Previous SFF Author: Frank Aubrey
Speculative fiction in audiobook format.
Quest Crosstime by Andre Norton
Quest Crosstime (1965) is Andre Norton’s second and final story about Blake Walker, a man who has the precognitive ability to sense when he’s in danger. Quest Crosstime is combined with The Crossroads of Time (1956), the first novel about Blake Walker, in the Crosstime omnibus which was published by Baen books in 2008 and has recently been released in an audiobook edition by Tantor Media.
June 28th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Andre Norton | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
This Virtual Night by C.S. Friedman
C.S. Friedman’s This Virtual Night (2020) is billed as book two in her OUTWORLDS/ALIEN SHORES series but these novels are, so far, stand-alone stories set in the same universe. Thus, you don’t need to have read the first book, This Alien Shore (1998), though I’d recommend doing so anyway because it was fabulous. All you need to know about Friedman’s world is that, long ago, the humans who left Earth to colonize other galaxies evolved in ways that their fellow humans who remained on Earth find repulsive.
June 24th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | C.S. Friedman | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Crossroads of Time by Andre Norton
Recently, Tantor Audio has been releasing audiobook editions of many of Andre Norton’s stories which have been combined in omnibus editions originally published by Baen Books. I’ve been reviewing each novel separately because that’s our preference here at Fantasy Literature, but I love that readers can purchase these relatively short novels in cost-effective omnibus editions, and I am especially pleased that these stories are finally available in audiobook format.
Crosstime contains two stories about Blake Walker,
June 23rd, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Andre Norton | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
Anna Tromedlov (try reading that backwards) works at a temp agency that supplies minions to evil villains. Her expertise is in data analysis so, typically, her jobs involve spreadsheets and reports and she gets to work from home. This fits her personality nicely, plus it’s the safest way to work for an evil villain.
When her best friend June encourages her to take an on-site job, Anna agrees that it might be good for her. She is just beginning to add new skills to her resume when there’s a conflict between her boss and a superhero and she gets badly injured by the hero.
June 17th, 2021. Kat Hooper | Natalie Zina Walschots | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
War of the Maps by Paul McAuley
On an artificially created planet made up of numerous islands, a middle-aged man called the lucidor is stalking his prey. At first, we don’t know much about Remfrey He, the man the lucidor hunts, except that he’s an arrogant and corrupt man who, thanks to the lucidor’s detective work, was convicted and imprisoned years ago. But now he’s been set free because his skills will be helpful in fighting “the invasion,” a war with an unknown enemy which has brought genetically engineered monsters to the realm.
June 17th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Paul McAuley | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley
A couple of years ago I read Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife (2018) which was a finalist for the Locus Award in 2019. Set in a wealthy suburb, the story was a promoted as a “modern retelling of Beowulf” and told from the perspectives of the mothers. I admired this novel and was therefore eager to read Headley’s new translation of Beowulf which also happens to be a Locus Award finalist in the Horror category this year.
June 16th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Maria Dahvana Headley | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Nizhoni Begay wants to be a star, or at least popular. She’s hoping to make the game-winning score at her middle school basketball game but, instead, she’s humiliated when she gets distracted and gets hit in the face by the ball. The reason she was distracted was that she saw a man in the stands watching her. She could tell he was a monster. When that same man shows up at her house for dinner because he’s her dad’s new boss, Nizhoni tries to warn her father that he’s a monster but her father doesn’t believe her and seems very eager to please the monster.
June 15th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Rebecca Roanhorse | Audio, Children, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Patricia Campbell and her neighbors are housewives in Charleston, South Carolina. Looking for friendship and something to talk about other than their husbands, children, housekeeping, and other neighbors, they form a book club. True Crime is their genre of choice.
After the ladies read Helter Skelter, Patricia laments that nothing exciting ever happens in their neighborhood:
“But don’t you wish that something exciting would happen around here?” Patricia asked. “Just once?”
Grace raised her eyebrows at Patricia.
June 14th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Grady Hendrix | Audio, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
This week’s SHORTS column features some of the 2021 Locus and Hugo award finalists in the novelette and short story categories.
“Wait for Night” by Stephen Graham Jones (2020, free at Tor.com)
Chessup is a day laborer working as part of a crew outside of Boulder, Colorado, helping to clean up a creek that was filled with trash in the aftermath of a flood. At the end of the day, looking to borrow a battery from the crew’s bulldozer to jumpstart his old car, Chessup finds something very old tangled up in the roots of a tree that the bulldozer had pulled down.
June 10th, 2021. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Ken Liu, Naomi Kritzer, Stephen Graham Jones, Yoon Ha Lee | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Yadriel’s Latinx community in East Los Angeles practices brujería. The men are brujos who escort ghosts to their final resting place and the women are brujas who have healing powers. But Yadriel’s large close family has not supported his desire to be a brujo because he is transgender. Their community has strict gender roles, they don’t see him as a boy, and they don’t think the brujo magic will work for him (though the women’s bruja magic definitely doesn’t work for Yadriel).
Yadriel is determined to prove not only that he is a boy,
June 9th, 2021. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Aiden Thomas | Audio, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Previous SFF Author: Frank Aubrey
COMMENT Book #3 of this trilogy is very much a heist story, and I quite enjoyed it!
Pirate stories and heist stories... Do we ever get enough of them?
Very interesting, Ulrich! Thanks for clueing me in!
So happy to hear that you enjoyed this article, Spacewaves! It was something of a labor of love for me,…
I absolutely loved this exploration of Edwige Fenech's contributions to the giallo genre! Her unique blend of charm and thriller…