I needed to re-read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky because I was tone-deaf years ago to what the author was doing when I first opened this novel. Yeah, I was a bit turned off by characters who were spiders but more so by the narrative voice of those sections describing their evolution. There was […]
Menewood by Nicola Griffith
As Nicola Griffith, author of Menewood, second in her Hild series, said in a recent interview, she expects to be writing about this seventh century British saint (the abbess of Whitby in her later years) for the rest of her life. The character of Hild she has created through 20 years of research is unforgettably […]
A Few Thoughts about Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Given the lavish production of Apple TV’s Foundation series, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the original Foundation trilogy. Like most people, when I was being introduced to science fiction it was Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels that were thrust upon me as cornerstones of the genre, one of the great achievements […]
The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar is even grander in scope than its title at first suggests. Like many Tidhar novels, it is uniquely brilliant, but this one draws together in its luminous writing many perspectives that take some time to sort out. There is a young woman from Vanuatu, a mathematician in […]
David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
In David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (author of Son of the Storm) the end of the world has come to Lagos. After a war among orishas, or gods, in Orun, home of a major pantheon, hundreds of spirits have taken over most of the city in the great Falling. Much of it lies […]
Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny – #VintageSciFiMonth
Every January is Vintage Science Fiction Month, the not-a-challenge created by Andrea at the little red reviewer and Retro Rockets podcast as well as Red Star Reviews. It’s definitely one of my favorite scifi celebrations. The original idea was to comment on science fiction written before your birth year – but I believe “vintage” came […]