Share on Twitter Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card may possibly be the best novel I’ve ever read. That’s not a statement I make lightly. While my other favorites – Stranger in a Strange Land, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Death World – have all effected me in different ways, none has moved me as [...]
Share on TwitterCharles Stross’s latest novel, Rule 34, is one of the notable books of 2011, a cyberpunk novel for the social media age. Gone is the notion of revolutionary computers and technologies just out of reach: this futuristic Scotland is a recognizable world that’s just around the corner, one that shows just how scary [...]
Share on Twitter Captain Darian Frey has had some more reversals of fortune. Despite the encounter at Retribution Falls, keeping his beloved aerium fueled airship The Ketty Jay is serious business. His navigator is still weird and possibly inhuman, his daemonologist is still haunted by something he won’t talk about, his outrider fighter pilots [...]
Share on Twitter “The book does prominently feature three of the foundational touchstones of all things steampunk: giant airships, brass computers, and kinky feminine underwear.” ~ Bruce Sterling, Afterword, The Difference Engine When I first delved into The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, I had no previous experience reading [...]
Share on Twitter The Worker Prince by Bryan Thomas Schmidt takes the Biblical story of Moses to the stars and beyond. When Prince Xander Rhii – Davi to his friends – graduates from the Borali Military Academy at the top of his class, his horizon looks clear and bright. Privileged enough to grow up [...]
Share on TwitterLucy Stone works as a game designer in Edinburgh. Digital Damage is making a Massively multiplayer online role playing game based on dark ages Britain. With Zombies and other odd things. Slaving away at this game, Lucy gets a call from her mother, a fellow émigré from a troubled region in the Caucaus. [...]
Share on TwitterJacob Aldridge, scion of a respectable, well off family in 1882 London, has had the shadow of tragedy hanging over him. His beloved fiancée, Rhoda Carothers, has suddenly died, and he seems more than usually affected by the tragedy. A chance meeting with Livia Aram is shocking to both, for Livia very much [...]
Share on TwitterCity of Ruin, by Mark Charan Newton #2 in Legends of the Red Sun Series 448 pages ISBN: 0345520882 What do you get when you blend noir, 1920′s-style glitz, horror, an approaching Apocalypse, alternate universes, and a smattering of nearly every genre out there? Well, in this case, you might just be reading [...]
Share on Twitter Its late 19th Century Seattle. The gold rush of the Klondike a couple of decades earlier meant that the city was large and growing when inventor Leviticus Blue’s magnum opus due too greedily and too deep, releasing a gas that turns those who breathe it too deeply into the walking dead. Those [...]
Share on Twitter Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, grabs the reader from page one and refuses to let go. The characters stand out, the setting is fantastic, and the situation dire. What better way to start a horror story? Set in the late 1800′s during the Civil War, the scientist Leviticus Blue invents an incredible [...]
Share on TwitterIn War, the fifth and final installment of the Afterlife series by Mur Lafferty, the author manages to merge steampunk, mythology, and pirates in an altogether fascinating and entertaining way. While the Dark gains a firmer hold, Kate and Daniel fight to free the imprisoned gods of the newest world. But will they [...]
Share on TwitterSing, Muse!: Moses Siregar III‘s The Black God’s War Two very different realms have struggled against each other for years. The Rezzians, worshipers of ten deities, have engaged in a holy war against their godless neighbors, the Pawleons. With the birth of a royal son who is also a prophesied holy leader with [...]
Share on Twitter Wasteland by Mur Lafferty starts immediately after the climactic conclusion of Earth, the previous book in the Afterlife series. If you have yet to read the series up to this point, be forewarned. There be spoilers ahead. Daniel is left alone, one eyed (still- or is it again?), and wandering the [...]
Share on Twitter Dealing with the running of Heaven, the creation of a new Earth, and a literal administrative Hell has the newly deified Kate and Daniel both frazzled and emotionally drained in Earth, the third book of Mur Lafferty‘s Afterlife series. Despite their godly powers and knowledge, they lack the experience to handle [...]
Share on TwitterThirteen Years Later by Jasper Kent ISBN-10: 1616142537 First off: Thirteen Years Later, as the title suggests, is the second book in the series. It stands alone nicely, but I do recommend reading the first one before this one. Spoilers in the review are of the most minor sort, but there will be [...]
Share on Twitter(Author’s Note: BEWARE: here there be spoilers!) “We tell the truth best by becoming lies.” – Avice Benner Cho To start this review, I need to make a brief confession: I have had Embassytown in my possession for a few months, and finished reading it weeks ago. But when I sat down to [...]
Share on Twitter “The journey is as important as the destination.” – God In Hell, Book II of the Afterlife series by Mur Lafferty, Kate and Daniel learn this important principle as they once again journey through the afterlife. God sends them on a divine mission, literally going through Hell – from Hades of [...]
Share on Twitter A savage pant—almost a laugh—puffed foul breath that blew hair from Sanders’s forehead. Sanders raised a fist, but the beast caught his arm with ease and slammed it on the concrete floor. Liam felt bones give way with a sickening snap and was pinned between satisfaction and revulsion. Sanders howled. A [...]
Share on TwitterThe Half-Made World by Felix Gilman ISBN-10: 0765325535 All of the stuff I saw about Half-Made World indicated it was Steampunk. Given my lack of luck with that genre recently, I had my reservations. Half-Made World has Steampunk elements, sure. But that’s probably the least influential genre in this book. Weird West, Magical [...]
Share on Twitter“So you’re saying that the journey is key, not the destination.” – Kate This sentiment – expressed in the very beginning of Mur Lafferty‘s Heaven – echos heavily throughout the novella. After dying in a car crash, best friends Kate and Daniel find out death isn’t what they expected. While they’re both [...]
Share on Twitter “Ah!” Malagigi’s eyes flickered over the three staffs of power we carried—the staffs that were our Prospero Family legacy: Gregor’s Staff of Darkness, Erasmus’s Staff of Decay , and my flute, The Staff of Winds—before coming to rest upon Durandel riding in its sheath at Erasmus’s side. Softly, he [...]
Share on TwitterPublisher: Spectra ISBN-10: 0345520858 ISBN-13: 978-0345520852 Nights of Villjamur Mark Charan Newton Shrouded in snow and ice, and facing the threat of an endless winter, the city of Villjamur is–understandably–under a great deal of stress. Refugees stream from all over the Empire, the Emperor is mad and paranoid, councilors are being murdered, cultist [...]
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