The Last Gifts of the Universe by Rory August is the winner of the second Self Published Science Fiction Competition, and it’s easy to see why it came out ahead of the hundreds of other novels. But before I get into my review, I’d like to say how grateful I am that SPSFC exists. Without […]
Ethera Grave by Essa Hansen (Part 3 of The Graven Trilogy)
Essa Hansen’s Ethera Grave may be the conclusion of her Graven trilogy (following Nophek Gloss and Azura Ghost), but it does far more than bring to an exciting and powerful conclusion a complex story. The novel expands its multiverse in dazzling ways and probes numerous questions of moral choice, diversity, transformation, time, the power of […]
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord, the latest in her Cygnus Beta novels, is unlike any science fictional work I’ve recently read. It depicts familiar elements: a vast scale of galactic politics, a humanoid diaspora in space, a climate-changed Earth where cities are being enclosed in protective globes and many current nation states have […]
Translation State by Ann Leckie
Ann Leckie has written a strange and compelling story in Translation State that is set in a part of her Imperial Radch universe different from what we know from the Ancillary novels. For all its trappings of space opera and bizarre species, it’s very much a captivating story about family, loneliness, friendship, and the need […]
Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Lords of Uncreation is the third and final volume of the Final Architecture series, including Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void. What draws me most to this series are the amazing descriptions of the encounters of the Intermediary Idris Telemmier with the creatures of unspace, a level of space beneath the […]
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Emily Tesh set herself a difficult task in Some Desperate Glory. Present the reader with a young protagonist raised in a militaristic society who is all about duty, war-breeding, xenophobia, homophobia and worse, then draw her through enough world-shattering experiences to make her interesting, flaws and all, from start to finish. And Tesh hits the […]
