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
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
Earlier this year, someone from the best of my many book clubs read I Who Have Never Known Men and was totally wowed, recommending it as a masterpiece that’s equally philosophical and character-driven. At that point, it wasn’t a question of whether I would read it, just a question of when. And this fall the… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
This is the same every month. I read some genre magazines, I talk about them. Let’s go. Clarkesworld My favorite genre magazine over the last several years has been Clarkesworld, which generally mixes experimental or boundary-pushing sci-fi with well-executed takes on classic premises. The former is unsurprisingly more boom-or-bust, but I regularly find favorites in… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Two): Reviews of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus (November 2024)
Ever since reading the tremendous “Strange Waters” a few years back, I’ve been eager to get to more of Samantha Mills. So when seemingly half of my Short Fiction Book Club friends were recommending her debut novel The Wings Upon Her Back, it was not a matter of if I would read it, but when. … Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills
I read A Court of Thorns and Roses earlier this year to see what all the hype was about. It really wasn’t good. But then I was told that I had actually not seen what all the hype was about, because really it’s the second book in the series–A Court of Mist and Fury–that set… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. We Are All Ghosts in the Forest will be released on November 7, 2024. I had never heard of Lorraine Wilson before seeing We Are All Ghosts in the Forest pop up on NetGalley,… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: We Are All Ghosts in the Forest by Lorraine Wilson
I’ve been hearing about Jo Walton for a while, but the place I chose to start was an odd one. Regular readers of the blog will be unsurprised to hear that it had a lot to do with Bingo. I’ve been working on a “Not So Hard” theme where I fill each square with a… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Lifelode by Jo Walton
