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A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle
And so, I have just come to the end of another lot of nine volumes from the remarkable publisher known as Valancourt Books. And what an ennead they were! In chronological order: Ernest G. Henham’s The Feast of Bacchus (1907), in which a pair of comedy and tragedy masks influences whoever comes into their orbit; L. P. Hartley’s Facial Justice (1960),
December 27th, 2024. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Lisa Tuttle | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Reposting to include Marion’s new review.
Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb
FitzChivalry Farseer’s life keeps getting worse. He has once again barely — and I mean just barely — survived Uncle Regal’s machinations. As Assassin’s Quest, the third book in Robin Hobb’s FARSEER trilogy, opens, Fitz’s situation seems hopeless. Only a couple of people know he still lives and Molly is not one of them. She’s gone, and it seems safest for Fitz to let her live in ignorance.
December 2nd, 2024. Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Robin Hobb | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture by Barret Klein
In The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture (2024), Barret Klein explores the impact of insects on human society, an impact both broad and deep. The text is almost always fascinating and offers up more than enough representative examples of his points, while the numerous included illustrations and photographs add a wonderful enhancement to the text.
After a preface which offers a personal touch, and an introduction that gives us some foundational sense of context and numbers (sixty percent of identified animal species are insects,
November 29th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Typically I write a summary in my own words about a book I’m reviewing, but I would like to start this review by sharing the publisher’s description because it plays an important role in how I initially perceived Fourth Wing (2023) by Rebecca Yarros:
Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from USA Today bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history.
November 25th, 2024. Justin Blazier´s rating: 4 | Rebecca Yarros | Audio | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine
2024’s Your Shadow Half Remains provides a seductive and disturbing journey of psychological horror, as we visit the mind of an isolated young woman in a post-apocalyptic world, where one look into another human’s eyes can kill both of you.
Your Shadow Half Remains is plainly inspired by Josh Malerman’s Bird Box, only in Moriane’s work, the thing you must not look at is a human face.
November 22nd, 2024. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | Sunny Moraine | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Scarlet Boy by Arthur Calder-Marshall
In the mood for an offbeat haunted-house novel to keep you company during this fall season … or during any season; a beautifully written tale of supernatural horror that you have most likely never heard of before? Well, then, I have a doozy of a suggestion for you … namely The Scarlet Boy, by the British author Arthur Calder-Marshall! The book has been unfortunately neglected for over six decades now, and a quick look at its sporadic publishing history will help explain why it might be an unknown quantity for you and the general reading public today,
November 21st, 2024. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Arthur Calder-Marshall | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Poison Ivy: Thorns by Kody Keplinger (writer), Sara Kipin (artist), Jeremy Lawson (colorist), and Steve Wands (letterer)
Keplinger’s Poison Ivy: Thorns is a wonderful young adult graphic novel from DC illustrated in a unique style by Sara Kipin. The graphic novel is divided into four sections: Toxic, Roots, Bloom, and Ivy. It takes a look at Poison Ivy when she was Pamela Isley, a struggling high school student, and it gives her a different origin story than some of the usual ones that are presented in other DC storylines,
November 9th, 2024. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4 | Comics, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star by Pierre Sokolsky
In The Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star, Pierre Sokolsky does a nice job in covering the history of solar mechanics and exploration, concisely and clearly explaining things in his own language but also, in one of my favorite aspects of the book, offering up a number of lengthy passages from his source material, letting us hear those early thinkers in their own words.
The early sections on pre-Scientific Revolution observations are detailed and often fascinating,
November 8th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest G. Henham
Tenebrae (1898), by the London-born writer Ernest G. Henham, had turned out to be one of my favorite reading experiences of 2023, and I had been wanting to read another book from this same author ever since. A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, Tenebrae was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century’s worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books.
September 23rd, 2024. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Ernest G. Henham | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
FanLit welcomes a new guest reviewer: Serena Labrecque! Find out more about Serena at the bottom of this post.
The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy & Cary Pietsch
The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins (2018) is the first in an ongoing graphic novel series based on the McElroy family’s D&D campaign. It’s a convenient way to enjoy the story without listening to 69 podcast episodes: over 82 hours of content.
Magnus Burnsides (human fighter),
September 20th, 2024. Serena Labrecque´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
No, Paul, sorry, I don't believe I've read any books by Aickman; perhaps the odd story. I'm generally not a…
I like the ambiguities when the story leading up to them has inserted various dreadful possibilities in the back of…
COMMENT Marion, I expect that my half-hearted praise here (at best) will not exactly endear me to all of Ramsey…
Ramsay Campbell was all the rage in my circle of horror-reading/writing friends in the 1980s, and they extolled the ambiguity.…
Oh boy, I wish I could escape that Neil Gaiman article, too. I knew already he’d done reprehensible things but…