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The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson
With Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Library of Broken Worlds, I found my first Hugo nomination for next year. Mind you, this is a year where I’ve read many good-to-great books. The Library of Broken Worlds is not only a brilliant story beautifully written, it is truly original in its conception and execution, by a writer who is a master of words.
Set a few hundred years in the future, the story is told by our narrator and main character,
September 6th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Alaya Dawn Johnson | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
Against a global backdrop that seethes with cyberpunk-style action, Ray Nayler’s 2022 Locus Award winning debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, gives us a philosophical and deeply thoughtful story about science, specifically first contact.
Sometime in the 22nd century, global corporations run huge AI-managed fishing boats that are scraping the last bits of protein from the planet’s oceans. At the same time, the world is exploring in-system planetary colonization, and the advancement of android tech. Governments have changed and much of the world answers to the UN Directorate Governance.
August 8th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Ray Nayler | Locus Award | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Bridge by Lauren Beukes
A quick glance at the jacket copy of Lauren Beukes’s 2023 weird thriller Bridge might make the reader think of the Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All at Once. After all, this is a mother-daughter story set in the multiverse. Beukes weaves into her story a few elements EEAAO didn’t have, like a parasite and a serial killer, or more accurately a collective of serial killers. The core of the book is a mother-daughter story, but it is filled with chills,
July 31st, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Lauren Beukes | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Night Fever: We are our own worst enemies
Brubaker and Phillips have done it again in their latest offering: They have given us another noir comic that is as stunning visually as it is engaging narratively. In Night Fever, Jonathan Webb, a businessman in Europe, cannot sleep, and his insomnia leads him to venture out into the night. This journey into the darkness is both literal and figurative, of course, and his drug- and alcohol-fueled adventures take a dangerous turn as he starts finding out that not everyone he meets after the sun goes down has his best interests in mind.
July 22nd, 2023. Brad Hawley´s rating: 5 | Ed Brubaker | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |
A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
“There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.”
A couple of weeks ago there was a big discussion on Twitter about “cozy horror.” I followed it, but never really understood what “cozy” was supposed to be. I feel confident saying that T. Kingfisher is the queen of Cozy Horror, though —if “cozy” means there’s a house (haunted or not) and the ending has some bit of optimism. With 2023’s A House With Good Bones,
June 30th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | T. Kingfisher | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle
This is a glorious month for Peter S. Beagle fans, with The Way Home (2023) offering up two novellas set in the same world as The Last Unicorn, and not one but two retrospective collections of stories: The Essential Peter S. Beagle: Volumes I and II. Even better, one of those two novellas is brand new and serves to show that Beagle remains one of our most elegant of fantasists.
May 31st, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Peter S. Beagle | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
All the Traps of Earth by Clifford D. Simak
Looking back, it strikes me with some surprise that, up until very recently, I had not read any of sci-fi Grand Master Clifford D. Simak’s shorter work in over 40 years. Oh, I had read any number of the author’s novels during those four decades, but since reading his 1968 collection So Bright the Vision back in 1981, none of his work of a shorter length. Coming to my rescue in this regard was the Wisconsin-born writer’s All the Traps of Earth,
May 18th, 2023. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Clifford D. Simak | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence
A topical, deeply thoughtful, and wonderfully written love letter to books, to libraries, to the power of storytelling, to fantasy, and to epigrams, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence will be appearing on my best of 2023 list at the end of this year. That’s not to say it’s perfect. After all, I now have to wait for book two in this new series. And, well, I don’t wanna wait. Me want. Me want now.
At nearly 600 pages,
May 16th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Mark Lawrence | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green
In The Possibility of Life, journalist Jaime Green takes us on an expansive and open-minded exploration of whether or not life may have formed elsewhere in the universe and if so, what that life might be like. If this were only that book, it would be well worth reading. But Green makes two choices that elevate her work beyond a good exobiology book easily recommended and into a fantastic medley of science,
May 5th, 2023. Bill Capossere´s rating: 5 | Non-fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Between by Tananarive Due
The Between, first published in 1995, is Tananarive Due’s classic horror novel, about a man who must risk his life to save his family from malignant forces, both supernatural and all too human. In the mid-1990s, Hilton James suddenly starts experiencing the dreadful dreams he had before, early in his marriage. Time with a therapist and a hypnosis session seemed to help then, but now the episodes are worse, and he begins to have waking dreams, until sometimes he can’t tell when and where he is.
April 27th, 2023. Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | Tananarive Due | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Looking forward to reading the review.
Always my pleasure, Marion! I'm almost finished with Book #3 now, and hope to be reporting on it very shortly....
After reading your review, I'm quite sure I never read this one, or Book Three for that matter. I loved…
What a fantastic review! I loved how you highlighted the blend of action and character development in "Foundryside." The intricate…
On her blog, "Aunt Beast" says she is in the early stages of working on another Tinfoil Dossier novella, so…