As much as I wanted to love The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, I have to be honest in that I only thought it was okay. I mean, I can see how these stories established a reputation for Ken Liu, and there’s no doubt that some of them are indeed award worthy, but I didn’t connect with nearly as many as I would have liked. Before you start getting disappointed, however, let me say that I blame the format, not necessarily the content. I’ve always been drawn to doorstopper fantasy novels like The Grace of Kings, where we have six or seven hundred pages to immerse ourselves in the world, so it’s not a surprise that many of these stories fell flat or felt a little shallow. Having said all that, I’d be remiss if I didn’t heap some praise on those stories that did work for me. “State Change” hooked me from the start, with a young woman’s strange obsession with freezers, glaciers, and ice cubes. Rina lives in a world where our souls physically manifest as small items that we must keep close at all times, which is easy enough if your soul is a rock or a…

It wasn’t until I had finished reading The Ballad of Black Tom that I found out it was based on an H.P. Lovecraft short story called The Horror at Red Hook and that several of the characters have the same names. This would have been more interesting to me had I actually read Lovecraft’s story first, but I did enjoy going back afterwards and looking up the details (thank God for Wikipedia!). What’s much more interesting about LaValle’s take on it is that he’s turned Lovecraft’s famous xenophobia on its head and written a story about one man’s experiences with racism in 1920s New York City. I mean, think about it: an African-American author, writing a story that deals with racism, based on a story by a famous racist. It sounds crazy, but LaValle pulls it off, although I have to say I was more interested in the mechanics of what he was trying to do, rather than the story itself, which to me lacked cohesion. The Lovecraft elements are subtle, and unless you’re familiar with the story it’s based upon, you may not notice them at all until the end. What did scream “Lovecraft” to me, however, was the unsettling feeling that runs…

Rarely can a book captivate me so strongly so quickly, but Arkwright hooked me from the very first page. I literally could not put the book aside until I got through the first section. It is a story of vision, aspiration, determination, progress, changing the world and it’s expectations and it is also the story of family, friendships and loyalties. It is a story of genre and evolution that includes the loss of the previous masters of genre as time goes by as readers move on and start to neglect reading the household names of generations past. This story takes generations to tell, but after a gripping opening, it starts with a character named Kate reading incomplete memoirs left by her recently deceased Grandfather. Kate was not close to him, I’m not sure she new much about him beyond the fact that he was a very successful Science Fiction author whose series launched TV spinoffs, catapulting him to genre’s most recognized authors. The same facts anyone of her generation would know about him. The memoirs illustrate the life and aspirations of a young aspiring author named Nathan Arkwright. It outlines his life, his friends, his successes and then most importantly, his dreams and goals….

Diving into a debut novel is always a bit of a gamble, but it can also prove exciting and extremely rewarding—especially when a book ends up surprising me or blowing away all my expectations. These are the moments I live for and this is exactly what I felt with Mark Tompkin’s The Last Days of Magic, a breathtaking historical fantasy saga about mysticism and mythology through the ages. I am absolutely in love with this novel and its premise, which posits that magic is real but merely forgotten, suppressed and denied. Today we dismiss the tales of the Sidhe as nothing but folklore and legend, but just a few centuries ago humans co-existed with all kinds of supernatural creatures, and in no other place was that bond stronger than in Ireland, the last bastion of magic against the encroaching powers of the Vatican Church. Much of island’s strength comes from the protection of its patron deity the Morrígna, a goddess whose three aspects come together to rule over the Celts and the Sidhe. One of Her aspects resides in the Otherworld as a source of power, while the other two—known as Aisling and Anya—are always reborn in the mortal realm…

Just finished reading The Silver Tide by Jen Williams.  This series is so good that it makes me want to cry because it’s now come to an end.  Literally, I could cry right now!  Enough about me though, to the book with a small cautionary note about spoilers for the first two books in the series. This book is so good, I absolutely loved it.  It’s jam packed with so many goodies that I’m sure I developed an ache in my jaw from just gaping ridiculously whilst reading.  Not only do we get to return to this fantastic world and spend time with, frankly, three of my most favourite characters from fantasy at the moment, but we go on some totally crazy adventures. At the start of the story the Black Feather Three are going to be enlisted by none other than Devinia the Red.  Their mission: to delve, boldly I might say, into the heart of the cursed Island of Euriale (otherwise known as the Island of the Gods) where hopefully heaps of treasure lies waiting for their little grabby hands.  Why, you may ask, is this treasure left lying around?  Well, nobody who wandered into the jungles of…

