I feel as if so many of my reviews start off this way, but: I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping on Tade Thompson so long! (And isn’t that one of the great things about reviewing—discovering new authors you might not have picked up otherwise?) I went into Rosewater without reading too much about the content […]
It’s been years since I read any Tamora Pierce. Back in my early teenage years, her Song of the Lioness and Circle of Magic books found me, and it felt as if I’d been waiting for them all my life. So I’m happy to say that coming back to her with Tempests and Slaughter felt […]
To See the Sun is a SF m/m romance, set almost entirely on the remote and hostile planet of Alkirak. Bram is an ex-miner turned farmer, leading a quiet life on his own land claim. Gael is an interstellar runaway from the dystopian megacity on the planet of Zhemosen, barely more than a kid, fleeing […]
Rachel Heng’s Suicide Club is a very millennial novel. (I can say this, because I’m a millennial.)
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]