Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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Persephone Station: Action, suspense, and tears in this adventure

Persephone Station by Stina Licht

Stina Leicht’s SF novel, Persephone Station (2021), is filled with action, suspense, and great descriptions. From a hold-your-breath opening to the tear-jerking ending, the book leads us through capers-gone-wrong, double-crosses, asymmetrical warfare, decades-old rivalries and witty banter.

Persephone is described as a “hell-planet.” Behind the artificial barrier around the one human city, everything in the environment wants to kill you; the atmosphere, the flora, and the fauna. Within the human city you can make a living if you’re flexible about obeying the law,

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately uneven

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

I was a huge fan of V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (and much of her other work as well) and so was excited to see her new book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, was seemingly a bit similar. Unfortunately, while the writing on a sentence level remains strong, and there’s a lot of strong elements, I ended up somewhat disappointed with the tale.

July 3rd, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Victoria (V.E.) Schwab | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Hidden Truth: Familiar strengths and flaws

Hidden Truth by Dawn Cook

Hidden Truth (2002) is the second book in Dawn Cook’s TRUTH series. It picks up a few weeks after the events of First Truth (which you definitely need to read first) and mostly continues the same formula: a small cast, a secluded mountain setting, some very fuzzy magic, and — because it’s a YA story — the requisite love triangle.

I was hoping we’d finally get some new scenery in this novel, but nope — we’re still stuck in Bailic’s mountain hold.

Shield of Sparrows: My favorite romantasy so far

Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry

Shield of Sparrows came out this year, 2025, and is already in development as a feature film, so I guess Devney Perry, who sold about a million romance novels before this one, knows what she is doing. I’m exaggerating. It isn’t a million books, only fifty. This book is a romantasy—a romance novel set in a second world. It’s not my go-to genre, but I enjoy them now and then, and I would say this is my favorite romantasy so far.

Let me quickly run through the romantasy tropes you can expect here: enemies-to-lovers,

July 1st, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Devney Perry | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Druid Stone: Ugony and the Ecstasy

The Druid Stone by Simon Majors

“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard the saying before and know it to be true. Not that I’m demeaning the work of all the wonderful cover artists out there. Indeed, a good book with a beautifully decorative cover illustration makes for a treasure in any home, to be sure, and I’m nerdy enough to have my own favorite artists of such: Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, Richard M. Powers, Virgil Finlay, James Bama … the list goes on and on. All I’m saying is that it can be a risky proposition to purchase a book,

Where the Axe is Buried: Thoughtful SF spy thriller

Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler

Ray Nayler’s 2025 SF geopolitical spy-thriller novel, Where the Axe is Buried, explores totalitarian regimes and the role of AI in a dystopian near-future. The story moves among many characters; Lilia, a scientist; Palmer, her London boyfriend; Zoya, a famed activist in the repressive Federation, now living in exile; Nurlan, a government functionary who is deeply in love; Nikolai, the Federation president’s personal physician, and Krotov, the president’s head of security.

The Federation is ruled by one man,

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses: An award-winning series that’s not for me

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

Sometimes you just have to give in to the fact that a particular book, series, or author just isn’t for you. Sadly, I think I’ve reached that point after reading The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, the third book in Malka Older’s THE INVESTIGATIONS OF MOSSA AND PLEITI.

Though I’ve never really fallen hard for any of the first three works, I say “sadly” because I love the premise behind them.

June 26th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3 | Malka Older | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

WWWednesday: June 25, 2025

Locus awards were announced last Saturday. Best Science Fiction Novel: The Man Who Saw Seconds, by Alesander Boldizar; Best Fantasy Novel: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher; Best Horror Novel: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle.

Surfing around, I found this piece of short fiction from Garth Nix from last month on Reactor.

They also feature an excerpt from The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst.

Canada’s Sunburst Award longlist is out.

June 25th, 2025. Marion Deeds | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A graphic novel adaptation by Manu Larcenet (An Oxford College Student Review!)

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A graphic novel adaptation by Manu Larcenet

In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today,

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era by Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko’s, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era — no surprise given the title — explores the “strange new worlds” of the Trek universe from Enterprise onward, managing to get about as fully up to date as one can with publication schedules, missing only the very recent Section 31 film (apparently to Kotsko’s great benefit). Aimed at the layperson despite its close readings of the shows and cultural criticism,

June 20th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Film / TV, Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

The Living Death and Drome: A John Martin Leahy “Double Feature”

The Living Death and Drome by John Martin Leahy

The double-decker volume entitled The Living Death and Drome, from the Seattle-based imprint Sarnath Press, gathers together two novels from the weird-fiction author John Martin Leahy; the second of two volumes that Sarnath has recently issued focusing on this relatively unknown pulp writer. The entirety of Leahy’s fictive career was limited to just three novels and four short stories; that initial collection, Draconda and Others,

June 19th, 2025. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | John Martin Leahy | SFF Reviews | no comments |

WWWednesday: June 18, 2025

This Friday is 2025’s summer solstice. The Farmer’s Almanac provides some information on the event.

