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Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds

Elysium Fire (2018) is the sequel to Alastair Reynolds’ The Prefect (now renamed Aurora Rising to designate it as part of the PREFECT DREYFUS series), a complex and detailed police procedural set in the Glitter Band of his REVELATION SPACE series, set before the Melding Plague that destroyed the 10,000 orbitals that sported every conceivable political system, all run by real-time neurally-based electronic democratic voting systems that allow citizens to weigh in on each issue and decision on how to ru... Read More

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The Surgeon of Souls and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Leslie Bellem

In my last two book reviews, I discussed a pair of characters who were amongst the most popular during the era of the pulp magazine: The Spider, who was featured in 118 novels that appeared in The Spider magazine from 1933 - ’43, and Doc Savage, who appeared in no fewer than 181 novels in the pages of Doc Savage Magazine from 1933 - ’49. Today, however, I am here to discuss still another pulp character, but one who does not enjoy anything near the renown of those other two. That character is Dr. Zarkov, the self-styled Surgeon of Souls, one of the many pulp-era characters created by the remarkably prolific, Philadelphia-born author Robert Leslie Bellem... Read More

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Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski

“The story goes on. The tale never ends.”

For those of us who can’t get enough of Geralt of Rivia (better known as The Witcher), Andrzej Sapkowski offers Season of Storms (2013 in Polish, 2018 in English), a stand-alone prequel novel. This would be a fine place to start for WITCHER newbies, though its story is not one of the better ones. I recommend starting with The Last Wish and coming back to Season of Storms once you’ve become a fan. I have a feeling that many WITCHER readers appreciate this novel more for its feelings of nostalgia than for the actual story... Read More

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Chaos Choreography by Seanan McGuire

This review will contain spoilers for the first two INCRYPTID books, Discount Armageddon and Midnight Blue-Light Special.

Seanan McGuire’s INCRYPTID series (which currently includes eight novels and numerous shorter works) follows the adventures of the Prices, a family who used to belong to the Covenant, a rigid group of monster-hunters whose mission it was to eradicate all supernatural creatures from the face of the planet. A couple generations back, ... Read More

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Frogkisser! by Garth Nix

Anya is an orphaned young princess, about twelve or thirteen years old, and a bookworm (as many of the best princesses in literature seem to be). She and her fifteen year old sister Morven are orphans under the dubious care of their stepmother, a botanist who is enthusiastic about plants but completely uninterested in and uninvolved with the girls, and Duke Rikard, their stepstepfather (which is what you get when your stepmother remarries after your father dies). Morven is supposed to be crowned as the queen when she turns sixteen in three months, but she’s far more interested in handsome princes than in ruling. This suits Duke Rickard just fine: he’s a black-hearted sorcerer who’s intent on making his control of the Kingdom of Trallonia permanent.

Duke Rickard is also given to transforming unlucky servants and hapless princes into frogs. Morven asks Anya t... Read More

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Quest of the Spider by Lester Dent

I have just reacquainted myself with six dear old friends. As I mentioned in my FanLit minibio (below), back in high school, this reader just could not get enough of the adventures of Doc Savage and his five faithful associates, eagerly devouring four dozen of the Doc Savage paperbacks that Bantam books released in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. These paperbacks were hugely popular back in the day and are now highly prized collectible items, not only for the stories themselves, but for the beautifully rendered cover illustrations that James Bama created for well over 100 of them. Eventually, though, I tired of reading the Doc Savage novels, as a certain formulaic sameness started to become evident in them (and indeed, years later, I learned that author Lester Dent did have a chart hanging on his office wall, delineating what was to happen by certain... Read More

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Weaver’s Lament by Emma Newman

Weaver’s Lament (2017) is Emma Newman’s second novella in her INDUSTRIAL MAGIC series. The first one is Brother’s Ruin. Both stories feature Charlotte Gunn, a young woman from a respectable family who is hiding several secrets; she is secretly an illustrator of popular fiction and she is secretly magical, having clandestine meetings with a magus to learn to control her abilities. In the first story, Charlotte used her abilities to enhance her older brother’s lesser skill and get him accepted into the Royal Society (who pays the family of nascent magi a pretty penny).

Now Charlotte and her family are financially comfortable. She wants little more than to marry her diligent fiancé George, but brother Ben summons her to Manchester, where he is working. Ben and another magic... Read More

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The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

The Lost Plot (2017) is the fourth book in Genevieve Cogman’s INVISIBLE LIBRARY series. Committed to the Library’s mission to maintain the balance between chaos and order, Irene Winters and her student, Kai, end up in a world in a Prohibition timeline, as they track down a Librarian who has violated the Library’s neutrality by assisting an agent of Order (a dragon).

To put it simply, if you enjoyed the other INVISIBLE LIBRARY books, you will enjoy this one. It has book humor, lavish use of the magical Library language, dragons, Fae, double-crosses, predicaments, chase scenes and action scenes galore, culminating in a suspenseful interrogation sequence in the royal court of a Dragon Queen.
... Read More

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Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below by Martha Wells

Note: This review will contain mild spoilers for the RAKSURA novels.

