spanish Civil War,
June 25th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Hannu Rajaniemi | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Outsider (2018) by Stephen King is a big book with a big, layered story. With great effort I’m going to hold my review to one or two aspects of it. First things first; it’s horror, with its roots in King’s classic horror works but with a sensibility influenced by the modern world. It’s good. Horror readers will love it and be creeped out by it, but non-horror readers will find plenty that is thought-provoking (and they’ll be creeped out by it).
June 22nd, 2018. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Stephen King | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts
Having never read one of Peter Watts’ novels before, I thought a short novel like The Freeze-Frame Revolution (2018) would be a good place for me to start. After all, I like science fiction, generation-style ships, rogue AIs, and solid narratives about mutinous crews. Watts delivers on those elements and many more, but the story never really coalesced for me, and I had trouble connecting with the narrator.
Over the last sixty million years, Sunday Ahzmundin and the rest of the Eriophora’s crew have been traveling the galaxy,
June 22nd, 2018. Jana Nyman´s rating: 2 | Peter Watts | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Time Was (2018), a novella by Ian McDonald, is billed as a time-travel love story, but really, there’s not a lot of depiction of either in this slim work, and while it’s often linguistically/stylistically beautiful, in the end I was more disappointed than not.
Emmet Leigh is a used book dealer who specializes in WWII. He comes across a 1930’s book, Time Was, with a letter inside from Tom Chappel to his lover Ben Seligman dating from the war.
June 21st, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Ian McDonald | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian
In Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (2018), David Christian ably does what I would have guessed was nigh on impossible — cover 13+ billion years of history from the Big Bang to current times (and actually further since he takes a quick look in the future as well). It’s a smoothly told, incredibly efficient history that mostly lives up to its subtitle.
At the core of Christian’s “Big History” is an ever-increasing complexity: “in special and unusual environments such as our planet …
June 15th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution by Menno Schilthuizen
At the close of his exploration of the somewhat oxymoronic “urban nature,” Menno Schilthuizen tells us that one of his aims is that “the urban organisms you see on your daily wanderings of the city streets will become more special, more interesting, worthy of more than a casual glance.” Schilthuizen, I’d say, is more likely to succeed than not in achieving his goal, as Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution (2018) is a delightfully informative whose insights are enthusiastically and clearly conveyed.
June 8th, 2018. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Claire North brings a haunting and all-too-realistic vision of the near-future to life for her most recent novel, 84K (2018), in which an already-existing real world injustice is pushed to its natural limit: every possible crime and infraction are assigned a monetary value, from murder to petty theft and everything in between, and wealthy citizens escape punishment by simply paying the appropriate fine. Those who cannot pay their fine are, at best, interned in working penitentiaries known as “the patty line,” making cosmetics and frozen dinners and shiny baubles that they could never afford,
June 1st, 2018. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Claire North | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 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.