Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 3.5

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Haunting Violet: Charming YA romantic mystery

Haunting Violet by Alyxandra Harvey

It’s Victorian England, and Spiritualism is all the rage. Violet Willoughby’s mother Celeste is a phony medium, using parlor tricks to scam her way up the social ladder. Now, the Willoughbys have been invited to the palatial estate of Rosefield for a grand house party. On this trip, Violet learns something shocking: she is a medium. A real one. And the ghost of a girl from the next estate over, who drowned mysteriously the previous year, is haunting Violet and demanding she solve her murder.

The Truth-Teller’s Tale: Shinn is a beautiful writer

The Truth-Teller’s Tale by Sharon Shinn

Adele is a Safe-Keeper, physiologically incapable of sharing a secret. Her twin sister Eleda is a Truth-Teller, incapable of telling a lie. From the young age of 12, these sisters assume positions of responsibility in their town, but what happens when they get dragged into royal intrigue and the indiscretions of the most powerful family in town?

The Truth-Teller’s Tale, the second book in the SAFE-KEEPERS series by Sharon Shinn,

Dark Sleeper: Delightful, debonair and decidedly Dickensian

Dark Sleeper by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Dark Sleeper is a delightful, debonair and decidedly Dickensian departure from dime-a-dozen fantasy. Jeffrey E. Barlough, who published the book in 2000, attempts and mostly succeeds in writing an entire fantasy novel in the style and form of Charles Dickens, with a dash of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thrown in.

Let me be clear. This is not a steampunk novel, set in the nineteenth century while incorporating twentieth-century technology, winking at the sensibilities and conventions of the time.

April 30th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Jeffrey E. Barlough | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Blackbirds: You’ll probably go to hell for reading it

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Blackbirds is a Justin book, by which I mean that you will probably go to hell for reading it. This book is splattered with gore and peppered with sexual and toilet humor, and will probably teach you several new profanities. As for me, not being Justin, how did I like it? Well, it pushed me past my usual gore limits (there are reasons I don’t watch the Saw movies), but for the most part I liked it anyway.

The heroine is Miriam Black,

April 25th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Chuck Wendig | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

Dead Harvest: Supernatural noir at its best

Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm

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.

Bones of the Earth: Revels in paleontology and paradoxes

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,

Phantastes: The first fantasy novel for adults

Phantastes George MacDonald

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.

Mirror Mirror: A genuinely creative take on the famous fairytale

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,

Bad Monkeys: A funny, dark and twisty thriller

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

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.

The Alchemist of Souls: Eager for more

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.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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