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Herland: A very fine feminist utopian novel with some real fantasy elements

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman‘s Herland is a lost-world fantasy in the Haggardian tradition with a decided twist: It functions primarily as a discourse on the supposed but not necessarily actual differences between the two sexes, and as a feminist screed in the utopian genre. Written in 1915, the novel was initially serialized in the pages of Gilman’s own monthly magazine, The Forerunner, a publication whose main agenda was to further Gilman’s ideas of feminism and socialism.

April 13th, 2015. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

The Quillan Games: Another exciting PENDRAGON story

The Quillan Games by D.J. MacHale

The Quillan Games is the seventh novel in D.J. MacHale’s PENDRAGON series. Bobby is now on Quillan, one of the most unappealing places we’ve been to so far. Here a large corporation called BLOK (think Wal-Mart) has price-busted everyone else out of business until BLOK basically owns and operates the entire territory. Everyone is poor (BLOK pays low wages) and they are merely surviving. But there is a way to get money. Kids who are willing to risk it, or who are sold off by their families,

Dandelion Wine: A perfectly-distilled small-town summer

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Can you be nostalgic for a place you never lived in, for a time long gone before you were born? I certainly never lived in Waukegan, Illinois in the summer of 1928 as a 12-year old boy named Douglas Spalding, but Ray Bradbury has perfectly evoked a magical world of a long-lost Midwest small town as seen from the eyes of a bright, energetic young boy.

You would think small town life is fairly boring and uneventful, but in the lyrical hands of Bradbury,

The Rivers of Zadaa: MacHale gets this series back on track

The Rivers of Zadaa by D.J. MacHale

With The Rivers of Zadaa, the sixth book in his PENDRAGON series for young adults, D.J. MacHale gets the series back on track after a disappointingly preachy fifth book. If you haven’t read the previous books, but plan to, I advise you to read no further in this review. It’s impossible to talk about The Rivers of Zadaa without spoiling some of the plot of the previous books.

This time Bobby and Saint Dane are battling it out on Zadaa,

The Buried Giant: I Enjoyed It. Others Might Not.

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I enjoyed it. Others might not. I suppose I could put that title on a lot of my reviews without sacrificing much for accuracy, but I mean it to be suggestive here that The Buried Giant is going to be a bit divisive. It’s a well-crafted book, certainly, and it has as much thematic heft to keep anyone happy, but whether or not it’s an appealing book may be a bit less cut-and-dried.

The story, in brief, is as follows: sometime in early British history,

Midnight Blue-Light Special: Distant relatives and dancing mice

Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire

Midnight Blue-Light Special (2013), book two in Seanan McGuire’s INCRYPTID series, wraps up some plot points, deepens some characters and expands the world of the stories. McGuire takes the expected “The Covenant Strikes Back” plot, but incorporates a few nice twists along the way.

The Covenant of St. George is a group dedicated to a “scorched earth” policy toward magical creatures, working hard to exterminate any cryptid race, no matter how harmless or,

April 9th, 2015. Marion Deeds and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Seanan McGuire | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Slaves of Sleep: Not an E-Meter in sight

Slaves of Sleep by L. Ron Hubbard

Potential readers of L. Ron Hubbard‘s Slaves of Sleep who might be put off by the author’s association with the cult of Dianetics and Scientology need not be concerned here. This novel first appeared in Unknown magazine in 1939, more than a decade before Hubbard’s first Dianetics article was published (in Astounding Science Fiction) in May 1950. Thus, in Slaves of Sleep, there’s not a mention of “auditors,” “clears” or “E-meters” to be found.

Childhood’s End: The Overlords have a plan for us

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

There’s something very comforting in the SF novels of Arthur C. Clarke, my favorite of the Big Three SF writers of the Golden Age (the other two being Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov). His stories are clearly-written, unembellished, and precise, and they focus on science, ideas, and plot. Though some claim his characters are fairly wooden, I don’t see it that way. They tend to be fairly level-headed and logical, and focus on handling the situations on hand in an intelligent manner.

Black Water: The plot suffers for the sake of the Message

Black Water by D.J. MacHale

In Black Water, the fifth book in D.J. MacHale’s PENDRAGON series, the rules seem to be changing. All the things we thought we knew about how the flumes, the territories, the Travelers, and the acolytes work are different. Saint Dane, the villain, has brought that deadly poison he used on Cloral (in The Lost City of Faar) through the flume to use in the beautiful but dangerous territory of Eelong. Bobby Pendragon figures that if Saint Dane has broken the rules,

Bill chats with Dr. Liam Burke about comic book film adaptations

Dr. Liam Burke is the author of The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood’s Leading Genre, a thoroughly excellent examination of that topic and one I highly recommend for both fans and non-fans of comics (thus the five-star review). Dr. Burke generously took the time to answer a few questions I had after reading his book and his responses were as clearly edifying as I had expected.

Bill: It could be argued that Marvel has so far had more success in adapting their catalogue to film in comparison to DC.

April 7th, 2015. Bill Capossere | Comics | Author Interviews | 2 comments |

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Recent Discussion:

David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
Bill Capossere on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
We’re in total agreement David!
David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Marion Deeds on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.