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The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie
To my surprise and delight, Joe Abercrombie’s A Little Hatred, the first book in his THE AGE OF MADNESS series, was one of the best books I read last year. As I said in my review, “it’s got everything I’m looking for in a fantasy novel,” including a large cast of interesting and multi-faceted characters, a fascinating setting (a world on the brink of an industrial revolution), and an exciting,
October 30th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Joe Abercrombie | Audio | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Ever read a book and immediately wish that you’d been able to read it in school, rather than [insert inaccessible book of choice]? For me, Nancy Kress’s 2020 novella Sea Change, with its gutsy-yet-conflicted heroine and all-too-real near-future global catastrophes, is exactly the kind of book I wish I’d been handed way back when.
Renata Black is a lawyer, handling cases for citizens of the Quinault Nation in the Pacific Northwest. She’s cultivated friendships among them,
October 22nd, 2020. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Nancy Kress | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
There are two ways this review could go: either the controversy surrounding Troubled Blood (2020) and the internet backlash against J.K. Rowling for casting one of the main suspects as a cross-dresser could be ignored, or the entire review could be hinged upon it. It would be disingenuous to do the former and reductive to do the latter, so let’s leave it at this: if readers want the down-low on the dispute, Google it (and there’s plenty of content out there).
October 20th, 2020. Ray McKenzie´s rating: 5 | J.K. Rowling | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Meteorite: How Stones from Outer Space Made Our World by Tim Gregory
Meteorite: The Stones from Outer Space That Made Our World (2020), by Tim Gregory, does what the best popular science books do — uses a vibrant, engaging and distinctive voice to both broadly and deeply inform the lay reader without dumbing down the science down too much while placing it in historical context. Check, check, and check. I already can’t wait for what Gregory turns to in his next non-fiction work.
The title tells you all you need to know about the subject matter.
October 16th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
When I was a kid growing up in Montana, hunting was a steadfast part of my family’s life. Elk, deer (mulies and white-tails), antelope, pheasant — if you wanted to eat it, you had to go out into the snow-covered woods before the break of dawn and hope that you would find something early enough that you wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the day dragging the cleaned carcass back to your truck. There were rules, of course: respect nature to the point of veneration;
October 15th, 2020. Jana Nyman and Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Stephen Graham Jones | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
Megan Whalen Turner’s QUEEN’S THIEF young adult fantasy series, a masterwork of twisting plots, deceptive plans, and occasional divine interventions from the first book to the last, winds to a close with Return of the Thief (2020), twenty-four years after the publication of The Thief. Return of the Thief introduces us to a new narrator, Pheris, oldest grandson and nominally the heir of Baron Erondites,
October 6th, 2020. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Megan Whalen Turner | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Baltimore (Vol. 1): The Plague Ships by Mike Mignola (writer), Christopher Golden (writer), Ben Stenbeck (artist), Dave Stewart (colors), & Clem Robins (letters)
In volume one of Baltimore, we meet a tough, rugged man with a wooden leg. At the beginning of the book, we witness Lord Baltimore’s chasing vampires in a coastal town in France in 1916. The town has been struck by the plague as well as vampires. The night is dark, and Baltimore is in the midst of hunting a hoard of them. Though he will kill any of them he can,
October 3rd, 2020. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Mike Mignola | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Note: This review contains spoilers for Six of Crows, the first book in this duology.
Crooked Kingdom (2016) picks up the story begun in Six of Crows and takes off like ― well, there are no freight trains in this world, so ― a runaway Grisha on jurda parem. In Six of Crows, teenage crime lord Kaz Brekker and his handpicked group of five pulled off a near-impossible heist,
September 25th, 2020. Tadiana Jones, Rebecca Fisher and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Leigh Bardugo | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Given the success of her debut, it would be impossible to write about Erin Morgenstern‘s eagerly awaited follow-up without alluding to The Night Circus (2011). The bestseller accrued a mass following of ‘Rêveurs’ – the self-styled fanbase, named after the followers of the circus in the book. It inspired a formidable amount of tattoos and artwork on Pinterest, as well as being translated into thirty-seven languages, no less. It was always going to be a hard act to follow,
September 22nd, 2020. Ray McKenzie, Marion Deeds and Jana Nyman´s rating: 3.5, 5 | Erin Morgenstern | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
If the recent television adaptation of Lovecraft Country (2017) is anything like the source material, I think I’m going to enjoy it immensely. Matt Ruff’s novel of interconnected tales is well-written, compelling, horrifying (all the more so because the Lovecraftian horrors experienced by the novel’s African-American characters are not that much worse than the everyday evil of Jim Crow-era America), insightful, and, at times, even funny.
Korean War veteran Atticus Turner, a fan of pulpy sci-fi and horror novels written by the likes of H.P.
September 21st, 2020. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Matt Ruff | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
What a fascinating exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! I love how the post highlights her unique…
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…