Needle is the third book in Linda Nagata’s compelling Inverted Frontier series that began with Edges and continued with Silver. This is an epic story of the search for remnants of human civilizations reaching back from the farthest reach of settlement toward the origin of it all. Urban and the crew of the Dragon encounter […]
The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford – A Review for Wyrd & Wonder
John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting is a brilliant reshuffling of fantasy tropes and alternate history but at heart also a beautiful study of a group of extraordinary characters. First published in 1983, this is the first of Ford’s novels to be republished since his death in 2006 when, apparently because no one could trace […]
Moon Witch Spider King by Marlon James, A Review for Wyrd & Wonder
Marlon James’ Moon Witch Spider King (second book of the Dark Star trilogy) impressed me at first as everything I had missed in the first novel, Black Leopard Red Wolf. There was a story of emotional depth I could link into and a brilliant character I could care about, as opposed to the strangely alienating […]
Amazing Cities in SFF – 3
To round out for now this series on cities in SFF, I’m revisiting a few novels that capture the importance of how people experience urban environments and how the massive structures affect their language and thought. A city, after all, is not just buildings and a way of physically organizing dense populations, but also a […]
Fevered Star and Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
Fevered Star is the second book in Rebecca Roanhorse’s brilliantly imagined series Between Earth and Sky. Picking up directly after the conclusion of Black Sun, Fevered Star pushes its central characters in new directions while building on their gods-driven purposes played out in a richly imagined setting that draws together elements of many pre-Columbian American […]
Dark Theory by Wick Welker
Wick Welker’s Dark Theory (the first volume of a series called Dark Law) poses basic questions about what it means to be human in a far-future poisoned world. The story begins in a junkyard where people have to scavenge the means of survival. Two young women, the generous-hearted Lucindi and the hardened and cynical Miree, […]
