Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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Searching for the Fleet: A book full of booby traps

Searching for the Fleet by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Searching for the Fleet (2018) is the seventh full-length novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series. It focuses on Coop, commander of the Ivoire, and Yash, one of his officers (chief engineer) who has expertise in anaconda drives. We don’t see Boss in this installment.

As has been common for the last few novels, Searching for the Fleet jumps around in time. The first long section shows us an event we’ve known about (and have been wondering about) for a while now – the suicide of Dix,

The Falls: A DIVING police procedural

The Falls by Kristine Kathryn Rusch science fiction book reviews

The Falls (2016) is the eighth novel in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s DIVING series but, since it takes place in the past and features a completely different cast of characters, you can read it as a stand-alone at any point in the series. The author recommends reading it after The Runabout (which was published later) because it gives us the backstory of a character,

A Swift and Savage Tide: A pleasant romantic fantasy with a nautical setting

A Swift and Savage Tide by Chloe Neill fantasy book reviews

A Swift and Savage Tide (2021) is the second novel in Chloe Neill’s CAPTAIN KIT BRIGHTLING series. You’ll want to read the first novel, The Bright and Breaking Sea, first. These are pleasant romantic fantasies that will especially appeal to readers who enjoy a nautical setting.

Captain Kit Brightling has, once again, been called on by her queen to save their country from usurper and former emperor Gerard Rousseau.

The Saint of Bright Doors: The good parts are so good

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

The Saint of Bright Doors, a debut novel by Vajra Chandrasekera, opens with an absolutely killer beginning (literally, as the very young main character is being trained as an assassin) that had me sure I was going to love this novel. But while I did love parts of it, and was in the end happy I’d read it, I can’t say it lived up fully to the promise of that beginning.

But oh,

June 19th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Vajra Chandrasekera | SFF Reviews | no comments |

For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet

For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet by Matthew Shindell

Mars has long fascinated us Earthlings, whether we were gazing up at it with eyes or telescopes, gazing down at it via orbital probes, or vicariously rolling across/flying over it via a slew of lander expeditions, several of which are still up there tooling around. That long obsession with the planet has prompted a huge number of books, fiction and non-fiction, centered on our red neighbor and now Matthew Shindell has added another — For the Love of Mars — which rather than focusing on Mars itself looks at our long-enduring but changing relationship.

June 15th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Jupiter Knife: Another adventure with Hiram and Michael

The Jupiter Knife by D.J. Butler & Aaron Michael Ritchey

Hiram Woolley and Michael are back in The Jupiter Knife (2021), a follow-up to The Cunning Man. (Each novel can stand-alone so it’s not necessary to read The Cunning Man first, but I think you’ll enjoy The Jupiter Knife a little more if you do).

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Cunning Man (first in THE CUNNING MAN series) when I read it a couple of years ago.

Val Hall: The Odd Years: Enjoyable and often moving

Val Hall: The Odd Years by Alma Alexander

Val Hall: The Odd Years, by Alma Alexander, is the second collection of linked stories set in what is basically a retirement home for superheroes (or possibly villains as one story asks). Particularly “Third-class superheroes”, those who have a singular, lesser power that might only have been used once or a handful of times. As with just about every collection, the stories vary in effectiveness/impact, but overall, as with Val Hall: The Even Years,

June 9th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Alma Alexander | SFF Reviews | no comments |

G.O.G. 666: Taine’s Cold War swan-song novel

G.O.G. 666 by John Taine

When famed Scottish mathematician Eric Temple Bell released his first novel, 1924’s The Purple Sapphire, no one could have foreseen that his literary career would extend 30 more years and encompass 15 books of very high-quality science fiction. Looking back on the eight books by Bell that I have read so far – all of them written under his pen name, John Taine – the thing that strikes me first is how very different each one is from the others.

Crashing Suns: Five adventures of the Interstellar Patrol

Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton

In his serialized novel of 1930 entitled The Universe Wreckers, which originally appeared in the pages of Amazing Stories magazine, Ohio-born author Edmond Hamilton gave his readers a tale concerning the pancake-shaped residents of Neptune who were trying to increase the spin rate of our sun for their own nefarious purposes. But this was hardly the first time that Hamilton had presented his audience with a gaggle of bizarrely shaped aliens who were weaponizing the celestial bodies;

The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life

The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life by Felix Flicker

Felix Flicker’s relatively unique take on popular science is right there in the title: The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life. Taking Arthur C. Clarke’s old adage that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Flicker presents his layperson’s explanations of modern-day physics as a wizard’s manual of sorts, as in one scene where a wizard illuminates her path with a crystal spelled into glowing and then cuts through a bolt with a “stream of light.” In reality though (at least our reality),

April 14th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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