Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 4

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King of Shadows: Historical fantasy for children

King of Shadows by Susan Cooper

Nat Fields is a young boy with a tragic family history who has just joined a new theatre group. Run by the eccentric Arby Babbage, Nat finds solace and escape from his past with the rehearsals of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Nat is to play the part of Puck, and despite some minor difficulties, Nat is happy with his role as an actor, especially as the director plans to make the performance as loyal as possible to the original performances (including having boys play the part of women).


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Aurian: Fine popcorn entertainment

Aurian by Maggie Furey

Aurian is a highly entertaining story that, with a boundless sense of “sky’s the limit” confidence, unapologetically runs the gamut from heroic high adventure to bodice-ripper (which is, I’m told, a very pejorative term amongst the romance set, but hey). It’s a great guilty pleasure. Don’t think I’m belittling this book, people. Sure, it’s about as arch and melodramatic a novel as you’re likely to find without the Silhouette imprint on the cover. But Maggie Furey, in what was her debut novel,


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Disciple of the Dog: Brimming with sharp dialogue and humor

Disciple of the Dog by R. Scott Bakker

CLASSIFICATION: Featuring a first-person narrative drenched in cynicism, a noir-esque mystery to solve, and sarcastic humor, Disciple of the Dog is a contemporary private eye novel influenced by the classics, but stamped with R. Scott Bakker’s own unique flavor.

FORMAT/INFO: Disciple of the Dog is 288 pages long divided over fourteen chapters (tracks) with titles like “One Hundred Thousand Cigarettes” and “The Law of Social Gravitation”. Narration is in the first-person exclusively via the private investigator,


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Magic at the Gate: Gets better the further you read

Magic at the Gate by Devon Monk

I haven’t read Magic on the Storm, the fourth book in the Allie Beckstrom series, but I gather it ended on a massive cliffhanger. The opening of book five, Magic at the Gate, finds Allie in the land of the dead. She has ventured into death to find the soul of her boyfriend, Zayvion, who is in a coma after the events of the previous book.

I normally love to read about underworld journeys,


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The Well at the World’s End: Important piece of fantasy literature history

The Well at the World’s End by William Morris

Notes: Because the copyright has expired, you can get The Well at the World’s End for free on the Kindle at Amazon or at Project Gutenberg. Make sure you have the entire book. Some publishers have divided it into two installments.

William Morris, a textile artist, was enamored of medieval chivalric romances, so The Well at the World’s End, published in 1896, is his contribution to that dying literary genre.


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Highborn: Brynna has a lot of acclimating to do…

Highborn by Yvonne Navarro

Highborn begins with a vividly described scene of Hell. Astarte, a fallen angel, watches the daily round of horrors from her bloodstained tower, and decides she wants out. We then cut to Astarte, having escaped Hell and calling herself Brynna Malak, as she adjusts to life in modern-day Chicago. Brynna can understand any language she hears. She’s less adept at navigating other aspects of human life: how to feel empathy, how to pet a dog, and why you shouldn’t just wander away from the scene when you witness a murder.


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Side Jobs: Dresden short stories on audio

Side Jobs by Jim Butcher

Side Jobs is a collection of short stories from The Dresden Files. Some of the stories have been previously published in other collections, and some are being published for the first time. The timeline for the stories range from before Storm Front to after Changes, so aspects from every possible point in time in Harry Dresden’s life are represented.

There isn’t much of a central theme to Side Jobs,


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Steampunk: Quick entertaining education on the subgenre du jour

Steampunk edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer

Steampunk is an anthology of, well, steampunk stories, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. If you hurry, you can still get to this first anthology before the second one, Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, appears in mid November. Based on the quality of the stories in this collection, I heartily recommend checking it out, especially if you’ve been a bit bemused (or possibly amused) by all the people wearing odd Victorian costumes at SFF conventions nowadays,


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Heir of Novron: Just a plain ol’ fashioned good time

Editor’s note: Heir of Novron was originally published as Wintertide and Percepliquis.

Heir of Novron by Michael J. Sullivan

Wintertide
 is the next to last book in THE RIYRIA REVELATIONS series. As with the rest of these books, this is a fairly self-contained story, but at the same time the reader can feel the momentum building toward an explosive conclusion. Hadrian is forced into a deadly deal to kill an honorable knight by making it look accidental in a tournament,


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Perseus: A great way to introduce children to Greek myths

Perseus by Geraldine McCaughrean

There are probably much shorter retellings of this hero-story, and there are probably quite a few longer ones — but if you wish to avoid the simplicity of a picture book and the long-windedness of an epic, then I don’t think you’d find any reason to complain about Geraldine McCaughrean‘s version of the Perseus myth. In fact, I would go so far as to say that its fidelity to the well-known myth and the lyrical prose in which it is told make it the quintessential retelling of the ancient story (perhaps a premature claim considering I’m far from having read them all,


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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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