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Chris F. Holm’s first novel, Dead Harvest, is supernatural noir at its best. Sam Thornton, who is as surely named for Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade as he is for the Hebrew judge of the Bible, is the best sort of hero to serve as the basis for a series (THE COLLECTOR): despite being damned, he still has a strong sense of right and wrong, and refuses to do wrong whenever he has the option.
April 24th, 2012. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Chris F. Holm | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick
Paleontologist Richard Leyster works for the Smithsonian. It’s his dream job, so naturally he scoffs when a strange man named Harry Griffin offers him a new job whose description and benefits are vague. But when Griffin leaves an Igloo cooler containing the head of a real dinosaur on Leyster’s desk, Leyster is definitely intrigued. A couple of years later, when Griffin finally contacts him again, Leyster is ready to sign on to Griffin’s crazy project. He and a team of scientists are sent back to the Mesozoic era to study,
April 21st, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Michael Swanwick | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
George MacDonald’s Phantastes is generally regarded as pivotal in the development of fantasy literature: it is the first ever fantasy novel written exclusively for adults. Now of course we have fantastic literature intended for an adult audience going back centuries before that, to epic poems like Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal in the 14th Century, or — leaving English literature behind — to the Iliad and suchforth. MacDonald, however, does bear the distinction of being the first to introduce the world to the adult fantasy in its most common present form.
April 20th, 2012. Tim Scheidler and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | George MacDonald | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire
The Eye Is Always Caught by the Light, but Shadows Have More to Say…
Gregory Maguire is best known for Wicked, his take on the life of the Wicked Witch of the West, but due to the fact that 2012 seems to be the year of Snow White (with two big-budget films based on the classic fairytale heading into cinemas) I thought that I’d start with his retelling of the girl “with skin as white as snow.”
With a tale so familiar,
April 17th, 2012. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Gregory Maguire | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Bad Monkeys, by Matt Ruff, is a funny, dark and twisty thriller. I was hooked on Page Five, when a woman who is being held in the nut-job wing of a Nevada jail says to the doctor evaluating her, “I think it all started when I figured out my high school janitor was the Angel of Death…”
Jane Charlotte, the woman in question, says she works for a secret organization called, well, the organization. This organization has a unit called “The Division for the Final Disposal of Irredeemable Persons” — nicknamed Bad Monkeys.
April 12th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Matt Ruff | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle
Anne Lyle’s first novel, The Alchemist of Souls, is a big tankard of Elizabethan ale, foaming with intrigue, hidden identities, secret societies, treachery, plots, swordplay and magic. I can’t think of a much better way to spend a few hours than to curl up with this book.
Maliverny Catlyn is half English and half French, but a loyal English citizen. He has been a soldier, but now is reduced to taking jobs guarding warehouses and teaching merchants’ sons swordplay.
April 5th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Anne Lyle | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk
At the end of Magic on the Line, Allie Beckstrom killed the head of Portland’s Authority — who was ignoring a magical plague in the city for his own ends — and now she is a fugitive, along with her lover Zayvion and a handful of her closest friends who have now broken with the Authority as well. In Magic Without Mercy, Allie and her small band investigate the poisoning of Portland’s four magical wells and try to find a way to cleanse magic before the problem can go worldwide.
April 5th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Devon Monk | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In 1962, vampire-detective Sebastien, having adopted the name ‘Jack Prior,’ returns from Europe to New Amsterdam, arriving not by airship but airplane. As he attempts to re-establish himself in the new world, he makes the acquaintance of a clique of sorcerers who invite him to join them in an ambitious endeavor. But old — indeed, ancient — habits die hard, and Sebastien must chart the course of his eternal voyage while buffeted by public protests against vampires and the sudden return of someone powerful from his past.
March 23rd, 2012. Rob Rhodes´s rating: 3.5 | Elizabeth Bear | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Homunculus by James P. Blaylock
“Does the night seem uncommonly full of dead men and severed heads to you?”
Langdon St. Ives is a man of science and a member of the Royal Society. With the help of his dependable and discreet manservant, St. Ives prefers to spend his time secretly building a spaceship in his countryside silo. But currently he’s in London to help his friend Jack Owlesby recover a wooden box containing the huge emerald Jack’s father left him for an inheritance.
Things get confusing when it’s discovered that there are several of these boxes that all look the same and all contain something somebody wants.
March 22nd, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | James P. Blaylock | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell
Secondhand Spirits (2009) is the first in the WITCHCRAFT MYSTERIES series by Juliet Blackwell. The series centers on Lily Ivory, a natural witch who has traveled the world looking for a place to belong, and finds it in the eccentric Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. She owns a vintage clothing shop, and her magical abilities help her in her business by allowing her to sense something of the history of a garment and thereby match it with the right customer.
March 14th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Juliet Blackwell | Audio | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Kind of you to say. I certainly like to think so!
BTW, Steve Sterner will be performing at seven films during this upcoming fest: https://filmforum.org/series/clara-bow
As far as I know, Bill, Steve Sterner is the only person who does the live accompaniment to silent movies…
And I'm positive that Kaidan will fondly remember watching these movies with his old man for the rest of his…
You bet, Marion!