Stumptown (Volume One) by Greg Rucka (writer) and Matthew Southworth (artist) Stumptown volume one collects the first four issues of Greg Rucka’s excellent comic book series about P.I. Dex Parios. Clearly influenced by Hammett, Chandler, MacDonald, and Parker, Rucka takes the tradition of the hardboiled P.I. and puts a female in the lead. With excellent […]
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Shadows in the Sun by Chad Oliver Although it’s been almost seven years since I read Chad Oliver’s masterful fourth novel, Unearthly Neighbors (1960), such are the evocative atmosphere and compelling alien depictions in that book that I still manage to remember it quite well. And indeed, Unearthly Neighbors just might be the most convincingly […]
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White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link The vast majority of story collections by their nature vary in relative strength from piece to piece. I’m always happy when I fully enjoy more than half of the stories and thrilled if that hits three-quarters. Well, there are seven stories total in White Cat, Black Dog (2023), […]
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The Atlantic Abomination by John Brunner In his 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes, English author John Wyndham gave his readers a tale concerning aliens who land on Earth and proceed to terrorize the planet from their bases on the ocean floor. But this, of course, was not the last time that a British writer would […]
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The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty Shannon Chakraborty, author of the recommended THE DAEVAVAD TRILOGY, is back with the start of a new series, and if the first book, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, is any measure, it’s sure to be as fun and magic filled as the first (sharp-eyed readers will at […]
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Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth Arch-Conspirator (2023), by Veronica Roth, is a tautly written reimagining of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. While some will probably wish for a bit more world-building detail and deeper development of some themes, fans of the novella form will find a lot to like here. Set in a post-apocalyptic, far-future refuge where the land […]
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Conquerors From the Darkness by Robert Silverberg As I believe I’ve mentioned elsewhere, 1959 was the year when future sci-fi Grand Master – not to mention multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner – Robert Silverberg, chafing at the genre’s limitations, decided to retire from the field. By that point, he’d already written, since his professional […]
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The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett Toward the end of 2015, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the so-called “Queen of Space Opera,” Leigh Brackett, I decided to read (and, in several cases, reread) 10 of this great author’s works, both novels and short-story collections. One of Brackett’s books that I did […]
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Reposting to include new reviews by Skye and Bill. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells Martha Wells continues her popular and highly-acclaimed MURDERBOT DIARIES series with another novella, Fugitive Telemetry (2021), which actually takes place before the only novel in the series so far, Network Effect. (So you could read this one before that novel, but […]
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The Giant Anthology of Science Fiction edited by Oscar J. Friend & Leo Margulies For the past five years, all the books that I have read, be they novels or short-story collections, and whether in the field of sci-fi, fantasy or horror, have had one thing in common: The were all written during the period […]
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Conan: Blood of the Serpent by S.M. Stirling To say I was thrilled to discover a new Conan novel is the understatement of my year or maybe even decade. Conan of Cimmeria, barbarian, thief, warrior, outlaw, mercenary, reaver, king, Robert E. Howard’s legendary hero, the one who made him the father of Sword and Sorcery […]
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House of the Restless Dead and Other Stories by Hugh B. Cave In my ongoing quest to read every one of the selections spotlighted in Jones & Newman’s excellent overview volume Horror: 100 Best Books, I have come to the realization that some of those books are a lot harder to obtain than others. Oh, […]
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Network Effect by Martha Wells Martha Wells’ Murderbot has been gathering enthusiastic fans (which would be certain to have Murderbot hiding behind its opaque armored faceplate), along with multiple Nebula, Hugo and other awards and nominations, as each of the first four novellas in the MURDERBOT DIARIES series has been published over the last three years. […]
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The Hourglass Throne by K.D. Edwards The Hourglass Throne, published in 2022, is the third book in K.D. Edwards’s THE TAROT SEQUENCE, following the adventures of Atlanteans transplanted to Nantucket Island. This review may contain spoilers for The Last Sun and The Hanged Man, the two previous books. I recommend reading both earlier books; at […]
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The Killing God by Stephen R. Donaldson I was not, to put it mildly, a fan of Seventh Decimate, the opening book of Stephen R. Donaldson’s GREAT GODS WAR trilogy. Book two, The War Within (2022), was an improvement, but marginally. The good news is that book three, The Killing God, is a big jump […]
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The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova 2021’s The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina was practically a perfect book for me. It’s filled with fantastical magic that baffled me and thrilled me, and it brought to mind the early books of Isabel Allende. The Montoya family were complicated and realistic, in a real-world setting that […]
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Echo of a Curse by R.R. Ryan xIn several of my earlier musings here on FanLit, I made reference to the list that editor/author Karl Edward Wagner released in the pages of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine back in the summer of ’83; the so-called Wagner 39 List. This overview of KEW’s favorite horror […]
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The October Faction: Volume 2 by Steve Niles (writer) and Damien Worm (artist) The October Faction volume two picks up right where volume one ended, and though there is a third volume in the initial run, there is good closure at the end of volume two compared to volume one, which left us wondering what […]
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The Nectar of Nightmares by Craig Laurance Gidney It’s horror season for me, the time of year where I usually settle in with a cozy haunted house story, but sometimes branch out into the region of the genuinely horrifying or the truly weird. Craig Laurance Gidney’s short story collection The Nectar of Nightmares, published in […]
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The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling) Detective duo, Strike and Robin, are back for the sixth instalment of the CORMORAN STRIKE series, and they’ve got their work cut out for them. They’re presented with a case unlike any they’ve come across before and what ensues is a twisting mystery that might just […]
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What Lives in the Woods by Lindsay Currie Ginny — or Gin — Anderson is looking forward to the summer writing workshop she’s going to attend with her best friend Erica, in their hometown of Chicago, until Dad upends the family’s plans because of a job. He’d going to restore a century-old house-turned-hotel, The Woodmoor […]
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The October Faction (Volume one) by by Steve Niles (writer) and Damien Worm (art) The October Faction is a family affair. Meet the Allans: goth girl and daughter Vivian who has just graduated from high school; Geoff, the son who is college-age but not in college; Frederick, the professor-husband and father and former monster hunter; […]
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Abe Sapien (volume 4): The Shape of Things to Come by Mike Mignola (writer), Scott Allie (writer), Sebastian Fiumara (art), and Max Fiumara (art), Dave Stewart (colors), and Clem Robins (letters) This volume consists of two stories: “The Shape of Things to Come” and “To the Last Man.” In the first story, we find ourselves […]
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Dark Sanctuary by H.B. Gregory A very happy day it was for me – but a very unfortunate day for my bank account – when I first discovered the website for Ramble House books. Specializing in impossibly obscure sci-fi, horror, mystery and “weird menace” titles from the first half of the 20th century, the publisher […]
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Ithaca by Claire North Ithaca (2022), by Claire North, is another in a recent spate line of Greek myth retellings, with the source material here being The Odyssey and the House of Atreus storyline (Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Electra, Orestes). North greatly narrows the focus here in setting, time, and plot, lasering in what was happening at […]
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