Direct Descent by Frank Herbert Direct Descent (1980) is by a fair margin the weakest novel by Frank Herbert I’ve read. In the far future the whole of Earth’s interior has been taken up by a gigantic library. Ships travel the known universe to collect information about just about everything and bring it back to […]
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Steadfast by Mercedes Lackey Steadfast by Mercedes Lackey is another fairy-tale retelling from her ELEMENTAL MASTERS series. It recasts Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the Steadfast Tin Soldier. Katie Langford is a circus acrobat on the run. She flees to Brighton and ends up as a dancer and magician’s assistant for a small theatre. Lionel […]
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The House of the Four Winds by Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory Do you ever read a book and wonder how it got published? Or read an established author and think, “Don’t they understand basic storytelling?” The House of the Four Winds, by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, starts innocently enough. Princess Clarice of the […]
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Beauty Awakened by Gena Showalter I’d never read any of Gena Showalter’s books before trying Beauty Awakened, but I’d gotten the idea they were fun reads. Unfortunately, I did not have fun with Beauty Awakened — in fact, it made me angry — and I abandoned the book partway through. The setup is that Koldo, […]
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The Long War by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter The Long War, the second installment in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter’s five-book LONG EARTH series, is more tedious than the first one, probably because I have already seen the inside of their bag of tricks and I am no longer impressed. This sequel happens about 12 […]
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Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein You’d think I’d learn, but no, I just keep torturing myself with Heinlein’s adult novels. That’s because when I was a kid, Heinlein was one of my favorite authors, so I still think of him that way. I know it’s not that my tastes have changed because […]
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Chosen by P.C. and Kristin Cast Chosen is the third book in the HOUSE OF NIGHT young adult paranormal romance series by P.C. and Kristin Cast. Don’t start here if you haven’t yet read Marked and Betrayed. But, actually, I don’t recommend that you start anywhere unless your tastes run completely contrary to mine (which […]
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The Sandcats of Rhyl by Robert E. Vardeman The Sandcats of Rhyl, Robert E. Vardeman’s first novel, is possibly the worst novel I’ve ever read. It is bad in every sense — so bad that I wondered if it might be a parody of bad science fiction. Apparently it’s not a parody; it’s just simply […]
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Extinction by B.V. Larson Extinction is the second novel in B.V. Larson’s STAR FORCE series about professor Kyle Riggs who was picked up by an alien spaceship and now captains a fleet of ships that are protecting earth from other aliens. I called the first book, Swarm, “a silly, but exciting, male wish-fulfillment fantasy.” I […]
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Dead Man Rising by Lilith Saintcrow Dead Man Rising is the second book in Lilith Saintcrow’s DANTE VALENTINE series. Dante, a freelance necromance, has lived through her first assignment for the devil. (She didn’t want to work for him, but the devil can be very persuasive.) Now Dante’s brooding because her demon lover is dead […]
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Beyond the Highland Mist by Karen Marie Moning Modern Seattle: Ravishingly gorgeous Adrienne de Simone (whose every body part is “perfect,” though she doesn’t know that) hates beautiful men because she just had a bad experience with the gorgeous man who was her fiancé. Never! Never again! Medieval Scotland: Sidheach James Lyon Douglas, otherwise known […]
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Deathworld 2: The Ethical Engineer by Harry Harrison Deathworld 2: The Ethical Engineer is the second of Harry Harrison’s novels set on Pyrrus, the planet that tries to kill most humans who set foot upon it. In the first DEATHWORLD novel, space rogue Jason dinAlt discovered the secret of Pyrrus and negotiated a very tense […]
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The Seedbearers by Peter Valentine Timlett The 1970’s were the heyday of the “sword and sorcery” boom that started a decade earlier with the publication of pulp fantasy adventure writer Robert E. Howard’s CONAN stories by Lancer Books. The popularity of Howard’s newly rediscovered (at least to young fantasy readers such as myself at the […]
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Keeping it Real by Justina Robson Lila Black is a high-price cyborg special agent. She used to be a regular human, but after a disastrous encounter with someone from a parallel realm, she nearly died. Then she was rebuilt, at huge expense, and is now being sent by her government intelligence agency to be the […]
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The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel The Land of Painted Caves is the sixth and final volume in Jean M. Auel‘s EARTH’S CHILDREN series. It has taken her more than three decades to complete the series. The previous volume, The Shelters of Stone, appeared in 2002. Auel has sold millions of books […]
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The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn Maria is madly in love with Dante. It doesn’t matter that he is a shapeshifter, spending longer and longer periods away from her in animal form. Maria’s motto is “you can’t choose who you love,” and she loves Dante, regardless of the increasingly brief moments of time they […]
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Guenevere: Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles The literary world is crammed full of books surrounding Arthurian lore — so many, in fact, that it could very well be a genre of its own. The problem, however, is that because the main events, characters and storylines are already set out in the mythology, […]
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Evermore by Alyson Noël Evermore is the first in the Immortals series by Alyson Noël. Immortals are a bit like vampires… but not. Ever Bloom is a teenage girl who becomes entangled in the world of the Immortals. Ever’s backstory feels pieced together from other works. Like Buffy Summers, she was one of the popular […]
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The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock Langdon St. Ives returns in The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs, James P. Blaylock’s latest Langdon St. Ives Adventure. St. Ives is described as “the greatest, if largely unheralded, explorer and scientist in the Western World … piecing together a magnetic engine for a voyage […]
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Hamlet’s Father by Orson Scott Card Those of us who majored in English in college have all read Shakespeare’s Hamlet at least once, and we’ve all seen at least one performance. Some of us go to as many performances as we possibly can, enjoying every new spin on the old tale. I’ve seen at least […]
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Angelology by Danielle Trussoni Danielle Trussoni is a highly educated and well established non-fiction writer with an award-nominated memoir under her belt already. She has a degree in history and an MFA in creative writing. She puts both of those degrees to use in Angelology. When she is drawing on history, the book comes to […]
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Wraith by Phaedra Weldon This review is brought to you by the letters “T,” “S,” “T,” and “L.” Wraith is a textbook example of an Idiot Plot. The story is set in motion when the heroine does something stupid, and this sets the tone for the entire novel. Almost every plot development in Wraith is […]
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Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich Janet Evanovich is the well-known author of the Stephanie Plum mystery series, and here she begins another series that edges firmly into the paranormal arena. Elizabeth Tucker lives in Marblehead, just north of Boston, and makes cupcakes for a living while living in the house bequeathed to her by Great […]
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The Questing Road by Lyn McConchie New Zealand author Lyn McConchie has written several novels with Andre Norton in that author’s WITCH WORLD and BEAST MASTER universes, so I was surprised that The Questing Road, though officially McConchie’s first solo fantasy novel, actually reads much like a debut novel. While there are a few moments […]
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The Turning: What Curiosity Kills by Helen Ellis The Turning: What Curiosity Kills is the tale of Mary Richards, a girl adopted from foster care into a plush life in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. When strange events begin taking place, Mary struggles to comprehend the idea that she is one of those who […]
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