Speak by Louisa Hall is a very unusual book.  I admit that my curiosity was piqued by the cover and I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I picked it up.  As it is I found this a totally fascinating and thought provoking read.  It certainly isn’t an action book and I’ll just make that perfectly clear from the outset but in spite of the lack of any action this was a compelling read that drew me in. This is a combination of five stories that intertwine.  I’ve heard comparisons to Cloud Atlas and whilst I can see where those comparisons are coming from this is a story that stands on it’s own two feet.  Each story is told in a certain style, so we have a diary, letters, court transcripts, a memoir and also direct communication to us through one of the characters. The main threads are told as follows: We follow a young woman called Mary whose family take the decision to uproot and relocate to America during the 1660s.  Mary’s tale is told in the form of a diary.  It’s a somewhat sad tale but told in a fascinating voice and a style that I really…

Coyote shifter Mercy Thompson has faced some truly formidable foes in the past, ranging from vampires to fae assassins and even a god….not to mention Adam’s horrible ex-wife Christy. Somehow Mercy always survives, even if it’s just by the skin of her teeth. But the latest threat is one that Mercy alone cannot hope to beat alone: the Grey Lords, the elders of the fae community. The Grey Lords are tired of living as second-class citizens when they’re actually apex predators, and they’re finally ready to show the world just how powerful they can be. Mercy, Adam, and all their allies will need to work together if they want to stop a war… Although I’ve enjoyed all the books in the Mercy Thompson series, I couldn’t help but feel that the last installment, NIGHT BROKEN, was something of a filler novel. Not a whole lot happened in that book generally, and even less occurred to drive the series’ plot arc forward. But Patricia Briggs is in fine form with FIRE TOUCHED, juggling characters both old and new with the increasingly complex inter-species politics that makes up the foundation of the series. A new species or supernatural type is introduced in…

The Last Mortal Bond is a truly epic conclusion to the The Unhewn Throne trilogy. I just can’t stress enough how much I feel Staveley has grown as a writer since Emperor’s Blades. I felt the first book, The Emperor’s Blades, was unfairly over hyped, setting a level of expectation that I just didn’t feel like the book could live up to. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely enjoyed it or I would not have read on, but it was not without its issues. Providence of Fire set a new level of standard for the series, it was a fantastic second installment and the real test was going to be if that level of story telling could be maintained in the third and final book. I’m happy to say it succeeded. Easily. This series as a whole undoubtedly lives up to the expectations that were set for Staveley’s debut novel. This is a thrilling book that really ties up so many things, and was still able to deliver unexpected twists. All three of the Malkeenian siblings have changed tremendously since that first book, it is amazing to think back to the young naive characters they were when this series started. Sadly, with…

Calamity is the concluding novel of The Reckoners series and it was nothing like I expected, but I have yet to decide whether I feel positively or negatively about that. In truth, I feel torn because even though I enjoyed this book overall, for the first time in a long while I ended a Brandon Sanderson novel without feeling completely satisfied. Here came the long awaited answers to the questions that have been with us since the beginning, but I’m not sure that they really resolved all that much for me. It probably goes without saying, but it’s worth mentioning anyway: This will be a spoiler-free review for Calamity, but if you haven’t read Steelheart and Firefight yet, keep in mind I may reference events from those preceding volumes. Following the devastating events of the last book, David and the Reckoners have left Babilar for Ildithia, tracking down the whereabouts of Jonathan “Prof” Phaedrus. The former Reckoners leader had ultimately succumbed to the darkness of his High Epic powers, but rather than attempting to kill Prof outright, David believes that his friend can still be saved. To do that, he’ll have to uncover Prof’s weakness, the thing that an Epic…

When it comes to media tie-ins – whether it be movie, television, or comic book – one name that consistent comes to mind is Greg Cox. Winner of 3 Scribe Awards from the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, Cox has adapted everything from The Avengers, Batman, and Buffy, to Xena, The X-Files, and X-Men. He is also the author of two dozen novels and short stories in the various Star Trek universes, with Miasma being his first Star Trek e-book. The plot itself is simple, with Spock, McCoy, Chekov, and a few red-shirts sent to investigate an alien signal coming from an unexplored planet. Things begin to go wrong from the start, when their shields produce an explosive reaction in the atmosphere, and then quickly get worse when they crash their shuttle craft in the middle of a swamp. As if that weren’t enough, their phasers are just as dangerous in the planet’s atmosphere, their communicators are useless, and there are massive, man-eating leech-like monsters hunting them in the mist. In many ways, this plays like an sci-fi horror story, more akin to the Alien or Predator franchises than Star Trek, but Cox’s mastery of the characters, the mythology, and the humor of the series makes it…