Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 4

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Schrödinger’s Kitten: Hugo and Nebula winning story

Schrödinger’s Kitten by George Alec Effinger

Jehan is a pretty 12-year-old Islamic girl who sees visions of her own possible futures. These visions suggest that she will be raped in an alley, disowned by her fundamentalist Muslim father, and forced to live as a whore until she dies. Or she could kill her potential rapist first, but if she does that she will be executed, unless somebody saves her by paying the blood price… There are too many “ifs” and too many potential paths and, as a child, Jehan is haunted by all the possibilities and her knowledge that something bad will happen,

Ajjiit: Dark Dreams of the Ancient Arctic

Ajjiit: Dark Dreams of the Ancient Arctic by Sean Tinsley and Rachel Qitsualik

Ajjiit: Dark Dreams of the Ancient Arctic, by Sean Tinsley and Rachel Qitsualik, is a collection of fantasy short stories based on Inuit myth and culture. It isn’t often I come across wholly unfamiliar fantasy backgrounds, creatures, or images and it really was a pleasure to wander through the utter strangeness of these stories. They took me places I didn’t expect to go: not to the snowy arctic landscape I imagined,

May 15th, 2012. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

After the Apocalypse: Stories like jewels

After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh

I’ve read Maureen McHugh’s “Useless Things” at least three times now, and I admire it more with each rereading. It appears just a bit less than halfway through McHugh’s thought-provoking short story collection, After the Apocalypse. The first-person narrator is a woman living well outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a time when the United States seems on the brink of collapse: the economy is terrible, and water is extremely scarce in the Southwest — a time that doesn’t feel very far away from today.

Summoning the Night: Snap up on sight

Summoning the Night by Jenn Bennett

Summoning the Night is the second book in Jenn Bennett’s ARCADIA BELL series. It follows Kindling the Moon and is just as good as its predecessor; with this book Bennett has cemented this series’ place on my “snap up on sight” list.

The main plot this time around is that Cady is manipulated into doing an investigation for the Hellfire Club. The teenage children of Hellfire members are vanishing, and the club’s leader,

May 9th, 2012. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Jenn Bennett | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Reunion: A lovely story

Reunion by Rick Hautala

As we grow older, we tend to think of childhood as a golden time, when the hours poured through our fingers like water, glistening and plentiful. Summers were especially wonderful, those days when school was out and there was nothing to do but play. But when we call up specific memories, they never seem quite so golden; our friends never seem quite such good friends; and there are terrors that we have worked hard to forget. Perhaps that’s why so many books have been written about that time when we transition from childhood to young adulthood,

Bitterblue: Cashore delivers great YA heroines

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue is the third book in Kristin Cashore’s series that began with Graceling and continued with Fire, both excellent novels (I gave them 5 stars and 4.5 stars respectively). Bitterblue is not quite as good, but the drop-off is slight, resulting in another strong read and a more than satisfying continuation.

Bitterblue picks up some years after Graceling.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories: Six doozies

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories by Tim Powers

Tim Powers does not often write short fiction, but when he does, he comes up with doozies. The Bible Repairman and Other Stories contains a mere six stories, but each one is so well-crafted that it will stick in your brain, giving you odd jabs now and then, twisting a thought or causing goosebumps.

“The Bible Repairman” is about Torrez, a man who makes his living “fixing” Bibles: carefully “scorch[ing] out the verses the customers found intolerable,

The Immortal Rules: YA page-turner

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

A plague has killed off much of the human race, and now vampires rule, keeping the remaining humans under tight control to ensure a steady blood supply. Allie Sekemoto lives on the outskirts of New Covington, a vampire-ruled city. She’s part of a ragtag gang of street kids who survive by scavenging and stealing. And she hates vampires. That is, until the day she is mortally wounded and brought back as one of them.

The Immortal Rules follows Allie as she learns how to live as a vampire (still on the run,

Dead Harvest: Supernatural noir at its best

Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm

Chris F. Holm’s first novel, Dead Harvest, is supernatural noir at its best. Sam Thornton, who is as surely named for Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade as he is for the Hebrew judge of the Bible, is the best sort of hero to serve as the basis for a series (THE COLLECTOR): despite being damned, he still has a strong sense of right and wrong, and refuses to do wrong whenever he has the option.

Fuzzy Nation: A successful re-write of Piper’s classic

Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

When Jack Holloway’s dog blows up a cliff during a prospecting mission on the planet Zarathustra, Jack loses his contract with ZaraCorp. Fortunately, inside the cliff he discovers the biggest vein of precious gems that have ever been found on the planet and he gets to take a percentage of the profits as finder’s fee. Things start to get complicated when Jack returns home to discover that his house has been invaded by a fuzzy mammal that seems a lot smarter than he should be on this planet that has no sapient creatures.

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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Recent Discussion:

David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
Bill Capossere on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
We’re in total agreement David!
David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.