Mystery Society by Steve Niles (writer) and Fiona Staples (artist)

If you are looking for a light, funny read with beautiful art, you should check out Mystery Society by Steve Niles and Fiona Staples. The basic story sounds like it should be written seriously, but Niles turns to wit instead. The Mystery Society is a renegade group devoted to debunking myths (or verifying them), revealing military secrets, and exposing the lies of reporters (who have themselves been lied to, as one character points out). What’s amusing? The team includes not just psychic twin sisters with a mysterious secret and a woman bit by a ghoul who calls herself “Secret Skull,” but also the brain of Jules Verne housed in a robot body (with — I kid you not — a “butt jet”).

The relationship between the two main characters is what makes this book wor... Read More

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

I consider the Man Booker Prize to be one of the most reliable guides to finding excellent work, much more so than say the Pulitzer or the National Book Award. And so when the long list comes out I dutifully copy it and think about picking up some of them eventually (usually when they’re out of hardcover). But when the shortlist is revealed, I’ll usually leap on those titles and try to read as many as possible as soon as possible. I’ve rarely been disappointed. This year, I’ve worked my way through several, and so far, Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being is ... Read More

Well, it's nearly the end of the year and we are eager to hear about your favorite reads of 2013.

What is the best book you read in 2013 and why did you love it? It doesn't have to be a book that was published in 2013 and it doesn't have to be speculative fiction, either. We just want to share some great reading material.

Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.

(And don't forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our Fanlit Faves page and our 5-Star SFF page.)

As always, one commenter will choose a book from our stacks. (We just adde... Read More

Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk

Magic to the Bone is the first book in Devon Monk’s Allie Beckstrom series of urban fantasy. I think this series is now finished and Monk has moved on to a new one featuring a spin-off character. I came to the party late, but I’m glad I have all the Beckstrom books ahead of me, because I really enjoyed this one.

Monk lets us know in the first paragraph that her characters inhabit a world that functions much as ours does, and yet differently.
It was the morning of my twenty-fifth birthday, and all I wanted was a decent cup of coffee, a hot breakfast, and a couple of hours away from the stink of used magic that seeped through the walls of my apartment every time it rained.
Allie is nearly six feet tall, breath-takingly beautiful, brilliantly snarky. She could be irritating (and often she is irritating) except that Monk has her hobbling around in pain, usually in the r... Read More

Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough

Two things drew me to Sarah Pinborough’s Mayhem. First, the cover — exceptionally elegant and very fitting for this 19th century tale. Second, Jack the Ripper. If for some reason you are unaware of who he was, Jack was a serial killer in late 19th century London who targeted female prostitutes and murdered them in brutal ways. He killed at least five women, likely more, but get this — he was never caught. This anonymity led to widespread terror throughout the area for years to come. Mayhem is not the story of Jack, though, but one of a new killer, dubbed by some as The Thames Killer and as The Torso Killer by others. Though there are similarities between Jack’s killings and those of the newcomer, primarily that they both target women, the protagonist, Dr. Thomas Bond, knows that there is indeed a second killer in the London slums who keeps his victims’ heads as ... Read More

Welcome to Christmas-is-Officially-a-Week-Away mania, in which there are many lists made and gift guides hurriedly compiled. Unfortunately for me, most of these lists only apply to me, rather than the people I desperately need to find last-minute gifts for.

Lists and awards

There’s only one piece of award news this week: The Carl Brandon Parallax and Kindred Awards are open for nominations now, which recognizes the best speculative fiction dealing with race and ethnicity in 2013.

But what we lack in awards, we make up for in massive mid-December listing. There’s so many lists that I’m pulling out my emergency stash of bullet points:

Bookish.com’s list of the best sci-fi and fantasy of the year includes some familiar titles, but also some excellent mini-awards li... Read More

Key Out of Time by Andre Norton

Key Out of Time is the fourth book in Andre Norton’s TIME TRADERS series. Ross Murdock is once again the hero (he was not present in the previous book). This time he’s on the planet Hawaika which is being settled by the United States. Ross is accompanied by Gordon Ashe and, because this planet has a lot of ocean, Karara, a Polynesian girl who has telepathic dolphin companions.

When Hawaika turns out to be different from what they expected, Ross, Ashe and Karara begin to investigate. What happened to the people who used to live there? Could the enigmatic aliens they call the “Baldies” have anything to do with their disappearance? The trio decides to go back in time to learn about the planet’s history, but when the time gate is destroyed in a storm, they end up in the past with no way to get back. There they get split up, have separate adventures, get caught in the middle of a war b... Read More

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s 1965 Dune was an overwhelming success, winning awards and selling millions of copies. Little did readers know, however, that it was only the beginning of the Family Atreides saga. Picking up events roughly a decade after Paul’s ascension to Emperor, Dune Messiah is the story of his descent from power. Herbert knocks the hero he created off his pedestal, so readers should be prepared for many changes in the story — and not all are for the better.

Dune Messiah continues the saga of the Atreides family in epic, soap-operatic fashion. Paul, having expanded his power to over much of the known universe since becoming Emperor in Dune, is nevertheless helpless to prevent the religious fanaticism and destruction caused by his Fremen followers, drawing the hatred and ire of the opposition in the process. Chani, now his concubine, is unable to con... Read More

The Doctor and the Dinosaurs by Mike Resnick

The Doctor and the Dinosaurs, by Mike Resnick, is part of his WEIRD WEST series, featuring Theodore Roosevelt in an American frontier where colonial westward expansion was delayed for many decades by native magic. I read this book because I remember Resnick as being a writer with interesting ideas; “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge,” was good, and Kirinyaga was thought-provoking. With The Doctor and the Dinosaurs, I was disappointed. I felt like I was in an overloaded, underpowered cargo plane that was lumbering down the runway, gathering speed but never getting airborne.

The “doctor” of the title is Doc Holliday, famous gunfighter and gambler, who is coughing away the last days of his life in a tuberculosis sanitarium. He is visited by the Apache shaman Geronimo (Geronimo is not a war chief in this reality). Geronimo needs his help, and he rest... Read More

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

Chosen for inclusion in both David Pringle's Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels and Cawthorn & Moorcock's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, Three Hearts and Three Lions had long been on my "must read someday" list. This compactly written epic of "hard fantasy" was first serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953 and released in an expanded book format in 1961. Author Poul Anderson was seemingly well suited to write this tale. The son of Scan... Read More