Rating: 3.5

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Dawn: More than just an exciting disaster story

Dawn by S. Fowler Wright

Muriel Temple, a single woman who has recently returned to England after serving as a missionary in Africa, has learned that she doesn’t have much longer to live — maybe a year, maybe a little more or less. She is sad, but she is not afraid because her faith is strong. She wants only to serve God by helping others during the time she has left. Her current project involves trying to talk an unwed pregnant girl out of an abortion, but before she gets a chance to track down and confront the alleged father of the baby,

Damnation for Beginners: A DEEPGATE CODEX novella

Damnation for Beginners by Alan Campbell

Alan Campbell has been on my TBR list for years, but I still haven’t managed to get around to reading his DEEPGATE CODEX. That is going to change soon, though, because I just finished his novella Damnation for Beginners which takes place in the city of Cog in the DEEPGATE CODEX world.

This short book is about Jack and Carol Aviso, who work as bank tellers for the greedy Henry Sill Banking Corporation. Jack and Carol know better than to keep their money with Henry Sill because nearly every day the customer account policies change and the customers continue to become further indebted to the company.

May 29th, 2012. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Alan Campbell | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Hide Me Among the Graves: Clever “secret history” fantasy

Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers

Tim Powers’s The Stress of Her Regard was one of my favorite random used-bookstore discoveries. After reading it ten years ago, I talked it up to all my friends. It was out of print at the time, so I constantly lent out my own copy until the time I didn’t get it back. When I got wind of Hide Me Among the Graves, a sequel of sorts, I was thrilled and hoped it would be one of my favorite books of the year.

May 19th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3, 3.5 | Tim Powers | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Deep: John Crowley’s first novel

The Deep by John Crowley

In a world very different from ours, two powerful factions fight for the throne. Alliances are made and shattered. Vows are sworn and broken. Brothers betray brothers; fathers betray sons; kings are imprisoned and queens make war. No, it’s not A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE. It’s The Deep, by John Crowley, published in 1975.

The Deep is Crowley’s first novel. It is unlike his other works,

Chime: An odd book

Chime by Franny Billingsley

Briony has lots of secrets. She’s a witch. She can see the Old Ones. And when she loses her temper, bad things happen, like the accidents that crippled both her sister and her stepmother. Luckily, her stepmother figured out why these things happened, and taught Briony the trick to make sure they never happen again: she must always hate herself. Always. And she can never tell anyone else about her secret power, or she will be hanged. But when the locals decide to start draining the swamp near the town for the train to go through,

May 11th, 2012. Ruth Arnell´s rating: 3.5 | Franny Billingsley | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Chasing the Moon: Heavy on laughs, light on depth

Chasing the Moon by A. Lee Martinez

Diana’s had a tough time of it lately, but finally a stroke of luck comes along: after a long search, she finds the perfect apartment. It’s affordable. It’s furnished exactly the way she likes. There’s even a jukebox with all her favorite songs. Maybe she should have been more suspicious about how perfect it was, because once she’s moved in, she discovers that the apartment has an extra inhabitant: a monster who goes by the name Vom the Hungering and who tries to eat everything in his path.

Haunting Violet: Charming YA romantic mystery

Haunting Violet by Alyxandra Harvey

It’s Victorian England, and Spiritualism is all the rage. Violet Willoughby’s mother Celeste is a phony medium, using parlor tricks to scam her way up the social ladder. Now, the Willoughbys have been invited to the palatial estate of Rosefield for a grand house party. On this trip, Violet learns something shocking: she is a medium. A real one. And the ghost of a girl from the next estate over, who drowned mysteriously the previous year, is haunting Violet and demanding she solve her murder.

The Truth-Teller’s Tale: Shinn is a beautiful writer

The Truth-Teller’s Tale by Sharon Shinn

Adele is a Safe-Keeper, physiologically incapable of sharing a secret. Her twin sister Eleda is a Truth-Teller, incapable of telling a lie. From the young age of 12, these sisters assume positions of responsibility in their town, but what happens when they get dragged into royal intrigue and the indiscretions of the most powerful family in town?

The Truth-Teller’s Tale, the second book in the SAFE-KEEPERS series by Sharon Shinn,

Dark Sleeper: Delightful, debonair and decidedly Dickensian

Dark Sleeper by Jeffrey E. Barlough

Dark Sleeper is a delightful, debonair and decidedly Dickensian departure from dime-a-dozen fantasy. Jeffrey E. Barlough, who published the book in 2000, attempts and mostly succeeds in writing an entire fantasy novel in the style and form of Charles Dickens, with a dash of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thrown in.

Let me be clear. This is not a steampunk novel, set in the nineteenth century while incorporating twentieth-century technology, winking at the sensibilities and conventions of the time.

April 30th, 2012. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Jeffrey E. Barlough | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Blackbirds: You’ll probably go to hell for reading it

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Blackbirds is a Justin book, by which I mean that you will probably go to hell for reading it. This book is splattered with gore and peppered with sexual and toilet humor, and will probably teach you several new profanities. As for me, not being Justin, how did I like it? Well, it pushed me past my usual gore limits (there are reasons I don’t watch the Saw movies), but for the most part I liked it anyway.

The heroine is Miriam Black,

April 25th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Chuck Wendig | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |

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