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Cross Elizabeth Hand with Fire and Hemlock, and you might end up with something like Freda Warrington’s Elfland. This is the kind of big, sweeping modern faerie tale that you don’t see often on the adult shelves anymore. There’s been some beautiful work done in YA recently, but in the adult realm, the trend has been away from novels like this. And that’s a shame. Elfland is complex, rich, sensual, beautifully written, and sometimes heartbreaking.
April 7th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5, 5 | Freda Warrington | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A Fantasy Medley edited by Yanni Kuznia
FORMAT/INFO: A Fantasy Medley is 136 pages long divided over four short stories and is published by Subterranean Press in two editions: A fully clothbound hardcover limited to 3000 copies and a numbered hardcover limited to 200 copies and signed by the authors and editor. Dust jacket by Kristy Doherty.
ANALYSIS:
1) “Zen and the Art of Vampirism” by Kelley Armstrong. “Zen and the Art of Vampirism” is an urban fantasy tale with all of the usual trimmings including a female protagonist,
March 28th, 2009. Robert Thompson´s rating: 4.5 | C.E. Murphy, Kate Elliott, Kelley Armstrong, Robin Hobb | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Robin McKinley sure knows how to use the English language. We are in her spell from the beginning. Deerskin commences with Lissar’s nurse telling her a fairy tale — but the fairy tale is the story of how Lissar’s larger-than-life parents met. She is told from the very cradle what paragons her mother and father are, and yet she herself is ignored by them. McKinley seduces us with the the magical kingdom’s rarefied beauty and glamour — and also the coldness and rot at its core.
February 7th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Robin McKinley | SFF Reviews | no comments |
My favorite novel by J.V. Jones is The Barbed Coil, a stand-alone novel set in both 20th century Earth and a strange and distant world. It begins in a most unusual manner, and I didn’t think it would work for me, but I read on, and I was glad I did.
Tessa McCamfrey suffers from tinnitus, or a ringing in her ears. She is never entirely free of it, but at certain periods of her life she suffers from especially bad spells.
January 26th, 2009. Tia Nevitt (guest)´s rating: 4.5 | J.V. Jones | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Speculative fiction sometimes gets a bad rap for being nothing but “escapism.” While there are certainly plenty of “just for fun” books in the genre, what people sometimes forget is that sci-fi and fantasy have often been a place where writers can experiment with unusual prose styles and tackle controversial themes that might not go over well in mainstream, “realistic” fiction. Sylvia Kelso’s Riversend is an ambitious novel, blending dense, lyrical prose with a thought-provoking look at gender roles and unconventional relationships, and it’s a good story to boot.
January 25th, 2009. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Sylvia Kelso | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Decoy Princess by Dawn Cook
Princess Contessa of Constantinopolie has a pretty good life. She’s an expert shopper, has parents who love her and are good rulers, and is looking forward to her upcoming engagement to Prince Garett of Misdev. So what if a few pesky assassins try to get in her way? She’s been well trained to ward them off — she’s not worried.
Oh, but she should be. Prince Garett, not taking the advice of his father, arrives in Constantinopolie early, almost six full months before the formal engagement is announced.
January 14th, 2009. Guest´s rating: 4.5 | Dawn Cook | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines
I’m always a bit wary of books that take fairy tales as source materials. Too often, I’ve found, they fall into a few typical traps. One is they become enslaved by the structure of one cute explanation/cute twist per each plot point of the original fairy tale, so that the twists themselves become predictable: beat one, two, twist, beat one, two, twist. Another is they become so enamored in the humor aspect of their humorous retelling that they lose sight of the telling aspect — so the plot is unoriginal and dull.
January 2nd, 2009. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Jim C. Hines | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In this story of the Western Shore, we meet Memer, a 17 year old girl — a “siege-brat” — who lives in the occupied land of Ansul, a city of people who used to be peaceful, prosperous, and educated but who were overtaken 17 years ago by the illiterate Alds who consider all writing to be demonic. All of the Ansul literature, history, and other books were drowned… except for a small collection of books that has been saved and hidden in a secret room in the house of Galvamand and can only be accessed by the last two people in the Galva household — Sulter Galva (the Waylord) and Memer,
December 28th, 2008. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Ursula K. Le-Guin | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The first installment of Pamela Freeman‘s Castings trilogy may seem at first like a typical fantasy novel, with swords as everyone’s weapon of choice, horses as everyone’s mode of transportation, and copious amounts of ale and stew making up everyone’s diet. But it doesn’t take long before Blood Ties reveals itself to be quite different from the usual swords-and-sorcery realm: in its setting and atmosphere, in its plot and story-structure, and in its myriad of themes and ideas.
November 20th, 2008. Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Pamela Freeman | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
Midnight Never Comeis the story of two courts, and of two courtiers who must uncover a deadly secret that threatens both mortal and faerie England. Lune is a disgraced lady of the faerie court, trying to win her way back into the good graces of the cruel Queen Invidiana. Michael Deven is a young gentleman of Elizabeth I’s retinue, working with Elizabeth’s spymaster Walsingham to sniff out a “hidden player” in English politics. Neither is quite prepared for what they discover.
Marie Brennan has a lovely,
September 21st, 2008. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Marie Brennan | SFF Reviews | no comments |
That's what I think,too!
As an old fan of '60s-era Marvel comics, I must say that this book looks FUN!
COMMENT Book #3 of this trilogy is very much a heist story, and I quite enjoyed it!
Pirate stories and heist stories... Do we ever get enough of them?
Very interesting, Ulrich! Thanks for clueing me in!