I didn’t know that Mechanize My Hands to War even existed until author Erin K. Wagner was interviewed in Clarkesworld in December 2024. But as so often happens with Clarkesworld interviews, she talked about it in a way that caught my attention and sent it flying up my TBR. And I’m glad it did. Mechanize… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner
My judging team in the fourth annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC4) has sifted through our 32-book allocation and chosen four quarterfinalists for further evaluation as we seek to identify just two semifinalists to advance to the next stage. For my second quarterfinalist read, I picked up the time travel romance A Swift and Sudden… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: A Swift and Sudden Exit by Nico Vincenty
I was previously unfamiliar with Jedediah Berry, and despite a striking cover, I would have let The Naming Song pass me by without a strong recommendation from a book club friend who loved the language element. So I decided to give it a try after all. The Naming Song takes place after an underdescribed apocalypse—when… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is an undisputed classic of magical realism, with a Nobel Prize under its belt and plenty of staying power. And so it’s been on my TBR for a long time. But at the same time, I don’t have a ton of experience with magical realism, so… Continue reading Magical Realism Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
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 top 15-25% to pass… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Norylska Groans by Michael R. Fletcher and Clayton W. Snyder
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. ChloroPhilia will be released on January 14, 2025. I had read a short story or two by Cristina Jurado a couple years ago, and while I was a bit wary that she can lean… Continue reading Sci-fi Novella Review: ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado
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’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
I hadn’t previously read any Nathan Tavares, but I’m always curious about books that provoke especially strong reactions, and a Redditor hyping up Welcome to Forever as the book of the year nudged me to look further into it. And between a premise that included plenty of weird memory stuff and an extremely messy interpersonal… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Welcome to Forever by Nathan Tavares
