Previous SFF Author: Matt Ruff
(1960- )
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning author who writes under several pennames in several genres. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. She used to edit The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Kristine is married to writer Dean Wesley Smith. Learn more at Kristine Kathryn Rusch‘s website.
Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Diving into the Wreck is a short but excellent science fiction novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has also written extensively in fantasy, mystery and romance, and is the former editor of the prestigious Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The main character of Diving into the Wreck (2009), who goes by the name “Boss,” is a specialist in the exploration of derelict space ships. Accompanied by a team of specialists,
Stefan Raets and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
City of Ruins by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
One of 2009’s most pleasant surprises was Diving into the Wreck, a short but excellent SF novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch about Boss, a specialist in the exploration of derelict spaceships. In this first novel, Boss discovered the wreck of a Dignity ship. This remnant of a legendary Fleet contained remnants of the mysterious and dangerous “stealth technology” that could possibly tip the balance of power between the Enterran Empire and a small alliance of independent planets.
In City of Ruins (2011),
Stefan Raets and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Becalmed by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Becalmed (2012), a novella originally published in 2011 in Asimov’s Magazine, acts as a prequel to the second DIVING UNIVERSE novel, City of Ruins. You can read it at any point in the series.
Becalmed tells the story of how the spaceship Ivoire, captained by Jonathon “Coop” Cooper, was damaged as it entered foldspace after a failed diplomatic mission to the Quurzod people on the planet Ukhanda.
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Application of Hope by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Application of Hope (2014) is another novella set in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING UNIVERSE series. You can read it at any point in the series, but it’d be best as a companion to City of Ruins because it takes place at the same time and gives a different perspective on the important and exciting events of that novel.
Here we meet Tory Sabin and Jonathon “Coop” Cooper,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Boneyards by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Boneyards (2012) is the third full-length novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series. You’ll want to read Diving into the Wreck and City of Ruins first. A couple of companion novellas that you may also want to read first (but it’s not necessary) are Becalmed and The Application of Hope.
Boneyards begins five years after the events of City of Ruins (as well as the two companion novellas mentioned above).
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Skirmishes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Skirmishes (2013) is the fourth novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING universe. It begins a month after the events in Boneyards which, of course, you’ll want to read first. Skirmishes has a structure similar to Boneyards – there are two main plotlines (one starring Boss and the other starring Coop) and one of them jumps around in time.
In Boss’s plotline, she’s trying to get into the Boneyard which is,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Runabout by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Finally we get to explore more of the Boneyard in The Runabout (2017), the fifth full-length novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series. It was actually published after The Falls, but it works better if you read it between Skirmishes and The Falls. (And this is what the author suggests, too.)
After the discovery of the Boneyard,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Falls by Kristine Kathryn Rusch science fiction book reviews
The Falls (2016) is the eighth novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series but, since it takes place in the past and features a completely different cast of characters, you can read it as a stand-alone at any point in the series. The author recommends reading it after The Runabout (which was published later) because it gives us the backstory of a character,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Searching for the Fleet by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Searching for the Fleet (2018) is the seventh full-length novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series. It focuses on Coop, commander of the Ivoire, and Yash, one of his officers (chief engineer) who has expertise in anaconda drives. We don’t see Boss in this installment.
As has been common for the last few novels, Searching for the Fleet jumps around in time. The first long section shows us an event we’ve known about (and have been wondering about) for a while now – the suicide of Dix,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Renegat by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The Renegat (2019) is a long, slow-moving, complicated novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series. As usual, the story jumps around in time, following multiple plots and perspectives. The characters are new to us, so readers who are unfamiliar with the DIVING universe could start here if they want to, though it’d probably be best to read the series in either publication order, or the order we’ve presented on our author page.
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The February 2015 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine opens with “The Last Surviving Gondola Widow” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The first person narrator of the story is a woman living in Chicago who works as a Pinkerton (that is, a detective employed by the Pinkerton Agency, established in 1850 as one of the first such agencies) who was on Michigan Avenue the day the Gondolas came in from the South to rain hell down on the city. Now it appears that the widow of one of the Gondolas — for that’s how the engineers who piloted them were named,
“The Loud Table” by Jonathan Carroll (Nov. 2016, free at Tor.com, 99c Kindle version)
A group of retired old men meets every day at a coffee shop to hang out most of the day and shoot the breeze. They live for each other’s company, so they’re bewildered and alarmed when the coffee shop manager announces that the café is closing for two months for renovations.
Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe edited by Ellen Datlow
Whether you’re aligned with the literary academia or an unabashed genre reader, the name Edgar Allan Poe commands much respect. I think it’s only fitting that a modern anthology inspired by the author’s body of work should be released on his 200th anniversary. Kudos to Solaris Books for taking on the task of publishing such a book, which all comes together with the firm editorial direction of Ellen Datlow. Datlow, for me, has been an editor who’s less impressed with literary fireworks or verbal acrobatics but focuses more on the meat and bones of the story,
Charles Tan (GUEST)´s rating: 4 | Ellen Datlow, John Langan, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lucius Shepard, Suzy McKee Charnas | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The New Space Opera 2: All-New Tales of Science Fiction Adventure edited by Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan
The New Space Opera 2: All-New Tales of Science Fiction Adventure is, as its name implies, the second of Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan’s themed anthologies attempting to put a modern spin on space opera, a subgenre of science fiction which causes many of us to think of big metal spaceships crewed by handsome blaster-wielding men who protect us from evil aliens that want to destroy the Earth,
Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Bill Willingham, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Moon, Gardner Dozois, Garth Nix, Jay Lake, John Kessel, John Meaney, John Scalzi, Jonathan Strahan, Justina Robson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick, Robert Charles Wilson, Sean Williams, Tad Williams | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Shadowed Souls edited by Jim Butcher & Kerrie L. Hughes
Shadowed Souls is an invitational anthology edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes. Butcher is the author of three fantasy series: THE DRESDEN FILES, THE CODEX ALERA, and THE CINDER SPIRES. Hughes is an established short fiction writer who has edited several anthologies including Chicks Kick Butt, Westward Weird, and Maiden Matron Crone.
The theme of Shadowed Souls is,
Previous SFF Author: Matt Ruff
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…