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Seraph of the End (Vol 1): Vampire Reign by Takaya Kagami
Seraph of the End is an exciting shonen manga with some creepy post-apocalyptic elements combined with the vampire genre. This is the third vampire book I’ve reviewed in the past few weeks, and I’ve never been drawn to vampire stories to begin with. I do enjoy many vampire stories — from Dracula to a few by Rice, and I love Buffy — but I don’t actively seek them out.
May 16th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic by Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley
Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic, by Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, is a Middle Grade book that despite some problems has a winning charm to it.
Set in, well, the old Arctic, at a time when the Inuit were just entering a land, the story is both a coming-of-age tale and a clash of cultures narrative. The coming-of-age belongs to a young Inuit hunter named Kannujaq. The culture clash involves the new-to-this-land Inuit,
May 16th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross
Krina Alizond-114, a metahuman, is worried because Ana, one of her sibs, has gone missing. It’s not that Krina cares much about her sisters — they’re all just the spawn (and, anagrammatically, the pawns) of their scary overbearing mother and, besides, metahumans don’t have all that mushy emotional stuff that so frequently hijacked the thought processes of the “Fragile” race of homo sapiens that created them. The problem is that together Ana and Krina hold the key to a vast fortune and, if Ana disappears,
May 9th, 2014. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Charles Stross | Audio | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson
Unwrapped Sky, the debut novel by Rjurik Davidson, has an evocative setting, an intriguing set-up, and an often lyrical and lovely prose style, but an off-putting distance between the reader and its characters/material works against these strengths, leaving more of a sense of “what could have been” than I would have preferred.
A clear denizen of the New Weird or Urban Weird, Unwrapped Sky introduces us to Caeli-Amur, an ancient city rising out of the dark ages brought about from the legendary God War and its ensuing Cataclysm,
May 8th, 2014. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Rjurik Davidson | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett
Given the light-hearted yet poignant nature of Terry Pratchett’s DISCWORLD, it is surprising that so few of the dozens of books in the series are Young Adult oriented. One of these is The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and it can readily be enjoyed by adults, as well.
Playing with the legend of the Pied Piper, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is the story of Maurice the cat,
May 7th, 2014. Jesse Hudson´s rating: 3.5 | Terry Pratchett | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor (text), Michael Wyatt (illustrations), and Alison Kooistra (adaptation)
This graphic novel The Night Wanderer is an adaptation by Alison Kooistra of Drew Hayden Taylor’s novel The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel. Since it’s a vampire novel — a genre of which I’ve about had my fill — I almost passed it by. But I was very interested in the Native American angle. I’m glad I picked this up — the book is only using the vampire genre to tell a Native American tale and make us look at an all-too-familiar tale in a new light.
May 2nd, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Sky Raiders is the first book in Brandon Mull’s new FIVE KINGDOMS series for Middle Grade readers. It’s about a boy named Cole who takes his friends, including a girl he has a crush on, to a haunted house on Halloween Night. The occupants of the house lure the kids into the basement where they’re abducted, taken to another world called The Five Kingdoms, and sold into slavery.
As you might guess, Cole feels a little guilty about this.
April 22nd, 2014. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Brandon Mull | Audio, Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Malvolio’s Revenge by Sophie Masson
I’ve read plenty of Sophie Masson’s novels and enjoyed them all, but I’m fairly certain that Malvolio’s Revenge may end up being my favourite. Though Masson usually writes straight-out fantasy stories, this is a more of a mystery with a few supernatural trappings thrown in.
The book’s title is a bit misleading, for this book isn’t a sequel to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Instead it refers to the title of a play that the travelling troupe of actors who comprise our main characters are performing all around Louisiana.
April 17th, 2014. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 3.5 | Sophie Masson | Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Notes from the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone
Humorist Wayne Gladstone takes on the American obsession with the internet in Notes from the Internet Apocalypse, an amusing but thoughtful look at what might happen to our culture if the world wide web went down for good.
Gladstone himself is the protagonist of his story. Since both his job and his free time activities depend on the internet, he has no idea what to do now that it’s gone. So he begins keeping a journal about how the world is handling the crisis.
April 14th, 2014. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Wayne Gladstone | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Three by Kieron Gillen & Ryan Kelly
Gillen is one of my favorite comic book writers for Marvel, so I was extremely eager to pick up Three, a new series written by him for Image. Otherwise, I wouldn’t normally find myself picking up a book on Ancient Sparta. I suppose I’ve always been partial to Athens. So, I had mixed feelings going into the book . . . and I have mixed feeling coming out of it as well.
Being the academic that I am,
April 14th, 2014. Brad Hawley´s rating: 3.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no 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.