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2023’s Witch King, by Martha Wells, is the first book in a new fantasy series, THE RISING WORLD. In the opening pages we meet Kaiisteron, who goes by Kai, the Witch King of the title. Kai awakens in a strange place, unable to move. He can mentally contact his friend Ziedi, but their magical connection should let him know exactly where she is, and he can’t find her. He can’t find his own body, either.
From there,
March 11th, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Martha Wells | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi
The Truth of the Aleke is Moses Ose Utomi’s sequel to his fantastic The Lies of the Ajungo, which I said in my review was “as close to perfect a modern parable as I’ve read in some time.” I’m happy to report that if the follow-up isn’t quite as “perfect,” it’s nonetheless a fantastic read, and one that makes me oh so eager to see how Utomi wraps up this loosely connected trilogy set in the Forever Desert.
March 4th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Moses Ose Utomi | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
The Butcher of the Forest (2024) is a dark fantastical novella by Premee Mohamed that hearkens back to the original old folktales by refusing to sand off the edges of the genre to make it safe or cozy. More faerie than fairy, as much horror as fantasy, it is as unsettling and bittersweet a read as it is a worthy one.
The tale is set in an empire ruled by The Tyrant, “the man with a thousand names and a thousand cities under his bootheel … bringer of death,
February 27th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Premee Mohamed | Horror, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Treacle Walker (2022), by Alan Garner, is a little book, a strange book, a layered book, a mystifying book, a linguistic romp of a book, a stimulating book, a delightful book. It may also be, to employ two of the many Google-necessitating words from its pages, a hurlothrumbo or lomperhomack, a macaroni or taradiddle of a book, though I’ll leave it to your own investigations as to whether any of those fit (if those few examples of Garner’s dialect didn’t scare you off,
January 15th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Alan Garner | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske
What struck me first about A Marvelous Light, (2022), Book One of Freya Marske’s THE LAST BINDING trilogy, was the style and narrative tone. Set in an alternate world in the last decade of the 19th century, A Marvelous Light could have featured Dorothy Sayers’s aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, if Wimsey were a magician and had sex with men. The descriptions and the dialogue sparkle, and the book seems inhabited with real (if, in many cases,
December 28th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Freya Marske | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Master of the Macabre by Russell Thorndike
Ever since I was a wee lad, I’ve been a fan of the type of motion picture known as the “anthology-horror film.” It was 1965’s Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors that first pulled me in back then, a product of the British studio Amicus, which would go on to deliver six more similar films over the next nine years. Oh … for those of you wondering what I mean by an “anthology-horror film,” simply stated, it is a type of picture with one overarching story line and numerous stand-alone side stories included.
December 26th, 2023. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | Russell Thorndike | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Reposting to include Marion’s new review.
Daniel Mason’s North Woods (2023) is a wonderfully and precisely crafted collection of related short stories that greatly impresses with its varied styles, vividly detailed descriptions, sharp sentence constructions, connecting echoes, and a few unexpected twists and turns. I would have preferred a bit more emotional depth at times, though several of the stories, particularly toward the end, offer up some more than a few moving scenes. Between those moments and Mason’s consummate craftsmanship,
December 7th, 2023. Bill Capossere and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Daniel Mason | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Hide: The Graphic Novel by Kiersten White (original author), Scott Peterson (adaptation), Veronica Fish (artist), and Andy Fish (artist)
Hide: The Graphic Novel is an adaptation of a prose novel that I have not read, so I cannot comment on the accuracy of the translation from one art form to another. However, I think Hide: The Graphic Novel stands well on its own. I only knew that this was a horror comic going in, and that was enough to interest me. The plot is an intriguing one: Fourteen strangers are competing for a $50,000 prize.
December 2nd, 2023. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Kiersten White | Comics, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo
Mammoths at the Gates (2023) is the fourth of Nghi Vo’s novellas set in the world of the Singing Hills Abbey. Chih, a cleric tasked with gathering oral histories of the world, has returned home after three years, to find old friends, great sorrow, and disruption. The source of the disruption is a pair of war mammoths and their warrior handlers, two sisters, who wait outside the abbey’s gates.
Once inside, Chih learns that most of the clerics have been sent to a distant project.
November 7th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Nghi Vo | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Starling House is the central mystery of Eden, Kentucky. Eden is a company town, and that company is Gravely Power, who provides energy to a wide swathe of the southeast. They also poison the air, soil and water of Eden. Periodically the government imposes fines, and the Gravelys pay them and move on. Starling House is an isolated mansion in the woods, close to an abandoned mine shaft that goes deep into the earth. There is less “history” about Starling House than there are rumors, and Opal,
November 1st, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Alix E. Harrow | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
COMMENT Was I hinting that? I wasn't aware of it. But now that you mention it.... 🤔
So it sounds like you're hinting Fox may have had three or so different incomplete stories that he stitched together,…
It's hardly a private conversation, Becky. You're welcome to add your 2 cents anytime!
If the state of the arts puzzles you, and you wonder why so many novels are "retellings" and formulaic rework,…
I picked my copy up last week and I can't wait to finish my current book and get started! I…