Previous SFF Author: Anthony Horowitz
Blackwater: The Complete Saga by Michael McDowell
Michael McDowell originally published the BLACKWATER horror series in six volumes (The Flood, The Levee, The House, The War, The Fortune, and Rain) in 1983. Some of the installments go for a pretty penny on the Internet these days, so it’s great that Valancourt Press released an omnibus edition, Blackwater: The Complete Saga (2017).
June 12th, 2020. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4.5 | Michael McDowell | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
Some time ago, I read a novel that promised to combine a man-vs.-nature survival narrative with a ghost story. It disappointed me, not delivering enough of either. When reading Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead, I couldn’t help thinking that this book was what I wanted that one to be. The Luminous Dead succeeds at both the (wo)man-vs.-nature stuff and the eerie goings-on — not to mention a character study of two complicated,
June 9th, 2020. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Caitlin Starling | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Phantoms of the Midway by Seanan McGuire (2019, anthologized in The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe). 2020 Locus award finalist (novelette).
Most kids dream of running away to join the carnival. Seventeen-year-old Aracely dreams of running away from the carnival. Her mother, Daisy, is the boss and the tattoo artist of the traveling fair,
June 8th, 2020. Kelly Lasiter and Tadiana Jones | Ann Leckie, Fonda Lee, Kelly Link, Seanan McGuire, Ted Chiang | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Solstice (2020), by Lorence Alison, is subtitled “A Tropical Horror Comedy” and is a thinly fictionalized take on the disastrous Fyre Festival, with the addition of an eldritch sea monster lurking beneath the waves. I wasn’t expecting high literature from it, just the proverbial “beach read” to distract myself from the fact that there is no beach anywhere near me (and if there were, it would probably be closed anyway). But the more I think about it, the more it just doesn’t work for me.
June 4th, 2020. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 2 | Lorence Alison | Horror, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
They say that the Undersea was the dwelling place of the gods. They say many things of the Myriad, and all of them are true. The gods were as real as the coastlines and currents and as merciless as the winds and whirlpools.
No one knows who or what the gods were, the giant creatures who lived in the sea and then, mysteriously, all died. But everyone knows that a piece of a dead god can make your fortune. Hark is still a child himself,
June 1st, 2020. Terry Weyna´s rating: 3.5 | Frances Hardinge | Horror, Stand-Alone, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Subterranean Press is reissuing Connie Willis’s moody and bleak novella Jack (1991), which was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo awards and has appeared in several anthologies over the years. It’s set during the London Blitz in WWII, one of Willis’ favorite settings for her works, including the time-travel novels Blackout and All Clear and the Nebula and Hugo award-winning novelette Fire Watch.
May 22nd, 2020. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4.5 | Connie Willis | Horror, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
SHORTS: Our column exploring free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. In this week’s column, we review more of the current crop of 2019 Nebula nominees in the short story and novelette categories.
“A Strange Uncertain Light” by G.V. Anderson (2019, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine). 2019 Nebula Award nominee (novelette).
Anne and Merritt have just been married, practically on impulse. Each of them has a problem: Merritt is a drunk, but Anne sees the ghosts of strangers at the moment of their death. As prosaic an activity as looking out a train window can give her a vision of a man caught between the rails and the wheels,
April 22nd, 2020. Terry Weyna and Tadiana Jones | Fran Wilde, Sarah Pinsker | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Catfish Lullaby (2019), a Nebula Award-nominated novella, might be described as Louisiana swamp monster folklore colliding with eldritch Lovecraftian horror. Author A.C. Wise (who also has a second Nebula nomination this year, for her short story “How the Trick is Done”) visits Caleb, the biracial, queer son of the local sheriff, at three key points in his life. We follow Caleb from childhood to adulthood as he navigates his friendship with Cere Royce, the daughter of a once-prominent and depraved local family, and they try to conquer the black magic that haunts her and has destroyed her family.
April 21st, 2020. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 4 | A.C. Wise | Horror, Short Fiction, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
The Twisted Ones (2019) begins with mild consternation: Melissa, who goes by “Mouse,” has the thankless task of taking a trip to backwoods North Carolina, with her loyal redbone coonhound Bongo for company, to clean out her late grandmother’s home. “It’ll be a mess,” her father says, in a massive understatement. Consternation shifts to deep dismay: Grandma was a hoarder. It’s even worse than normal, since her grandmother was a cruel and vicious person, and something of her evil still infuses her house,
April 9th, 2020. Tadiana Jones and Marion Deeds´s rating: 4 | T. Kingfisher | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed
If you’ve had the good fortune to read any of Premee Mohamed’s short fiction, you know it is strange, beautiful and often horrifying. In Beneath the Rising (2020), her first full-length novel, all these things are true. This adventure novel with tentacular monsters and evil Ancient Ones will sweep you along and get deeply under your skin.
Joanna Chambers, who goes by Johnny, is more than a genius and more than a prodigy. She might be a miracle.
March 31st, 2020. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Premee Mohamed | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: Anthony Horowitz
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.