The first two books of R. J. Barker’s The Tide Child trilogy (The Bone Ships and Call of the Bone Ships) blew me away with a sustained level of sheer excitement, inventive detail of a sea-faring world of two archipelagos, a great set of characters and incredible staging of naval battles. These books brought me […]
The Pastel City, a Novel of Viriconium by M. John Harrison – A Review
The Pastel City (1971) is the first story by M. John Harrison in his Viriconium fantasy sequence. This short novel drew me in immediately with its luminous prose and its ability to depict a world in ruins and a world of hope with just a few brilliant visual strokes. Though it begins with a prologue […]
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – A Review
Never having read Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, I picked up her Piranesi with no preconceptions about the sort of book it might be and promptly fell in love with it. It’s a masterful fable about life in this world that introduces us to the mind of a narrator who proclaims himself to […]
Inhibitor Phase by Alastair Reynolds – A Review
Alastair Reynolds brings us back to the Revelation Space universe with the magnificent Inhibitor Phase. It’s a story about sacrifice, redemption, rebirth and basic human bonds of friendship, love and loyalty that builds to a powerful conclusion. Now, a confession here. When I started reading science fiction seriously almost 20 years ago, Alastair Reynolds and […]
Taking on my SciFi TBR – Summer Wrap-Up
Well, I worked through this summer’s scifi TBR, adding a few more titles along the way, but not all of the novels and stories were quite right for me. I’ve already reviewed the four I really loved – books that changed me in some way. Those are Notes from the Burning Age, And What Can […]
Ursula K. Le Guin on What Is Science Fiction?
When I started this blog, I considered having a page offering various answers to the question, What is science fiction? There are so many different, often clashing views that I thought that would be interesting, but I eventually rejected the idea because it seems too pedantic to even suggest that there is or ought to […]
The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar – A Review
Lavie Tidhar’s The Escapement starts quietly enough: A man who has been sitting with his very ill son in a hospital room steps out for some fresh air and notices a small red flower by the sidewalk. Then we see that flower through the eyes of the Stranger in a surreal, barren landscape. We are […]
10 Great SFF Books Coming This Fall
Here I am only half way through my short summer TBR list, and already I have 10 great SFF books lined up for the late summer and fall. This list includes mostly new volumes of some of the heavy hitter series of the last decade as well as a couple of stand-alones from writers who […]
