Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker
The Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale
It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of most urban fantasy. I tend to find problems with almost every urban fantasy book I’ve tried to read. When I got this book in the mail, I kind of rolled my eyes and shot it to the top of my “to be read” pile so I could get it over with fast. I didn’t expect to actually enjoy this book. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d open this anthology and think,
July 25th, 2017. Sarah Chorn´s rating: 4 | Carrie Vaughn, Charles De_Lint, Emma Bull, Francesca Lia Block, Holly Black, Jeffrey Ford, Joe R. Lansdale, Kelley Armstrong, Neil Gaiman, Patricia Briggs, Peter S. Beagle, Steven R. Boyett, Suzy McKee Charnas, Tim Powers | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
“As Good as New” by Charlie Jane Anders (2014, free at Tor.com, 99c Kindle version)
Marisol Guzmán, a pre-med student who decided that being a doctor was a better career choice than a playwright, is saved from the end of the world only because she’s housecleaning a mansion when massive earthquakes began.
July 24th, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Arthur C. Clarke, Charlie Jane Anders, Kat Howard, Seanan McGuire | Audio, Locus Award, Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway (2016) introduces the reader to a reality in which some children get swept away to other worlds. These worlds of whimsy or darkness (and everything in between) become home to the children so much so that they are devastated if they are forced to leave. If they do come back to our world, a fortunate few may find kindred spirits at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the setting of that first novella.
July 12th, 2017. Skye Walker and Tadiana Jones´s rating: 5 | Seanan McGuire | Short Fiction, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde
Fran Wilde’s novelette The Jewel and Her Lapidary was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards this year. I listened to the 1.75 hour long audiobook version produced by Macmillan Audio and narrated by Mahvesh Murad.
I loved the setting of this story — a kingdom that is protected by powerful gems which can be heard and gently manipulated by lapidaries, people who have a genetic predisposition for connecting with the gems.
July 6th, 2017. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Fran Wilde | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
“The Evaluators: To Trade with Aliens, You Must Adapt” by N.K. Jemisin (2016, free on Wired)
About two hundred years in our future, humanity is engaged in exploring other planets and worlds and meeting alien civilizations. Wei Aiuha is part of a team that is engaging in discussions with a newly discovered alien race, the Manka, to see if humans can develop a relationship with the Manka and engage in some profitable trade with them. Back on earth, Thandiwe Solomon is trying to decipher Aiuha’s personal logs from her meetings with the Manka two years earlier.
July 3rd, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Katie Burton | N.K. Jemisin, Neil Gaiman | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
In Search of Lost Time by Karen Heuler
Hildy, who’s been experiencing odd gaps in her awareness, is hit with the news that she has cancer of the Tempora, a (made-up) part of the brain where the body experiences time. Her chemotherapy has an odd side effect: Hildy can now see auras around people in the form of colorful mists and vapors. What’s more, she finds that she can pull away bits of aura from other people and inhale it. It gives her the feelings and memories from the person she took the bit of aura from.
July 3rd, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 2.5 | Karen Heuler | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Black Dog Short Stories by Rachel Neumeier
This set of four short stories is an interlude in Rachel Neumeier’s BLACK DOG universe, where werewolves ― more properly known in this world as black dogs ― are adjusting to a world where humans are now aware of them, after an interspecies war that wiped out the world’s vampires and decimated many of the black dog packs. To the black dogs’ dismay, destroying the vampires also destroyed a type of mental mist or miasma produced by the vampires that kept humans from recognizing the magical creatures around them.
June 27th, 2017. Tadiana Jones´s rating: 3 | Rachel Neumeier | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
“A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny (1963, text and audio free on EscapePod, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). 1964 Hugo nominee (short fiction)
In this classic and much-anthologized tale of life on Mars, Gallinger, a brilliant linguist and poet with an antagonistic personality, is part of an Earth mission to study the humanoid Martian natives.
June 19th, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
The Waiting Stars by Aliette de Bodard (2013, free to read online or download on author’s website). 2013 Nebula award winner and 2014 Hugo award nominee (novelette)
In this 2013 Nebula award-winning story, set in the 22nd century, Aliette de Bodard weaves together two narratives that at first seem unconnected but in the end, of course, are. The first concerns a woman’s exploration of a derelict spaceship in a graveyard of spaceships in an isolated corner of space controlled by the Outsiders.
June 5th, 2017. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper | Aliette De_Bodard, Allen Steele, Barbara Barnett, Sarah Pinsker, Tobias Buckell | Audio, Nebula Award, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.
You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay, Alyssa Wong (2016, free at Uncanny, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue) 2017 Nebula and 2016 Hugo award nominee (novelette)
Alyssa Wong sets her novelette You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay in a Western mining town, focusing this second-person tale on Ellis,
May 29th, 2017. Bill Capossere, Tadiana Jones, Kat Hooper and Marion Deeds | Antonia Honeywell, Karl Schroeder, Poul Anderson, Tobias Buckell | Audio, Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |
Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker
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.