Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Rating: 4

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Jewel Box: Delightful startling points and beautifully honed sentences

Jewel Box by E. Lily Yu

The pleasure for me in reading E. Lily Yu’s collection of short stories, Jewel Box, was sourced in two of the book’s elements: its what-if premises and its, well, jewel-like language, which glittered precise and edged as any gemstone in a Tiffany’s case. The plots and characters, meanwhile, were more hit and miss for me, which is why I’m not giving it a five.

As is typical for collections, the individual stories varied in their impact,


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Rai: The rise and fall of a futuristic New Japan

Rai: Deluxe Edition, Volume 1 (issues 1-12) by Matt Kindt (writer), Clayton Crain (art), and Dave Lanphear (letters)

Matt Kindt is one of my favorite writers, and Valiant is an exciting publishing company with great stories that are quick-moving, with story arcs told in four-issue increments. So, this twelve-issue collection contains three story arcs telling a larger story about Rai, the protector of New Japan, an enormous, floating structure containing countless cities and neighborhoods. New Japan is in the control of Father, an “omnipotent, omniscient, and unseen ruler” who is not really alive.


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The Running Grave: An addictive return to the detective series

The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

An insidious cult, a spiritual leader who converses with the dead and a ghost that manifests at will – the dynamic detective duo have well and truly returned in what might be their most riveting mystery yet.

When a desperate father approaches the agency asking the detectives to help remove his son from the grip of a pernicious cult posturing as a benign church, Strike is hesitant to let Robin go in under cover: there have been stories of torture, sexual assault and starvation.


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Fingers of Fear: In Ormes’ way

Fingers of Fear by J.U. Nicolson

This will hardly be the first time that I have mentioned editor/author Karl Edward Wagner, and his so-called KEW 39 list, in one of my reviews here. But ever since 1983, when the list first appeared in the pages of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, it has been used as a guide of sorts by horror readers in search of something different. Those 39 novels were divided amongst three categories: The 13 Best Supernatural Horror Novels, The 13 Best Science-Fiction Horror Novels,


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Mooncakes: A magical YA love story

Reposting to include Brad’s new review.

Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker (writer), Wendy Xu (illustrator), & Joamette Gil (letterer)

Mooncakes (2019) is the story of Nova and Tam, two young people who are exploring their connections to magic. They are both, in their own way, deeply connected to the magical world and must decide what that means to them. Their relationships — with the people around them and each other — fuel the emotional core of this whimsical, down-to-earth, LGBTQ+ narrative.

I was delighted by Mooncakes.


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Hysteria: An American amnesiac In London

Hysteria directed by Freddie Francis

As I believe I have mentioned here before, during the 1960s, Hammer Film Productions in England did not only excel at the horror, science fiction and period action movies for which it is best remembered today, but at the psychological thriller, as well. Previously, this viewer had watched and hugely enjoyed such Hammer thrillers as The Snorkel (1958), Maniac (1962) and Nightmare (1964), and so it was with great anticipation that I sat down the other day,


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Blue Book: The story of a famous alien abduction

Blue Book (Volume One) by James Tynion IV (script), Michael Avon Oeming (art), Aditya Bidikar (letters)

Blue Book is the true-life story of Betty and Barney Hill, a couple who claimed to have had an UFO encounter in the summer of 1961. While driving late at night, the young couple encounters a space ship, and then aliens abduct them, do experiments, and return them to their car within about two hours. All of this is narrated by Tynion in his script and shown through excellent black, white, and blue art by Oeming.


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Light Chaser: Can two humans put the universe right?

Light Chaser by Peter F. Hamilton & Gareth L. Powell

2021’s Light Chaser novella is a collaboration between Gareth Powell and Peter F. Hamilton. This fast-paced story actually spans centuries, featuring a functionally-immortal woman, Amahle. The sole occupant of her AI controlled lightship, Amahle, the titular Light Chaser, is one of many of her kind, who travel a “circuit” of human-occupied planets, collecting the memory collars selected families wear for generations. In return, Amahle provides carefully chosen wealth and trinkets, careful never to provide something that might allow the stable (or stagnant) societies on these worlds to make any kind of leap forward in technology or political thinking.


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The Secrets of Insects: A retrospective of Kadrey short fiction

The Secrets of Insects by Richard Kadrey

Before he published the SANDMAN SLIM series, Richard Kadrey published short fiction in various markets. Several of those stories have been collected in his latest book, 2023’s The Secret of Insects. The earliest story in here, “Horse Latitudes,” appeared in Omni in 1992. The most recent story, “Candy Among the Jades,” is original to this collection. The Secrets of Insects is a retrospective of Kadrey’s short fiction.

I’ll provide the Table of Contents,


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The City Inside: An exquisite, complicated puzzle

The City Inside by Samit Basu

For the first 22 pages of Samit Basu’s The City Inside (2022), I didn’t have a freakin’ clue what was going on. I followed Joey (Bijoyini) Roy around her parents’ house, as she interacted with her intrusive “wellness system”—think very needy FitBit on steroids—as she talked to her parents about the Years that Can’t Be Discussed, as she dodged her performative adolescent brother, who was constantly auditioning for a place in the Flow. I understood vaguely that social media was a big thing,


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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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    How can cats not have an official Patron Saint? I call foul! This must be fixed at once.

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    "Renegade Nell" looks interesting! Reminds me a bit of both Queen of Swords and The Nevers.

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    Thank you for the giveaway opportunity! Still not getting notifications despite being signed up, though.

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