By Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer Tachyon Publications, $11.95, 92 pages “But it’s self-cooking!” Despite the incredible variety of plants and animals on Earth, humans have always enjoyed conjuring up even stranger and more vibrant creatures. The phoenix. The mermaid. The jackalope. The chupacabra. The banshee. They haunt and terrify and fascinate. But how would [...]
By Jane Lindskold Tor, $27.99, 367 pages Inhabiting the world of the Chinese zodiac, Five Odd Honors is a vibrant work and steeped in heavy culture, as readers of Jane Lindskold’s Firekeeper series might expect. Written with Lindskold’s lyricism and complex prose, the characters and culture feel successfully foreign and strange as the author paints [...]
By Robert J. Sawyer Tor, $14.99, 381 pages In the novel Hominids, author Robert J. Sawyer offered a fascinating idea–a world where Neanderthal man survived and Homo sapiens went the way of the dinosaurs. When a single Neanderthal scientist, Ponter Boddit, appeared in our world from an alternate dimension, he offered a wonderful outsider’s perspective [...]
By S.M. Stirling Tor, $14.99, 301 pages Mr. Stirling has set The Sky People in the same science fiction writers’ wishful universe as In the Courts of the Crimson Kings. Just as his Mars was a blend of Burrough’s Barsoom and his own wonderful weapons sense, this adventure takes place on a Venus of great [...]
By Michael Sims Walker & Company, $17.00, 467 pages Vampire stories are even more popular today than they were during the age of Bram Stoker and other Victorian authors. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight to movies, books, and television shows, vampire stories–and more than just the classics–are all around. This new collection goes [...]
By Miller, Karen LucasBooks, $16.00, 401 pages No backup. No escape plan. No support. No time to rest. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are two of the Order’s most capable Jedi, but they’re low on options. On the run from overwhelming Separatist forces on a backwater planet in the Outer Rim called Lanteeb, Obi-Wan and [...]
By Charles de Lint Tachyon Publications, $15.95, 427 pages The Very Best of Charles de Lint is a short story collection compiled, in part, with the help of de Lint’s fans. De Lint includes a very nice introduction that explains the impetus for this urban fantasy collection and how he collaborated with his fans to [...]
By Suzanne McLeod Ace, $10.54, 368 pages Part witch, part fae nobility, part something else, Genevieve “Genny” Taylor works for Spellcrackers.com who’s slogan ‘Making Magic Safe!’ says it all. As a spellcracker, Genny dispatches troublesome magic and is happy to stick to what knows. But when Mr. October, a vampire, is accused of murdering his [...]
By Peter S. Beagle Subterranean Press, $35.00, 104 pages A bow and arrow-wielding mercenary confronts painful memories and an ancient evil in Return, a new Innkeeper’s World story from the pen of mythopoeia, Hugo and Nebula Award winner and two-time World Fantasy Award best novel nominee Peter S. Beagle. Soukyan, the narrator, has long been [...]
By Holly Black, Orson Scott Card, George R. R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, Todd Lockwood Night Shade Books, $15.95, 499 pages This enchanting collection is a sampling of all things dragon; philosophy, magic, mechanism, environment, menu, subterfuge, climate, culture, and dragons as friends and protagonists. I met several old winged friends and made some new ones. [...]
By Peter F. Hamilton Del Rey, $28.00, 694 pages Picking up precisely where The Temporal Void left off, The Evolutionary Void,—the third book in Hamilton’s Void Trilogy—immediately kicks into high gear. Edeard has finally managed to master his awesome psychic abilities, but he finds that his troubles are far from over. Second Dreamer Araminita finds [...]
By Phaedra Weldon Ace, $15.00, 352 pages Those unfamiliar with the storyline may very well find themselves lost through much of the latest offering in the Zoe Martinique series. Zoe is back with the same cast of characters from her earlier novels with new powers and abilities. On a positive note, long time readers won’t [...]
By Patricia C. Wrede Tor, $15.99, 448 pages A Matter of Magic combines two novels by Patricia C. Wrede, both previously published under their own titles. The first book, Mairelon the Magician, introduces Kim, a thief disguised as a boy and living on the London streets, and Mairelon, the street magician who Kim’s engaged by [...]
By Carrie Vaughn Tor, $23.99, 299 pages Evie Walker returns home to Hopes Fort, Colorado, to take care of her dying father. She takes notice of the Storeroom, a room forbidden to her when she was younger. Gradually, she learns its purpose and the contents it protects. Some of these are Excalibur, Cinderella’s slippers, and [...]
By Kelley Armstrong Dutton, $25.95, 320 pages Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld goes beyond standard paranormal fiction, using an ensemble cast of women in a deep supernatural universe, moving from one set of characters to another through the books, yet intertwining their stories to provide a rich background for the readers. Waking the Witch bridges [...]
By Charles Stross Ace, $24.95, 304 pages For some reason, fighting elder gods and facing the Apocalypse is done more in comedy than in serious prose. The Fuller Memorandum leavens it with some serious on why they fight, but it’s so aggressively in the passive British voice and is so the anti-James Bond (married, geeky, [...]
