Sarah Pinborough | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

SFF Author: Sarah Pinborough

Sarah Pinborough Sarah Silverwood (1972- )
Sarah Pinborough lives and writes horror, supernatural thrillers, and YA fantasy novels (YA under the name Sarah Silverwood). She lives in Buckinghamshire, England. She has had a lot of jobs — some of which were mind-numbingly dull and some of which definitely weren’t — but has decided that writing books is by far the best of them. Here’s Sarah Pinborough’s website.

Tower Hill: Feels like a formula

Tower Hill by Sarah Pinborough

Religion is ripe soil for horror writers. If you squint a bit when you read the Bible, it’s a vast catalog of horror itself: Adam and Eve’s eviction from paradise, the invention of death, Cain’s killing of Abel, the torture of Job — and we haven’t even gotten past Genesis! But the Bible is the source of salvation as well, as God provides his people with manna in the wilderness, preserves the human race despite a flood that covers all the earth, and rescues Moses from the bulrushes.

The Language of Dying: Slowly creeping horror hiding within the mundane

The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

A novella that packs the emotional punch of a full-length novel, Sarah Pinborough’s The Language of Dying (2009) stealthily moves from an innocuous beginning to a stunning conclusion in the spare space of less than 150 pages. This work was nominated for a 2009 Shirley Jackson award and won a British Fantasy Award for Best Novella in 2010, and it’s obvious why: Pinborough writes beautifully and honestly about the complicated process of saying good-bye to a loved one,

A Matter of Blood: Leave the lights on

A Matter of Blood by Sarah Pinborough

Sarah Pinborough makes it clear from the first page of her prologue in A Matter of Blood that we’ll be seeing plenty of blood — and worse. The novel opens on the scene of a corpse squirming with maggots. An unnamed man stands in the doorway and declares that “This has to stop,” but the noise of the flies only grows louder. It seems, though, that the man is talking to someone — not to the corpse,

The Shadow of the Soul: A complicated, suspenseful tale

The Shadow of the Soul by Sarah Pinborough

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first book in the FORGOTTEN GODS trilogy, A Matter of Blood (reviewed here).

As The Shadow of the Soul by Sarah Pinborough opens, Cass Jones has been through six months of interviews, arrests, statements and the backlash from his discovery of rampant corruption among his fellow police officers (as set forth in the first book of the FORGOTTEN GODS trilogy,

The Chosen Seed: Keeps readers compulsively turning pages

The Chosen Seed by Sarah Pinborough

Note: This review contains spoilers for the first two books in the FORGOTTEN GODS trilogy. The review of the first of the books in the trilogy, A Matter of Blood, is here; the review of the second, The Shadow of the Soul, is here.

The first two books of Sarah Pinborough’s FORGOTTEN GODS trilogy opened with one of the members of the shadowy group known as The Bank committing murder most foul — and supernatural — and The Chosen Seed continues that pattern.

Mayhem: A dark, elegantly written murder mystery

Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough

Two things drew me to Sarah Pinborough’s Mayhem. First, the cover — exceptionally elegant and very fitting for this 19th century tale. Second, Jack the Ripper. If for some reason you are unaware of who he was, Jack was a serial killer in late 19th century London who targeted female prostitutes and murdered them in brutal ways. He killed at least five women, likely more, but get this — he was never caught. This anonymity led to widespread terror throughout the area for years to come.

Pat Doherty´s rating: 3.5 | Sarah Pinborough | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Behind Her Eyes: Twisty thriller with cross-genre appeal

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough

Louise is an insecure single mom who, one night, meets and kisses a dashing stranger. She’s mortified the next morning to find that the stranger, David, is now her boss. Her married boss. Then she (literally) bumps into David’s wife, Adele, and the two of them hit it off.

Despite her best friend’s warnings that all of this is a bad idea, Louise falls in deeper: into a full-blown affair with David, and into a close friendship with Adele. In particular, Louise and Adele bond over their shared experience with night terrors.

Magazine Monday: Nightmare, Issue 3

The third issue of Nightmare is more accomplished than one would expect from a magazine so new. The choice of stories is excellent, and the debut story is especially disturbing.

That debut is “Chop Shop” by J.B. Park, and if it is any indication, Park is going to have a brilliant career as a horror writer. The viewpoint character is a woman who has a horrifying sexual fetish: she is turned on by a man cutting away her flesh, her limbs, her organs slowly but surely. She is able to experience this because a virtual reality program makes it so,

The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes edited by Christopher Golden

FORMAT/INFO: The Monster’s Corner is 400 pages long and consists of 19 short stories. Also included is an Introduction by the editor Christopher Golden, and biographies of all of the anthology’s contributors. September 27, 2011 marks the North American Trade Paperback publication of The Monster’s Corner via St. Martin’s Griffin. The UK version will be published on the same day via Piatkus Books.

ANALYSIS: The New Dead was one of my favorite books of 2010,

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September 2023

Marion Deeds on WWWednesday: September 27, 2023September 28, 2023
Thanks, Kat, great input!
Kat Hooper on WWWednesday: September 27, 2023September 28, 2023
Marion, thanks for the audiobook article! Interestingly, they list All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Here's part of my review…
Sandy Ferber on I Am Your Brother: Half frustrating, half dazzlingSeptember 28, 2023
And, oh...as to that 2.5-star rating: I think I gave Damon Knight's "Beyond the Barrier" a similar halfhearted rating earlier…
Sandy Ferber on I Am Your Brother: Half frustrating, half dazzlingSeptember 28, 2023
And speaking of mixed, that's how the book left me...mixed! As in MIXED UP!
Vaporwave Megatext: Code Beast (2023) - Utopia District on The Terminal Beach: The best of Ballard’s early storiesSeptember 27, 2023
[…] marketing materials for itself, the ultimate cargo cult, dedicated to spam, stranded on the terminal beach at time’s end.…