The Lands of Faerie, after a struggle and a near-death experience, have a true High Prince again. The rule of the false Basilisk Prince is over, and the long process of healing the damage caused by his reign can finally happen.There are holdouts, those who do not want to submit to the new Prince, and […]
The beautifully written novel, Broken by A.E. Rought takes the reader through a modern retelling of Frankesntein with a twist of Romeo and Juliet. The story begins in a cemetery, where the lonely teen, Emma, mourns her boyfriend and the fact that he will never have a grave. Her heartache is palatable; yet soon she […]
A familiar skeleton of a tale. A lost ruler or aspirant to rule of a magical land has been banished, and lost his allies, friends and even his memory. He lives his life on Earth, unaware of his true role and nature, until a meeting with an ally from his old realm shows up at […]
In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’ There was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, […]
Thematic Shared-world anthologies used to be, once upon a time, all the rage, and one of my favorite forms of genre reading. Wild Cards, Thieves World, Heroes in Hell, Forever After, Time Gate, the Man-Kzin Wars…at one point, I couldn’t scan a shelf in a bookstore without running into one I had not seen or read before.Thematic […]
This book is a love letter. Within its pages, books are magic. They come alive. Libriomancy allows certain gifted individuals to pull forth objects from the pages of books and use them in our world. From the time Gutenberg himself became the first Libriomancer when he invented the printing press, libriomancy has been used […]
As a barista at a cafe/comic book store in a fictional California college town, Ree Reyes has a pretty typical life for a genre geek. Talk with the regulars about the latest Watchmen prequel, gather with her group of equally geeky girlfriends after work. Try and pay the rent and the bills in a recession. […]
Babylon is the madam of a brothel in Scalentine. Scalentine has two moons, and is a hub of the multiverse, with portals to many other worlds. As such, a madam of a brothel who is also a good swordsman is fairly straightforward and ordinary compared to lizard races, a werewolf chess playing police captain, and […]
Drothe is a Nose. In a city of thieves, his role is as an information gatherer and curator for his employer, a roughhewn boxer of an Upright Man (think mob boss) called Nicco. It’s a decent life, one that Drothe has developed over years as one of the Kin. On the side, Drothe likes […]
In Purgatory, by Tim Dodge, Charles Cunningham joins forces with Edgar Allan Poe and a mysterious character named Billy to win his salvation and gain admittance to heaven. To accomplish this, they journey to Earth to watch over Charles’s daughter, who is now an old woman. Through this act of kindness toward the daughter […]
Amy is five years old, somewhat stunted for her age, but otherwise a happy go lucky innocent girl who is about to graduate from kindergarten, an only child with a loving father and devoted mother. Amy is also not human, just like her mother is not human. Both are Von Neumann machines, android form artificial […]
In Suited by Jo Anderton, Tanyana is a debris collector – one of the people of Movac-under-Keeper given the job of collecting the dark byproduct of the city’s powerful pion systems. Unable to see the bright pion particles herself, she instead has the unpleasant and sometimes dangerous task of collecting the dark debris that […]
Across the galaxy from Lost Earth, the youngest, dissolute and disreputable scion of the noble house that rules a stellar empire flees his responsibilities, his privileges and station on the eve of the ceremony marking his maturity. Little does the ne’er-do-well Brandon know, however, that at the same time, a plot decades in the […]
“-Falling just means you’re someone else when you stand up.” – Debris In the world of Debris by Jo Anderton, pions – the sentient energy that composes reality – can be coerced into shaping matter and performing whatever task is required. The veche who rule the city of Movac-under-Keeper employ powerful pion “binders” to […]
There is something special about books and reading. The ability to transport a reader into another world, into the lives of characters is a very powerful thing. One might even go so far as to say that reading and books are a form of magic. For Isaac Vainio, that magic is literal. He is, […]
The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, tells the story of the expansion of humanity into a seemingly endless collection of Earths. When plans for the “stepper” – a box of simple electronic components powered by a potato – appears on the internet, it seems little more than a harmless project for children. […]
The term Science Fiction applies if there is a science somewhere at the bottom of the fiction. Be it the “hard” sciences of physics, astronomy and chemistry, or the “soft” sciences of sociology, psychology, anthropology, and biology lying somewhere in between, there is always an underlying science for the fiction to be considered science […]
Redshirts by John Scalzi takes one of the most beloved science fiction series of all time and mercilessly tears it apart. But in a good way. Andrew Dahl has just been stationed aboard the Intrepid, but as soon as he arrives he notices things are amiss. Crew members mysteriously disappear before certain officers appear in […]
If Bryan Thomas Schmidt‘s ‘The Worker Prince’ was Moses in space, than ‘The Returning’ contains the seeds of a new Exodus – blending the background of the original story seamlessly into the sequel. Readers may pick up the thread of the story quickly – whether or not they have read the first book. For decades, […]
A military unit outside of the boundaries of its Empire, messing around in client kingdoms and bordering polities. A motley group of soldiers and gritty veterans, more than a bit war-weary. Some of those soldiers are burdened with dark secrets, and a mission and purpose unclear to anyone around them. Standard Sword and sorcery stuff, […]
Egil and Nix are thieves. Good thieves, as a matter of fact. True, they have side interests and pasts. Nix knows something of magic. Egil was trained as a priest of the Momentary God. Both of them have pasts and long careers as thieves, years of tomb robbing and other unsavory jobs. Now, the results […]
In Blackbirds, Chuck Wendig tells the story of a modern day Cassandra. Miriam has had the visions for years. All it takes is the touch of another person’s skin on her own, and she sees their death. When she meets a trucker named Louis, she sees him call her name before he dies. Can […]
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