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The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
Stuart Turton’s debut novel, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, was one of my favorite reads of 2018, a compulsively readable and wildly original murder mystery, an homage to Agatha Christie, with a science fictional wrapper. Turton’s second novel, The Devil and the Dark Water (2020), is a highly twisty and eerie Sherlockian mystery, set in the seventeenth century on a large ship traveling from Batavia (now Jakarta,
December 11th, 2020. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Stuart Turton | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden
Chris Gosden takes on a lot in Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present (2020) — a history of magic through time and space, skipping across millennia and the continents. Though “history” might be a tad misleading, in that Gosden includes our current age in his survey and then makes a call for magic to, if not “return” (he would argue it never left),
December 8th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
Sometimes when I’m pondering a review of Brandon Sanderson, I feel like I’m back in one of those classic middle school conversations:
Me: I heard you like Brandon.
Also Me: Maybe I do
Me: Do you like like him?
Also Me: I said I liked him.
Me: Yeah, but like, like like?
Also Me: I don’t know. What’s that like, like like?
Me: It’s like, you stay up all night thinking about how much you like him.
November 19th, 2020. Bill Capossere and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Brandon Sanderson | SFF Reviews | no comments |
While growing up in the 1960s, I used to love whenever one of the local TV channels would show one of British director James Whale’s Big 3 horror movies, all from Universal Studios: Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933) and, perhaps best of all, the eternal glory that is Bride of Frankenstein (1935). What I was unaware of back then was the fact that there was a fourth Universal horror film directed by Whale, and that bit of youthful ignorance was not entirely my fault.
November 17th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | J.B. Priestley | Film / TV, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
Our Daddy never taught us shit, except what a fox teaches chickens — how to run, how to tremble, how to outlive the bastard — and our mama died before she could teach us much of anything. But we had Mama Mags, our mother’s mother, and she didn’t fool around with soup-pots and flowers.
Once upon a time there were three sisters, in a world where women’s magic was outlawed and driven underground. They had to battle an evil man and rediscover their own power,
October 30th, 2020. Marion Deeds and Jana Nyman´s rating: 4.5 | Alix E. Harrow | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hilda and the Troll by Luke Pearson
The HILDA graphic novels had been on my radar for a while, but knowing they’ve recently been adapted into a Netflix original made me finally give them a read (I like to read the source material before watching any adaptations).
In Hilda and the Troll (2010), Hilda is a young girl living with her mother in an unspecified part of the Scandinavian countryside, in a little wooden cabin on a great grassy plain. She spends her days wandering outside,
October 28th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020) is a charming, thoughtful, sometimes-dark, sometimes moving, story about memory, love, rash decisions, female agency, stubborn defiance, mortality, resilience, and the power of art. In this time of Covid, a novel focused so much on the desire for human contact and fear of dying without leaving “a mark” is especially timely, though The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue would have been a highly recommended book in any other year.
October 23rd, 2020. Bill Capossere, Tadiana Jones, Jana Nyman and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Victoria (V.E.) Schwab | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Entity directed by Sidney J. Furie
According to the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey of 2016, a full 80 percent of all rapes in the U.S.A. go unreported. When asked to account for this staggering statistic, 20 percent of all victims surveyed said that the reason for this lack of reporting was a fear of retaliation; 13 percent said they felt the police would be ineffective at helping them; another 13 percent said that it was a personal matter that they wished to keep private; 8 percent seemed to feel that it was no big deal (!);
October 20th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Power of the Dark Crystal: Volume One by Simon Spurrier
With the recent release of Netflix’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, a prequel to the original 1982 film, I’ve been treating myself to all the supplementary material that’s been released in the show’s wake. Given that Thra is one of my favourite fantasy worlds (along with Middle Earth and Narnia), it’s been a dream come true to have so much new content.
According to the afterword, The Power of the Dark Crystal was originally written as a script by screenwriters David Odell,
September 29th, 2020. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Today, more than a century after Jack London’s passing in 1916, most people probably remember the San Francisco-born author for his books of rugged adventure, such as his third novel, The Call of the Wild (1903), his fifth, The Sea-Wolf (1904), and his seventh, White Fang (1906). Fewer will recall that amongst London’s 23 novels, 21 short story collections, three memoirs, three plays, 22 books of nonfiction and 45 poems – all written during a life span of only 40 years – this most superhumanly prolific of authors also produced four books that must be classified as either fantasy or sci-fi.
September 25th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Jack London | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…