A Game of Fox & Squirrels by Jenn Reese
11-year-old Samantha and her big sister have just arrived at their Aunt Vicky’s farm in Oregon. Samantha is not happy that the girls have been taken away from their parents and she wants to go home, even though her dad sometimes has a pretty bad temper. Aunt Vicky and her wife are clearly not prepared to take the girls in, but they do their best to make the sisters feel at home.
Aunt Vicky gives Samantha a game called The Game of Fox &
May 19th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Jenn Reese | Audio, Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Tower of Mud and Straw by Yaroslav Barsukov
Lord Shea Ashcroft, a government minister, faced with a rioting crowd of protestors in the capital city, makes the call to have the military fall back rather than killing the protestors — and innocent bystanders —with poisonous gas. Some people praise his mercy, but half the city now lies in ruins from the mob’s violence, and the queen is not so appreciative of his decision. Shea is shipped off to the border city of Owenbeg as punishment, charged with overseeing the finishing of construction of a colossal tower to protect the border against enemy airships.
April 8th, 2021. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Yaroslav Barsukov | Audio, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In the Palace of Shadow and Joy by D.J. Butler
D.J. Butler tries his hand at the two-loveable-rogues-for-hire story and mostly succeeds.
Our two loveable rogues are Indrajit Twang and Fix. Indrajit is the poet of his very small clan of people. He has come to the great city of Kish to find (he hopes) an apprentice who can learn the epic poem of his race so it can be passed down to the next generation. If he does not succeed, all of the history and culture of these few hundred people will be lost.
April 7th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Dave (D.J.) Butler | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen
A Beginning at the End (2020) is set in a near-future world where, in 2019, a deadly worldwide pandemic kills some five billion people, including seventy percent of the U.S. population. Johanna Moira Hatfield, a teenage pop music star known as Mojo, tired of being browbeaten by her stage father, Evan, uses the sudden panic at her Madison Square Garden concert to disappear into the crowd in search of a new life.
Six years later, in San Francisco in 2025,
March 31st, 2021. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Mike Chen | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel rose to prominence with the extraordinary Station Eleven (which, given the current state of the world, is enjoying a resurgence on the best-seller lists), but her latest novel, The Glass Hotel (2020), is a very different kind of book.
The story begins with a young woman named Vincent disappearing from a ship, the Neptune Cumberland. In what has become Mandel’s signature style, the story eschews chronology to skip backwards and forwards in time,
March 16th, 2021. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Emily St. John Mandel | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Who hasn’t fantasised what a different version of their life might look like? What if you’d become famous? Or an Olympic athlete? What if you’d become an arctic researcher? A musician? That’s exactly what Matt Haig explores in his latest offering, The Midnight Library (2020).
Nora Seed (and note the pointed symbolism of her surname) is not having a great day. Her cat just died. She’s been fired. Her brother is ignoring her and her neighbour,
March 4th, 2021. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 4 | Matt Haig | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Trouble the Saints (2020), by Alaya Dawn Johnson, follows three people of color — Phyllis (whose friends call her Pea), Tamara and Dev — from the late 1930s into the American involvement in World War II. Not one of them is “ordinary”; Pea and Dev have “saint’s hands” that bestow a gift … or a curse. Tamara has inherited a deck of playing cards, and she’s an oracle. When the story opens, all three are trying to make a living working for the white gangster Victor in New York City.
March 2nd, 2021. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Alaya Dawn Johnson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline
Cherie Dimaline is a Métis writer and activist from the Georgian Bay Métis Nation in Ontario, Canada. She has received a number of awards for her novels and short stories, none of which I’ve yet had the pleasure of reading — but after reading Empire of Wild (2020), I’m definitely going to track them down. Her use of First Nations themes and folklore is fascinating, and a delightful change from the many fantasies based on European images and tales.
Dimaline has set Empire of Wild in Arcand,
February 25th, 2021. Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Cherie Dimaline | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Beginning in the middle of the 19th century, explorations began in the ancient Mayan city complex known as Tikal, in a remote and inaccessible area of northern Guatemala. In the 1880s, a systematic clearing of the area commenced, as well as a recording of the manifold marvels that were being discovered in this centuries-old site. (And when I say “centuries,” that is perhaps an understatement, as it has since been established that Tikal’s heyday was from A.D. 200 – 900.) Perhaps stimulated by news reports of this Central American wonder,
February 12th, 2021. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Roy Norton | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
1983-era London, with a half-twist toward the fantastic, mingles with ancient British mythology in Garth Nix’s new urban fantasy, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (2020). Art student Susan Arkshaw, a punkish eighteen-year-old from rural western England, takes leave of her loving, vague mother and heads to London to try to find the father she’s never met. She starts with an old family acquaintance, “Uncle” Frank Thringley, but Frank turn out to be, in rapid succession,
January 18th, 2021. Tadiana Jones and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Garth Nix | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
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COMMENT Experiencing this book, of all books, in an audio format would indeed be interesting! I can only imagine, Olle....
I recently listened to the Libravox audiobook version of this one and completely agree with your assessment. The strange language…
I wish the media organizations publishing Best Of lists would commit to not including any works appreciably less than twenty…
It IS pretty hard to bee Fuzziman.
Hey, they had ME at Roland Fuzziman! 😂