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A Red-Rose Chain by Seanan McGuire
This is one of my favorite of Chris McGrath’s covers for the OCTOBER DAYE series, and it’s one of my favorite titles too, so it pains me to say that this isn’t one of my favorite books in the series. A Red-Rose Chain (2015) suffers from some pacing issues and didn’t quite knock my socks off like The Winter Long did.
The kingdom of Silences, analogous to mortal Portland, declares war on the Mists.
July 10th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Seanan McGuire | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son. Everyone on the same page? Okay… Hill has delivered a deeply satisfying and literate novel in NOS4A2. He is absolutely his own man, and he’s very good. But he’s also picked up some tricks from his father. He writes children well, especially those that have some unique ability. In this case, Victoria McQueen has a special gift: she can find lost things. And this skill tends to transport her to wherever those lost things happen to be.
July 1st, 2019. Jason Golomb and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Joe Hill | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 13 comments |
Take a Thief by Mercedes Lackey
One of Mercedes Lackey’s most popular characters is Herald Skif, the young former thief who we met in the first two VALDEMAR trilogies (HERALDS OF VALDEMAR and MAGE WINDS). In Take a Thief (2001), a stand-alone prequel novel, Lackey gives us his backstory.
It starts as so many of her stories do. Skif is a young orphaned boy who is basically a slave to his cruel uncle.
June 27th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Mercedes Lackey | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Clash by Night by C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner
Clash by Night (1943) , by the wife-husband team of C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, is an odd bit of a bird, feeling less like a smoothie that blends together different story types and writerly styles and more like a salad where you can easily spot the tomatoes, greens, peppers, etc. Uneven overall, but it does have its good points.
The opening gives us the setting quite directly, with an unknown narrator of the future telling us,
June 25th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner | Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Silver God of the Orang Hutan by David Douglas
As many of you here at FanLit may have already discerned, this reader is a huge fan of English author H. Rider Haggard, and at this point I have read 45 of the man’s 58 novels. Haggard, for good reason, has been called “The Father of the Lost Race Novel,” and his influence on that genre has been enormous, casting a very long shadow across the decades since he came out with the triple whammy of King Solomon’s Mines,
June 20th, 2019. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | David Douglas | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Dreadful Sanctuary by Eric Frank Russell
As I have mentioned elsewhere, there are several writers who never seem to let me down, and in that elite group, English author Eric Frank Russell must surely be included. The Best of Eric Frank Russell (1978) was my initial exposure to this Golden Age great (reputedly, legendary editor John W. Campbell’s favorite contributor), and it was, for me, among the best of the 21 Best of… titles in the justly celebrated Ballantine series.
June 14th, 2019. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | Eric Frank Russell | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken
Derek Künsken’s The Quantum Magician (2018) is kind of like one of those summer movies where if where you don’t think too much about what is happening, and aren’t looking for deep, moving character studies, you’re more than perfectly happy to glide along the surface and enjoy the ride as things go boom. And though, like a number of those same movies, The Quantum Magician goes on a bit too long, for the most part I happily skated through.
June 11th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Derek Kunsken | SFF Reviews | no comments |
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
One Word Kill (2019) is a tale of 1980s British teenagers, time travel (bonus: with branching universes), Dungeons & Dragons, and cancer. As the first book in Mark Lawrence’s IMPOSSIBLE TIMES trilogy, it sets things up nicely, and we’re all three looking forward to the next two novellas.
We know that the first-person narrator of the story has cancer ― leukaemia, to be precise ― from the very first paragraph of the story.
June 10th, 2019. Terry Weyna, Kat Hooper and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Mark Lawrence | Audio | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher
The plot of T. Kingfisher’s Clockwork Boys (2017) is of the “misfit company of strangers on a dangerous mission” type. Their country has been invaded by the so-called Clockwork Boys, nearly unstoppable, 10-foot-tall centaur-like creatures who are laying waste to the countryside. (I like the allusion to the out-of-control gang of boys in A Clockwork Orange.) The Dowager Queen has previously sent soldiers and spies to distant Anuket City, from which the Clockwork Boys regularly emerge,
June 5th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | T. Kingfisher | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Deep Roots (2018), a finalist for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, is the sequel to Ruthanna Emrys’ Winter Tide. This Lovecraft-inspired story is about a race of Americans living in the 1940s who worship, and are related to, the eldritch gods. They are long-lived and, when they eventually mature, they may grow gills and return to the sea.
Most of the People of the Water were exterminated or dispersed when the American government,
June 5th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Ruthanna Emrys | Audio | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.