I had heard almost nothing about The Ministry of Time in genre circles in the early part of this year, but it seems to have hit big enough in general fiction circles to have bled back into genre, and I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about with Kaliane Bradley’s debut. The Ministry… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
It’s time for my favorite post of the year, where I share all the best sci-fi and fantasy I read from 2024. I write two versions of this post each year. The second comes out in late February, once I’ve had a chance to read works from everyone else’s Best of the Year lists. And… Continue reading Tar Vol’s 2024 Recommended Reading List (Holiday Edition)
Everybody may be posting Best of the Year lists–and don’t get me wrong, I’ll be doing the same later this week–but there are still new stories coming out this month. As always, I read a couple magazines and am here to talk about them. Clarkesworld The December 2024 issue of Clarkesworld had a wonderfully international… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Two): Reviews of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus (December 2024)
I’ve read quite a few quest novellas this year and generally haven’t fallen in love with any of them—not surprising, as I’m just not a huge fan of the quest plot structure—but after a few friends highly recommended Premee Mohamed’s novella The Butcher of the Forest, I decided to try another one, and I’m very… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
I don’t often dip into speculative literary fiction, and my success rate is low enough that even when I saw an intriguing review of Scott Alexander Howard’s debut novel The Other Valley—and I don’t even recall where—I approached with some trepidation. But I do like time travel stories, and my library had a copy, so… Continue reading Speculative Novel Review: The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
For the fourth consecutive year, I am leading a judging team in the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4), and my team has been given 32 books to whittle down to two semifinalists. To start, we’ve split them up so that each team member has nine or ten books to evaluate, and together we’ll pick the… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Turn Left at the Mooncrow Skeleton by Linda Raedisch
I am not especially fond of zombies or especially deep into literary fiction, but I have been really enjoying stories about grief this year—notably “Death Benefits” and The Warm Hands of Ghosts—and so when a book club friend highly recommended Ursula K. Le Guin Prize-winning It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de… Continue reading Speculative Novella Review: It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken
The more I read new releases, the more my “scramble to catch up on new releases” time moves from February to November. Which is not to say that it won’t continue into February, but it’s definitely started. Let’s take a look at what I read this month and what I have to recommend. Short Fiction… Continue reading November 2024 Round-up and Short Fiction Miscellany
In my first two months of Magazine Minis—where I review a few stories from a particular magazine, even if I haven’t read the entire issue—I’ve collected groups of stories that were at least published in the same issue. But some magazines don’t publish multi-story issues at all. And just because a venue publishes one story… Continue reading Tar Vol’s Magazine Minis: Podcastle and Strange Horizons
Each year since my pandemic-fueled reading binge, I’ve completed two full cards for the r/Fantasy Bingo challenge: one themed card and one regular card. This year, my entire theme is being regular—each square has an optional “hard mode” to give the reader an extra challenge, and I’ve filled an entire card with books that cannot… Continue reading Not-So-Hard: My 2024 Fantasy Bingo Card
