Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 2

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Betrayed: Slightly better than Marked

Betrayed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Betrayed is the second book in the HOUSE OF NIGHT series by mother/daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast. In the first book, Marked, Zoey Redbird discovered that she’s a fledgling vampYre, went off to vampyre boarding school, defeated Aphrodite (the beautiful stuck-up popular girl) and her minions, became the most popular (but not stuck-up) girl and set up her own minions friends in a position of power where they will rule the school justly and benevolently.

Marked: Typical boarding school book

Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

Zoey Redbird used to be a normal teenager dealing with normal teenage stuff — boyfriends, school, parties — until the day she’s marked with a tattoo right in the middle of her forehead. This signifies her as a vampyre and means that she has to go live in the House of Night, or she’ll die. Nobody knows what causes vampirism — it has something to do with junk DNA and it’s a physiological reaction to puberty hormones in some kids.

Zoey’s parents, conservative religious zealots who are more worried about what the neighbors will say than they are about how Zoey feels,

Starless Night: Prepackaged and pointless

Starless Night by R.A. Salvatore

While reading THE LEGEND OF DRIZZT series, I’ve developed the grim suspicion that every time R.A. Salvatore looks at his characters and thinks “time for some development, lads and lasses,” he immediately starts trying to shoehorn in an adventure to go along with it. Apparently one simply cannot have development through conversation or work or leisure or for that matter anything else that does not involve leaping off the hunched shoulders of your barbarian friend to stab an ogre in the face. Granted,

November 7th, 2013. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 2 | R.A. Salvatore | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Undead and Unappreciated: Funny but still shallow

Undead and Unappreciated by MaryJanice Davidson

“Blurgh! Death loomed (again), and I was grossed out. It was the worst week ever. Again.” ~Queen Betsy

In Undead and Unappreciated, the third book in MaryJanice Davidson’s QUEEN BETSY series, a lot of stuff happens to Betsy — she reads the Book of the Dead and becomes evil for a little while, she hurts her friends, she learns that her stepmother (who she hates) is pregnant, she negotiates with her unionized employees, she discovers that she has a half-sister who is the daughter of the devil,

The White Isle: The story of Prospero gone bad

The White Isle by Darrell Schweitzer

Readers familiar with Darrell Schweitzer probably think of him mostly as someone who writes short stories, edits magazines and anthologies, and writes books and essays about speculative fiction. But he’s written a few novels, too. The White Isle, published in 1989, is one of these, though it was originally serialized in the magazine Fantastic in 1980. It tells the story of Prince Evnos of Iankoros who we meet as a boy and follow into madness.

The story is divided into two parts.

Blood Feud: Thin characters, dull romance

Blood Feud by Alyxandra Harvey

Blood Feud is the second of Alyxandra Harvey’s DRAKE CHRONICLES. The first book, Hearts at Stake, told how Solange Drake survived the Bloodchange on her sixteenth birthday and became the first female vampire to do so in centuries. Her mother Helena is about to take the throne as the vampire queen while Leander Montmarte, an old and powerful vampire, pursues princess Solange.

Meanwhile, a woman named Isabeau St. Croix, who we met briefly in the first novel,

Journey to the Underground World: Everyone should read a lost world novel

Journey to the Underground World by Lin Carter

I believe I’ve come to the point in my life where I need never pick up another lost world pulp fantasy novel. Seriously, they’re all running together in my mind.

In Journey to the Underground World, Lin Carter is (as usual) channeling Edgar Rice Burroughs. In Carter’s version of an underground world, an adventurer named Eric Carstairs meets up with a paleontologist named Dr. Potter who thinks he knows how to find a legendary land under the earth.

Death Warmed Over: Like microwaved leftovers

Death Warmed Over by Kevin J. Anderson

Dan Chambeaux, a private investigator, and his girlfriend Sheyenne, a med student, recently died. But thanks to a weird event now called “The Big Uneasy” which happened a decade ago, dead no longer means dead. A certain percentage of folks (usually homicides and suicides) return from the grave as some sort of “Unnatural.” That’s what happened to Dan and Sheyenne. Now he’s a zombie and she’s a ghost. That’s not stopping them from living life, but it is stopping them from touching each other.

Dan has returned to his job and he’s working on several cases involving Unnaturals (divorce,

Equations of Life: A reheated mish-mash

Equations of Life by Simon Morden

I picked up Equations of Life, the first novel in Simon Morden’s SAMUIL PETROVITCH series, after receiving a copy of his latest novel The Curve of the Earth for review. The new novel is the fourth one set in the series, but it came billed as a good point to get started if you missed the first three books, which form a trilogy of sorts. Still, being somewhat obsessive about these things, I decided to go back and read the first book rather than jump in at The Curve of the Earth.

September 5th, 2013. Stefan Raets´s rating: 2 | Simon Morden | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Between Two Thorns: Boring, but there’s hope

Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman

Between Two Thorns is the first book in Emma Newman’s SPLIT WORLDS series set in Bath, England where some humans live in a secret world called Aquae Sulis (aka “the Nether”) that’s parallel to Mundanis, the “Mundane” world we know. The people who live in the Nether keep themselves hidden from us and shun modern dress, manners and technology. Their society is just like early 19th century English society except that they are influenced by their fae House Lords and are also under the authority of the Arbiters who police their use of magic.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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