It’s a bit of a space-travel review this week as I read two more Hugo-nominated novellas: Sofia Samatar’s story set in a caste-system aboard a generation ship, and Aliette de Bodard’s planetary-hopping monster hunt. The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain – Sofia Samatar He spoke of the Wilderness and the River of Life. He
I’ve got about eighteen weeks to post reviews of twenty-four Hugo Award nominees in the main fiction categories (well, twenty-one, since I’ve already reviewed one novel and two novellas), so I’m gonna start with a two-fer. This week’s review is for Ray Nayler’s haunting novella of memory and war, and another adventure featuring Nghi Vo’s
I think back to something Qin Zheng once said: “Every oppressor, through their denial of humanity, sows the seeds of their own destruction.” Here we are. The seeds that bloomed. (Warning: Massive spoilers for the end of Iron Widow.) The second book in Xiran Jay Zhao’s (ongoing, yay!) Iron Widow series picks up exactly where
It’s that time of year! The nominees for the 2025 Hugo Awards have been announced, and this year I’ve actually read and reviewed three of the Hugo nominees, plus one of the Lodestar nominees for best YA novel! Check out the full list below (which will be updated on a regular basis as I get
It took a moment for her rage to clear enough for the words to actually register: byt’ uveren. A beat later, she realized why that looked so strange, apart from words having no business on the back of a turtle. They were written in Russian. Be sure. In Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series there are
“Angels,” I’d told Alizar when I was eight and freshly appalled to discover I was his saint, “are assholes!” And always have been, Ish, said Alizar. You have no idea. I had the idea, just from looking at the titles, that C.S.E. Cooney’s 2023 novel The Twice-Drowned Saint was going to be similar to her
T. Kingfisher’s latest book is a Regency(ish)-era fantasy in a world of stately mansions, butlers and ladies maids, hunting parties and society balls, best-selling books on how to have impeccable manners and, yes, magic. But not much magic, at least according to the general populace. Sure, there are the occasional stories about someone being a
The world is full of rattlesnakes. Sometimes you step on them and they don’t bite. Sometimes you step over them and they bite anyway. Stephen King has a new collection of short stories! Which he released last May. I probably should have gotten to this in October, but actually this feels less like a Halloween
Yes, I know we never posted a review of Book 2 of Greg Rucka’s Lazarus graphic novel series. It’s an excellent book, you really should read it, but we can skip it for the purposes of Book 3, because it focuses on one of the many desperately poor families in this dystopian future, with the