Here is the second volume containing the novellas and short stories written by Martha Wells to accompany her BOOKS OF THE RAKSURA. I really enjoyed the first volume, Stories of the Raksura, Volume 1. I liked the tight and focused nature of the novellas and short stories and thought they were actually, for that reason, better than the novels.

Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2 (2015) contains:

The Dead City — (RAKSURA story #0.3, published in 2017, takes place before Read More

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Robot Titans of Gotham by Norvell Page

In my recent review of the anthology volume Rivals of Weird Tales, I mentioned that one of my favorite stories therein was the novella-length “But Without Horns,” which was written by Norvell Page and first appeared in the June 1940 issue of Unknown magazine. I also expressed a desire to read some of Page’s many tales dealing with his most famous character, the Spider. Well, I am here to tell you: Mission accomplished! Thanks to the fine folks at Baen Publishing, two volumes of Spider tales have been released for modern-day audiences, and this reader was fortunate enough to pick up the first, 2007’s Robot Titans of Gotham, which c... Read More

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Summerland by Hannu Rajaniemi

Hannu Rajaniemi’s Summerland (2018) is what you might get if you took the setting/premise of Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead and gave it to John le Carré to turn into a novel, though I’d argue it’s lacking a bit in the character depth and emotional touch of those two authors.

Summerland is basically an espionage/counter-espionage novel set in late 1930s Britain, who is involved in a proxy-war with Russia (led by a sort of over-soul known as “The Presence”) via the Spanish Civil War, while Stalin, as a Russian dissident, is playing his own power games amidst the chaos. What truly set... Read More

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The Siren Depths by Martha Wells

Book three in Martha Wells’ BOOKS OF THE RAKSURA is The Siren Depths (2012). (By the way, the novels’ titles are only vaguely related to the plot, I’ve noticed.) If you've loved this series so far, I feel certain that you will love The Siren Depths. In my opinion, it's better than both of the previous books (The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea).

Moon, a Raksura (shape-shifting human/dragon) who used to be a lost orphan, is finally starting to feel comfortable in his new home with the Indigo Cloud Rak... Read More

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Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe

Sufficiently Advanced Magic (2017) took 2nd place in SPFBO 3, which wrapped up last week. The book is a strong addition to the highly popularized LitRPG subgenre, though Rowe avows it is not strictly LitRPG. I am not a follower of the subgenre, but this book has enjoyed such runaway popularity over the past year, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Introducing Corin Cadence, resident of a world where people can earn magical enchantments by progressing through magic towers where they encounter tests of strength, judgment and combat skill. If all goes well, the goddess grants the challenger an attunement, including a magical skill, and safe exit of the tower. If all goes poorly, challengers die ... get lost ... imprisoned ... or some other unpleasantness.

Corin’s primary motive in life is to enter... Read More

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An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), by Rivers Solomon, is a book that a lot of people will absolutely love unconditionally, a lot of people will love even as they hate reading large parts of it, and that will leave some people (cough cough this reviewer) a bit cold, which they will softly note while they keep their eyes down and move quietly for the exit. Despite falling into that last category, I’d still recommend Solomon’s debut novel for its stark depiction of a slave society that has too many echoes of our own world despite the sci-fi setting and for its diverse set of characters.

The novel is a generation ship story, with the premise that the society sent out into space on the ship Matilda was a slave-based one (or regressed to one, it’s not wholly explicit, though I believe it’s the former), with the u... Read More

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Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman

Neal Shusterman follows up Scythe, which introduced readers to a mostly-perfect futuristic world in which death isn’t permanent (until it very much is) with Thunderhead (2018), the second installment in his ARC OF A SCYTHE trilogy. Regrettably, I won’t be able to discuss anything about Thunderhead without spoiling some of Scythe’s details, so consider yourself warned and/or prepared.

Rowan Damisch and Citra Terranova are no more — at least, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Rowan has taken his fight ... Read More

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New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson is among the best there is at hard science fiction; he can write characters who feel like real people and give you ideas that keep you thinking well after you’ve set the book down. Unfortunately, New York 2140 (2017) is not up to the mark of his best work; fortunately, that still leaves plenty of room for it to be enjoyable and thought-provoking.

New York 2140 is, among many other things, a love letter to New York, or, as it is known in 2140, SuperVenice; the chapter titles and a number of references throughout (Archy and Mehitabel, anyone?) reference the city’s past (and, from our point of view, fut... Read More

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Reposting to include Jana's new review.

The Overneath by Peter S. Beagle

It must be hard to be a literary icon, late in your career. You’ve ascended the literary heights and amassed an adoring following who still expect you never to repeat, and even improve upon your previous genius with each new work. But I’m not sorry for Peter S. Beagle, nor his latest short story collection The Overneath, which came out in November of 2017.

Most striking, to me, is that Beagle manages each new tale with a distinct, and yet perfectly effortless narrative voice. No problem with that whole repetition worry. There is none here. His narratives roll out rich in otherworldly wonder.

