Audiobooks are fantastic companions, especially for someone like me who has headphones on 24/7. But there’s no doubt that my reading experience suffers when I listen to a story instead of reading it. Audiobooks invite other elements into my personal reading experience that can alter the storytelling, and I end up sacrificing quality for convenience.…
Welcome to a brief respite from our usual sci-fi and fantasy fare! Today, I’m reviewing The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs, a man obsessed with finding the world’s best puzzles, digging into their history, and attempting to solve them. I imagine the Venn diagram of SFF readers and puzzle lovers probably has at least a few…
While they aren’t nearly as pervasive as they appeared to be, first-contact stories are still a mainstay within the science fiction genre. Depending on the era that they come from they are laden with different ideas on how aliens might function, and what a proper response would be to said lifeform. Instead of doing a…
I’ve been meaning to read These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan for way too long. It was a story that received some hype, and I anticipated that it would be intriguing based on what I was hearing. I have been in the YA spirit recently, so I finally committed to picking this story up. Unfortunately,…
I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger, is a book that caught my eye with its evocative and surreal cover. The blurb on the back makes the book sound transportive, a story about a musician on a rainy lake looking for the meaning of life. Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is a strange…
The characters populating Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things precariously perch on the edges of reality. They risk falling into worlds of despair at any moment. They peer through the veil to see what lies beyond, and what they see is often awesome and terrifying at once. Fragile Things, then, is a fitting title for such a…
Despite the well-worn phrase “never judge a book by its cover,” I think we all fall into that habit. Such was the case with L. M. Sagas’ debut, Cascade Failure. The title serenaded me like a siren, and the cover produced feelings of coziness while creating deep stress. This conflict depressed my initial zeal for…
Continue reading ➞ Cascade Failure – Wins Well, But Could Use A Little More Losing
I picked up When Among Crows by Veronica Roth solely based on its premise—it sounded metal as hell. An order of knights that pull swords from their spines to keep the monsters at bay? That’s my jam. It was a short, dark, and heartfelt ride that is a must-read for the top of your summer…
The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch came out over ten years ago, and ever since the massively popular Gentleman Bastard series ground to a standstill, there have been any number of debut heist books that generate tons of excitement as something to fill the gap. This comparison is almost always deeply unfair to debuts…
Continue reading ➞ The Silverblood Promise – He’s Just So Dumb
For most, I imagine the name “Derek Delgaudio” is shrouded in mystery. His Wikipedia page says he’s an “interdisciplinary artist primarily known as a writer, performer, and magician.” He was an artist in residence for Walt Disney Imagineering. He consulted for The Prestige. My first encounter with Delgaudio was his stage show, In & Of…
