Orson Scott Card‘s second book in the Ender series, Speaker for the Dead, takes place years after humanity’s war against the alien ‘buggers.’ Ender Wiggins, the former child hero of the Bugger Wars, has spent twenty years traveling from world to world, speaking for the dead – telling the truth about the lives of those […]
Last May, I read The Winds of Khalakovo, and reviewed it here at the Functional Nerds. The Winds of Khalakovo is a secondary fantasy novel borrowing from cultures not usually invoked in fantasy–Tsarist Russia and ancient Persia. Throw in a pair of very different magic systems, very non standard cultural issues of duty and honor, […]
The Snow Queen’s Shadow, by Jim C. Hines, turns the fairy tale protagonists of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White into kick-ass heroines. Each princess draws her strength from a classic element of her original tale. Talia – Sleeping Beauty – is a deadly warrior who uses her fairy blessed reflexes and strength to combat […]
DOCTOR WHO, the classic British scifi television series, recently celebrated 48 years since its first episode. I recently re-read Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who By The Women Who Love It and it got me thinking about what makes Doctor Who so special, and what makes MY Doctor Who experience into something […]
Airships! Secretive assassin-monks! Fanatic cults! The world at stake! Don’t let the airship on the dustjacket fool you, this isn’t your expected steampunk novel. Ash is pursuing an official vendetta. He is a member of the Roshun, a secretive order providing protection services through the use of living ‘seals’ that die with their owner. They […]
The Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith series by John Jackson Miller will be releasing its eighth and final free eBook, Secrets, in all eFormats on March 5, 2012. The entire collected series will be published in paperback July 31st. As with all the previous stories, it will also include an […]
The scene is Budapest, Hungary in the late 1930’s. Hitler’s saber rattling over in Germany is becoming more and more bellicose, and there is the scent of war in the air. The quasi-fascistic pre war Hungary is not the most pleasant of places, especially for a Jew like Magda. The fact that she is not […]
I bought Myke Cole’s debut novel the day it came out, on the strength of the reading I saw him do at last summer’s Readercon. Shadow Ops: Control Point is the first in a series, and it’s a quick read. I started it on the train ride from Trenton to Philadelphia, read a bit before class, […]
So, I have to start this out with a moment of honesty: I’ve been biased against novels published by gaming companies for…as long as I’ve been buying books. There’s no particular reason for it, and I really should have known better, but I just didn’t see myself as the target market. I don’t know the […]
Kafkaesque Adjective Marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity e.g. Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. In the manner of something written by Franz Kafka. There are precious few writers whose names have transcended their status as a proper noun. Dickens has become an adjective to […]
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 much as this […]
Charles 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 a high-technology […]
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 are still a […]
“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 the work […]
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 in the […]
Lucy 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. Her mother […]
Jacob 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 resembles the […]
City 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 Mark Charan […]
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 bitten or injured […]
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 drilling machine called […]
In 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 find them […]
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