He does revisit the unicorn theme in this collection with b... Read More

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LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff

Jay Kristoff’s YA post-apocalyptic novel LIFEL1K3 (2018) stars seventeen-year-old Eve as its tough, fauxhawk-sporting protagonist. Eve is a gifted mechanic who lives with her grandfather, her only relative, in a post-apocalyptic island version of “Kalifornya” called the Dregs. She has a cybernetic eye and a memory drive (“Memdrive”) implanted in the side of her head, with silicon chips behind her ear that give her fragmentary memories of her childhood and supply her with other useful life skills. Eve’s secret pastime ― at least it’s secret from Grandpa ― is engaging in robot deathmatches to fund Grandpa’s anticancer meds. Eve’s besties are a feisty redhead named Lemon Fresh, whose name comes from the box in which she was found abandoned as ... Read More

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The Secret Service: Kingsman, by Mark Millar, is about a young man, Eggsy, being rescued from rough, poor neighborhoods by his uncle, who takes him under his wing and trains him in a new profession. The twist is that his uncle, Jack London, is not in computer work like Eggsy thinks; actually, his uncle’s job is as a spy for his country. Our young man is sent to a spy school and, given that the rest of the spies-in-training are from upper-class families, he sticks out in a number of ways, including not being able to act with a certain amount of class socially. This story is about his learning his trade and getting to put it to good use by the end of the book.

The Secret Service: Kingsman can be divided into three storylines: First, the book is about a man wanting to do well and come back to take care of his mother and get revenge on his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Eggsy’s... Read More

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Hearts of Tabat by Cat Rambo

Cat Rambo’s Hearts of Tabat (2018) is the second book in the Tabat Quartet. I love the beautiful, strange world Rambo has created here. I understood nearly everything that was going on in this book, so technically it qualifies as a standalone, but I see that reading the first book, Beasts of Tabat, first would probably have answered some questions and added richness to an already lush tapestry of a story.

Tabat is on a world that is filled with humans, magic and Beasts who are made of magic. Beasts are enslaved by the humans, considered less than animals (although they are used as beasts of burden) and consumed, literally, for the magical power in their flesh, bones and blood. Adelina Nettlepurse is the daugh... Read More

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Magic Shifts by Ilona Andrews

In Magic Shifts (2015), the eighth book in Ilona Andrews’ KATE DANIELS urban fantasy series, Kate and Curran struggle with both old, ongoing problems ― in the form of Pack politics and Kate’s father Roland ― and new ones. *obligatory spoiler alert here for earlier books in the series*

Kate and her werelion mate Curran, who has resigned as Beast Lord of Atlanta's huge pack of shapeshifters, are now trying to live a more ordinary, circumspect suburban life among humans, with mixed results. Some of the neighbors are alarmed at Curran's walking around the neighborhood in his immense lion form (“He is patrolling,” Kate informs her nosiest neighbor, protecting the area), and Kate finds out that several of their shapesh... Read More

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Fearless by Elliott James

Fearless is the third novel in Elliott James’ PAX ARCANA saga (following Charming and Daring). John and Sig are back together working to protect Kevin Kichida, a young man with some magical blood in his heritage who’s being hunted by a greedy ancestor.

The investigation leads John and his supernatural friends to a fight club where they go undercover (as fighters) to get close to their suspect. John acquires (or perhaps simply recognizes and practices) some new supernatural skills in this installment.

The plot of Fearless Read More

Reposting to include Nathan's review of the new format for THE TWO OF SWORDS.

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The Two of Swords: Volumes One, Two, and Three by K. J. Parker

Reading any of K.J. Parker’s books will reveal that he is deeply skeptical of human nature, very much including the feelings and ideals that usually get the best press. He passed his witheringly critical eye over romantic love in the ENGINEER trilogy, platonic friendship in The Company, and in THE TWO OF SWORDS series, idealistic devotion to a cause and rationalism ... Read More

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Charming by Elliott James

John Charming doesn't know exactly what he is. Well, he knows he’s a descendant of the Knights Templar, a group that’s under a geas to slay supernatural creatures who violate the Pax Arcana (a secret treaty the Knights made with the elves), but when his mother was pregnant with him, she was bitten by a werewolf. The werewolf blood gives John supernatural powers, something that’s anathema to the Knights. They trained him when he was young, but when his powers manifested, he was ostracized, and now some Knights are even hunting him, so he has to hide.

That’s how John Charming ended up as a bartender in a backwoods bar in a small Virginia town. He was satisfactorily flying under the radar until a beautiful six-foot-tall blonde showed up one night. John reluctantly gets pulled into her ragtag team of monster hunters who are trying to flush out a nasty nest of... Read More

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The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Prisoner of Limnos (2017 print, 2018 audio) is another of Lois McMaster Bujold’s PENRIC AND DESDEMONA novellas. It is a direct sequel to Mira’s Last Dance, so I’d recommend reading that (and its prequels) first.

Penric and Nikys, the widow Penric is in love with, are safe at court in Orbas when Nikys gets an encrypted letter stating that her mother has been taken prisoner by political enemies in Cedonia.

To his delight, Nikys comes to Penric for help, and the two set off for Cedonia to bust mom out of jail. This will involve Penric dressing up like a woman (again), using his chaos ... Read More