Brilliance and Shadow Ops – The Search For The Perfect Mutation

When I was a kid I loved the X-Men. They were my favorite superheroes and I watched all the cartoons and read all the comics. Now many years later, that love has in no way diminished. In fact it has likely grown. So when I discovered multiple books about mutants I was very excited. The…

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction – Something for Every Kind of Sci-Fi Fan

In between the larger books I read for review, and for my own personal enjoyment, I like to read smaller works to fill my down time on the subway or right before I go to sleep. As such I decided to pick up a collection of short stories to kill time. Enter Hannu Rajaniemi. Hannu…

The Grace of Kings – There But For The Grace of The Gods, Kings Go

A little while ago I heard about a short story called The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu (click here) that was going around and impressing a lot of people that I take seriously. I am not a huge short fiction person myself, but I thought what the hell, it isn’t that long I will just…

Monsters of Elsewhere – Giving You Respect For The Monster Under Your Bed

I am on a bit of a self publishing kick for no particular reason. This choice has led me to read some really great unknown gems, and some books that have not made it into posts as they are not worth mentioning. Today I want to talk to you about a new self published book…

Knight’s Shadow – A Thick Second Chapter in a Heartfelt Story

I like to think of myself as a fairly harsh critic. I think I have an eye for good world building, character development, plot, etc. and I think I am very fair in how I assess different books perform at these various metrics. That being said, I have noticed an interesting effect when I read…

What Everyone Can Learn from Agatha Christie

Because I am secretly a 60 year old grandmother, I run a book club. We read mostly fantasy and sci-fi books, but in the spirit of variety we try to throw in books from other genres occasionally. When we were picking our line-up for this year, we decided to look into best selling books that…

The Autumn Republic – Putting the ‘Pow’ in Powder Mage

This Review will be both for The Autumn Republic, and The Powder Mage series as a whole. The Autumn Republic is the final installment of the Powder Mage trilogy by Brian McClellan, a military fantasy that primarily follows the stories of three main protagonists; Tamas, Taniel, and Adamat. Tamas is the General of an army…

Forging Divinity – Like a Better Dragonlance

Once upon a time, a much younger me decided that it had been far too long since I read a book. I wandered into a Barnes and Noble and perused the shelves until I found a book that sounded cool. I picked up The Black Company with no prior knowledge, took it home and discovered…

Vicious – Setting New Bars for Awesome Super Powers and Terrible College Roommates

To begin, this is a good book. You should buy this book and subsequently read this book. But first, let’s talk about what it is and why this is a good book. Background - Vicious is the story of two brilliant college roommates, Eli and Victor, who go on a quest to discover if super powers…