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Hidden Cities: Final volume lacks closure

Hidden Cities by Daniel Fox

PLOT SUMMARY: Whatever they thought, this was always where they were going: to the belly of the dragon, or the belly of the sea.

More by chance than good judgment, the young emperor has won his first battle. The rebels have retreated from the coastal city of Santung — but they’ll be back. Distracted by his pregnant concubine, the emperor sends a distrusted aide, Ping Wen, to govern Santung in his place. There, the treacherous general will discover the healer Tien, who is obsessed with a library of sacred mage texts and the secrets concealed within — secrets upon which,

March 16th, 2011. Robert Thompson´s rating: 3.5 | Ben Macallan, Chaz Brenchley, Daniel Fox | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Stainless Steel Rat for President: Fascist dictators, watch out!

The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison

Fascist dictators, watch out — Slippery Jim diGriz is on the planet, and he’ll stop at nothing to secure freedom, peace, and representation for the people. Even if he has to lie, cheat, steal, and stuff ballot boxes to do it.

Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series is lots of fun and you can’t help but love con-man Slippery Jim, his sadistic wife Angelina, and their twin sons James and Bolivar who are, for better or worse,

The Princes of the Golden Cage: A world of sand, roses and tulips

The Princes of the Golden Cage by Nathalie Mallet

The Princes of the Golden Cage is a fine debut fantasy by Nathalie Mallet. Mallet sets her fantasy in a vaguely Arabian setting, with a Sultan and his many princes by many wives. The princes are kept caged in sumptuous captivity, a reaction to previous generations having raised armies and warred upon one another to eliminate competition for the throne. Now the princes war merely upon one another, seeking out reasons for offense and therefore excuses for duels to the death.

March 12th, 2011. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Nathalie Mallet | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Cloud Roads: Rich and inventive world-building

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells

FORMAT/INFO: The Cloud Roads is 288 pages long divided over 20 numbered chapters. It also includes two Appendixes, one about the Raksura and one about the Fell. Narration is in the third-person, exclusively via the protagonist Moon. The Cloud Roads is self-contained, but a sequel titled The Serpent Sea will be published in 2012. March 2011 marks the Trade Paperback publication of The Cloud Roads via Night Shade.

Elfsorrow: Doesn’t neglect tactics and strategy

Elfsorrow by James Barclay

Elfsorrow is the first book in The Legends of the Raven, James Barclay’s second series about a group of mercenaries called the Raven. If you have not read the previous series, The Chronicles of the Raven, you are going to end up guessing at much of what is going on. If I had it to do over again, I would have read the previous series first; based on all the information that I had to figure out from context,

February 19th, 2011. John Hulet´s rating: 3.5 | James Barclay | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Home Fires: Even a minor Gene Wolfe is still a major event

Home Fires by Gene Wolfe

Before Chelle left Earth to fight in the war against the alien Os, she contracted (entered into a civil marriage) with Skip. If she returned, more than twenty years would have passed for Skip but only a few years for her: Skip would be a successful, rich lawyer, and she’d be his beautiful, young contracta. Fast forward to the start of Home Fires, the latest novel by all-round genius Gene Wolfe: Skip is indeed a rich, successful partner in his law firm,

End of the Century: Roberson deftly juggles three stories

End of the Century by Chris Roberson

In End of the Century, Chris Roberson takes us on an Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail. While that would be plenty for most writers, Roberson isn’t content to stop with only one story; he also tells the story of a search for a serial killer in London around the time of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, and of Alice Fell, a sixteen-year-old following a vision that may simply be a symptom of epilepsy in 2000. The three stories have a number of factors that seem to be similar,

Underground: Incredible sense of place

Underground by Kat Richardson

Underground is the third in Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series, which features Harper Blaine as a Seattle private investigator who can see the “Grey” — the borderland between reality and magic, life and death, past and present. Harper gained this ability when she died for two minutes in an attack by the subject of an investigation.

Underground starts so slowly that I feared Kat Richardson had lost her way. It’s difficult to imagine that a hard-working private investigator with plenty of work would dive into a case with no client,

January 27th, 2011. Terry Weyna and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Kat Richardson | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

The Physiognomy: Sometimes brilliant, always bizarre

The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford

Physiognomist Cley has been sent by Master Drachton Below, the evil genius who constructed the Well-Built City, to the faraway mining district of Anamasobia to investigate the theft of a fruit that’s rumored to have grown in the Earthly Paradise and to have supernatural powers. Upon arriving, the skeptical and arrogant physiognomist finds a whole town of morons whose physical features clearly indicate that they are all backward and generally pathetic. Except for Arla, whose beautiful features suggest that she is intelligent and competent, and who seems to understand the science of physiognomy (even though that’s impossible because she’s a woman).

Silence in Solitude: Splendid space opera escapism

Silence in Solitude by Melissa Scott

Silence in Solitude smartly continues Melissa Scott’s Roads of Heaven (Silence Leigh) trilogy, keeping the storyline fresh and invigorating by taking readers down unexpected new paths. This sophomore entry opens with Silence in training on the planet Solitudo Hermae to become the first female magus in history. Her sponsor, the magus Isambard, has agreed to train her in exchange for her taking him along once she discovers how to reach long-lost Earth.

Just to recap, Scott has developed an interesting,

January 22nd, 2011. Thomas M. Wagner (guest)´s rating: 3.5 | Melissa Scott | SFF Reviews | no comments |

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