Reposting to include Bill’s new review.
Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone
Save the world, or fix the world? Can we do either? These questions underlie the second book in Max Gladstone’s CRAFT WARS series, Wicked Problems. Other things are happening in this 2024 installment, too, and the ending, while anticipated, is a gamechanger for everyone involved.
In Book One, Dead Country, Craftswoman Tara Abernathy took on a student, the orphaned and traumatized Dawn.
May 21st, 2024. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Max Gladstone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
This review of Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands contains spoilers for Book One, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. Heather Fawcett’s second book, published in 2024, advances the adventures of scholars Emily Wilde and Wendell Bamblely as they prepare to embark on a perilous quest. It also introduces some new characters to the mix, and I’ll be interested to see if they appear again in the third book of the series.
May 7th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Heather Fawcett | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Book That Broke the World by Mark Lawrence
It’s funny that as I was reading Mark Lawrence’s The Book That Broke the World (2024), I kept thinking how it was much more action/plot oriented than its predecessor, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, which in my head I recalled as far more character and theme-driven. Then, in preparation for writing this review, I went back and read my review of book one and saw that I’d noted how the action “quickens at a relentlessly breathless rate.” So maybe it’s a balance thing?
April 30th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Mark Lawrence | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Reposting to include Bill’s new review.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older
On Jupiter, known as Giant, Mossa, an Investigator, and Pleiti, scholar and instructor, are on a new case, involving the disappearance of a student. As Mossa explores, she finds not one, but seventeen university students, faculty and staff have gone missing. What the two sleuths will uncover in 2024’s The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, by Malka Older, will destabilize Pleiti’s already-shaky faith in the university system,
March 14th, 2024. Marion Deeds and Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5, 5 | Malka Older | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi
The Truth of the Aleke is Moses Ose Utomi’s sequel to his fantastic The Lies of the Ajungo, which I said in my review was “as close to perfect a modern parable as I’ve read in some time.” I’m happy to report that if the follow-up isn’t quite as “perfect,” it’s nonetheless a fantastic read, and one that makes me oh so eager to see how Utomi wraps up this loosely connected trilogy set in the Forever Desert.
March 4th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Moses Ose Utomi | SFF Reviews | no comments |
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
Alex Easton, protagonist of T. Kingfisher’s 2023 novella What Moves the Dead, is back with a second adventure in 2024’s What Feasts at Night. Joining Easton is loyal batman Angus and the unflappable British mycologist Miss Potter. This go-round, Easton and company face less of the science and more of the supernatural.
Alex Easton is Gallacian by nationality (a small imaginary country somewhere in central Europe). Easton is a “sworn soldier,” anatomically female but living as a man as part of the military.
March 1st, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | T. Kingfisher | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Spark of Destiny by Gail Z. Martin & Larry N. Martin
Steampunk as a fiction genre has nearly disappeared. It’s become much more of a fashion or costume statement; or subsumed completely into alternate history. I understand the reasons; and expect the various sub-genres to ebb and flow like everything else. It was still a nice treat to read 2023’s Spark of Destiny by Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin, a genuine steampunk adventure.
Here’s an incomplete list of what I expect in steampunk:
December 21st, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Gail Z. Martin | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Oh...and the men used the name "The Great Northern Expedition" to throw people off as to their actual destination, even…
Oh, it IS, Marion! It is!
Sorry if I mislead you in this detail, Paul...the voyage by ship was only the first leg of the quintet's…
The geography is confusing me--how does one get to a village in Tibet by ship? And even the northernmost part…
Oh, this sounds interesting!