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The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Tim Powers’ fourth novel, 1983’s The Anubis Gates, is a book that I had been meaning to read for years. Chosen for inclusion in both David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels and Jones & Newman’s Horror: 100 Best Books, as well as the recipient of the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award in 1984, the book came with plenty of good word of mouth, to say the least.
June 18th, 2018. Sandy Ferber, Katie Burton and Stuart Starosta´s rating: 2, 5 | Tim Powers | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 13 comments |
Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor
From its stunning cover to the triumphant final word (“Gooooooooal!”), Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Warrior (2017) continues to deliver on the promise of Book One, Akata Witch. Sunny, an American-Nigerian girl currently living in Nigeria with her family, has embraced her heritage as a Leopard Person, one of a magical lineage, but things to do not get easier for her or for her magical friends, the oha coven. Ekwensu, the evil force that Sunny faced and vanquished in the first book,
June 16th, 2018. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Nnedi Okorafor | Locus Award, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr (2017) is a brilliant novel. It is lovely, eerie, and heartachingly elegiac. It is also deeply weird.
I want the reader to understand me perfectly here. When I say “weird,” I do not mean it’s experimental, or iconoclastic, or that you’ll feel awkward explaining to your friends why you wanted to read a book about a magic bird. All of those things might be true (to greater or lesser degrees),
June 15th, 2018. Tim Scheidler´s rating: 5 | John Crowley | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Fatale (Vol. 1): Death Chases Me by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Death Chases Me is the first of five volumes in the Fatale series by Ed Brubaker and his frequent collaborator Sean Phillips. In the prologue to this story, Nicolas Lash is attending the funeral of his Godfather, Dominic Raines. Dominic was known as a hack writer of detective novels, but still, when Nicolas, as executor of the Raines estate, returns to Dominic’s home and finds the manuscript of Dominic’s unpublished first novel,
June 9th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Marion and Terry discuss Head On. Marion’s words are in black and Terry’s are in blue.
Head On by John Scalzi
Marion: John Scalzi’s 2018 novel Head On brings back FBI team Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, this time investigating a murder that should be impossible. Hilketa is a violent game where the objective is to tear off the head of a specific opposing player and throw it through the goal posts, while defensive players whale on each other with swords and chainsaws.
June 7th, 2018. Marion Deeds, Terry Weyna and Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | John Scalzi | Audio | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Claire North brings a haunting and all-too-realistic vision of the near-future to life for her most recent novel, 84K (2018), in which an already-existing real world injustice is pushed to its natural limit: every possible crime and infraction are assigned a monetary value, from murder to petty theft and everything in between, and wealthy citizens escape punishment by simply paying the appropriate fine. Those who cannot pay their fine are, at best, interned in working penitentiaries known as “the patty line,” making cosmetics and frozen dinners and shiny baubles that they could never afford,
June 1st, 2018. Jana Nyman´s rating: 5 | Claire North | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
When Clay Cooper returns home from work to find his old friend, Gabriel, waiting on him, he knows something is wrong. He learns that Gabe’s headstrong daughter has run off to be a mercenary and ended up in a city besieged by an overwhelming horde of monsters. Gabe is now desperate to get their “band,” Saga, back together and go save her. Saga used to be the most famous mercenary band ever. Tales of Slowhand Clay, Golden Gabe, Arcandius Moog, Matrick Skulldrummer, and Ganelon are still told in the pubs throughout the kingdom to this day.
April 24th, 2018. Greg Hersom and Tim Scheidler´s rating: 5 | Nicholas Eames | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Demo by Brian Wood & Becky Cloonan
Demo is a collection of eighteen coming-of-age short stories about young people. It’s a giant collection of close to five hundred pages. Usually, but not always, one of the characters has a “super power,” but none of the stories is a superhero story. None of these characters tries to be “super” in any way — characters do not run — or fly — around saving others from villains, nor are there any global threats that need attending. In most instances, these stories deal with everyday issues,
April 14th, 2018. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum
Behind the scenes of our lives, pulling the strings for the benefit of humanity, are the people assigned as “coincidence makers,” arranging the events that need to happen in people’s lives, both on a personal and larger scale. It may be making a particular love connection by arranging that two people meet at the right time, or taking steps to help an accountant find his true work in being a poet, or ensuring that an assassin is pointed in the right path to later do society a larger good.
March 16th, 2018. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Yoav Blum | Edge, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 8 comments |
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
All the Light We Cannot See (2014) opens in the basement of a hotel in the port city of Saint-Malo in occupied France, 1944. The city is being bombed. Eighteen-year-old Nazi soldier Werner Pfennig is trapped below tonnes of rubble, his chances of survival increasingly slim, whilst across town, a blind French girl Marie-Laure is hiding in her attic. The pair is bound by a curiosity in natural science, years of surreptitious radio broadcasts, and a diamond that may bestow immortality upon its holder.
March 12th, 2018. Ray McKenzie and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Anthony Doerr | Edge, 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…