HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!

June 1 marks our lucky THIRTEENTH birthday!

Yep, we've been hanging out together (well, some of us) since June 2007!

To celebrate, we're giving away gifts!

FIVE commenters from the US will receive some FanLit BOOKMARKS (quite practical!) and a cozy FANLIT T-SHIRT (as long as we still have your size). Or, if you prefer, you may choose a book from our stacks.



You can leave any sort of comment -- a birthday wish, an admission of how many days/years you've been wasting your time edifying yourself at our site, suggestions for what you'd like to see happen at FanLit in the future, a festive natal day poem. Whatever! Just make sure to click the little notification box so you'll know if you won, or check... Read More

The Grand Tour by E. Catherine Tobler

E. Catherine Tobler created Jackson’s Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade, a carnival/circus where things are not necessarily what they seem… or in some cases, exactly what they seem, no matter how strange that might be. The stories appeared in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and now, in The Grand Tour: A Jackson’s Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade Collection (2020), Apex has gathered up nine of the tales, which traverse earth and time, as we meet Jackson and the people who find their way to the circus, and a few who leave, or seem to.

Story collections can be dicey. Fortunately, Tobler’s prose is excellent, and every one of these stories is filled with beautiful, beguiling language, powerful imagery, and complex characters, whether they are magical o... Read More

Reposting to include Rebecca's new review.

A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge

Here in the UK, Frances Hardinge is everywhere. Her new book, A Skinful of Shadows (2017), was plastered all over the London underground in the run-up to its publication, thrusting Hardinge into the mainstream.

I heard Hardinge talk about A Skinful of Shadows at a local bookshop and she admitted that she’d felt some pressure when writing. I can’t help wonder if this pressure somehow seeped into the novel as she wrote.

Like all of her books, A Skinful of Shadows is an adventure. There’s a plucky heroine, plenty of ghastly enemies and best of all, murderous ghosts. But the story lacked the originality of her previous work and felt alto... Read More

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Star Wars: Vader Down by Jason Aaron & Mike Deodato

It took me a while to figure out how Vader Down fit into the VADER series by Kieron Gillen that I was making my way through: turns out that this should be read after Vader and Shadows and Secrets, but before The Shu-Torun War (which is technically the third book in the VADER series). This is a crossover between the storylines in Gillen’s Vader-centric arc and those by Jason Aaron in his Rebellion-centric series.

Still with me? Okay, so Vader Down deals with Vader following up a lead on the pilot that destroyed the Death Star, and who in previous issues he found out was his son Luke Skywalker. Along with plans to build his own power base to undermine the Emperor’s authority, he now wants to hunt down Luke and tu... Read More

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

Tavia is a siren. This fact is enough trouble to her that she’s trying to contact the spirit of her grandmother (who was also a siren) to learn whether there’s any way to rid herself of the power.

Her best friend/adopted sister Effie isn’t really a mermaid; she just plays one at the Renaissance Faire. She’s a totally normal human — or so she thinks.

A Song Below Water (2020), by Bethany C. Morrow, is set in what is essentially our world in the present day, except that several types of magical beings are known to exist. Elokos are prestigious, admired. Sprites are annoying, invisible tricksters who play pranks on children. Sirens are feared and despised. Every known siren in recent years has been a black woman, which has led to a stigma being attach... Read More

The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant

There’s a scene in Kester Grant’s The Court of Miracles (2020) where an entire room of nobles is hypnotized by the head of the assassin’s guild into doing something horrific, but which they are wholly oblivious to. It’s an apt scene to note, because while this first book in the COURT OF MIRACLES trilogy is far from horrific (really, far from it), Grant is such a fluid writer that she lulls you into a sort of readerly trance, a smoothly flowing journey that carries you effortlessly along, leaving you if not oblivious at least uncaring with regard to the story’s several flaws. As such, it’s one of those occasional odd novels where I’m going to say there are lots of places it isn’t very good, but you still may find yourself enjoying it anyway.

The blurbs label it a retelling (of sorts) of Les Misérables,... Read More

Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Aurora Burning (2020), the second book in Amie Kaufman’s and Jay Kristoff’s young adult SF AURORA CYCLE series, follows the tension-filled, nonstop space adventures of the teenage crew of Squad 312, recent graduates of the Aurora Academy. In the first book, Aurora Rising, the crew visited the forbidden planet of Octavia III and discovered, to their horror, that an alien hivemind, called the Ra’haam, has taken over the planet and is bent, Borg-like, on assimilating all intelligent life in the galaxy (or, perhaps, more like the group consciousness alien in Read More

Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 2: Shadows and Secrets by Kieron Gillen & Salvador Larroca

Carrying on from the first Vader volume (which was simply called Vader) this compilation of issues further explores Vader’s attempts to pull together secret resources of his own, without the knowledge of his Imperial superiors. Having discovered that he has a son, Vader now wants more information on Luke Skywalker and to quietly undermine the Emperor himself.

Helping him in this endeavour is an amoral young archaeologist and thief named Doctor Aphra, and two droids who are clearly meant to be dark foils to C3-P0 and R2-D2: Triple Zero, a protocol droid with a sadistic streak (he lists his specialities as: “etiquette, customs, translation and torture”), and Beetee, an astromech who likes blowing things up. Oh, and a gang of bounty hunters... Read More

Reposting to include Marion's new review.

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Once upon a time there was a small group of uber-powerful folks who truly messed up the world. Luckily that was ages, sorry, I mean, Ages, ago. But now one of those ancient badass power users is potentially going to return and hoo boy is the world in trouble if he gathers all his power yet again. Thank the gods for the plucky group of scruffy underdogs who are definitely not a fellowship and who have decided to risk their lives to prevent the Dark Power’s rise. Anyone? Bueller?

OK, yes. We’ve all heard it before. So you might be forgiven if, upon learning that Robert Jackson Bennett’s newest title, Shorefall (sequel to the fantastic Read More