Savage Epics: The Seminal Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs by Edgar Rice Burroughs
I haven’t had this much pure fun reading a book since I was thirteen, which was the same age that I started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ TARZAN series.
Those TARZAN books that were a turning point for me. I collected, read, and still have the Ballantine series with the Neal Adams and Boris covers. TARZAN led me to the Ace CONAN series that was edited by DeCamp and Carter.
April 16th, 2025. Greg Hersom´s rating: 5 | Edgar Rice Burroughs | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Carnivale of Curiosities by Amiee Gibbs
This carnival book completely satisfied. 2023’s The Carnivale of Curiosities, by Amiee Gibbs, is set in 1880’s London. It’s a slow-burn, late-Victorian-styled literary novel, filled with magic, lies, secrets, and revenge plots, all centered around Ashe and Pretorius’s Carnivale of Curiosities, and its leader, Aurelius Ashe, who can grant anyone nearly any wish… for a price.
Unlike other circuses and carnivals of the day, Ashe uses real magic and many of his “freaks” have magical powers. Some are simply unusual-looking people,
March 6th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Amiee Gibbs | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson
Published in 2023, J.R. Dawson’s The First Bright Thing is a solid entry in the subgenre of magical carnivals, joining The Night Circus, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bacchanal, and Mechanique, among others. Once again, good versus evil plays out in the center ring, against the backdrop of big tops and midways. Dawson adds one new ingredient to the mix,
March 3rd, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | J.R. Dawson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital (2023) will, for some people, barely qualify (if that) as a novel, leaving them crying “Where’s the plot? Nothing happens!” And you know, I can’t argue with them. If you define a novel as a series of plot steps from a to b to c such that change occurs, then yes, Orbital probably won’t squeeze in under that definition. Its focus is less on “what is happening” and more on “what am I feeling about what is happening?” or “What am I thinking about while things are happening?” And if you’re looking for conflict or fleshed out and distinctive characters who are different at the end than when we first meet them,
February 4th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Samantha Harvey | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Spite House by Johnny Compton
Spite houses are real and I went down a shallow rabbit hole preparing for this review. With his 2023 novel, The Spite House, Johnny Compton takes on the concept of a house built solely to irritate and harass nearby landowners, and morphs it into something original and scary.
Eric Ross and his two daughters, Dessa and Stacy, are making their way through Texas, trying to keep under the radar. They have the normal concerns a black family in Texas would have,
January 13th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Johnny Compton | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Militia House by John Milas
2023’s The Militia House is the debut novel of John Milas. Set in Afghanistan in 2010, it follows a team assigned to a Landing Zone as they are drawn into an abandoned Russian-invasion-era “militia” house close to their base. The sense of dread grows as the story continues, veering into a surreal world, but as in real life, the greatest horror may simply be war.
Our first-person narrator is Corporal Loyette, and his team consists of Johnson, Blount and Vargas.
January 7th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | John Milas | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
In the aftermath of the pandemic, fantasy caught the midtown bus and moved into the suburbs of women’s fiction. There, it’s set up shop and seems to be doing quite well, if paperbacks like The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods, are any indication. This pleasant story, following three characters and an elusive, magical bookshop, is enjoyable even if it didn’t fully satisfy this fantasy reader.
Set in modern day Dublin, the story follows Martha, a woman fleeing an abusive relationship,
December 16th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Evie Woods | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
2023’s Thistlefoot, by GennaRose Nethercott, is one of my favorite reads of 2024. This literary fantasy draws from Jewish and Eastern European folktales, with a concretely modern setting, a gloss of mythic American West (hobos and tumbleweeds), and sentences that sing with poetry.
Isaac Yaga is a street performer and a con artist. He can impersonate almost anyone, and he is always on the run, either from the people whose pockets he’s picked, or from his own guilty memories, accompanied only by a small black cat named Hubcap.
September 13th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | GennaRose Nethercott | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Weyward, by Emilia Hart, (2023), is women’s fiction with magic. The stories of three different women in three different eras wrestling not only with their connection to nature, but with the restrictions and exploitations of society, are captivating, and it’s all delivered with beautiful descriptions and flowing language.
I’m going to go down a rabbit hole here. I recently had to make a long drive (2 ½ hours each way) and used most of that time to chew over why I categorize this as “women’s fiction with magic” rather than “fantasy.” Here’s what I’ve decided;
August 26th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Emilia Hart | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Camp Damascus (2023) starts off as a demonic thriller and ends up as a plucky-kids-fight-humancentric-evil story, in Chuck Tingle’s first non-erotica novel. The author, who had a large audience on X/Twitter, came to the attention of many of us during the 2016 Hugo awards (all scandals aside, don’t say the Hugos never did anything nice for us). Previously known for men/men (or in some cases, men/dinosaur) erotica online, with Camp Damascus Tingle successfully makes the jump to horror,
July 12th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Chuck Tingle | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…