Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 3.5

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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 |

Untethered Sky: Enjoyable but doesn’t reach its full potential

Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee

Untethered Sky is a mostly enjoyable fantasy novella by Fonda Lee, but one whose brevity I felt prevented it from reaching its full emotive potential. This is, however, something I often feel upon reading novellas (though not always as per my 5-star review of The Lies of the Ajungo), so readers of this review should keep that in mind. Some of us, it appears, are just generally not built for the form, though exceptions can always break through.

The Secret Skin: So many scares!

The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner

There are so many scary things in Wendy N. Wagner’s short 2021 novella, The Secret Skin. There is the nasty housekeeper who gives the nasty housekeeper in Rebecca a run for her money. There is the leering, unpleasant overseer of the Vogel family sawmill. There is Abigail, a deeply disturbed little girl who may be telekinetic. There is the “community meeting” of the white men in the nearby town of Coos Bay, Oregon, and their white robes and hoods.

Hell Bent: Return to magical Yale

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

When 2023’s Hell Bent, by Leigh Bardugo, opens, a demon has trapped Galaxy Stern, who goes by Alex, in the basement of the Black Elm house, along with two ghosts. Upstairs, her friend and mentor, Darlington, who was sucked into a hell dimension in Ninth House, Book One of the ALEX STERN series, waits in demon form. It’s safe to say things aren’t going well.

The second book brings us back to dark Yale and the home of the various secret societies,

February 7th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Leigh Bardugo | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Legendborn: There’s much to like in this debut

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn (2020), the first book in her LEGENDBORN CYCLE, wasn’t on my radar until I saw it on the Locus Awards finalists list for Best Young Adult novel. I grabbed the audiobook and one of the YAs that lives in my house (Tali, my 18-year-old daughter) and we listened to Legendborn together as we worked a jigsaw puzzle. We agreed to give Legendborn a rating of 3.5 which is quite a bit lower than the book currently rates at both Amazon and GoodReads,

Even Though I Knew the End: Powerful setting and period piece

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk

Let me start with what I loved about C.L. Polk’s 2022 novella, Even Though I Knew the End. I loved the premise of the magical system at play here, and the story delivered a 1940s Chicago, Illinois, that was both familiar and convincingly strange. The Wink, a lesbian bar that has rolled through several incarnations in its lifetime, is a sheer delight of evocative description.

I liked the fast-moving plot and Polk’s spin on the hard-boiled detective story.

Knock Three Times: Wizards and Warriors join forces

Knock Three Times by Cressida Cowell

The third book in Cressida Cowell‘s THE WIZARDS OF ONCE sees our young protagonists on an adventure to collect the rare ingredients needed to banish the terrible Witches that have recently awoken all across Ancient Britain.

As difficult as it may be to find the scales of a Nuckalavee, it’s even stranger to consider the team they’ve assembled to retrieve them. Xar is the youngest son of the Head Wizard Encanzo, while Wish is the daughter of the cold Queen Sychorax,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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