Another win from the LibraryThing giveaway program, which I highly recommend if you ever find yourself short of books to review ; ) . Finding Nina is the concluding volume to Stephen Hazlett’s City Different trilogy (“The City Different,” an in-story Jeopardy question informs me, is a nickname for Santa Fe). It’s been described variously…
Category: Book Reviews
Book Review: Liane Merciel’s The River King’s Road
This is exactly the kind of fantasy I love: a potentially epic setting but with “low fantasy” focus on the actual people within it. Peasants have the chance to determine fate for a change. Like Saladin Ahmed, I also want “fewer kings and starship captains, more coach drivers and space waitresses” in my spec fic….
Book Review: “Blood of Kings” by Billy Wong
I received a free ebook copy through a LibraryThing giveaway in exchange for an honest review. I signed up for the giveaway because I’ve followed Wong’s short fiction casually for years (not least because we’ve frequently wound up in the same places, such as Firefly in Amber etc etc). While his style is fine for…
Book Review: Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker (Aspect-Emperor trilogy)
I mentioned this one in my review of The Skybound Sea–where I hoped for the sake of Aeon’s Gate fans Skyes goes on to write a sequel trilogy like this. I cannot remember enjoying a sequel so much in years! Although the worldbuilding behind what Bakker is now calling The Second Apocalypse is beyond complex, and…
WisCon Rapidfire Book Reviews #4: Aeon’s Gate: The Skybound Sea by Sam Sykes
I have a confession to make: I already took one review copy (Edge of Oblivion), but I couldn’t resist snagging this one, too. I picked it up and meant to page through it to pass the time before the auction, but then I could not put it down. The opening lines beat out a hypnotic rhythm….
WisCon Rapidfire Book Reviews #3: Edge of Oblivion by J.T. Geissinger
Among the delights of WisCon was the cardboard box of free review copies in the lobby. Diving in among them, I read the back cover copy of this ARC and snagged it, always one to enjoy the occasional romance. I was expecting fantasy in a historical setting, only to find paranormal romance instead. Paranormals aren’t…
WisCon Rapidfire Book Review #2: A Stranger on Olondria by Sofia Samatar
Another one of the books I discovered through WisCon–in fact, I discovered Stranger in Olondria through the little sampler pamphlets Small Beer Press handed out out at WisCon 2012. This was daring promotional tactic–because the first 50 pages of this story don’t have much of the plot, though they gave a flavor for style. The style intrigued me enough that…
WisCon Rapidfire Book Review #1: Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
Life is busy, what with the move, the job search, and the Starter Guide, but it’s unfair of me to hold off on these reviews any longer. So: a RAPID FIRE ROUND shall commence, where I give you my thoughts on the books I discovered at WisCon this May in a few hundred words each….
The Plants of Middle-Earth: Botany and Sub-Creation by Dinah Hazell
What a charming book! Like The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel, this was a find made in the American University library shelves. It stood out not only for the title (of all things it was sub-creation I was drawn to; the concept is Tolkien’s gift to the fantasy genre far more than any number…
Currently Reading: William Goldbloom Bloch, The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel
This is a book that, fittingly perhaps, I am reading because I discovered it in the library. The library at American University, that is. Not the Library of Babel. Although this book could, conceivably, be discovered in the Library of Babel. I wouldn’t give much for your chances of finding it, but it’s possible. The…