Translation State by Ann Leckie
With Translation State, which was nominated for a Best Novel of 2023 Nebula Award, Ann Leckie brings us back to the universe adjacent to the Radchaai Empire, which is still embroiled in a civil war. This book directs its attention to the Presger Translators and their mysterious origin race, the Presger Themselves.
I liked Translation State, and about halfway through, one of the characters was suddenly in such jeopardy I could not put the book down.
June 3rd, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Ann Leckie | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
The first book in the EMILY WILDE series is a lively, lovely romp through an alternate Europe, with faeries, magic, lost kingdoms, irascible scholars and their irritating colleagues. Though completely different in tone and subject matter, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023), by Heather Fawcett, reminded me a bit of Marie Brennan’s LADY TRENT series. Both series feature a woman scientist and a story transmitted via reports or journal entries. There the similarities end,
April 25th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Heather Fawcett | SFF Reviews | no comments |
2023’s Witch King, by Martha Wells, is the first book in a new fantasy series, THE RISING WORLD. In the opening pages we meet Kaiisteron, who goes by Kai, the Witch King of the title. Kai awakens in a strange place, unable to move. He can mentally contact his friend Ziedi, but their magical connection should let him know exactly where she is, and he can’t find her. He can’t find his own body, either.
From there,
March 11th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Martha Wells | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen by Bradley P. Beaulieu
The Dragons of Deepwood Fen is an enjoyable start to a new fantasy trilogy by Bradley P. Beaulieu. Though the novel has a few issues, Beaulieu offers up an interesting world, a complex political set-up, and a nicely original use of that old fantasy standby, the dragon.
Ancris is the chief city of a long-standing, aggressively imperialistic empire, with the “vassal state” of the Holt having held them off enough to carve out a small amount of self-rule (within the empire) under their political leader known as the Imperator.
January 3rd, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Bradley P. Beaulieu | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Undetectables by Courtney Smyth
The Undetectables, by Courtney Smyth, (2023) reads like the first book in a series and I hope this is the case, because it was fun, and I loved the magical detective characters. Set in a modern world where magic and the mundane exist in close proximity if not actually side-by-side, the story follows our three amateur sleuths as they try to uncover the identity of a magical serial killer.
The point of view character of the story, mostly, is Mallory Hawthorne.
December 11th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Courtney Smyth | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Blue Book (Volume One) by James Tynion IV (script), Michael Avon Oeming (art), Aditya Bidikar (letters)
Blue Book is the true-life story of Betty and Barney Hill, a couple who claimed to have had an UFO encounter in the summer of 1961. While driving late at night, the young couple encounters a space ship, and then aliens abduct them, do experiments, and return them to their car within about two hours. All of this is narrated by Tynion in his script and shown through excellent black, white, and blue art by Oeming.
September 30th, 2023. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
An Inheritance of Magic by Benedict Jacka
An Inheritance of Magic is a solid fantasy with an entirely engaging Everyman of a character who comes with an equally engaging cat. I could have done with a bit more clarity on the world the story is set in, and at times things seemed to come a little easily to the main character, but this was a generally enjoyable and interesting story, enough so that I’ll pick up the necessary sequel.
Stephen Oakwood is twenty years old and adrift in the world of London.
September 22nd, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Benedict Jacka | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
XINO #1 by Various Creators for Oni Press
XINO #1, the first of three issues, includes four stories about technology. The first, “Hue,” written by Melissa Flores, illustrated by Daniel Irizarrri, and lettered by Jim Campbell is the best of the four. In it, Matteo Mendoza, a blind man, is given sight through some new implants that enable him not simply to see as we do; rather, he can see things the rest of us cannot. At first, excited by the promise of vision for the first time in his life,
September 2nd, 2023. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
Against a global backdrop that seethes with cyberpunk-style action, Ray Nayler’s 2022 Locus Award winning debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, gives us a philosophical and deeply thoughtful story about science, specifically first contact.
Sometime in the 22nd century, global corporations run huge AI-managed fishing boats that are scraping the last bits of protein from the planet’s oceans. At the same time, the world is exploring in-system planetary colonization, and the advancement of android tech. Governments have changed and much of the world answers to the UN Directorate Governance.
August 8th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Ray Nayler | Locus Award | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei
Yume Kitasei’s debut novel, The Deep Sky, is half a sci-fi mystery aboard a troubled spaceship and half a boarding school story set some years beforehand during the training/selection period for the crew. The sci-fi section moves along at a fast pace while the school segments slow down to delve more into character and also provide backstory so as to better understand motivations and actions in the present. The premise and structure are good ideas, but unfortunately issues with execution, pace,
July 11th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Yume Kitasei | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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