Previous SFF Author: Frank Aubrey
Speculative fiction in audiobook format.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Time (2015), the first book in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s CHILDREN OF TIME series, is an expansive and visionary epic that speculates about the future of humanity.
In the first chapter, we meet a scientist who has managed to extend her life so that she can create her own world. Her plan is to drop monkeys on a terraformed planet, let loose a virus that will uplift them, wait until they evolve, and then introduce herself as their god.
March 17th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Night of Cake & Puppets by Laini Taylor
For years Laini Taylor’s been a favorite here at FanLit, and now I know why. I picked up Night of Cake & Puppets, a stand-alone novella set in Taylor’s DAUGHTER OF SMOKE & BONE world, because it was short and available on audio at exactly the length I needed for a recent car trip: two hours and forty-five minutes. Perfect. That’s not all that was perfect about Night of Cake & Puppets.
March 16th, 2020. Kat Hooper and Rebecca Fisher´s rating: 4.5 | Laini Taylor | Audio, Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Terminal Uprising by Jim C. Hines
Terminal Uprising (2019) is the second novel in Jim C. Hines’ JANITORS OF THE POST-APOCALYPSE series. It follows Terminal Alliance, which should be read first. There you’ll meet “Mops” Adamopoulos, the boss of a human janitorial crew that works for the Krakau aliens. These friendly aliens saved humanity by genetically engineering thousands of humans after the Earth was ravaged by a virus that turned everyone into zombies.
It’s been a few months since Mops and her crew found themselves accidentally in charge of the spaceship Pufferfish.
March 13th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Jim C. Hines | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
William Gibson’s latest novel, Agency (2020), is a follow-up to The Peripheral which needs to be read first. In The Peripheral we learned that in the not-too-distant future, someone will discover some software on a secret server in China which allows users to interact with people using the internet in the past (our modern day). Contacting people in the past makes a new timeline branch called a “stub.” The future people who create the stub can play around with it,
March 10th, 2020. Kat Hooper and Ryan Skardal´s rating: 4 | William Gibson | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines
The people remaining on a devastated Earth have been turned into zombies by a virus accidentally unleashed by one of their own scientists. Fortunately for some humans, a race of aliens known as the Krakau have figured out how to genetically engineer humans without the virus. Thus, about 10,000 humans still live, but rather than return to Earth to be cannibalized by their own species, they choose to work for the Krakau who saved them. The Krakau are benevolent overlords; they have even preserved the records of as much of Earth’s civilization as they could so that their human fosterlings can have their own culture.
March 4th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3 | Jim C. Hines | Audio | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold
Knife Children (2019) is a stand-alone novella set in Lois McMaster Bujold’s SHARING KNIFE world. I wasn’t a fan of that series because I didn’t like its main character, Fawn, but I’m a huge fan of all of Bujold’s other work, and I think she’s one of the best speculative fiction writers that’s ever existed, so I was happy to try this stand-alone story in which Fawn played only an insignificant role. You don’t need to be familiar with SHARING KNIFE to understand and enjoy Knife Children.
March 2nd, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 4 | Lois McMaster Bujold | Audio, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
In his whimsical way, Charles Yu writes about the Asian-American immigrant experience in Interior Chinatown (2020). The story is about Willis Wu, a young man whose family lives in an SRO (Single-Room Occupancy Hotel) in the Chinatown of mid-20th century San Francisco. He’s the son of immigrants who came to America looking for a better life but who have been misunderstood, alienated, marginalized, ghettoized, and further discriminated against by an American government and populace that is always putting people into boxes and insisting that they stay there.
February 26th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Charles Yu | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Broken Crown by Michelle West
I listened to 19 hours (60%) of the new audio version of Michelle West’s The Broken Crown before giving up. The Broken Crown (1997) is the first novel in West’s SUN SWORD series which contains six books that add up to a whopping 4,803 pages. After getting through 458 of these pages and feeling absolutely nothing, I was dreading the remaining 4,345. I decided to quit.
Many readers love long,
February 24th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 0.1 | Michelle Sagara West | Audio | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Dispel Illusion by Mark Lawrence
Tadiana: Kat:
Dispel Illusion (2019) is the final book in Mark Lawrence’s IMPOSSIBLE TIMES trilogy. Readers will need to finish One Word Kill and Limited Wish before beginning Dispel Illusion, so we’ll assume you’ve done that. Kindly, Mark Lawrence provides a recap of previous important events at the beginning of this book.
February 19th, 2020. Tadiana Jones and Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5, 4 | Mark Lawrence | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North
“I do not know whether death is mercy, or love is easy, or vengeance is peace, or if all these things are lies or truth. Or if it is the truest thing of all to say that life is all of these things, all of these truths together in perfect contradiction, blinding us to a greater truth that lies beneath.”
My husband and I are foodies. We love to try new foods, new cuisines, and new restaurants. When we order off the menu,
February 6th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 3.5 | Claire North | Audio, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Previous SFF Author: Frank Aubrey
My pleasure, Robin! And yes, it surely is some kind of an experience, to be sure....
Thanks for the solution to a mystery many decades old. One of my favourite novels, this. Hilariously funny, completely unpredictable,…
Thank you. I’m all caught up. Back to reading Crimson Embers.
Enjoyed your review. I’m reading A War in Crimson Embers and am having the hardest time reminding myself where everybody…
Just saw you like Jack Vance. Me too. Surely he offends you somewhere though?