When the world ends three weeks later, it happens on the most beautiful day Syenite has even seen. The sky is clear for miles, save for the occasional drift of cloud. The sea is calm, and even the omnipresent wind is warm and humid for once, instead of cool and scouring.
We’re a bit late to the party, but we’re finally reviewing N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo and New York Times Notable- winning fantasy.
This year’s Nebula for Best Novel (and Hugo nominee) went to Naomi Novik’s faerie tale about a wizard’s apprentice and an evil forest.
The novel succeeds at being what you expect from that description, and not being what you expect at all.
“You can’t see the future that’s coming.”(239)
Madeline Ashby’s most accessible novel to date sends a young, unaugmented security agent on an increasingly bizarre mission in a town built on a Maritime oil rig.
Few writers have had the influence of H.P. Lovecraft on SF, fantasy, and horror, but the eccentric author’s racism and xenophobia—extreme even by the standards of his time— shamble through many of his stories and can make contemporary readers terribly uncomfortable. Matt Ruff is the latest writer to address Lovecraft’s other disturbing rather directly in a Lovecraft-influenced novel. Lovecraft Country unfolds against the backdrop of mid-1950s America, and focuses on characters who face both the eldritch horrors and the Jim Crow racism lurking beneath the surface of American life.
Robert Charles Wilson’s 2015 offering is more social science fiction, a blend of creeping near-dystopia, spy/crime thriller, and unnervingly plausible look at the next decade. It also may be the best among those SF novels overlooked by both the Hugos and Nebulas.
So did every day have to be interesting? Was God an entertainer?
–“The Missing Word”
Alan Weiss has published a number of stories in different genres, and many academic papers. This new collection concerns an itinerant wizard and his faithful, if not always amiable, horse.
With the TV adaptation of John Scalzi’s 2014 SF/detective novel in development/preproduction, we thought we’d review the 2014 source. We’re a bit late to the party, we know. Consider it a bonus “Weekend Review.”
One of the most-discussed YA novels of the last year is Fran Wilde’s Updraft, the first of a series set in the wild “Bone Universe,” where humans live in gigantic towers of bone and fly above the clouds on manufactured wings. The book has been nominated for a 2016 Nebula and the Andre Norton Award. Does it live up to the hype?
This premise sold to television first. The first book appeared in September, while the series remains in development. The Luna saga comes closer than anything to A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones…. In Spaaace! Volume one features corporate feudalism, shifting alliances, family in-fighting, pointy-end battles (projectile weapons are banned), and graphic sex scenes.
It’s also by Ian McDonald, an SF writer of considerable talent.
Recently picked up as movie (to be directed by Steven Spielberg, no less), this homage to 80’s culture was all the rage within the geek community when it debuted. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?