This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. System Collapse will be released on November 14, 2023. The Murderbot Diaries have rocketed Martha Wells to genre stardom, and it’s easy to see why. They’re fast-paced and fun, with a part-mechanical, part-organic construct—the… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: System Collapse by Martha Wells
Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty was often discussed among the exciting new fantasy epics back in the late 2010s when I returned to genre reading. But it’s also very long, and the first book has a reputation (arguably undeserved) for being a difficult read. So I kept putting it off, even as I read more and… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
A welcome quieter month—with only two of my regular magazines releasing new issues—allowed me to get to an ARC of an exciting new short fiction anthology, leading yet again to a magazine round-up coming at the very end of the month. But I thought it was a very good reading month, and I have a… Continue reading Tar Vol Reads a Magazine (or Two): Reviews of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus (October 2023)
I was a bit late to the party on the Wayward Children novella series, but since I’ve started voting in the Hugo Awards, I’ve made an annual event of reading last year’s entry. This year is no different, with Seanan McGuire’s seventh entry in the series, Where the Drowned Girls Go, earning her seventh consecutive… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Digital Aesthete will be released on November 14, 2023. I haven’t read much of Alex Shvartsman’s work as an editor, but I’ve enjoyed a bit of his translated short fiction, and I’ve been… Continue reading Sci-fi Anthology Review: The Digital Aesthete, edited by Alex Shvartsman
I heard so many rave reviews about Spear by Nicola Griffith that I decided to put it off until its inevitable Hugo nomination. Tordotcom novellas seemed unstoppable, and it was getting nothing but praise. And then it ended up not making the list—perhaps due to category confusion, as the word count puts it in that… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Spear by Nicola Griffith
I read T. Kingfisher for the first time a couple years ago when a friend highly recommended A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, and since then I’ve added a fair few others, from the excellent children’s book Harriet the Invincible (as Ursula Vernon) to adult fairy tale retellings and even horror. But Nettle & Bone… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Starling House was released on October 3, 2023. Alix E. Harrow burst onto the scene in the late 2010s with a blend of beautiful imagery, bingeable prose, and fabulist plots featuring sharp moral divides… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Generation Ship will be released on October 17, 2023. When I saw Michael Mammay’s Generation Ship pop up on NetGalley, I was intrigued by the blurb, but I’d never heard of the author and… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay
I’ve been working through my own personal subset of my team’s slush allocation for the third annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC3), and one of the books that immediately intrigued me from the cover and blurb was The Mimameid Solution by Katherine Kempf. The Mimameid Solution takes place after a series of environmental disasters, in… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: The Mimameid Solution by Katherine Kempf
