Well, folks, I did it! I read my first George R.R. Martin book. The book in question? His definitive work, his magnum opus: an illustrated novella called The Ice Dragon. This pint-sized fable comes and goes like a winter’s first flurry, dissipating in a flash after leaving its translucent mark upon the ground where it…
Engines of Reason, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is an eagerly anticipated sequel to Elder Race, my absolute favorite novella. In some ways, I was a little sad that Tchaikovsky decided to write Engines of Reason. I fundamentally believe that Elder Race is so perfect that it can’t be improved on, but Tchaikovsky has proven me wrong…
Continue reading ➞ Engines Of Reason – Iterating On Perfection
Reading and then reviewing older science fiction always feels a bit weird. Rarely am I picking up something that is a hidden gem, a thing that someone has never read before. Often it feels like I am just adding to the choir of voices that already assures you “yes, this is good.” I know I…
Welcome back to V.L. Bovalino’s world in The Hand and the Heart series, where we meet a spy dealing with a set of problems seemingly far removed from the long war that devastated the neighboring kingdom of Idistra. Yet the war had far-reaching effects, and the spy will soon find herself in a plot that…
Continue reading ➞ The Thief And The Traitor Bride – Stole My Time
The publisher renamed this series to the Ana and Din Mysteries while I wasn’t looking, and I only just realized. We are off to a great start. Well, the formerly called Shadow of the Leviathan series got its third installment this month, and as always, anything that Robert Jackson Bennett puts out does numbers with…
It’s the end of the world as we know it. That’s the setting for TJ Klune’s latest exploration of the human condition. We Burned So Bright drops a retired couple into the oncoming apocalypse, during which they embark on a journey that’s just as internal as it is geographical. A rogue black hole has appeared…
The Iron Garden Sutra, by A.D. Sui, is the kind of book I relish. It’s an exploration of death amongst the stars through a semi-religious lens. I read it at a particularly weird time, an almost serendipitous one, had the circumstances not been so unfortunate. It popped up as ready from the library only a…
Y’all, I had so much fun with Starside by Alex Aster. It starts with a dying world and a deadly competition, but it becomes an action-packed adventure with a pair of enemies dedicated to their hatred of one another while begrudgingly keeping each other alive. This story is pure escapism, so stop being an intellectual…
BookTok-beloved debut The Demon Star, by Jesse Aragon, has been getting non-stop incredible reviews, to the point that I wondered if it was productive for me to review it. It’s an ambitious science-fantasy story set on an arid and desolate alien world, very reminiscent of genre behemoths Dune and Sun Eater in a lot of…
Continue reading ➞ The Demon Star – A Sad Demon Clown On Fire
Immortal Game by Allison Saft turned out to be much cosier than I thought. A high-stakes chess game against the fae? I was expecting all sorts of tricks and a cunning competition, but this story is much more low-key than that. Everyone is wary of chess prodigy Shea Fury and her half-fae sister, Aideen. The…
