Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 3.5

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She Said Destroy: A good introduction to Bulkin’s beautiful, creepy prose

She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin

Nadia Bulkin’s horror stories are surreal, subversive, often political. 2017’s short story collection She Said Destroy offers 13 stories, some set in our world, some set in worlds almost exactly like ours and some set in strange, feverish landscapes unlike what we’ve seen before.

“Intertropical Convergence Zone” and “Red Goat, Black Goat,” are set in an imaginary country that looks more than a bit like Indonesia. (Bulkin writes many stories set in this place.) “Intertropical Convergence Zone” follows the country’s dictator,

The Black Wolves of Boston: Complex and funny new series perfect for late-teens

The Black Wolves of Boston by Wen Spencer

Joshua is a teen runaway; a college-bound senior who survived a horrifying massacre of his classmates during an extracurricular project. Silas Decker is a vampire who lives in Boston, one who has the magical ability to find lost things – and people. Seth is the werewolf Prince of Boston. Elise comes from the Grigori family, who trace their bloodline back to the first angelic-human hybrids. She kills things — mostly, evil things. These four characters find their paths intersecting and tangling in The Black Wolves of Boston,

September 11th, 2017. Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Wen Spencer | SFF Reviews | no comments |

House of Names: Thoughtful and strongly-voiced

House of Names by Colm Tóibín

The Ancient Greeks didn’t invent murder, sex, and vengeance, but they did realize the staying power of stories centering on them. As, apparently, does Colm Tóibín, whose newest work, House of Names (2017), is a retelling of the House of Atreus tale involving Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, and Orestes (spoiler alert — it’s not a happy story). Nor does Tóibín bother to dress it up in contemporary garb, eschewing the usual “updating” into modern times and dress. Though perhaps that’s not wholly accurate.

Snowspelled: A Regency magician without her magic

Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis

Snowspelled (2017), the first book in the new HARWOOD SPELLBOOK fantasy series by Stephanie Burgis, is a fun, light read, right at the intersection of magical fantasy and Regency romance, with a twist of alternative history. We are in Angland, not England, and there’s a time-honored treaty between humans and elves, with the humans paying a toll to live on elven lands. Cassandra Harwood, her brother Jonathan, and sister-in-law Amy travel to a week-long house party at Cosgrove Manor,

September 4th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Stephanie Burgis | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Summoned Mage: Diary of a misplaced mage

The Summoned Mage by Melissa McShane

Editor’s note: At the time we are posting this review, this 99c at Amazon.

The Summoned Mage (2017) is the diary of Sesskia, a 27 year old thief and secret mage: secret because being a mage is viewed as an executable offense in her country of Balaen. But her magical powers have saved Sesskia’s life before, and in any case are a part of her very self that are both exhilarating and terrifying. So Sesskia wanders from place to place,

August 31st, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3.5 | Melissa McShane | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Magician’s Key: An amenable Middle Grade fantasy

The Magician’s Key by Matthew Cody

I have to admit at the outset that I didn’t read Matthew Cody’s first book (The Peddler’s Road) in THE SECRETS OF THE PIED PIPER trilogy. But that turned out not to be much of an obstacle as Cody does a very efficient job early on of catching the returning reader up on the events of book one, so I never felt lost in what was happening. Obviously, I can’t comment on the quality of that first book,

The Tourist: Twisty-wisty, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff

The Tourist by Robert Dickinson

The good news is that, in terms of time-travel novels, Robert Dickinson does quite a lot of interesting things with The Tourist (2016): dual narratives — one straightforward and one circuitous, commentary on human nature, and the mechanics of time-travel itself, along with its social and economic effects on the 21st-century. The bad news is that the novel stumbles in the third act and never regains its footing, sacrificing clarity and plot in favor of poetic imagery.

The Tourist begins by describing the prison “you” reside in,

The Hike: A surreal and often humorous journey

The Hike by Drew Magary

I’m of two minds on Drew Magary’s The Hike (2016). On the one hand, it’s a fast, energetic, often funny and sometimes moving work. On the other hand, its plotting feels wholly capricious and arbitrary and some of the territory it wanders is well-worn or less profound than it seems like it wants to be taken. I mostly like my books with a bit more structured depth, and if you do as well, then I think you’ll zip through and enjoy The Hike while also being a bit annoyed.

The Greatest Adventure: Dinosaurs and dynamite

The Greatest Adventure by John Taine

In the 1957 Universal film The Land Unknown, a quartet of men and one woman discover a tropical wonderhell 3,000 feet below sea level in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, replete with killer plants and savage dinosaurs. But, as it turns out, this was not the first time that four men and one woman had battled prehistoric monsters and inimical flora in a surprisingly balmy valley on the frozen continent. That honor, it would seem, goes to a book called, fittingly enough,

Shattered Warrior: Tale’s too familiar but artwork shines

Shattered Warrior written by Sharon Shinn & illustrated by Molly Knox Ostertag

Shattered Warrior (2017) is a new graphic novel written by Sharon Shinn and illustrated by Molly Knox Ostertag. The artwork is excellent, but as far as plot, it’s an overly familiar one and, as usual for me with graphic novels (fair warning), neither story nor characters are rich enough for my deep engagement.

The story is set on a human world conquered years ago by an alien race (the Derichet) and mostly wholly subjugated,

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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