Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 3.5

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Semiosis: Oh, give me a home where the fippokats roam…

Semiosis by Sue Burke

Semiosis, Sue Burke’s 2018 debut novel, is a fascinating examination of culture, intelligence, and co-operation in the face of extreme hardship. A small group of high-minded and free-thinking colonists have left Earth for a planet they’ve named Pax, in honor of their Utopic dream of what the planet represents, though they quickly discover that peace is not easily achieved — especially when they discover that you can never go home again, but neither can you completely leave it behind.

Pax has breathable air and potable water,

April 30th, 2020. Jana Nyman and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5, 4.5 | Sue Burke | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

The Way Past Winter: A simple but evocative fairy tale

The Way Past Winter by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The first thing about this book that caught my eye was just how beautiful it was: the green binding, the interior pattern, the embossed cover-art — I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it really is a lovely object to behold.

The story itself rides the current popular wave of Scandinavian-based fairy tales, and reads a little like Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”. Winter has lasted for five years in Eldbjørn Forest, and siblings Oskar,

The Illustrated World of MORTAL ENGINES: A great companion piece

The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

The film adaptation of Mortal Engines may have been a disappointment, but at least its release led to more material from Philip Reeve — not only this book, but a series of short stories starring Anna Fang, and new reprints of the original MORTAL ENGINES quartet. So it all works out well!

The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines (2018) is a standard tie-in volume that comes with many a book franchise,

April 28th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Philip Reeve | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Stars Beyond: A better sequel

Stars Beyond by S.K. Dunstall

Stars Beyond (2020) is the sequel to sisterly writing duo S.K. Dunstall’s novel Stars Uncharted which Tadiana and I reviewed last year. We agreed that it was a Firefly-type story that was accessible and pleasant, but lacked originality. The good news, though, is that book two, Stars Beyond, is better.

Stars Beyond picks up where Stars Uncharted left off.

Riverland: A sad but sweet tale of resilience

Riverland by Fran Wilde

Sisters Eleanor and Mike have come to rely on each other for comfort and love. The space beneath Eleanor’s bed is a favorite hiding place where they can retreat from real life when their parents begin to fight almost every night.

One night, after their abusive father breaks the family heirloom they call the “witch ball,” the girls find a river running under Eleanor’s bed. After falling in, they discover that the river leads to a land of dreams and nightmares and that, according to strange creatures who live there,

The Hanged Man: Rune confronts the Arcanum and his own doubts

The Hanged Man by K.D. Edwards

The Hanged Man, published in 2019, is the second book in K.D. Edwards’s fantasy series THE TAROT SEQUENCE. In the first book, The Last Sun, we men Rune Sun, last of the Sun Court, in New Atlantis. New Atlantis is the former island of Nantucket and exists because of a truce between humans and the Atlanteans, at the end of a devastating war. The New Atlanteans value power only,

April 14th, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | K.D. Edwards | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Skeleton Key: A darker take on the teen spy’s adventures

Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz

The ALEX RIDER books have always veered on the side of realism (as opposed to other teen-targeted spy stories such as Spy Kids and Kim Possible) but even I was surprised by just how dark the third book in Anthony Horowitz‘s series actually got.

Having been recruited and trained by MI6 in order to infiltrate locations and undergo missions in which teenagers go unnoticed, fourteen year old Alex is happy to be free of espionage and just hanging out with the lovely Sabina Pleasure (a Bond girl if ever there was one).

How Dark the World Becomes: Who doesn’t love a good-hearted gangster?

How Dark the World Becomes by Frank Chadwick

Sasha Naradnyo is a mid-level gangster in “Crack City,” a city literally inside a large canyon on the surface of a planet called Peezgtaan that’s mostly inhabited by the Varoki, a sentient lizard-like species. The smaller population of humans, second-class citizens on Peezgtaan, have been ghettoized to Crack City, the only place on the planet where they can breathe the air. They came to Peezgtaan to work for a pharmaceutical company that later went bust, and now they’re stuck on the hostile planet.

Sasha’s got a good heart,

Wonder Woman: Warbringer: A fresh look at an old favourite

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

The DC ICONS COLLECTION is a series of four YA novels that take a famous DC superhero and explores their background before they became the stuff of legends. This means having a look at their adolescence, whether it’s Clark tending the farm in Smallvillle, Bruce doing voluntary work in Arkham Asylum, or Selena Kyle struggling to survive the streets of Gotham City.

In the case of Princess Diana, she’s a young Amazonian warrior on the island of Themyscira, just beginning to understand her incredible power,

Spindle’s End: A light, sweet, unhurried fantasy

Reposting to include Tadiana’s review.

Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley

Spindle’s End (2000) is Robin McKinley’s delightful and very loose retelling of the Sleeping Beauty (Little Briar Rose) fairy tale.

On the princess’s naming day, a bad fairy declares a curse, stating that, on her 21st birthday, the princess will prick her finger on a spindle and die. In an attempt to thwart the curse, a good fairy named Katriona takes the princess to live with her aunt in a swampy region called Foggy Bottom.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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