Previous SFF Author: K. Arsenault Rivera
Rebecca Roanhorse is a Nebula and Hugo Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short fiction has also been a finalist for the Sturgeon, Locus and World Fantasy awards. Her novel Trail of Lightning was selected as an Amazon, B&N, Library Journal, and NRP Best Books of 2018, among others, and is a 2019 Nebula Finalist. Her short fiction can be found in Apex Magazine, New Suns, and various other anthologies. Her non-fiction can be found in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, and How I Resist: Activism and Hope for a New Generation. She lives in Northern New Mexico with her husband, daughter, and pug.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE STORIES BY REBECCA ROANHORSE.
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
Maggie Hoskie, the prickly heroine of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning (2018), and I took a couple of tries to really hit it off. I read a few chapters of this book several months ago but stalled out and put it aside. But when the announcement of its Nebula award nomination happened to coincide with a cross-country plane flight, I picked up this again and ended up loving it.
Trail of Lightning is a gritty magical fantasy set in Dinétah,
Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | Rebecca Roanhorse | Locus Award | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse
I pull my knees to my chest, feeling myself irrationally offended at being rejected by a sentient casino.
Rebecca Roanhorse’s second THE SIXTH WORLD book, Storm of Locusts (2019), continues to deliver on the promise of Trail of Lightning. Maggie, a Navajo monsterslayer (or now, as some call her, Godslayer) ventures outside the magical walls of the Navajo reservation to stop a magically enhanced terrorist from destroying it.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Rebecca Roanhorse | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Nizhoni Begay wants to be a star, or at least popular. She’s hoping to make the game-winning score at her middle school basketball game but, instead, she’s humiliated when she gets distracted and gets hit in the face by the ball. The reason she was distracted was that she saw a man in the stands watching her. She could tell he was a monster. When that same man shows up at her house for dinner because he’s her dad’s new boss, Nizhoni tries to warn her father that he’s a monster but her father doesn’t believe her and seems very eager to please the monster.
Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Rebecca Roanhorse | Audio, Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun (2020) introduces a new series set in an ancient Mesoamerica that is a mix of partly-familiar cultures and original fantasy elements, creating a heady brew that rolls along smoothly even as it moves back and forth in time and amongst a quartet of POVs.
Those POVs belong to:
Bill Capossere and Jana Nyman´s rating: 4 | Rebecca Roanhorse | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse
Fevered Star (2022) is the follow-up to Rebecca Roanhorse’s enjoyably original Black Sun, set in a fantastical Mesoamerica (with a few other cultures mixed in as well). As the second book, it does suffer somewhat from that dreaded middle book curse, but Roanhorse offers enough original worldbuilding here to compensate for the book’s weaker aspects, leaving the reader eager to see the trilogy’s conclusion.
As with Black Sun,
Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4, 4.5 | Rebecca Roanhorse | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
The setting in Rebecca Roanhorse’s 2022 novella Tread of Angels is eerie and vivid, like a strange dream, both ethereal and concretely described. The conceit of this world is wonderful and I would like to read more stories set here. This particular one was disappointing, with fairly flat characters acting out a familiar plot.
Long ago, the battle of the rebel angels against heaven actually took place. In the setting of the story, Lucifer’s great general Abaddon was vanquished and fell to earth.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 3 | Rebecca Roanhorse | Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read recently that we wanted you to know about.
“Second Person, Present Tense” by Daryl Gregory (2005, free in print and audio at Clarkesworld, November 2017 issue; originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2005 issue)
I love what Daryl Gregory does with drugs. “Second Person, Present Tense” is about the parents of a girl who died after overdosing on a drug called “Zen” or “Zombie.” Unable to cope with their loss,
Our exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM” by Rebecca Roanhorse (2017, free at Apex Magazine, $2.99 Kindle magazine issue)
Accolades have been pouring down on this 2017 SF short story, which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and is also a Sturgeon Award nominee, a Locus Recommended Short Story, a Apex Magazine Reader’s Choice Winner. Additionally, Rebecca Roanhorse won the Hugo’s John W.
SHORTS: Our column exploring free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. This week’s post reviews several more of the current crop of Locus Award nominees in the short fiction categories.
“A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy” by Rebecca Roanhorse (2019, anthologized in The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe). 2020 Locus award finalist (short story).
In the future, people’s memories can be stored and preserved even after they’ve died, and other people can inject them like drugs.
Previous SFF Author: K. Arsenault Rivera
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…
this sounds like a fun one