Previous SFF Author: Anthony Horowitz
The Brink by James S. Murray & Darren Wearmouth
Human monsters take precedence over the creature type of monsters in The Brink (2019), the sequel to last year’s SF horror novel Awakened. (Some spoilers for the first book are in this review, but are also in the publisher’s blurb for this book, so they’re nearly impossible to avoid.) Awakened was pulpy fun if you like SF horror and mysterious, murderous threats lurking beneath the surface of the earth.
August 8th, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 2 | James S. Murray | Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Awakened by James S. Murray & Darren Wearmouth
Grady McGowan has been logging lots of overtime, running a tunnel-boring machine beneath the Hudson River for the massive Z Train subway line extension that will link New York City to New Jersey with an underground express train. They’re even building a state-of-the-art underwater Visitors’ Pavilion in the middle of the Upper Bay. It’s hard work for Grady, but everything is going well … until a huge hole opens up underneath Grady and his machine.
Three years later, the mayor of NYC,
August 2nd, 2019. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | James S. Murray | Horror | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Silvie’s summer vacation is a nightmare. She, her abusive father, and her browbeaten mother have joined a college professor and his three-person Experimental Archaeology class in the northern woods of England, where they are trying to live like the ancients. For the class, it’s a learning experience and something of a lark, at least at first. For Silvie’s father, it’s deadly serious; he’d love to live like that all the time, as he imagines Iron Age Britain to be the world of his racist and sexist dreams.
July 30th, 2019. Kelly Lasiter´s rating: 4 | Sarah Moss | Edge, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
The Invasion by Peadar O’Guilin
The Invasion (2018), a finalist for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Young Adult Novel, is the sequel to Peadar O’Guilin’s The Call, which you’ll need to read first. (This review will spoil some of the plot of that first novel.) Once again I listened to the audiobook version (Scholastic Audio) which was nicely performed by Irish actor Amy Shiels.
At the end of The Call,
July 25th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 2.5 | Peadar O'Guilin | Audio, Horror, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
I picked up Peadar O’Guilin’s The Call (2016) because its sequel, The Invasion, is a finalist for a Hugo Award this year (Best YA Fantasy Novel). Though I often enjoy Young Adult fiction, this book is probably not something I would have noticed had it not been for the Hugo nomination.
The Sidhe are finally taking revenge on the Irish for banishing them to The Grey Lands centuries ago. Ireland has been cut off from the rest of the world and every Irish teenager will,
July 22nd, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Peadar O'Guilin | Audio, Horror, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney
I don’t know how to categorize Craig Laurance Gidney’s 2019 novel A Spectral Hue. It has an eerie, otherworldly story, and it’s published by a noted small horror press, but I didn’t think it was horror. I didn’t think it was fantasy either. And maybe categories don’t really matter for this slim novel that gave me a genuinely original reading experience.
Gidney’s story is set in a small town, a village really, nearly surrounded by marshlands, in Maryland.
July 2nd, 2019. Marion Deeds´s rating: 4.5 | Craig Laurance Gidney | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son. Everyone on the same page? Okay… Hill has delivered a deeply satisfying and literate novel in NOS4A2. He is absolutely his own man, and he’s very good. But he’s also picked up some tricks from his father. He writes children well, especially those that have some unique ability. In this case, Victoria McQueen has a special gift: she can find lost things. And this skill tends to transport her to wherever those lost things happen to be.
July 1st, 2019. Jason Golomb and Marion Deeds´s rating: 3.5 | Joe Hill | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 13 comments |
SHORTS: In this week’s column we review several of the Hugo-nominated short fiction works, including four of the Retro Hugo nominees.
“When We Were Starless” by Simone Heller (2018, free at Clarkesworld, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue). 2018 Hugo award nominee (novelette).
In a fallen, future version of our Earth, Mink’s tribe of nomadic, intelligent lizards wanders the land, living at a bare subsistence level and frequently threatened by physical dangers, like giant verminous creatures called rustbreed. One of the tribe’s treasures is their weavers,
June 26th, 2019. Tadiana Jones, Bill Capossere and Sandy Ferber | C.L. Moore, Edmond Hamilton, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Tide of Stone by Kaaron Warren
As usual with DNFs (Did Not Finish), this will be a quite brief review as I have too much respect for the achievement of finishing a novel to belabor its bad points. Or, in this case, bad point really, for what caused me to give up on Kaaron Warren’s Tide of Stone, twice actually, was voice.
In Tempuston, Australia, the town has taken to punishing its worst criminals in two ways. The first is relatively mundane — they imprison them in the Time Ball Tower set across a small stretch of water.
June 20th, 2019. Bill Capossere´s rating: 1 | Kaaron Warren | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Listener by Robert McCammon
Robert McCammon’s The Listener (2018), a finalist for this year’s Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, takes us to New Orleans during the Great Depression. There we meet:
June 19th, 2019. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Robert McCammon | Audio, Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
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.