The original plan was to review the first of the Hugo-nominated novels this week. However, I’ve been enjoying the book so much that I want to take another few days to read it (check back later week for a review of that). Therefore I’m changing course and reviewing three of the Hugo-nominated novelettes instead. This
If there are two words that can describe this year’s nominees for Best Short Story, it would be “triumphant” and “bleak”. Every one of them features someone overcoming a trial, whether it’s living life on their own terms, or making the hard decision to sacrifice their life for others. These are all lyrical and fierce,
Stephen’s god died a little after noon on the longest day of the year. Paladin’s Grace has a hell of a first line. I finished reading it last month, kept procrastinating about writing a review, and then decided it’d been so long I needed to reread it in order to write a decent review. If
The Hugo Award finalists for 2020 have been announced! The convention (July 29 – August 2) will be online only, for obvious reasons. So there’s less than three months before the award ceremony, and between this year and the retro 1945 awards there are 186 separate finalists and I’ve read…two of the novellas, and a
Why don’t you swallow broken glass. Late at night in the Hotel Caiette, someone writes a vicious and weirdly specific message on the lobby’s glass wall. The strangest part of the whole incident is that it happens so late at night that hardly anyone sees it. The grafitti disturbs the night manager, upsets an insomniac
More comfort reading time! This week I’m only going back to 2012 (or forward to the 2400’s) with John Scalzi’s Redshirts. (Courtesy of a free ebook from Tor Books this month. Thanks guys!) It’s Ensign Andrew Dahl’s first posting, and as luck would have it a position just opened on the Intrepid, flagship of the
So, anyone up for some comfort reading? BECAUSE I SURE AM. This week we’re going all the way back to 1991, and a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while now: Ray Aldridge’s first novel, The Pharaoh Contract, book 1 of The Emancipator series. It follows reluctant enforcer Ruiz Aw, who’s been sent
It took five years for us to get a sequel to Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, but it was worth it. This book was everything I wanted out of a return to the British translator with synesthesia, and the eccentric Japanese watchmaker who can remember the future. The plot of Book 1 was
The last night had lasted six months in Britain: half an old year of madness, and mayhem, and near-starvation in the dark. And then, agonizingly slowly, the sun had crawled back into the sky as the planet cruised to a stop, the boundaries of day and night locked forever. As apocalypses go, this was one