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The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
The second novel by Charlie Jane Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night (2019), surprised me. Having read her fantastical debut novel All the Birds in the Sky, and her sociological science fiction novella Rock Manning Goes for Broke, I was not expecting a story set on an exo-planet and a society vastly distant from Earth in time and space.
March 5th, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Charlie Jane Anders | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
I really loved Robin Sloan’s Sourdough (2017), but not everyone will. You probably will if you’re a foodie (I am), an introvert (I am), and a bit geeky (I am). If you love sourdough bread (I do) and magical realism (I do), you’ve just got to read Sourdough. And you must try the audio version. It’s amazing.
Lois is new to San Francisco. She moved from Michigan,
March 1st, 2019. Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Robin Sloan | Audio, Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
If you enjoy horror in all its many forms, or just plain Weird Stuff, odds are good that you’ve at least heard of (if not been sucked into the fandom vortex of) the highly-acclaimed podcast Welcome to Night Vale. Its creators, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, have spent the last five years expanding upon a central premise — there’s a desert town in the southwestern region of the United States, where all manner of strange things happen and time doesn’t really exist — through twice-monthly podcast episodes.
February 8th, 2019. Jana Nyman and Skye Walker´s rating: 5 | Joseph Fink | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Criminal (Vol. 6): The Last of the Innocent Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
The Last of the Innocent is volume six in the Criminal series by Ed Brubaker, and it tells the sordid tale of Riley Richards, another perfect noir character from this series of comics. What makes this an unusual noir tale is that the story, which takes place in 1982, is blended with flashbacks from the late 1960s that are told as if the characters are from the Archie comics. Even the style of the art changes to an Archie-style imitation,
February 2nd, 2019. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin continues to delight and amaze with How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? (2018), a powerful and thoughtful collection of twenty-two stories. Some stories metaphorically shook me by the collar and demanded whether I’m doing enough to better the world around me, some surprised me with a combination of sweetness and self-assurance, and some just flat-out brought me to tears.
Jemisin’s introduction is particularly useful, as she looks back over her authorial journey (so far) and provides tidbits about which stories collected here are interrelated,
January 25th, 2019. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | N.K. Jemisin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Empire of Sand is one of those rare debut novels that doesn’t read at all like a first effort; Tasha Suri’s prose is strong and assured, her characters are nuanced and multi-layered, and her world-building is lushly detailed. Since Empire of Sand’s publication in November 2018, a sequel has been announced, along with the news of its being optioned for a television series, which is quite impressive for a book that’s only two months old as of this writing.
January 23rd, 2019. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Tasha Suri | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Criminal (Vol. 5): The Sinners by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Tracy Lawless, whom we met in Criminal (vol. 2): Lawless, returns in The Sinners, volume five of Criminal. In this volume, he’s working for Sebastian Hyde, the man behind most of the organized crime in the city. He doesn’t want to work for Hyde, but he’s given his word (due to reasons explained in volume two), and Tracy always keeps his word — which keeps getting him into trouble.
January 19th, 2019. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Paper Girls (Vol 5) by Brian K Vaughan (writer) & Cliff Chiang (artist)
This is the fifth volume of Brian K. Vaughan’s PAPER GIRLS, and the larger story is really starting to take shape. The early volumes were quite elliptical and disorienting, so it’s great to be able to understand the various storylines and the larger world-building that is revealed, and get to know and like the four main protagonists even more as they are thrown into a series of tense adventures across time.
January 11th, 2019. Stuart Starosta´s rating: 5 | Brian K. Vaughan | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi
In The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi introduced us to an interstellar empire called The Interdependency, a collection of far-flung human habitats connected by a quantum event called the Flow. The Interdependency is ruled by an Emperox, and a new Emperox, one who never considered herself in the line of succession and never wanted the role, had just been crowned. At this time, Grayland II, as she named herself, discovered that the Flow was starting to collapse.
January 9th, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | John Scalzi | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
Wild Seed (1980) was written last in Octavia Butler’s 5-book PATTERNIST series, but comes first in chronology. The next books, by internal chronology, are Mind of My Mind (1977), Clay’s Ark (1984), and Patternmaster (1976). Butler was later unsatisfied with Survivor (1978) and elected to not have it reprinted, so I will focus on the main four volumes. Wild Seed is an origin story set well before later books and can stand on its own.
January 8th, 2019. Stuart Starosta, Marion Deeds and Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5, 5 | Octavia Butler | Audio, Edge | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.