Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun (2021) is the newest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, and the best description I can think of it is that it’s the newest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. In other words, it’s very “Ishiguro”-like in its themes, its voice, its prose style and will call up memories of earlier works such as Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, which I consider high praise indeed.
May 13th, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Kazuo Ishiguro | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls by Kaela Rivera
Kaela Rivera sets her novel Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls (2021) against a backdrop of Mexican/Meso-American/Southwestern folktales and legends, sending the titular protagonist on a quest to rescue her older sister. The story will probably mostly satisfy its target Middle Grade audience but is less likely to appeal to even slightly older readers.
Tierra del Sol is a remote town surrounded by desert that each year enacts a ritualist dance to frighten away the dark criaturas that have long threatened Cece’s people.
May 6th, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Kaela Rivera | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst
There’s a point almost exactly halfway through Sarah Beth Durst’s latest novel, The Bone Maker (2021), where the author teases us that the book we’ve been reading just might go in a completely different direction, prompting me to write in my notes, “Love this.” And then, well, it didn’t. Instead, as if the inertia were too great, we’re shortly steered back into a well-worn fantasy story, which, despite being mostly satisfying — with some moments that rose above that level and a few that pulled it below — had me wishing I could have gone back to that moment fifty-three percent of the way in and chosen the plot less traveled.
April 23rd, 2021. Bill Capossere and Jana Nyman´s rating: 3, 4 | Sarah Beth Durst | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
A Question of Navigation by Kevin Hearne
While on a hike, Clint Beecham gets abducted by aliens. The aliens have decided that humans are tasty and that Earth will make a wonderful buffet for them. Along with Clint, they’ve kidnapped 50,000 humans and are on their way back to their mother planet where they will report the location of this big delicious feeding trough.
Most of the captured humans have been put into a cargo hold and are being harvested for food, but Clint and a few others have been set aside for a special purpose.
April 22nd, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Kevin Hearne | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
“If they get everyone to stop taking pills and give bots equal rights, humanity is screwed.”
It’s 2095 and humans rely on drugs to stay healthy as well as physically and cognitively competitive in a gig economy where they must compete with artificial intelligence for jobs.
Cameras everywhere tend to keep violent urges in check, so life is fairly peaceful for Welga Ramirez, a 35-year-old physically-upgraded bodyguard who’s happy to have steady employment (most people don’t) and is looking forward to being transferred to a desk job soon.
April 15th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | S.B. Divya | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
Hummingbird Salamander (2021) is Jeff VanderMeer’s newest work, and it may also be his most accessible. Certainly it’s his least strange, though admittedly with VanderMeer that’s not saying much. Though if he’s working in more familiarly popular territory — the thriller novel — there’s no doubt VanderMeer puts his own stamp on the genre, whether he’s working within its tropes or subverting them.
Chapter One opens ominously enough, as any good thriller should — “Assume I’m dead by the time you read this” — and ends even more so — “I’m here to show you how the world ends.” The stakes have clearly been set.
April 13th, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Jeff VanderMeer | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Einstein’s Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe by Paul Sen
At some point in your schooling you learned the Laws of Thermodynamics. And then, at some point shortly thereafter (or at least, shortly after the test on them), you promptly forgot them. And even if you later in life you kept up with reading about science, well, there was always something sexier to read about: black holes, new particles, rovers zipping around on Mars. But in Einstein’s Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe (2021),
April 2nd, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart
When she was a small child, Remy was rescued from death by a chaplain who oversees the monks on a submarine called Leviathan. They carry the world’s last nuclear missile and their mission is to wait, protecting the missile, until God tells them it’s time to deploy it against the wicked Earth on judgement day.
Remy’s job is to sing in the choir of eunuchs, a crucial role that keeps up morale. Her voice will remain high because she’s a girl (a secret that only the chaplain knows),
April 1st, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Andrew Kelly Stewart | Audio, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky
What’s a grumpy, misanthropic time traveling warrior to do? Governments and factions have misused time travel machines, each using their time machines to remake the past in the way they want it to be, over and over again. Time travel machines really are the ultimate weapon: if you go back far enough you can change history enough that your enemy never has a chance. Except that your enemy’s time traveling agents are cut off from those changes, so they’re still around to try to change history in a different way that favors them.
March 24th, 2021. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves by Arik Kershenbaum
Usually, when one thinks about “universal laws,” the first disciplines that come to mind are mathematics and physics. Pi, or the law of gravity, for instance. But in The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens — and Ourselves, Arik Kershenbaum makes the case for “universal laws of biology.” And then further argues that said laws, which we can formulate based on our experiences and observations here on Earth,
March 22nd, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | 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.