Share on Twitter 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 [...]
Share on Twitter 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 [...]
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 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 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 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 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 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 Twitterhierophant noun. 1. (Historical Terms) (in ancient Greece) an official high priest of religious mysteries, esp those of Eleusis 2. a person who interprets and explains esoteric mysteries Back when I wrote a review of Finch, I called Jeff Vandermeer the “Hierophant of the New Weird”. I used that unusual word on purpose, then, and [...]
Share on Twitter Take a captain of a beat up old ship that sometimes can barely fly, but he loves it to death. He’s a veteran of a recent war, has no love for the Navy, and seeks freedom and profit, from trading between ports to a bit of light piracy and theft now [...]
Share on Twitter A Review of Engineering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan Jonathan Strahan is a freelance editor known for the wide variety of anthologies and author collections he has helped mold into shape. Ranging from collections of Jack Vance and Larry Niven to the New Space Opera to the Sword and Sorcery [...]
Share on Twitter The creature stalked forward, bent, its talon like hands flexing, and Burton saw that his first impression was accurate: the thing walked on two-foot-high stilts. Its lanky body was clad in a skintight white scaly suit that glittered in the dim light of the single guttering gas lamp. Something circular glowed [...]
Share on TwitterCowboy Angels A novel by Paul McAuley Review by Paul Weimer “There are white-tailed deer and woodland caribou and mule deer. Wolves and black bears, and short-faced bears too-those are as big as grizzlies. A few panthers.” “Pretty good hunting in Manhattan” “We call the island New Amsterdam here…If you want to [...]
Share on TwitterThe Winds of Khalakovo A novel by Bradley P Beaulieu Review by Paul Weimer “You look thin” Rehada said, perhaps growing tired of the silence. She held two snifters of infused vodka, one of which she handed to Nikandr as she settled gracefully upon the nearby pillows. “The work on the Gorovna…” Thankfully [...]
Subscribe to The Functional Nerds Podcast on iTunes and never miss an episode!