Click on stars to FIND REVIEWS BY RATING:
Recommended: 
Not Recommended: 
The Living Death and Drome by John Martin Leahy
The double-decker volume entitled The Living Death and Drome, from the Seattle-based imprint Sarnath Press, gathers together two novels from the weird-fiction author John Martin Leahy; the second of two volumes that Sarnath has recently issued focusing on this relatively unknown pulp writer. The entirety of Leahy’s fictive career was limited to just three novels and four short stories; that initial collection, Draconda and Others,
June 19th, 2025. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | John Martin Leahy | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter
The first A.G. Slatter book I’ve read, 2025’s The Crimson Road was a treat. Violet Zennor is a smart, witty, bitter young protagonist with an unusual upbringing, who reluctantly embarks on a quest she has no desire to undertake. The story is a vampire-themed fairy tale, filled with magic and danger. I wanted to know how Violet would fare against the dreaded vampire Leech Lords, who rule in the north. Violet has been trained to fight and kill, but she’ll need more than the arts of war to prevail against the being who has risen as their new leader.
June 16th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Angela Slatter | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A new MORTAL ENGINES story? What bliss!
The first book set in the dystopian world of Philip Reeve’s mighty Traction Cities since Scrivener’s Moon was published back in 2011, Thunder City (2024) ends up being something of an oddity within the overarching scope of the series. Unlike the three prequels, which delved into the genesis of the Traction Cities, or Night Flights,
May 29th, 2025. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4 | Philip Reeve | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski
I finally found a cozy, small-stakes fantasy that simply and completely entertained me. 2024’s The Crescent Moon Tearoom, by Stacy Sivinski, resonates as much with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as it does with the CW’s seminal 1990s TV show Charmed (except no one wastes away from consumption). Three witchy sisters deal with a thriving business, the Witch Council and its demands, and their own growing powers.
To be fair, the cozy subgenre isn’t my cup of tea.
May 12th, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Stacy Sivinski | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Karen Russell’s newest, The Antidote (2025), is at times a great book, is at times a befuddling book, and is, in a few instances, a flawed book. The strengths of the book are many: wonderful character creation; the exploration of gravely important themes such as historical erasure, the treatment of Indigenous people, the shaming of women; a healthy dose of magical realism via a magical camera, a sentient scarecrow, and memory-vault “witches”; and wonderfully rich, vivid description. The issues crop up with regard to character presentation,
April 25th, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Karen Russell | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Book That Held Her Heart by Mark Lawrence
Mark Lawrence’s first title in his LIBRARY TRILOGY, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, made my Top Ten Books list the year it came out (2023), and while its sequel, The Book That Broke the World, wasn’t as strong, I still quite enjoyed it. Now Lawrence is out with The Book That Held Her Heart,
April 22nd, 2025. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Mark Lawrence | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (aka Shadowfire) by Tanith Lee
In Tanith Lee’s first novel written for adults, The Birthgrave (1975), Book #1 in her BIRTHGRAVE TRILOGY, the reader had been introduced to a very unusual young woman. Petite, albino, in command of a range of superhuman abilities, and with no memory of her past or even her own name, she had awoken in the heart of a dormant volcano and ventured forth on an epic journey of self-discovery.
April 14th, 2025. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Tanith Lee | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Reposting to include Sandy’s new review.
Let me be clear: The Birthgrave has kind of a dumb plot. It’s repetitive, it’s all predicated on a prosaic twist that’s kept overly mysterious, and when the big reveal finally does come, it’s via one of the most blatant examples of deus ex machina I’ve ever seen. All the same, I’d still call this a good book. Maybe even a great one. That’s the magic of Tanith Lee: even her first novel,
April 4th, 2025. Tim Scheidler and Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4, 5 | Tanith Lee | SFF Reviews | 7 comments |
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle had The Devil in Silver published in 2012. The book is set earlier than that; around 2010/2011. Starting with a Greek myth of Theseus in the labyrinth, LaValle layers horror after horror, and maze after maze, onto this scary, dread-inducing story that looks hard at the nature of powerlessness and the systems designed to keep people that way.
Pepper is a big man—that’s how he’s described in the early sentences of the book. He lives in Queens.
April 1st, 2025. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Victor Lavalle | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
World of the Starwolves by Edmond Hamilton
Although Ohio-born author Edmond Hamilton had given his readers much in the way of action, spectacle, alien races, futuristic science, and cosmic wonder in the first two novels of his so-called STARWOLF TRILOGY – The Weapon From Beyond (1967) and The Closed Worlds (1968) – there was yet one element that he seemed to be holding in abeyance. In Book #1, the reader had met Morgan Chane,
March 27th, 2025. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Edmond Hamilton | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Agree! And a perfect ending, too.
I may be embarrassing myself by repeating something I already posted here, but Thomas Pynchon has a new novel scheduled…
[…] Tales (Fantasy Literature): John Martin Leahy was born in Washington State in 1886 and, during his five-year career as…
so you're saying I should read it? :)
As a native New Yorker, I love the idea of the city being filled with canals and no skyscrapers! And…