Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 4.5

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The Calling: A supernatural thriller

The Calling by David Mack

Urban fantasy is replete with different, sometimes catchy, permutations of a standard bunch of mythological/fantastic beings who happen to turn up in our world. In The Calling, David Mack tries something pretty original by bringing us (instead of vampires and werewolves) guardian angels and their evil counterparts.

Tom Nash is your everyman who happens to have a mystical gift: he hears people’s prayers. And through the prayers of a little girl, he is Called to New York City to help the angels of Heaven fight the demons of Hell.

Poison Ink: Smart, creative, entertaining storytelling

Poison Ink by Christopher Golden

Poison Ink is the first YA novel that I’ve ever read by Christopher Golden, and from start to finish, I couldn’t be more impressed. As usual, the first thing that stands out is the author’s top-notch writing. Which in this case encompasses his ability to convincingly adopt the personality of a sixteen-year-old female high school student; faithfully capture domestic, social and high school life — including different cliques, lunch ladies, texting, flirting, and peer pressure — and a gift for witty banter:

“My Clever plan for world domination failed.”
“So what next,

In Ashes Lie: This is a story about power

In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan

In Ashes Lie continues the story of the Onyx Court, a faerie city situated just below London, and the Court’s dealings with London’s mortals. Lune, who became queen of the Onyx Court in Midnight Never Come, reigns still. Her mortal consort, Michael Deven, is long dead. Lune has chosen another man to act as her official consort and liaison with the mortal world, but the role is political only.

In Ashes Lie follows Lune and her allies through the end of Charles I’s troubled reign,

July 5th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Marie Brennan | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

Wild Thyme, Green Magic: Cagey heroes & exotic locales

Wild Thyme, Green Magic by Jack Vance

I’m a big fan of Jack Vance’s wild imagination and his “high-end” writing style (his description, as I learned in this book). So, I was happy to get a copy of Wild Thyme, Green Magic, an assortment of his fantasy and science fiction tales which have previously been published in several SFF magazines and have now been compiled and edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan and published by Subterranean Press.

Lord Tophet: Better than its predecessor

Lord Tophet by Gregory Frost

Creatively Shadowbridge is a marvelous work of invention, embodied by the imaginative Shadowbridge setting — a world of linked spiraling spans of bridges on which all impossibilities can happen — the intriguing art of shadow play, and the many enchanting tales and fables that are interwoven into the main narrative. Yet because of issues that I had with not being able to emotionally connect with the characters, worldbuilding that I felt could have been more penetrating, uneven pacing and narrative structure, and an unsatisfying cliffhanger,

July 5th, 2009. Robert Thompson´s rating: 4.5 | Gregory Frost | SFF Reviews | no comments |

White Is for Witching: Haunting and poetic

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

White Is for Witching blends gothic horror, racial politics, and the older, bloodier sort of fairy tales into a deeply unsettling novel. The story opens with a passage intentionally reminiscent of “Snow White,” describing the mysterious imprisonment? disappearance? death? of the heroine, Miranda Silver. From there, we move backward in time, to the point when the events leading to Miranda’s fate began.

The story is told from several points of view, all of them seeing events from different perspectives,

Firethorn: Sarah Micklem’s prose is beautiful

Firethorn by Sarah Micklem

Reading the publisher’s blurb quoted above, you might expect a very different book from this one. It’s not that it’s inaccurate, per se. It’s just that all of the events in the blurb happen at the very beginning of the story. By page 15, Luck has fled the estate and is hiding out in the Kingswood, trying to survive on what she can forage. After what can best be described as a shamanic near-death experience, Luck believes she has been chosen by Ardor, the god of fire, for some unknown purpose,

June 24th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Sarah Micklem | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Little Gods: An elegant collection by Tim Pratt

Little Gods by Tim Pratt

A friend of mine simply adores Tim Pratt and so my curiosity was piqued when I saw this short story collection in the bookstore. Little Gods isn’t thick by any means (at under 300 pages) but it does include 14 short stories.

First off, I really, really love the book design. Second, the book has an introduction by Michaela Rossner, and then an afterword in which Tim Pratt talks about his stories. As for the stories themselves, the adjective that best describes them is “elegant.” Whether Pratt’s stories are very,

Slathbog’s Gold: Adventurers Wanted

Slathbog’s Gold by M.L. Forman

Alex Taylor is not having a good day. He didn’t mean to drop all the glasses and break them. Besides it was his cousin’s fault. Thinking that a brisk walk would clear his head, Alex wanders down a street and happens to see a sign in the window of a bookshop: Adventurers Wanted, apply within.

Curious, Alex enters the store and before he knows it he is signing a contract to go on an adventure with an Elf and a Dwarf. With the rest of his company Alex goes on the adventure of a lifetime searching for the evil dragon Slathbog and pursuing his legendary treasure.

Escapement: The main course

Escapement by Jay Lake

In my opinion, Jay Lake’s Mainspring was a novel full of great potential that was hindered by inconsistent writing and execution. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and was looking forward to reading the sequel. Happily, everything that worked so well in the first book has been retained in Escapement, while most of the problems were corrected, resulting in a greatly improved sequel that is everything Mainspring could have been and much more.

I had several issues with Mainspring — notably the description of Jay’s clockwork universe,

May 21st, 2009. Robert Thompson´s rating: 4.5 | Jay Lake | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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