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The Song of Rhiannon by Evangeline Walton
The Song of Rhiannon (1972), the third volume in Evangeline Walton’s MABINOGION TETRALOGY, begins with Manawyddan, son of the sea god, haunted by grief and feeling directionless after the events of The Children of Llyr. (I haven’t read The Children of Llyr, but I have read “Branwen Daughter of Llyr,” the medieval Welsh tale on which it is based. It features a Red Wedding’s worth of deaths.) His friend Pryderi,
August 16th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Evangeline Walton | Mythopoeic Award | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
This Body’s Not Big Enough for the Both of Us by Edgar Cantero
This Body’s Not Big Enough for the Both of Us (2019), by Edgar Cantero, is a metafictional roller coaster ride in which the safety bar that holds you into your seat occasionally turns into licorice whips else or disappears completely.
One definition of metafiction is a form of fiction that comments on fictional and literary elements by self-consciously departing from literary conventions within the narrative. If you like metafiction,
August 15th, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Edgar Cantero | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin
A war is raging, and a young boy is sent to spend the summer with his grandmother in her small country village. His life changes forever when she decides to rescue a downed enemy pilot and nurse him back to health. While helping her tend to the injured man, the boy also meets Mr. Girandole, a faun, who was once his grandmother’s love and is still her dear friend.
She knows just the place to conceal the pilot while he convalesces: a crooked little tower in an overgrown sculpture garden in the woods.
August 14th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 3.5 | Frederic S. Durbin | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Weapon Makers by A.E. van Vogt
The Weapon Makers (1943), currently nominated for a 1944 Retro Hugo award, is the sequel to the better-known The Weapon Shops of Isher. As discussed in my review of The Weapon Shops of Isher, A.E. van Vogt was fond of creating fix-up novels based on his earlier works, and the creation and publication history of both of these novels in his EMPIRE OF ISHER duology is complicated.
August 12th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | A.E. Van_Vogt | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation by Terri Favro
In Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation (2019), Terri Favro mixes journalistic research, speculative fiction, and memoir, along with a series of pop culture sidebars to create an engaging if sometimes frustrating look at the history of technology that led to our current hopes for true AI and Jetson-like robot.
Favro uses a relatively broad definition of “robot,” which I confess threw me a bit now and then, though it was easy enough to recalibrate my own pre-conceived concept and go along as she looked at driverless cars,
August 9th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 3.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
Having recently seen Saving Mr. Banks, a film that purports to examine the strained relationship between author P.L. Travers and film-maker Walt Disney when it came to adapting Mary Poppins for the big screen, it was only natural that I finally got around to my long overdue reading of the classic children’s story Mary Poppins (1934).
Having grown up with the Disney film, it’s quite shocking to realize how little one resembles the other.
July 29th, 2019. Rebecca Fisher and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | P.L. Travers | Children | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft
Randolph Carter keeps dreaming of a beautiful unknown city which he is aching to visit. After begging the gods to show him the way and receiving no answer, he sets out on a dream-quest to find it. The priests tell him that nobody knows where the city is and that the journey will kill him, but Randolph Carter is not deterred. His quest takes him through fantastic and mostly dangerous places where he meets strange friends and enemies. All the while he can tell that the gods who don’t belong to Earth are trying to stop him from discovering Unknown Kadath.
July 26th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | H.P. Lovecraft | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
Dr. Lilo Alexandr-Calypso, a brilliant geneticist who lives on the moon, has broken the law by fiddling with the human genome. Just as she’s about to be executed, she is saved by a group of vigilantes who want to use her skills to help them free the Earth from the alien invaders who’ve taken over and kicked the humans off.
Lilo doesn’t want to serve anyone, but their leader, a former president of Earth, has captured a clone of her and says that either she or the clone will be executed for Lilo’s crime.
July 18th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | John Varley | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Bonfires and Broomsticks by Mary Norton
In Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947), part two of Mary Norton’s BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS duology, it’s two years after events of the first book, The Magic Bed-Knob. The three young siblings, Carey, Charles and Paul, get the chance to leave London and spend the summer in Bedfordshire with their spinster friend, Miss Price, who was a witch in training. And they still have the magic bed-knob that enables them to fly through time and space on Paul’s old bed,
July 15th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Mary Norton | Children | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Purple Sapphire by John Taine
In the Rare Book Room in NYC bookstore extraordinaire The Strand there has resided, for quite some time now, a volume that I have greatly wanted to acquire. The book in question is Scottish author John Taine’s very first novel, The Purple Sapphire, which was first released by E. P. Dutton & Co. as a hardcover in 1924 … the same year that Dutton released Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin’s now-classic dystopian book We.
July 12th, 2019. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 3.5 | John Taine | Stand-Alone | 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.