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With Station Zero (2019), Philip Reeve brings to an end the RAILHEAD trilogy begun with Railhead and Black Light Express, and if it’s not a perfect conclusion, it’s pretty darn close, leaving you at the end with a sense of satisfying, even gratifying, resolution tinged with a lingering bittersweetness that makes the final result all the more richly rewarding. With this Cosmic Railroad trilogy (not an official title) and his earlier PREDATOR CITIES/MORTAL ENGINES work,
March 13th, 2020. Bill Capossere and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Philip Reeve | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Black Light Express by Philip Reeve
Black Light Express (2017) is Philip Reeve’s just-as-good-as-the-first-book follow up to Railhead, continuing the exhilarating romp while expanding the universe and its inhabitants, as well as digging a bit more deeply into the hidden history of the created world and offering up some more page time to some of the first book’s secondary characters. Warning: there will be some inevitable spoilers for book one (you can just stop here with the take-away that I recommend the duology).
March 9th, 2020. Bill Capossere, Jana Nyman and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Philip Reeve | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hellboy in Hell (Vol. 2): The Death Card by Mike Mignola (writer and artist), Dave Stewart (colors), & Clem Robins (letters).
This second and final volume of Hellboy in Hell collects issues 6-10. It opens with Baba Yaga reminding the reader what came before: “He fought and killed a dragon but the dragon was actually a witch. Her ghost plucked out his heart and cast it into Hell.” In the first volume of Hellboy in Hell, Hellboy “went into Pandemonium and cut Satan’s throat .
March 7th, 2020. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Mike Mignola | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The World of the Giant Ants by A. Hyatt Verrill
In two novels that I recently read, Ralph Milne Farley’s The Radio Man (1924) and its sequel, The Radio Beasts (1925), engineer Myles Cabot accidentally transports himself to Venus and discovers a society of enormous and intelligent ants, the so-called Formians. But, it would seem, if a certain book of 1928 is to be believed, Cabot did not have to leave planet Earth to discover such gigantic and civilized creatures.
February 27th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | A. Hyatt Verrill | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy by Francis Stevens
Up until recently, Minneapolis-born author Francis Stevens had been a very solid 3 for 3 with this reader. Her first novel, 1918’s The Citadel of Fear, had proved to be a mindblower, dealing as it did with the lost city of Tlapallan, nightmarish creatures, and battling Aztec gods. Her second novel, 1919’s The Heads of Cerberus,
February 12th, 2020. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Francis Stevens | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone
Max Gladstone’s Empress of Forever (2019) is definitely space opera. In a far distant future, tech genius, entrepreneur and loner Vivian Liao travels from planet to planet and system to system trying to find an advantage in a losing war against an all-powerful space empress. Viv, who is plucked by that same empress out of her our-present-day life (and planned rebellion), draws to herself the usual strange pack of uneasy allies in this battle. The book is complicated,
January 8th, 2020. Marion Deeds and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3, 4.5 | Max Gladstone | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife
“If you want to know history, read a book. If you want a story, take a tour.” — Christopher Skaife
The Ravenmaster was published in 2018. It’s nonfiction and it isn’t particularly about science, even the science of ravens. It’s got some history, some memoir, and some ghosts, but it isn’t about those things. I’m reviewing it here for one reason only: ravens.
Christopher Skaife,
January 7th, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Jo Walton writes truly thoughtful books, as anyone who has read her THESSALY TRILOGY (The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, Necessity) knows. She’s also, those fans also know, a big fan of Renaissance Italy, particularly Florence. So it comes as no surprise to find this the setting for her newest novel, Lent (2019), which wrestles in the same thought-provoking manner major issues,
December 30th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Jo Walton | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle
Although 1944’s The Uninvited has long been one of this viewer’s favorite spooky movies of that great filmmaking decade, it wasn’t until fairly recently that I learned of the special place it holds in cinema history. The film, apparently, was the very first Hollywood product to treat ghosts seriously. Here, at last, the specters on display were not hoaxes, not fakes, and not played for laughs. Rather, they were completely legit; supernatural survivors with unfinished business here on the material plane. Featuring first-rate acting by a cast of pros,
December 18th, 2019. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Dorothy Macardle | Film / TV, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch
Peter Grant, our favourite semi-competent detective cum wizard-in-training, returns in Lies Sleeping (2018), the seventh book in Ben Aaronovitch’s RIVERS OF LONDON series. The Faceless Man has been unmasked and is on the run, and it is now up to Peter and the inimitable Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale (slash last officially sanctioned English Melvin the Wizard) to apprehend him.
(Fair warning: some spoilers for preceding books will follow.)
London is once more under threat and there can only be one man behind it.
December 6th, 2019. Ray McKenzie and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Ben Aaronovitch | 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.