Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 2023

Where Peace is Lost: Enjoyable, with missed opportunities

Where Peace is Lost by Valerie Valdes

Where Peace is Lost by Valerie Valdes moves along smoothly and quickly, is peopled by engaging characters, and nods toward some serious themes of ethics, violence, and colonialism. I mostly enjoyed this fast read, though found myself wishing its themes were delved into more deeply.

The novel is set in a universe where the Pale Empire has been conquering/colonizing other planets or planetary systems/alliances. Some years back, one of their stiffest foes, whose military and altruistic institutions were known as “Orders”,

The Library of Broken Worlds: My first Hugo nomination of the year

The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson

With Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Library of Broken Worlds, I found my first Hugo nomination for next year. Mind you, this is a year where I’ve read many good-to-great books. The Library of Broken Worlds is not only a brilliant story beautifully written, it is truly original in its conception and execution, by a writer who is a master of words.

Set a few hundred years in the future, the story is told by our narrator and main character,

Circumference of the World: I like it

Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar

Once upon a time in the ancient era when childhood was about to bleed into pre-adolescence, we used to question if someone “liked” another person or “liked liked” them, our eyes wide in anticipation of the stressed or unstressed response. For the past half-dozen or so novels I’ve read by Lavie Tidhar, the reply each time was a no-brainer: a breathy, intense, “I like like.” With his newest, Circumference of the World,

Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon: A fresh addition to the fantasy heist genre

Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi

Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi is a new addition to the fantasy heist genre, one that brings a sense of freshness due to its backdrop of Yoruba folktale/myth and a sense of depth thanks to its focus on character, as well as a moving close.

The narrative is set in a world of gods and spirits who have organized themselves into companies and regions and who are,

August 7th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Wole Talabi | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Medusa’s Sisters: A bitingly insightful feminist viewpoint

Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear

Every now and then my reads fall into a pattern, the most recent being a trio of reimaginings of Greek tales. Medusa’s Sisters, by Lauren J.A. Bear falls in between the other two in terms of the reading experience, with engaging characters, good narrative voices, a moving close, and a nice refocusing of the ancient story of Medusa and Perseus (rather than of Perseus and Medusa).

Bear begins, well, at the beginning (after an excellent opening that gives us right away the classic Perseus-Kills-Medusa moment,

Bridge: The multiverse but with parasites and serial killers

Bridge by Lauren Beukes

A quick glance at the jacket copy of Lauren Beukes’s 2023 weird thriller Bridge might make the reader think of the Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once. After all, this is a mother-daughter story set in the multiverse. Beukes weaves into her story a few elements EEAAO didn’t have, like a parasite and a serial killer, or more accurately a collective of serial killers. The core of the book is a mother-daughter story, but it is filled with chills,

Night Fever: We are our own worst enemies

Night Fever: We are our own worst enemies

Brubaker and Phillips have done it again in their latest offering: They have given us another noir comic that is as stunning visually as it is engaging narratively. In Night Fever, Jonathan Webb, a businessman in Europe, cannot sleep, and his insomnia leads him to venture out into the night. This journey into the darkness is both literal and figurative, of course, and his drug- and alcohol-fueled adventures take a dangerous turn as he starts finding out that not everyone he meets after the sun goes down has his best interests in mind.

Beastly: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us

Beastly: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us by Keggie Carew

In Beastly: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us, Keggie Carew takes us on an always passionate, sometimes meandering, often fascinating, sometimes disorienting, often depressing, occasionally encouraging tour of humanity’s lengthy and often abusive relationship with the animals we share this world with. Like many such works, it makes for some difficult reading, but it’s often the things we find difficult that are the most important to face.

The book is divided into ten sections,

July 19th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

A House With Good Bones: Not the roses! Not the roses!

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

“There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.”

A couple of weeks ago there was a big discussion on Twitter about “cozy horror.” I followed it, but never really understood what “cozy” was supposed to be. I feel confident saying that T. Kingfisher is the queen of Cozy Horror, though —if “cozy” means there’s a house (haunted or not) and the ending has some bit of optimism. With 2023’s A House With Good Bones,

The Saint of Bright Doors: The good parts are so good

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

The Saint of Bright Doors, a debut novel by Vajra Chandrasekera, opens with an absolutely killer beginning (literally, as the very young main character is being trained as an assassin) that had me sure I was going to love this novel. But while I did love parts of it, and was in the end happy I’d read it, I can’t say it lived up fully to the promise of that beginning.

But oh,

June 19th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Vajra Chandrasekera | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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