Diverse SFF reviews, pinko politics, personal nonsense.
STARLINGS, by Jo Walton Tachyon Publications, 2018 eBook, 187pp Starlings is a short story collection by Jo Walton, author of such books as the Hugo and Nebula award winning Among Others as well as the Small Change trilogy, beginning with Farthing, and the Thessaly trilogy, beginning with The Just City. Starlings is Walton’s first collection…
It’s 2018 already! Oh god oh god how did this happen I’m not ready etc. etc. The fact that I’m not ready should be pretty evident considering the second half of my planned-out 2017 basically evaporated and I spent all the time between September and now clinging on to coping by my fingernails. Things happened:…
THE EMERALD CIRCUS, by Jane Yolen Tachyon Publications, 2017 eBook, 290pp I’m ashamed to have to admit that before requesting The Emerald Circus, to review, I didn’t know who Jane Yolen was. I don’t know why, but she never entered my circle of consciousness, despite being a veteran of SFF, having been publishing for over…
So the whole wet, grey summer and most of the wet, grey autumn have crawled by, and I’ve been slack with my short fiction reviews. Yeah, this disappoints me, but I want to go easy on myself. I always forget how busy the summer months can be, and this year was a stand-out one, with…
Read more What I Did This Summer (Instead of Writing Blog Posts)
THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER, by K Arsenault Rivera Tor Books, 2017 eBook, 295pp The Tiger’s Daughter, by K Arsenault Rivera, is an east Asian-inspired epic fantasy centred on the legendary love story of O-Shizuka, divine empress of Hokkaro, and Barsalyya Shefali, outcast daughter of the leader of the Qorin, a race of nomadic warrior horse-masters. This…
Read more REVIEW: The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera
AUTONOMOUS, Annalee Newitz Tor Books, 2017 eBook, preview excerpt You might know Annalee Newitz from her editorship of excellent SF culture website io9 and tech sites Gizmodo and Ars Technica, or from her extensive non-fiction writings, including Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction from Doubleday and Anchor (which I bought…
THE SUM OF US: TALES OF THE BONDED AND BOUND, ed. Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law Laksa Media, 2017 eBook, 326pp The Sum of Us, released September 8th, 2017, is an anthology of 23 short stories around the theme of carers and caregiving, edited by Canadian editors Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest. As…
Read more REVIEW: The Sum of Us, ed. Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law
Manuel Gonzales’ The Regional Office is Under Attack! is exactly what it says on the tin. The action, which takes place in breathless present-tense chapters, covers the events of the attack on the Regional Office, while the backstory inevitably pointing towards its fall is conveyed by academic article. The Regional Office is, on the surface…
Read more REVIEW: The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales
The second issue of FIYAH, a speculative fiction magazine publishing stories by black writers, dropped at the beginning of April. I’m lucky enough (thanks to @philmargolies on Twitter) to have a subscription. So find below the cut my overwhelmed and delighted micro-reviews of all the short fiction in the issue. Click on any story in…
April was a slow reading month for me. Not only that, it’s been busy—there is a point, I think, at which my brain becomes overwhelmed by important things and starts to deactivate interests and hobbies for more processing power. I think that’s what happened in April. Thing is: that’s not good. My interests and hobbies are…