Last Saturday, people all over the USA participating in a protest event called No Kings. The Facebook page called Alt National Park Services tracked attendance and reports a final number of 13.1 million people.

The Guardian provides a Best Of round-up of new speculative novels. Esperance has caught my attention—although the horror of sleepless zombies is intriguing too.

I tried to say “femfanzines”

June 18th, 2025. Marion Deeds | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Crimson Road: A treat of a magical vampire-hunter-quest book

The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter

The first A.G. Slatter book I’ve read, 2025’s The Crimson Road was a treat. Violet Zennor is a smart, witty, bitter young protagonist with an unusual upbringing, who reluctantly embarks on a quest she has no desire to undertake. The story is a vampire-themed fairy tale, filled with magic and danger. I wanted to know how Violet would fare against the dreaded vampire Leech Lords, who rule in the north. Violet has been trained to fight and kill, but she’ll need more than the arts of war to prevail against the being who has risen as their new leader.

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser

Emily Hauser is the author of THE GOLDEN APPLES TRILOGY, a retelling of several Greek myths. But in Penelope’s Bones, she puts her Classics/Ancient History scholarship to work in the service of non-fiction, using her own knowledge and a veritable mountain of cross-discipline evidence to re-examine the role of women in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey,

June 13th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

First Truth: A mild YA fantasy with a lot of walking

First Truth by Dawn Cook

First Truth (2002) is the first book in the TRUTH series, a young adult fantasy by Dawn Cook, who’s better known under her pen name Kim Harrison, author of a lot of urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels.

The story follows Alissa, whose mother throws her out when she begins showing signs of magic — something her (possibly dead) father always denied existed. Her mother tells Alissa to seek the Hold, a mysterious place where she might find answers.

Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time: A truly satisfying finish to a wonderful trilogy

Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time by Philip Reeve

Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time (2023) is the third and final book in the UTTERLY DARK trilogy, and the reason I left it this long (I read the preceding books exactly one year ago) is simply because I didn’t want it to end. Once a Philip Reeve story is over, it can’t be read for the first time ever again, so you have to savour them while they last.

And in this case,

The River Has Roots: Lush, beautiful fairy tale retelling

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

I use up all my superlatives whenever I review anything by Amal El-Mohtar, whose prose is always exquisite and imaginative, flowing like syrup. In the case of 2025’s The River Has Roots, the hardcopy version of El-Mohtar’s lovely, original fairy tale is enhanced by woodcut-style illustrations. The story is short, novella-length, and draws on familiar elements, but the themes of the river and music form the story’s main currents, which drew me in immediately.

Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn are sisters,

Draconda and Others: Resurrecting a forgotten Weird Tales talent

Draconda and Others by John Martin Leahy

For modern-day fans of the classic pulp magazine Weird Tales, few websites will be found that exceed the depth and breadth of the one created by Terence E. Hanley; namely, Tellers of Weird Tales. Encyclopedic in scope, the site is a virtual godsend for all lovers of the so-called “Unique Magazine.” In just the Weird Tales Authors section of the website, Hanley gives full biographies of (by my rough count) 460+ authors who contributed to the magazine during its first legendary incarnation (1923 – ’54),

The Afterlife Project: Recommended with a caveat

The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed

The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed is a cli-lit book that follows two distinct storylines, one set in the not-too-distant future wracked by climate disaster and a “hyper-pandemic” and the other set 10,000 years later in a vibrant recovered world, one that may or may not have us humans around anymore. The two-track structure is appropriate, as I had two differing reactions to the book, finding the far-future section (mostly) quite strong while having a less favorable reaction to the near-future setting,

Luminous: A beautiful debut

Luminous by Silvia Park

Luminous (2025) is the debut novel for Silvia Park, and as such evinces some of the issues that sometimes crop up in first books in areas such as structure and pace. Those issues, however, are more than eclipsed by the book’s shimmering prose, frequently moving moments, and thoughtful exploration of a number of themes, all circling around the question of what it means to be “human.”

Park sets her novel in a unified Korea, roughly twenty years after the war that ended their separation.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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Recent Discussion:

David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
Bill Capossere on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
We’re in total agreement David!
David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.

Category: SFF Reviews

Recent Posts

Persephone Station: Action, suspense, and tears in this adventure

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately uneven

Hidden Truth: Familiar strengths and flaws

Shield of Sparrows: My favorite romantasy so far

The Druid Stone: Ugony and the Ecstasy

Where the Axe is Buried: Thoughtful SF spy thriller

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses: An award-winning series that’s not for me

WWWednesday: June 25, 2025

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A graphic novel adaptation by Manu Larcenet (An Oxford College Student Review!)

Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era

The Living Death and Drome: A John Martin Leahy “Double Feature”

WWWednesday: June 18, 2025

The Crimson Road: A treat of a magical vampire-hunter-quest book

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It

First Truth: A mild YA fantasy with a lot of walking

Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time: A truly satisfying finish to a wonderful trilogy

The River Has Roots: Lush, beautiful fairy tale retelling

Draconda and Others: Resurrecting a forgotten Weird Tales talent

The Afterlife Project: Recommended with a caveat

Luminous: A beautiful debut

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