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Damocles by S.G. Redling is a charming but flawed twist on first contact stories, the twist being that, in this case, the humans are the aliens who are landing on a faraway planet after a long period of cryogenic sleep. They are attempting to trace the origins of a mysterious message from an ancient race that claims to have originally seeded the Earth. Upon landing, the small human team discovers a humanoid race called the Dideto and becomes the subject of intense study.
August 14th, 2013. Stefan Raets´s rating: 2 | S.G. Redling | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Hollis Kessler has just finished college, and now he’s coasting. He has neither purpose nor direction and can only tie everything he sees into a pop culture web of references. When he sees a woman, for example, he and his friends will immediately tell her what famous woman she resembles. The first woman they see looks like Denise Crosby, who played Lieutenant Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Hollis and his friends otherwise spend most of their time together gossiping about what jobs and internships their peers have gotten while waiting for something more interesting than their web of pop culture references.
July 19th, 2013. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 2 | Lev Grossman | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Citadel is the second in John Ringo’s TROY RISING series. The first book, Live Free or Die, had an interesting plot that was totally derailed by John Ringo’s intrusive and ugly political views which seem closer to neo-Nazism than anything else. So why did I read Citadel? Only because the audiobook publisher sent me a free copy and, out of a sense of completion, I wanted to review it for FanLit. I was prepared to hate it.
June 14th, 2013. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2 | John Ringo | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Reading Strange Magic made me think deeply about a number of issues I doubt Gord Rollo intended me to be thinking about. I wasn’t pondering whether good and evil are entirely human or whether there is a supernatural agency at work in some forms of evil (and good); I wasn’t thinking about addiction, its causes and cures; I wasn’t thinking about the redemptive power of love. Instead, I was thinking about whether a book can be considered good when it has a decent story but is poorly written,
June 10th, 2013. Terry Weyna´s rating: 2 | Gord Rollo | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Kalimpura is the third and supposedly concluding book in Jay Lake’s series about Green, the young girl who becomes enmeshed in both worldly and godly politics, much to her dismay. I had lots of issues with the first book, Green, fewer but still some issues with the follow-up, Endurance, and I have to say that Kalimpura, while better than Green, didn’t wrap up the series in any way that would have me recommend readers pick up the trilogy.
May 21st, 2013. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Jay Lake | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Tunnel Out of Death by Jamil Nasir
As a consumer of media, I’m usually OK with works that aren’t particularly focused on plot. Some of my favorite books and films are uber-quiet stories where “nothing happens.” Heck, I’m really looking forward to the new Terence Malick film, even though it appears to have the same narrative quality of a screensaver program. Character-driven works, works where the images sweep you away, works where the ideas make up for lack of story — I’ve enjoyed all of them. Unfortunately though, Jamil Nasir’s newest,
May 14th, 2013. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2 | Jamil Nasir | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Professor Kyle Riggs and his kids were asleep in their house when the alien spaceship arrived. It killed the kids, kidnapped Kyle, and put him through a series of grueling tests. Since he was still alive afterward, the ship made Kyle the captain. This has been happening all over Earth. Most of the captured humans have been killed because they couldn’t make it through the rigorous tests, but all the survivors are now piloting spaceships and in the perfect position to fight off an alien invasion that’s coming to enslave humanity.
May 2nd, 2013. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2 | B.V. Larson | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A Man and His God by Janet Morris
In A Man and His God, by Janet E. Morris, Tempus brings his Sacred Band of Stepsons to Sanctuary, a city in the midst of preparations for war. Tempus is a tough man to kill, one who has watched severed limbs return as his god, Vaschanka, heals him. Though their relationship is not always so smooth that he can afford to take Vashanka’s intervention for granted, Tempus is one soldier that Prince Kadakithis cannot afford to offend as they prepare to improve Sanctuary’s defenses.
April 30th, 2013. Ryan Skardal´s rating: 2 | Janet Morris | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow
Dante Valentine is a freelance Necromance — clients hire her to communicate with dead people so they can solve murders, settle estate disputes, etc. When the Devil wants to hire Dante to find a rogue demon named Vardimal Santino, and to recover the important object he’s stolen from Hell, he gives her no choice but to obey. Dante doesn’t want to work for the devil, but she does want to keep living. To help with that, the Devil assigns her a bodyguard — the demon Japhrimel.
April 22nd, 2013. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2 | Lilith Saintcrow | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Suburban Strange by Nathan Kotecki
Celia is a high school sophomore who’s grieving the death of her father and starting at a new school. She is swept up into a clique called the Rosary, a group of friends who pride themselves on their “darkness” and their sophistication. Celia feels awkward with them at first but gradually begins to gain confidence from these friendships. Meanwhile, something eerie is going on at Suburban High. Girls are suffering injuries or sudden illnesses on the day before their sixteenth birthdays. Will Celia find out what’s going on before her own birthday rolls around?
March 26th, 2013. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2 | Nathan Kotecki | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
This book made no sense to me at all. I was hoping for some explanations at the end but it…
Oh, Marion, you say "but dark" as if it were a bad thing! 😂
Hammer Studios is... reborn? I only ever read the "Kane" stories, which I found good but dark. It's a little…
Oh...and the men used the name "The Great Northern Expedition" to throw people off as to their actual destination, even…
Oh, it IS, Marion! It is!